August 20, 2025 • 49 mins
Dr. Erik Henrikson, PING Director of Golf Science, joins Marty Jertson in the PING Putting Lab for a discussion on putter torque and why it's a popular topic in golf. They cover the five senses and physics of putting, putter innovation, and the latest PLD Milled SE model, the Ally Blue Onset.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The guys from paying They've kind of showed me how
much the equipment matters. I just love that I can
hit any shot.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I kind of want. We're gonna be able to tell
some fun stories about what goes on here to help
golfers play better golf, everybody, and welcome back to the
Ping Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm your host today. Not co
host hosts today Marty Jertsen, Shane Baker normal co host.
He's probably out hitting driver off the deck playing golf somewhere.
(00:26):
We have a very very fun topic today. Something I've
been very excited about. Spending some time with doctor Eric
Henderson second time, second time on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
This is number three, number three, Yeah, coming to expert.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But we're we're going to talk about putters and a
lot of very fun things. How it's kind of a
very hot topic in the industry right now. Putters, how
they feel, what you're sensing? Uh, And I think Eric,
that's kind of where I want to start with things,
is we're looking at a bunch of different putters here.
(01:00):
They have a lot of different history to them, a
lot of different hozzle configurations and kind of waiting. But
you know, I think let's let's start the conversation with, uh,
just the concept of you go in, you pick up
a putter for the first time. What is the golfer
experiencing holistically there with what they're feeling and sensing?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, so keyword there is sensing. Right, So you pick
up a putter for the first time, we have these
five senses, right, and with putting typically not locking your putter,
so taste isn't involved. Maybe you want to smell it,
but really it's it's touch, right, It's it's it's the visuals,
and then it impact is what it sounds like, right,
(01:41):
And so each of those plays a role in our
experience as we execute a putting stroke with a putter
or various putters. And I think when you first put
it down and there's no motion, right, that's going to
be really dominated by visuals. Does it sit right? I
know Tony, our principal putter designer, spends a lot of
(02:03):
time making sure each of these models sits square to
the eye right, and and what are the different alignment
aids that will help somebody, you know, set this thing
down and have confidence that they're pointing it in the
direction that they want to put in. So site is
that first one. I think the second big one both
(02:24):
at setup. If you're hovering your putter, you're gonna feel
the weight of it. It may have a little tendency
to maybe want to rock open as you hold it,
and we'll hit on that a little bit, and well
that may be important and what that does to how
you you know, feel like you're you're you're pointing the
putter and then obviously you're gonna start moving it right,
(02:47):
and so the balance, the weighting of it. You're applying
forces and torques to the putter to move it and
make a putting stroke, so tactile feel. This word called
appropriate option right is really important and we're going to
dive into that one too, and then it impacts sound. Right.
We have different we have paying off for different groove
(03:08):
depths and patterns that really influence the acoustic Different ball
you use can influence that experience. So each of those
senses has its place. Looking into sensing, I was kind
of fascinated with, you know, which one is kind of
the most important. How fast can we process data? And
(03:30):
I was really surprised. Initially, I thought, oh, surely it's
sight right, speed of light fast. Yeah, But you got
to process that. And so actually, if you look at literature,
they would suggest that from a human response standpoint, sound
is actually the quickest thing we can respond to. It's
I don't know, processing is like say one hundred and
fifty milliseconds, and then touch is actually a very close second.
(03:53):
So what we feel is that we we react to
that very quickly, and rules is actually like lagging quite
a bit behind those two. And so as we want
to execute a putt right, we're using all those senses
to execute that task. Uh. And so how we design
(04:15):
a putter uh and how they interact with all those
senses is really important.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Let's break it down into what you kind of feel like,
you know, just aiming. We know that aiming is important,
whether you're trying to aim perfect to your intended intended
start line. We've seen a lot of great players maybe
aim slightly left or slightly right right, and then you know,
try to we try to optimize for the consistency of
the delivery. But let's talk about what the player, what
(04:42):
what physics are in play when the players just lining
up the putter, so so not swinging it yet.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yep, And so I think let's just say you're hovering
it right, yeah, and so h to to hold that putter.
You're first kind of holding it at an inclined angle,
So there's this to maintain that putter at this inclined
angle and for it to not just drop down.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
This is the li angle.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, this is the liingle. There's a torque that you're
applying right in your hands, you feel it to keep
that putter from, you know, not just dropping straight down.
