The question has been asked a lot recently with Odyssey Stroke Lab coming out, why did putter heads get heavier over the years? Was it just design elements? To increase MOI? Something else?
We sat down with putter and industrial design expert Sean Toulon, who has been involved with the creation some of the most popular putters in golf over the last 3-4 decades to ask him this very question.
I remember Austie talking about this. Golfers have inconsistent putting strokes and rather than work on it, they went heavier to feel "balanced" to cover up some flaws. I was a prime culprit of this. I went heavy because I thought it helped me "control" my stroke better, when in reality I was covering up for a bad putting motion.
Why is that such a bad thing? I wouldn’t necessarily call it “covering up”. It’s an option that perhaps will help in your stroke. It did for me.
It’s a splippery slope is best I can explain. It can get out of hand really quick throwing the putter all out of whack swing weight wise. I think the consensus was it has it merits, but it can hurt more than help.
For you being a better player/putter and information at your disposal, you can make it work effectively. Too many just see something on TV or don’t do their homework on the set up and it can end up hurting them.
This is a very old putter as far as when it was actually built. I’d had it for 15, or so years before putting it in my bag. When trying it out as a replacement, I also tested an 2 Ball putter, a Rail Gun putter and a couple of other putters I had laying around collecting dust.
Their claim was/is the extra weight created more stability in putting stroke. I have no reason to disagree with their claim. The weight of the club head resisted any twisting on heel/toe mishits. Except for the Rail Gun, the other putters I tried would twist on those mishits.
I putt pretty well with this putter. The extra weight also made it possible to use a shorter back stroke than I normally used. The shorter back stroke helped to keep the putter face on my putting stroke line.
This B-1 putter replaced a much lighter putter I had used for decades that had become unplayable. Took about 2 weeks of practice to get use to the extra weight. My putts per green average eventually returned to normal, and I never looked back.
very enjoyable!
I’ll compare it to something I do understand, which is curling ice. When we talk about ice being faster, the curler will actually take longer to deliver the stone when measured between two points in the delivery. In other words, it takes less effort to make the rock travel as far when the ice is fast. To me, a putting green would be the same – faster means less resistance, or further ball travel under the same energy input. So why did the putter need to get heavier?