Putter Fitting

Most Putter Complaints Are Posture Complaints

Golfers arrive convinced the head is wrong. What we find far more often is a stance that puts the eyes two inches inside the ball, shoulders that sit unlevel because the hands are too low, and a putter length that forced both of those things to happen. Change the head and none of it moves. Change the length and lie, and all of it moves at once.

So the block opens the same way every other block here opens. Kip sets a laser down the intended start line, drops a plumb reference over the ball, and photographs your address from behind and from face on. Those two frames become the baseline, and everything after them is a comparison rather than an impression.

Eye Line Before Anything Else

An eye position outside the ball tends to produce a stroke that cuts across the line. An eye position well inside it tends to produce a push and a compensating hand flick. Neither of those is a stroke flaw in any useful sense; both are geometry, and both change the second the shaft length changes.

We measure eye line against the ball, then against the target line, and we record how far off you are in inches rather than describing it as good or bad. When we later hand you a putter an inch shorter with a flatter lie, you can see the number move on the same scale.

The Order the Block Follows

1. Address photographs and eye line measurement, both marked
2. Shoulder tilt and forward press, recorded at address and at impact
3. Reference roll with your current putter, twenty putts at three distances
4. Length, then lie, tested as a pair because one moves the other
5. Head balance and toe hang matched to the arc your stroke actually has
6. Head mass and grip weight, adjusted for the speed of the greens you play
7. Loft and shaft lean, checked last against launch behaviour off the face

Notice that the head shape argument sits fifth, and that the reference roll happens before any of it. A putter that already suits you will show up in that reference block, and roughly one putter appointment in four ends with a length change and a grip swap on the putter the golfer walked in with.

Green Speed Is Part of the Spec

Head mass that feels wonderful on a green rolling at ten and a half feels dead on a green rolling at eight. Front Range municipal greens in July and the same greens in late September are two different surfaces, and most golfers here play both without ever changing anything.

We roll our own practice green with a stimp reference at the start of the day and write the reading on your sheet. If your home course runs consistently slower or faster than ours, we say so, and we bias head mass in that direction rather than pretending our surface is neutral.

A putter is fitted to a stroke, a posture and a green speed. Leave any of the three out and the spec is a guess wearing a number.

Arc, Not Adjective

Face-balanced or toe-hang is a decision that gets made from the measured arc of your stroke, taken from the overhead camera during the reference roll. We are looking at how much the face rotates relative to the path across a repeatable stroke, not at what you believe your stroke does.

Two golfers who both describe their stroke as straight back and straight through frequently produce arcs that differ by several degrees of face rotation, and they need different heads. Neither of them is wrong about how it feels.

What You Leave With

A written spec covering length, lie, loft, head model and balance, head mass, grip model and grip weight, and the resulting swingweight. Your address photographs with the eye line measurement written on them. The full roll tables from the reference block and each candidate, including the putts that missed and by how much.

If the answer is that your current putter needs a half inch off the butt, a flatter lie and a lighter grip, that is a bench job we can do the same week for a fraction of a new putter, and we will tell you so plainly.