Depending on the depth of that center of gravity in
the putter head, so a mallet may have a really
deep CG. A blade might have something that's a little
(05:31):
closer to like the shaft axis. You can move that
shaft axis and we'll talk about onset and offset relative
to that center of gravity. But the deeper that CG,
the more that putter might want to open up. So
you end up having to at setup if you're hovering
that putter, provide a torque kind of about the grip
(05:52):
axis or about the shaft axis to keep it from
rocking open at times. And I'd argue that's not a
bad thing. It's a signal. It's something that you can
use to understand where the face is pointed right. It's
it's it's something it's a response that you're having to
kind of react to, and that could be a good thing, right,
It's something you can use to set up. And then
(06:13):
obviously you're you're holding it up right, So there's this
force that you're you're using to kind of hold the
putter above the ground.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So depending on where the center gravity is, where the
hozzle position is, you're you're going to be probably no
matter what the putter you're going to be, you're going
to be applying some torque to maintain the liing goal.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
And then and then the amount of you know, kind
of about the grip torque your appliing is going to
be dependent on the hozzle position, center gravity relations. Okay,
now that's what you're doing kind of just statically, you're
aiming it, maybe you're hovering it, you're kind of light.
You've seen some players kind of lightly tap the plutter
things of this nature. Uh, Then what happens like when
(06:56):
you're making your main stroke? What what what's at play?
What a golfer's feeling and sensing in that aspect.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, So you did a lot of research on this
right when we first started, and it's kind of how
we are fit for stroke philosophy, It kind of evolved,
and so looking at you know, when you start moving
that putter, there's going to be players that don't rotate
the face a lot. You're kind of, I'm keeping this
thing square pendulum. You know, maybe they bend over a
(07:27):
lot and try and keep it so the face doesn't
rotate a lot during the stroke. And then you know,
you think of some other really prominent, you know, really
good putters in the game. Right you see their their
face swinging open and closed. And so when you do that,
you're you're using the center of gravity to feel where
the face is pointed, and you have to apply some
(07:48):
different torques and forces to get that putter to move
and that face to rotate kind of along the path
that you're you know, it feels best to you. And
so you know, you take something that's really he'll shafted.
This is an old Carston III. And if you don't
apply any torque and you pull it back, it's natural
tendency is to shut a little bit and then open.
(08:13):
But during anybody who takes a you know, putting stroke,
they're probably going to open that face a little bit.
So they're providing a torque to counteract a tendency for
this to shut by opening it, which, again, like we
can debate whether that's a good or bad thing, I'd
argue that that actually helps provide some feedback to the
player of where the face is pointed right, and so
(08:38):
that definitely has a big influence where that center gravity
of the putter head is, or the center gravity of
the full putter is on what you feel when you
make that stroke. And ultimately, you talked about consistency, right,
Our goal is to match up that waiting and that
balance with a player's natural movement tendencies provide a very
(09:00):
consistent stroke, repeatable and so constantly trying to match those up,
and there's gonna be maybe some different combinations that work
for different players as a result of that.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, I always think of Kevin Sullerland, who was one
of our players that had the very he almost he
was the one that almost sometimes on it. We got
him on iping closed the face almost slightly on the backstroke,
and he always used like a center center shafted putter.
You know, Louis had the beautiful stroke, just a lot
of rotation. You could, you could so much so you
(09:32):
could see it visually even when you didn't put him
on iping right, yep. And he always liked the heel
shafted you know, the ZB and some of other very
strong arc putters. And I think what's interesting with that, Eric,
is that is what happens in the backstroke. You know,
I always find that interesting the more we go down
this rabbit hole of what the player's doing in the backstroke.
(09:53):
So talk a little bit about that, and then how
that response to that manifests itself in the ford stroke
and maybe with different hozzle types, what is the result
on like the delivered face angle, which ultimately that's what
we're trying to Yeah, it's the king of hitting your
start line here.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
So with you mentioned Louis so, I remember when he
came in. It was right after he played in the
open one. It's twenty ten and uh he won it
with an answer five right, So something very similar to
this model. So a blade where if you looked at
(10:36):
the shaft axis relative to the CG, it was right
in front of it, so face balanced, and came in.
We measured him and he had all this rotation in
his stroke and we're like, hmm, okay, well this is
counter to what we were expecting, right yep. And then
we started asking him some questions about why he gravitated
(10:57):
toward that model, and uh, what he said was, well,
I was really struggling missing to the right, pushing my putts,
and I picked us up and it just like it was.
It was fantastic, Like it seemed like it just eliminated
that miss to the right and I could just swing
with confidence. And so for him, his mess tendency kind
(11:20):
of outweighed what he was experiencing kind of during the stroke.
And so that leads us down to a path of like, okay,
well he's this is Louis just won the open you know,
that's what he's talking about. Let's let's dive into this
a little bit more. And so sure enough, we ran
some testing with heel shafted putters and face bounced putters
and realized, okay, uh, yeah, he's right, something that a
(11:44):
heel shafted blade ends up being delivered a little more
open then face bounced one, and that then let us
down a path of doing some more kinetic studies. And
so I think you've had Sasha on right yep.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Ye.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
So, and you guys, you guys, are tight, start business together.
So caught up Sasso and asked them about the kinetics involved.
So kinetics, you have kinematics, which is the study of motion.
