Sure,
Essay Anne Vanderbilt, the aerospace engineer designer of these putters, is a friend of mine. She uses the same MOI "balancing" in 3 axes that is used to "balance" an airplane in flight. So yes the dynamics of the design are definitely much less bothered by bad physics than one finds in typical mainstream putters like the Scotty Camerons and most other designs. As to the criticisms of others, I wouldn't think these folks know enough about it to offer a critique -- no offense intended, it's just very unlikely to encounter people who think usual putter designs are good who would also understand the new and better designs enough to be critical of them.
No putter ever designed completely supplants the need for skill in reading, aiming, controlling distance, or even in stroking the ball where intended. And even badly designed putters can in fact be wielded with great effect by golfers who accept the responsibility for using the tool. So I don't generally try to encourage the attitude that the putter design is all that important. There are basically "bad" designs and "okay" designs. In that world, the Yar Putter probably qualifies as a "good" design.
For comparison, heel-shafted flanges in the Scotty Cameron style are "bad" physics designs, regardless of what the marketing or the popularity on Tour suggests to the contrary. It's just physics, or perhaps physics applied in an ergonomically sound fashion. The next level is to combine good physics and ergonomics with good anatomy and biomechanics, PLUS the neuroscience of biological processes for perception and movement in aiming and swinging such tools to roll balls across green surfaces with accurate read and touch.
The Yar putter is unique in that it is committed to serving not only normal golfers but also specifically disadvantaged golfers, with physical limitations. In particular, the putter head fits down inside the cup liner of the hole to retrieve the ball without the golfer having to bend over. So this putter is serving several interests simultaneously. The very advanced physics just happened to show up in this putter, but it is also designed for golfers who have back problems or similar movement limitations. This is a measurement of how far off the usual designers of putters are from getting a good design.
The same sort of bad physics is evident throughout golf when one considers what is accepted conventionally for putter balancing. The toe-hanging designs of Ping and Cameron / Titleist actually date from the 1960s shag-fest greens where only a power chip-stroke made much sense on the awful greens of the day, but this "arcing / power" design has been outdated for putting since at least 1980 when the greens worldwide stepped thru the time machine of better strains of grass from major research universities, better maintenance agronomy, better green design and construction for surface quality, better mowing and rolling and other agronomic care technology and machinery, and other factors in the circa-1980 "perfect storm" of greens improvements. Scotty and company appear stuck in the 1960s physics without appreciating how that physics is not appropriate for today's greens and the stroke that works best on them. Face-balanced putter reduce the bad physics but don't eliminate it. That's because the balance of the face is not the balance of the swinging putter, or the "putter in flight" as one might think of the Yar design. Even face-balanced putters have imbalances when swung by a real golfer -- less than the Ping / Cameron popular design, but not a complete elimination of the imbalances.
This questionable physics is clearly shown by flipping one of the Cameron putters around so the toe is where the heel usually is and the heel is now the toe of the putter. If one swings this upside / reversed physics, the design exhibits much less tendency to gate / arc out of the stroke path. These putters used as designed do NOT keep the putter face square to the stroke path -- they take the face OUT of the stroke path as defined by the trajectory of the sweetspot AND they take the trajectory of the sweetspot out of the Newtonian / inertial straightness that would naturally be the path of a swinging putter actually balanced. The reversed / flipped over Cameron swings a lot truer without face arcing open than does the same putter swung as designed.
