I was looking at my partners' putters today. One uses a 15+ year old Dunlop he said he bought at Big 5 Sporting Goods for $15 (the other guys have fancier putters). I told him I think it's a Ping Anser copy. He said he likes it because it's light. I remember what you said about amateurs benefiting from a heavier putter head, but I didn't say anything. I think I heard one of the guys saying that you can add screws to the back of the putter head to add weight if you want.
I mentioned to one of the guys today something I heard from Peter Kostis on a telecast this year -- he judges a player's putting not by his makes but by his misses. How badly does he/she miss sometimes. He didn't eleborate but I know that he meant that a really capable putter doesn't make a lot of really bad putts. I was OK today. No 3 putts, at least, and the greens on my home course are pretty difficult. So are the pin placements a lot of the time. I think one of the staff is to blame, but I don't know anything more than what I see on the greens. I'm especially good on the long putts, even really long putts. I really like practicing them is the reason. It's fun.
Is the putter really lighter? A lot of guys will pick up mine and get the impression that it's lighter because it's shorter, but the head is 25-50 grams heavier than most off the rack putters. Feel is a funny thing, it's why clubs measure swingweight in addition to static weight. You can add 100 grams of mass to a club and it will feel lighter if the weight is in the butt end and remove 50 grams and make it feel heavier if the weight comes off the butt end. That guy could think his putter is light when it's really heavy and for all you know he could get a lot better by switching to something even heavier.
They talk about judging a basketball shooter by how he misses. A really good shooter rarely misses right or left, he misses short or long, but on line. Golfers it works differently. Most bad putters don't miss wildly left or right. A terrible putter will still get the ball mostly in the right direction the majority of the time. For bad putters, three-putts and four-putts are caused by bad speed control. You'll almost never see a guy miss 4 feet left or 4 feet right on a 50-footer on any greens that are less severe than Augusta's. When a 3-putt arises because the first putt was not close enough, 99% of the time it will be either very short or very long. Watch poor putters on putts of 20 or 30 or 50 feet and you're going to see a shitload of putts left 15 feet short or blown 10 feet by. The best advice you can give to beginners and poor putters is to pay 10 times more attention to the speed of a putt than they do to the line. Without the right speed, line is meaningless. You can glance at a putt for a second and gauge the line fairly accurately, to assure an easy 2-putt you have to nail the speed.
"I really like practicing them is the reason. It's fun." - And that, right these in a nutshell, is why so many guys practice so much and don't get better. It's fun to practice what you're good at and frustrating to spend time doing something you suck at. I'd be the richest person on earth if I had a dollar for every guy I saw that can hit driver okay, but not be able to hit a crisp iron, a proper chip or a bunker shot and then after firing a 120 go right to the range to hit a bucket of drivers. I used to be like that. I was born with the ability to hit a golf ball really well. It came naturally to me and I didn't have to work at it. The short game was a mystery. I could go out, hit 12-14 greens and shoot 85 because I'd 3-putt several of the greens I hit, convert few birdies and every green I missed was a double or worse. As natural as the swing came to me the short game felt 1000 times more unnatural and it drove me batshit crazy. So what did I do? I'd run right to the range, blast balls over the fence and leave people oooing and aaaahing over my "skills" so that I could FEEL better. But I didn't actually GET better until I stopped jerking off on the range and put in the work on the painful stuff.
Two fundamental truths for all golfers and aspiring golfers.
1) Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. If you have a slice hitting an extra bucket a week does not cure the slice, it ingrains it. You need to practice with a specific plan to address the faults that are holding you back.
2) Practice what you're bad at. Nothing cures itself by magic, it takes effort and it takes the willingness to go out and look like a fool hitting terrible shots to eventually stop hitting terrible shots. Golf is not a game of how good your good shots are, it's a game of how good your bad shots are. You can impress a lot of people on a driving range that's 1000 yards wide, but you can't score if any part of your game sucks. Strive to make the weakest part of your game average. Not tour level, not great, just average. Most guys who struggle to break 100 (and that's most guys) would be able to break 90 by fixing their one biggest fault. It's a BITCH to go from a 2 handicap to scratch, but it's EASY to go from 30 to 15. At that level fixing the one fault will pay huge dividends.
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