You have kinetics, which is okay, the forces that create
that motion, the forces and torques like so what, let's
(12:20):
run a little study here and see what's going on.
And so with the heel shafted putter, you see that
somebody has to be very active in what they apply,
which you would expect, right. You have this center of
mass that's kind of off the shaft axis, and they
have to be very active, like I talked about earlier,
to kind of open and close the face. So you
(12:41):
see this signal and their torque about the grip that's
pretty prominent, and you don't see that with the face
balance putter. And so the other really fascinating thing though,
is that, okay, they have to be really active with
their torque. In that study, all the players with the
heel shafted answer putter ended up having a higher angular
(13:02):
velocity coming into impact, so the rotation rate, the rate
at which the face was closing was higher. But it
was almost like okay, I realized I got to square
the face up.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
And so you turn up your torque to do it,
but you still leave it open. And it's just like
I mean, you put a bunch of lead tape on
the tower driver, it's going to be harder to square up.
And so you have this balance of Okay, we can
match kind of the overall feedback they're getting from the
putter with the balance of it. Right, So how much
(13:32):
signal do I need to make a repeatable stroke, repeatable
face motion? But then you can kind of influence it,
influence the delivery. Then that delivery a little bit by
also moving the center amiss in tone. And so there's
the different variables that you spent a lot of your
(13:52):
time studying fitting that you can use to kind of
match a putter up to a player.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, And that's what I love about that Louis story
is that you know, our normal fitting methodology would be
and he and he has used as he's changed, maybe
his aim and players evolve over time. Maybe it changes
aim a little bit. He he fixes his push tendency
in another way, he would go into more of a
towdown putter. Yeah, the ZB or whatever slide slide arc
(14:18):
putter in our vernacular and still putt great. I think
it's interesting in that study we round with Sasho, it's
kind of always hard to wrap your brain around this,
that the that the closure rate is faster, so the
to is going faster than the heel, but the face
is still delivered open. Yeah, but fitting one on one,
(14:39):
I think even if you can't measure your stroke, how
much face rotation you have, Uh, there's this great signal.
And we've we've run this study many times that if
you pull your putts go to more totdown putter, if
you push your putts go to more face bounce putter.
That's what we saw with louis one hundred percent. And
what percentage eric of the stone art line of the
(15:00):
putt is the face angle? Right?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, it's about ninety and so done a bunch of
studies on this through the bag, right, But for a putter,
face is really important. It accounts for ninety percent of
where that ball is going to start.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, let's uh, we're looking at some fun putters here. Yeah,
let's look at this one where it all began. Tell
us a little bit about the the one A and uh,
and just I think what's fun to think about with
this one is in the way I kind of think
about this Putter Eric is that it brought in forgiveness
(15:36):
for mishits yep. And then when Carston really put ping
on the map, it was maybe forgiveness for your stroke.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah right, Hell, I love how you frame that.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Okay, we'll give us your thoughts on the one A yeah,
and then how Carston kind of evolved his way and
into into the plumber's neck and in the answer.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah. So this is one of the very early the
uh one as it is called a no model because
there's no model on there. And what's fascinating to me,
so the these you know, come from the archives with
Rob our historian, and what's fascinating to me about this
one is that it's one of the first one A's
(16:18):
obviously he's he'll toe waiting right, put all put all
the weight as far to the heel and the toast possible,
maximizing m y It's just it's been in our DNA
from the very beginning, and he did what I would
have done too. I just stuck the chef right in
the middle, right like right through uh where the center
of mass would be on this potterhead. So it's uh
(16:43):
it's pretty zero torque if I may.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Uh so, if you kind of hang it on your finger,
twist a lot of resistance.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And so I think when we talk about torque, and
let me kind of expand on that a little bit,
but I think that turn has been thrown around a lot.
We talked about the torque to keep it on incline plane.
We talked the torque that's being applied to kind of
open and close the face. That idea of zero torque
or torque and putters right now, it's applying a lot
to the opening closing in the face. And I think
(17:16):
in particular when you set up right, so there's this
kind of resting moment that tends to open the face.
If this center of mass is off the either shaft
axis or grip axis. If the grip is not in
line with the shaft, there's some grips out there that
are maybe a little crooked. So what's important is Okay,
(17:36):
that's the axis about which I'm grabbing it, and so
that's going to have a tendency to maybe those low
torque zero torque putters might not have a big signal
where the face is pointed, just it's set up when
you hover it. So when I say zero torque this
one right, it's the shaft is going and the grip
acxs is going right through the center of mass. What's
(17:56):
fascinating to me is like, this is the first one,
but anybody who has a one an at home. I
realized that, actually that shaft is no longer right through
the center of mass.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
He did that early on and realized, h I got
to move it off that, and so we started moving
it toward the heel. There's a lot of putters in
Rob's office where he started bending the shaft right, had
a couple of them here. We did that, and he
was constantly trying to use an offset from the center
of mass of the putter head relative to the shaft
(18:28):
or the grip to give that player that haptic feedback,
you know, to execute a putt. And so that was
something that was just embedded, like in Carson's DNA. He
went away from this and kind of never looked back.
