Forty Percent of Your Strokes, Fitted by Almost Nobody

Almost every putter we measure is too long

Standard putter length settled at thirty-four inches for reasons that have nothing to do with human beings. A golfer who is properly fitted usually lands between thirty-two and thirty-four, and the extra length in a stock club pushes the hands away from the body, which lifts the toe, which points the face somewhere other than where the golfer is aiming.

Lie follows directly from that. A putter sitting toe-up presents a face that is effectively closed to the intended line, and the golfer compensates with the hands. This is one of the few fitting faults where a golfer can watch the correction work in the same minute they hear the explanation, which makes it a satisfying thing to demonstrate.

Sole the putter on the green and look at the toe. That is a free diagnostic and it fails more often than it passes.

Static loft is not the loft that reaches the ball

A putter head carries a small amount of loft — typically three degrees or so — to lift the ball out of its resting depression and get it rolling. What matters is the loft delivered at impact, which depends entirely on where your hands are and whether the shaft is leaning forward or back.

A golfer who presses the hands ahead can deliver a putter at nearly zero loft, driving the ball down into the surface and producing a hop before the roll starts. A golfer who hangs back can add several degrees and float the ball, losing distance control on longer putts. Neither is a stroke fault to be coached out. Both are fixable by changing the loft on the head.

We measure it, bend the head to suit, and note both the delivered figure and the static one on your sheet. It is one of the quietest, cheapest improvements available and it takes about fifteen minutes.

This table is the industry's shorthand and it is a reasonable place to begin, but we treat it as a hypothesis to be tested rather than a conclusion. Plenty of good putters use a head the chart says is wrong for them and roll it beautifully, and switching them to the correct answer would be an act of vandalism dressed as a fitting.

What we do instead is watch the face at impact relative to the start line over enough putts to mean something. If your current head is producing a consistent start line, the head is not the problem and we will move on to length, lie and loft, which are cheaper anyway.

Two levers golfers rarely know they have

• Head weight. Heavier heads tend to help golfers who decelerate or who are nervous over short putts; lighter heads suit fast greens and a golfer with good touch who is leaving long putts short. We can add weight to most modern heads at the bench without changing anything else.
• Grip size and weight. A larger grip quiets wrist action, which helps some golfers and removes feel from others. It also adds significant weight to the butt end and changes the balance of the whole club, so it is never only a comfort decision.

Both are reversible and both are cheap, which is why we test them before discussing a new head. A counterweight and a different grip on a putter you already trust is a forty dollar experiment. A new putter is not.

Bay work only gets you part of the way

A putting mat is flat, consistent and true, which is exactly why it is a poor place to finish a putter fitting. Whenever conditions allow, the second half of the session moves to the practice green behind the building, on a surface that has grain, a slope, and a speed that changes across the season.

Local greens run quick and firm in the summer and noticeably slower through the damp winter months. Golfers who play year-round here should expect their distance control to need recalibrating twice a year, and a putter that suits August at a given weight can feel unhelpfully light in February. We note the speed on your sheet so the comparison at a later visit is honest.