The extra weight in the toe of a Scotty Cameron design has the following consequences according to high-school-level physics: When the hosel transmits a straight-back takeaway of the putter head straight back from the ball, the lighter heel goes with the hosel more easily than the heavier toe, so the physics of the design will close the face severely unless the golfer "grabs and drags" the toe back in a curling stroke path. Once the putter head (with severely closed face) is moving back with the hosel and the putter head experiences deceleration nearing the top of the backstroke, the heavier toe end acts like a runaway train charging into Penn Station, as the heavier toe "won't stop" the same as the lighter heel. This bad physics "opens the face severely" at the top of the backstroke, unless the golfer clutches and stops the toe from flaring open out of the stroke path. Then when the direction reverses, once again as at the beginning of the takeaway stroke, the heavier toe "won't go" as easily as the heel end, so the wide open face flares even MORE open. This is just high-school physics about heavier things and lighter things, but apparently the folks at Titleist would get an F in the class. Scotty Cameron, in copying the 1960s Ping design, apparently believes and says that his designs makes the toe "flow" in a manner exactly opposite the reality of the physics. That's not exactly trust inspiring.
The corrective to this bad physics is either a tight torque-controlling grip pressure or a "loose and sensitive" grip pressure combined with an unknowing manipulation of the putter to overcome the physics, which is to grab the toe and drag the toe back at the start, then grab the toe at the top and stop it, the close the toe thru impact and pop the ball. Unless the golfer uses this counter manipulation, a "light, sensitive" grip pressure will certainly and absolutely show the pattern of toe shutting at the start, toe flaring open at the top, and toe flaring WIDE OPEN coming into impact as described above. A sensitive grip or loose grip favored on Tour and taught by certain instructors does not fare well with a toe-heavy physics, and anyone doubting this should ask Chad Campbell why his putter face came open and he missed a four-foot putt in the Masters playoff. He used a Scotty Cameron putter, with a Stan Utley arcing stroke and sensitive grip -- a "perfect storm" formula for blowing a putt by allowing the physics to open the face. Duh!
You can keep a bad-physics putter but only if you accept the fact that you will have to grip it tighter to control the bad physics or you will be manipulated responsively by the bad physics and putt without the slightest idea of what is causing what in the stroke.
The Yar putter skips this stupid physics that poisons golf. Golf has a very poor culture for real science, and it shows.
I've watched top putter designers pick up a Yar putter and stroke it back and forth and get this puzzled look on their face. They then turn to Dr. Vanderbilt and ask her: "How did you do that?" While she's so friendly she can hardly restrain herself from telling them, the most she'll say is something like: "It's just the normal way of designing things that fly" or something like that.
This Yar design physics is WAY beyond current golf, but that's not really unusual, because golf science kinda fakes a lot of important stuff with goofy speak like heel-toe and face-balance pseudo-science. Golf borrows terms like MOI from physics and CAD/CAM software programs, but that doesn't mean golf designers APPLY the concepts of MOI effectively. Just because the putter head can result in an MOI calculation in the CAD/CAM program on the desktop doesn't really mean much to the swinging of the putter. And as a matter of the significance of MOI and similar physics (used in a pseudo-science way in golf culture), one should read the research of engineers Werner and Grieg, How Golf Clubs Really Work and How to Optimize Their Designs, who concluded that MOI doesn't matter enough for any real golfer to care compared to what the golfer is capable of doing, so that many golfers actually putt better with the less-desirable MOI designs than with the supposedly superior high-MOI anti-twist "helpful" designs. Just ain't real, folks, even IF golf's usual designer actually knew how to apply MOI science in the context of a swinging putter.
Enter the outsider.
I'm a little proud to be pals with Dr Vanderbilt and Geri Jordan, CEO of Yar Golf, as these outsiders really show up the so-called top designers in "golf".
For more information, check out the CNC Manufacturer's comments at:
OneCNC and the comments of Certified Yar Fitting Teacher Rob Comacho at:
Comacho and the GolfTestUSA report at and a movie of the Yar ball roll at:
Movie. (Incidentally, Yar definitely beats the roll of Ping, Odyssey and Taylormade putters in the testing, as these "popular" designs are also the worst performing designs in all the putters tested. The data is here:
Data.)
To get a taste of the aerodynamics physics for stabilized Moments of Inertia (MOI) in flight, take a look at this Cornell University course of the linearization of the equations of motion of an airplane in flight at
PDF.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