Everything since then has some sort of offset between the
(18:49):
grip access for the shaft and then the center of
mass of the head.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So this original we're looking at here not a lot
of torque. Would be the idea of maybe pushing something
at the CG versus pulling it.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, So he always wanted to use the center of
gravity relative to the shaft axis of their grip to
your advantage. And so we always wanted to either be
pulling it straight through or pulling it around. And so
I had this young engineer right I'm at my desk,
this is fifteen years ago, and I was like, man,
(19:24):
I got this idea for power. It's gonna be great.
And I was like, he's going to max out, moi.
John A's gonna love it, right, And so its a
big five inch square basically, and I put all the
mass out in the corners him high, MOI. And I
was looking at kind of this inertia. It's called a tensor,
but these terms on a putter that influenced kind of
(19:47):
those forces and torques, and I'm like, I'm going to
minimize all of them. It's gonna put the chaft right
through the middle. And so it's it's pretty much like
this putter, except imagine it as a big square a
bunch of onset on it, like two and a half
inches of onset. So the front of that putter is
going to be moving up at the bottom of the stroke.
It's going to roll great. And John A comes by
(20:09):
my desk and you know, I'm just getting to know
him and hands on my shoulder, what are you working on?
This is like this very fatherly tone, like it's incredible,
like just imprinted on my mind this conversation. I'm like, well,
I'm really excited about it. Click, got damn oi really
high and I got this idea where I want to
minimize all this and he's and he's like, well, are
(20:32):
you going to know where the face is pointed? It's like,
you know, it's going right through the center of gravity,
Like you can use that to understand where the face
is pointed. That's that's a good point. And he's like
and he's like, if ever Carston used to talk about
this world barrow analogy? Did you ever have you ever
heard that? And I was like no, no, I hadn't.
And so he's like, well, when you go up a
(20:54):
curb with a wheelbarrow, what do you do. I'm like, well,
you turn around and pull the cg up the curb
cause it's way more stable, and he's like exactly. And
then he got up and went on and and and
visited with some others. And so he if you think
about and I ran this analogy by him last week,
(21:16):
like a water skier kind of going behind a boat,
and uh, and if the boat's going straight, if the
water skier gets a little offline like that, that water
skiers like the CG. And this analogy, right, like he's
going to keep going back to the center line, right,
because he's pulling away, and it's always going to square
back up to where the boat is traveling and the
(21:37):
direction the boat is traveling. So that's pulling the CG.
That's like face balance putterer. And then if the boat's
taking a turn right and and and the water skier
is kind of going around still a stable movement, right,
that's more like a heel shafted putter pulling the CG around.
(21:57):
And so again, Carson always wanted to use center of
gravity to his advantage and to provide feedback to the
player and help them make a consistent like stroke. And
I thought those two things totally influenced how I viewed
putters moving forward and the type of research. It's really
cool about this, right, there's so much history here, yeah,
and elements that of how Carston philosophy has evolved and
(22:23):
now we have all this technology to then go out
and like actually like prove a lot of those things
that he found by just intuition.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, Eric, one test I remember doing, you know a
year or two or ago, was you know, you conduct
it yourself, went into went into the lab and you
had us I don't know if you blindfolded us or
had us close our eyes and you took away that sense. Yeah,
what tell us a little bit about that experiment you ran.
(22:52):
It relates exactly to this is of kind of like, hey,
how are you going to know where you're point in
the face? Yeah, and what you found with that experiment, and.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
The seed was planned for that back with that conversation
I had with John a like during my first year here,
and so the idea came about. I started looking into
this area called dynamic touch, and it's basically the study
of haptic appropriate reception and the idea of how it
does what we feel and the balance of objects influence
(23:22):
our ability to complete a task. And so I wanted
to kind of maximize the sense of touch being inspired
by dynamic touch. And there's for those kind of listening
or watching, there's a really cool if you google Ian Waterman.
He's an individual who had a really rare condition where
(23:46):
he lost all basically haptic appropriateception, all feeling kind of
from the neck down. So we had to learn how
to operate, balance, move his hand purely by looking. So
he has to use his site to execute any task
because he can't feel, like when you walk, you're constantly
(24:08):
feeling yeah, pressure in your feet and and and it's
fascinating how much our touch influences how we're able to
operate as humans. So I'd encourage people to kind of
google that, and because it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Reverse of being blindfolded exactly something exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And so he lost his touch, I'm like, well, okay,
like let's find out the importance of that with putting.
