(Premier Login aceputt) Forum Owner Posted Feb 28, 2009 9:51 PM
Dear did99,
The Revolver Putter is not yet officially on the market. Basically it is a putter with two weights at heel and toe that "revolve" from the inside to the outside making a narrower or wider putter, so you can set it both inside, both outside, heel inside / toe outside, heel outside / toe inside, one somewhere in-between all the way inside with the other all the way outside, etc. It's sort of like two "fingers" of metal off the toe and two off the heel, and one of the fingers revolves over the other so that one finger is fixed in the putter head and the second finger is attached at the far end of this finger and revolves at this point of fixation and is then screwed tight into a legal posture that won't change during play. This allows setting the weighting in a wide variety of patterns that change the putter MOI, total weight, swing-weight, center of gravity in the heel-toe and the up-down dimensions, and more.
As to design features that help the Indian be a better Indian on the green:
1. a nice putter head weight that works well with the golfer's body in the mass of the arms and hands, the strength, the sensitivity, the stroke timing pattern, and the type of green surfaces usually played.
2. a decent MOI that does not require too deep a recessing of the putter's center of gravity.
3. loft that does not launch the ball more than slightly off the ground for the greens usually played.
4. a lie that has the sole flat to the surface when the shaft angle naturally fits into the life line axis of the palm when the arms and hands hang naturally in gravity at setup, so the lie axis of the shaft matches the axis of the forearm as it naturally hangs beneath the shoulder at address.
5. a putter grip that does not cause activity in the hands but allows a nice forming of the palm and fingers and thumbs onto the putter handle, so one that is sized in diameter to fit into the golfer's hand, such that the nice-pressure grip is comfortable and forgettable at address.
6. a length such that the the naturally, balanced, comfortable setup posture of the golfer with neutral arm hang in gravity matches the height of the hands with the middle or lower portion of the handle, as opposed to the handle requiring the arms to crook to take hold of the putter handle too high on a length that is too long or to take hold lower by stretching the arms straighter or bending deeper over than the natural and comfortable preferred bend for a length that is too short.
7. a shape of the putter head that encourages appreciation of whether the putter is simultaneously aimed squarely at a target and also appears square in reference to the body's chest and shoulders and hips and feet at address, which for me means a simple, uncomplicated shape and appearance whether blade or mallet, with the shape being more valuable for aim and stroke sense than alignment markers.
8. a hoseling pattern that does not create confusion in the sense of the end of the stick that is being swung online thru the center of the ball.
9. a heel-toe weighting scheme and shaft hoseling that does not promote the toe swinging open and closed in the stroke above what the golfer by the body action causes to eliminate or at least reduce the added opening-closing action of the putter from the off-balanced mass in the heel or toe (usually the toe).
10. a sole "footprint" of the putter that promotes the golfer orienting to the very bottom of the stroke as the putter swings forward down to and thru and up away from the bottom of the stroke, with a very simple and clean stroke thru the bottom, without too little a sole and without too large a footprint as to cause attention of concern to whether the putter will swing on its natural down-up arcing without conflict with the flat surface of the green.
Fundamentally, these features are ones that do not add to the action of the golfer or make it more difficult than necessary to make a simple stroke. Practically nothing a designer can do will materially compare for effectiveness of the golfer learning performance skill for reading, aiming, stroking, and controlling distance with accuracy and consistency. A little extra skill helps results far more than the most highly-touted design feature offered by putter companies struggling for market share and your dollars.
I agree completely with Werner and Grieg, How Golf Clubs Really Work and How to Optimize Their Designs (Origin, 2000), p. 162: "There is negligible difference in performance between what is representative of the best and the poorest of conventional putter designs." And also (pp. 170-171): "For putters, we reached the surprising conclusion that performance differences among modern putters is negligible, including designs we have produced. ... For putters, the most important error is clubhead orientation [aim]. Proper alignment of the swing path [stroke] and proper head speed [distance control] are next in importance. Design can do little or nothing to reduce scatter [missing the line or distance] caused by these three [skill] errors."
To the extent the "smaller" effects of design features on the result of the putt are less than about 10% to 25% the size / importance of skill errors affecting the results, the design effects "rapidly diminish to negligible importance" (p. 162). For example, skill errors in distance control are typically 5-10 times (500% to 1,000%) greater than very effective MOI designs are effective to "save" distance loss from off-center impacts.
The golfer wants a simple design that promotes his instinctive use with good aim and a sound stroke with a smooth tempo and a nice launch and send of the ball. By far, the efforts of designers of putters trying to gain a marketing edge undercut the basic skills while not adding significant effect by dint of design. For example, the really ugly, complicated shapes of the big-headed MOI putters of today don't help nearly enough from the designs to justify the non-help or the hurt caused to basic skilled performance.
Less robotic stupidity and more human tool-use intelligence would be nice, but don't hold your breath. Putter manufacturers have a very clear history and a vested interest in not straying too far from what they have succeeded in branding and marketing to golfer as "conventional", lest a radical departure frightens the herd buyers and causes a reduction in market share. That's not so much a cynical point of view as one that accepts what the companies have always done as a fact. Car companies and other established consumer-goods companies simply won't risk market share with design that does not stay in the established track.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
PuttingZone Coach and Theorist
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