Advanced Elements of the Short Game was back out at Western Skies Golf Club for a Skills Development session on Scoring from Greenside Bunkers. There were two things working against us this morning – the practice green was closed because it’s being completely re-seeded, and it was so humid, I thought my face was melting. The humidity level was still around 65% at 7:30a. If you’ve ever been in that kind of weather, you know that it’s miserable.
Still, these hands-on classes are my favorite because PGA Professional Jay Friedman shows us how to hit different shots and then supervises us while we do it. This morning’s class was a follow-up on getting the ball up-and-down of of the bunker from a buried lie. Jay was kind enough to demonstrate the three different techniques we’re learning:
Golf Club Assembly & Repair
Last week we built a 3-wood, and today we got to work building a putter. Each of us got fit for a putter using Todd Sones’ Coutour Putter Fitting System. It’s based on the Pythagorean Theorem, and the length of the putter you should use is based on where your arms fall below your shoulders and where your eyes line up in relation to the ball. I like this fitting system because it helps bring out your natural putting stroke.
We built putters with .370 tipped shafts, the same tip diameter you would find on an old iron or hybrid shaft. This is just another reason why you should never get rid of an old golf club. You never know when you might be able to re-use the shaft. Putter shafts should be firm for proper feel, and all of the shafts we used were X-flex.
Here’s something I didn’t know – the sweet spot on a typical putter (or any club in your bag for that matter) is the size of a pin-needle. There’s no such thing as a larger sweet spot. A standard putter loft is often 1-2 degrees for fast greens and 3-4 degrees for slow greens. What you pull of the rack is likely going to have 3-4 degrees of loft (and 72 degrees of lie), but 0-2 degrees is the going loft on the PGA Tour. There’s actually a school of thought out there that you should have two different putters in your arsenal – a heavier one with more loft for slower greens and a lighter one with a little less loft for fast greens. The increased loft on slower greens helps get the ball rolling up and out of its indentation.
It’s too bad that the standard length for putters is 35″. That’s not the length everyone needs, but it was adopted as the industry standard because that’s what fit into golf bags without disappearing. Unless you’re around 6’4″ or 6’5″, a 35″ putter probably isn’t the right fit for you.