And so I had four different prototypes, all of the
same model, and then I oriented ended up orienting the
grip axis in different points. One ironed the graph axis
right through the center of mass of the putter, one
(24:50):
way forward, one way to side, one way heelside. And
it was a round grip like three D printed, put
it on there, and I'd put it in no flats,
no flats or anything. So you're you're purely dependent on
the balance of that putter to understand where the face
is pointed. So I put it in your hands and
random orientation. I'm like, set it up and point the face.
(25:12):
And the ones where people were more repeatable pointing the face,
it might have been in the wrong direction, but they'd
set up in the same way the farther away that axis,
that grip axis was from the center of mass, right,
It wasn't going right through it. It was you were maximizing
that kind of offset between that axis and the center
of mass in the head. The one one of the
(25:33):
grip went right through it. People like, I have no
idea where is appointed and this blindfold random. This is blindfolded,
So no beneficite using just purely your your feel in
your hands. And so in doing that, right, You're like,
why would I want to take away that sense? Right,
I'd want to turn that up. That's what they can
(25:54):
use to, you know, be more consistent. No where the
face is pointed. And it goes way back to like
John A said, man, how do you know where the
face is pointed if you don't have any any torque
to feel it?
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah? Interesting, Yeah, I know. I Equally as much as
the popularity of you know, on set lower torque putters
and what have you, is a lot of folks using
heel shafted ballants, right. Is that you know we've made
the floaky in the hardwood and some of these putters
where we do maximize that distance. Is that kind of
(26:27):
the theory behind that for some players?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, And so the deeper that CG is, you're kind
of maximizing it rest that kind of resting moment that
helps you point the face. And then with those heel
shaft ones, you're moving that CG kind of or the
shaft heelside right maximize. So during their stroke when they're
trying to open and close the face, they're getting a
(26:50):
really good signal over where that face is pointed. And
it could be more repeatable. Right, It's it's it's greater resistance.
And so I think there's a good connection between resistance
and precision in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Uh, let's take a look at Eric, Let's take a
look at this favor I'm looking at the and it's
pointed out ahead here, and tell us what's going on
with this with this putter from the archives.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, so there's a number of bends in this one.
So rob was kind to us and gave us a
shaft not only with a bend that people are probably
familiar with right down here, uh, you know, about five
inches up from the head, but there's also a bend
right under the grip. And Carsten designed the Balnamic shaft
(27:43):
to have the grip tilted in such a way that
it pointed toward the ball both in front of the
potter head at the ball, and then it's tilted a
little bit up toward the toe. And so you know,
I made you take some strokes with this to feel it,
(28:03):
because it's a it's an incredible feeling when you make
a stroke with this, and it highlights the reason he
did that was he's going back. I want to pull
the cg right. So I want to I know, the
center of mass of my head is back here. How
can I get my grip access to be pulling that
while I'm going to bend the shaft. Fortunately, the oshad
wasn't a big fan uh and uh, and so he
(28:26):
wasn't able to do that anymore. But what that led
him to do was invent the plumber's neck, which is
really cool. Right, So, all right, speed bump on the
road I'm going to get innovative and try and fix this.
And so he ended up creating the plumber's neck. And
for those of you when I say plumbers neck, aren't
(28:49):
familiar with that. So basically that's the common hozzle that
you see on most answer stylezz potters right now. And
so he was able to get that shaft axis pointed
at the all by putting a bunch of offset on
his hozzle at the top of the hozzle and created
that sensation of pulling the center of mass by incorporating
(29:12):
offset in a plumber's neck. Is just it's crazy to
me that he just was like, Okay, well fine, I'll
find another way to do it and created one of
the most i mean the most famous hozzle geometry and
putter design.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, still out there on a lot of putters today
for that reason. So so just going back to the one,
A a lot of inertia that comes into play if
you don't hit your putt perfectly right, you know, heel
and toe and then everything we're talking about with pulling
the CG that's even more stability or forgiveness during the stroke.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Correct. Correct.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I've also seen some research in our golf science stuff Erica,
where we've looked at face angle variability during the stroke, right,
and how putter properties Hazzele position can influence that. Now
that we have these tools to kind of X raym right,
(30:14):
tell us a little bit about face angle variability kind
of during the stroke and the impact of Hazzle position
on that.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah. So I mean this goes into our fit for
stroke philosophy, right, And I think depending on how much
rotation you have and just cognitively how you respond to
that balance of a putter, there's gonna be an optimal
center mass location that leads to greater consistency. And so
(30:44):
that's what drives our fit for stroke philosophy. I think
it goes to the resistance, right, the resistance to rotation
leading to precision. And then that also another study where
we ended up using kind of an iron grip and
(31:05):
moving the cg back and similarly kind of put had
people try to orient the putter multiple times and looked
at how repeatable they were when they had to orient
the putter without the benefit of sight multiple times, and
they got way more repeatable. The bigger that offset was,
the bigger that torque was, because it was a bigger
signal for them to adjust and feel. And so I
(31:29):
think what's really kind of cool about all that is
that there's there's a huge fitting nugget in there, right,
Like you can improve your repeatability if you're well fit.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, and yeah, let's don't a click on that idea
of a resistance for precision where else? I know I've
heard Sasho talk about throwing darts and somebody putting on
like their wedding ring, switching out for one hand to
the other.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, give yourself a little more precise. Yeah, what other
uh sports.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Domains applications do you see folks kind of getting the
right resistance to enhance their precision.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, so I mean surgical tools, right, you know you'll
see a really lightweight surgical tool. Right. They all have
some resistance to them meant to improve precision. Right, we're
going to be opening somebody up. You want to be
very precise, don't want to nick the wrong thing. Uh.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
To me, it's a golf pencil. I always have a
hard time with my Yeah, pencils too light, you know,
I can't feel where it's pointed.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I think you see it. You know, heavy piano keys
right on a grand piano being able to, you know,
have that tactile feedback on on piano keys. I think,
you know, my son's fourteen, and he's like, hey, Dad,
I want to start going to the gym. Great, and
(32:53):
so go to the gym. I ended up calling up
Sasha and I'm like, dude, some wants to start, you know,
lifting ways you know how me out proke sure I
don't give me a little program here to make sure
I'm not putting him down the wrong path. And so
we chatted and it was really crazy to me. As
he got him down on a bench, give him two dumbbells.
I'm like, I'm going to give him the lightest things
(33:13):
I can find because I don't.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I don't want to hurt him.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
And and he's never done a bench press before, right,
and so it's like this giraffe learning to walk thing him,
you know, because they're super light. So he's having a
hard time even you know. And I'm like, oh, he
needs he needs more weight so he has some resistance
and he can like feel where it's going. I don't
want to get him too much weight, right, because then
(33:40):
other things will happen. Put a little more resistance in there.
All a sudden, his form got way better because I
added some resistance to his motion, And I thought it
was a great analogy of like, you know, how adding
some resistance some inertia can improve precision. And so as
we're talking about putters, have somebody who's rotating the face
(34:01):
a lot, you know, you give them something, he'll shafted
and the cg's off that off that hostle access that
grip access a lot. They're gonna have more resistance, but
that resistance is going to help them be really precise
because they need it. They if they're moving their face
around a lot, there's a lot more degrees for them
to square up. If they're opening it a lot on
(34:22):
the backswing. Yeah, yeah, versus somebody who maybe doesn't, I
don't need as much resistance when they go back, but
you still want to be pulling the CG right. So
that's Carson, you know, ended up gravitating a lot toward
the face balance putters because he felt like, hey, that's
stable coming through. But there's that magic mix depending on
how much rotation you have to help improve precision and
(34:44):
provide the right resistance right for a given player to
help them be as precise as possible.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I think that's a big thing we've tried to do
in our fitting philosophy, whether it's ipaying, handicap score, just incentivizing,
trying to incentivize and measure that repeatability. I mean, it's
all the fundamentals of a fitting with ipaying. Here in
the putting lab is somebody is not matched to the
right resistance for them effectively, and we get him into
(35:10):
something matches better, their repeatability goes up. We can measure
it and then have success out on the golf course.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, and walk away with a lot of confidence.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
So, Eric, let's transition to a little bit to onset offset,
because you pull the CG using offset.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
But here we are we have we have Corey Connors,
one of our best putters and players, using our Alley
Blue onset putter. Yeah, so tell us a little bit
about the benefits of onset and what physics properties are
in play here that still allow him to Is this
thing still pulling the CG or not? Great question.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
So we've there's a number of different variables at play
with this design, right, and so to answer your first question, yes,
it is still pulling the CG. The CG is located
off that shaft axis right, it's a little bit of
toe hang on this, but it definitely keys in at
a certain angle when you hold it up like that,
(36:17):
and that helps Corey and players who use this model
still feel where the face is pointed. It's set up
and relative to maybe an alley blue with like a
plumber's neck. The cg's not as deep relative to that axis,
so it's going to feel as it moves through the
(36:38):
putting stroke for Corey less like a mallet and more
like a blade. Because we've moved that shaft axis back
closer to the center of mass. It's not in line
with the center of mass. It's not above the center
of mass toe side of the center of mass, it's
forward of the center of mass, and healside. It's going
to have those torques that maybe he feels with a blade,
(37:02):
but give him the forgiveness in the footprint of a mallet,
which is really cool.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
So something feel wise that might be a little bit
more like an answer, ye.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Okay, somewhere between an answer and I'd say B sixty.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
And what have we seen. We've done a good bit
of testing just on onset in general. What have we
seen with some of the benefits of onset for certain players.
What might somebody need to do. We're just starting to
incorporate this in the lab with these putters from a
fitting standpoint, based on how it's delivered and things of
that nature.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, I would we as a team, we're fascinated to see. Okay,
we're changing going from offset to onset, but with that,
we're also changing the balance of a putter. And so
we had limit curves for center of mass relative to
the shaft, axss, heel, toe, and deep, and so we're like, okay,
we're moving closer to the center of mass, so it's
(37:58):
probably going to be delivered little more closed, not more open,
right you go, heel shafted, more open, more face balance
more closed. So we have that variable going. But then
we also have limit curves on offset and no offset,
and we knew that as you take offset off, people
tend to set up and deliver the face a little
(38:19):
more open, which like, this has both those going on.
It's got one variable at saying this is going to
be a little more open because I'm taking away my offset,
but maybe I'm going to square it up a little
easier because I'm moving the center of mask closer to
the shaft axis. And so what we found in our
testing is with this particular model, players comparing that to
(38:43):
something that's say got a plumber's neck on it, or
maybe a double bend with a little bit of offset,
they're tending going to tend to deliver it a little
more open. And if somebody, say typically use a face
balance putter or a s balance mallet and then miss left,
this might be a really good option left for a
(39:03):
right handed golfer if they pull their putts, this might
be a really good option because it biases because it's
got on set. It's biasing a player to be a
little more square if they tend to pull their putts.
And so it's a cool addition to our kind of
mix of putters and fitting options because it can fix
(39:27):
a miss tendency in a way that if we just
went facing, there's only so much you could do. You
either gonna have to put them in a heel shafted
putter to get them to like leave the face a
little more open. But now you're messing with what naturally
might work for them from a face rotation standpoint during
the stroke and give them something that will kind of
(39:48):
help fight that miss tendency of.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
A polls new fitting, new fitting option, the.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Unlocked a new fitting option.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
So that's what I'm very excited about. I also love
the when we worked on this putter, Tony Serrano or
our principal putter designer, he made a bunch of different versions, right, Yeah,
tell us a little bit about the how we landed
on the fifteen degrees toe down and you know how
deep the CG is where we placed the hoesle, etc.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah, so we had a five degree He was kind
of doing it in terms of toe hang, but basically
he's moving that shaft access. He's there closer to the
center line of the putter or more heelside. And we
landed at the fifteen for this particular model because it
fit right at the center of the bell curve of
(40:37):
our fitting philosophies. So we we categorize this as like
a for somebody who fits into our slight art category,
which is a good sixty to seventy percent of all
players fit into that category. And so we have some
options on tour right now that maybe if somebody's a
little more straight back straight through, we go to the
(40:59):
one where the uh, the shaft is inserted a little
closer to the center line. Somebody's got a lot of rotation,
we'll give them the option that tony design that's maybe
got that, or that has that shaft axis inserting a
little closer to the heel, and so all those have
the onset so you get to see the full kind
(41:19):
of top rail, right, So no distraction of hozzle geometries
if that's something that you're sensitive to. So another good
benefit of this sort of design. And so yeah, right
now that fifteen is kind of the most popular one,
but that's just because that's kind of fit in the
center of the bell curve.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Luz, there's so much there's so much, so much fun
in this top Yeah. One other piece and I remember
doing this when we were working on late some Ladies
driver's research. Was, Uh, we were just asking a bunch
of our target customer to kind of look at some
sizes of the driver and tell us what we're the
most comfortable with. And at the time I was, I
(42:03):
was working on our Ladies driving design and I max
it out to the USG limit five inch by five
inch box and a lot of the ladies said, hey,
this the headweight was light you know, it was like
one hundred and eighty eight grams, and a lot of
the ladies were like, well, this looks heavy, you know,
like it's just it's gonna be too heavy. Yeah, but
the actual mass was the same. Tell us a little bit.
(42:25):
We start off with the optics is one of the
first piece of feedback to the putter of how size
or maybe what you're feeling dynamically with the CG offset
impacts the weight of the putter. And I think you know,
one thing I always like to do to test us
with folks is set up to a putter, then you
flip it one hundred and eighty degrees upside down, close
(42:46):
my eyes, kind of swing. It feels very light. Yeah,
why why is that? And then maybe the optical piece too.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Oh, there's so much in there. So there's this I
mentioned dynamic touch, and this whole study area of dynamic touch,
and one of the studies that's been redone by a
number of different academics is studying the size of weight illusion.
And so if you can imagine, you know, you have
(43:13):
I don't know, you got a twenty five pound kettlebell, right,
and then you blow that thing up three times its
size and keep it at twenty five pounds right, and
then shrink it down to you know, the size of whatever,
like a quarter or something twenty five pounds. That quarter
is going to feel so heavy, right, because you're not
(43:35):
expecting something that small to feel like twenty five pounds.
But then the thing that's really big right at twenty
five pounds is going to feel super light. And so
that's really important with putters is you got mallets and
you have blades, and you don't want to cross the
wires too much in the player and confuse them when
(43:56):
they're setting up over a putter. You want something to
feel like it looks right, the interaction between what you're
feeling and what you're seeing like. You don't want to
tax tax them any more than you need to cognitively
as they're setting up to that. So it typically mounts
are just a little heavier because if you make them
as light as a blade, we can do that using
different materials. But then it kinda it can get a
(44:20):
little confusing when you set up to them. And so
it's a really cool kind of area study this size
weight allusion something you can google. And then the other
thing that you feel when you set up and that
can influence perceived weight is the more that So for
a mallet, if you have a really deep CG, they
(44:43):
tend to feel a little heavier because there's this natural
kind of resting torque and resting moment that wants to
open and so you're you have to apply a little
bit of a torque and your brain thinks, hey, I'm
it's heavier. I gotta I gotta resist this thing just
holding it. And so all that plays into you know,
(45:06):
how we perceive weight. The experience that you had when
you're designing that Lady's driver, and we did I remember
before we found the body of literature, we went around
and like had some putters of the same weight but
different size, and did the whole like okay, feel these righto.
And then we say okay, close your eyes. And then
we asked them which one was which and they're like,
I don't know, right, Remember that it was pretty cool, yeah,
(45:30):
and so uh so, yeah, it's a it's a that
area of dynamic touch and how mass properties of an
object can influence what you perceive, what you feel, and
how well you can execute a task is uh yeah,
it's really rich and something that we're continue to implement
and the decisions we make with our putter designs.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yeah, just did just the closed the lip on the
Ladies driver. So what we did there was instead of saying, oh,
I need to make the driver smaller, we put a
little decal offset from the silhouette so it it struck
the balance there. Yeah, right, so the the Ladies mind's
eye captured it smaller visually, right, then you can still
(46:09):
make it big.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
So as that's your plumbers neck finding another solution exactly exaction.
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
So I've been using the alley the alley blue, but
with the four houseley because I love tork Henrickson. I
love torq. I love to feel that resistance during the stroke.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
And it's awesome to now understand the physics of why
that is, you know, continuing down this journey to understand it.
Any last things there you want to touch on on
this topic in general?
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, No, I just think there's a it's an exciting
time in putters. I think we've got a lot of
cool stuff kind of cooking. We we've spent a lot
of time bashing around different technologies and ideas and so
you know, I just I want to highlight that you know,
there are you know, a variety of different ways that
(47:06):
you can wait to putter that match up with different
players strokes and abilities. And I think when you when
you take away, I just I hesitate to take away
a sense, right, Yeah, to like minimize one of those
knobs to the point where like, well, I'm now eliminating
its ability to like help somebody. And so that's just
(47:29):
a philosophy of ours that it's like we want to
maximize that. Like, we think a lot about what we're seeing,
what we're feeling, what we're hearing when we design a
golf club. All those things are really important, and you
don't want to minimize any of those.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Words of wisdom. Words of wisdom. The third time on
Doctor Eric Hennery is so much fun. This was a
fun one. We went down a little little history lesson
right to our contemporary design approach, and hopefully all the
listeners out there, whether they're club fitters or consumers in
the market for a new putter, helping them understand maybe
(48:05):
some putters they've liked in the past, what they're feeling,
what they're sensing. Hopefully there'll be some folks out there
closing their eyes trying to point some putters.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
I'll do it.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
That's a good way. That is probably a good way
for folks to.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
It.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Is that a good test for folks that do on
their own. Let's say you're going into a putting crawl. Yeah,
you're like, which one of these can I aim the best?
Is that a protocol folks can do one hundred percent?
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Right? I think it helps. What it'll do is it'll
help maximize that sense. Right, anytime you take away a sense,
all your other senses have to kind of go into overdrive.
So why not when you go into a putter crawl
and you know, not be biased by the alignment alone,
close your eyes and does this still feel as I
(48:49):
swing this? Like it could be precise with it? Yeah,
because you don't want your eyes to fool you, right,
and the visuals are important, right, but you're not staring
at the thing as you're swinging it, right, And so
by taking that away, it'll kind of heiden your sense
of you know, I see you close your eyes when
(49:09):
you do a point.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Absolutely absolutely, you're you're.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Trying to go in and you're trying to maximize what
you feel with your feet and minimize all the other senses, right,
Probably get your hands over your ears if you did too,
but yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
All right, let's end on that one. Thanks for being
with us, and we'll see everyone next time on the
Ping Proving Grounds Podcast
The guys from paying They've kind of showed me how
much the equipment matters. I just love that I can
hit any shot.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I kind of want. We're gonna be able to tell
some fun stories about what goes on here to help
golfers play better golf, everybody, and welcome back to the
Ping Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm your host today. Not co
host hosts today Marty Jertsen, Shane Baker normal co host.
He's probably out hitting driver off the deck playing golf somewhere.
(00:26):
We have a very very fun topic today. Something I've
been very excited about. Spending some time with doctor Eric
Henderson second time, second time on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
This is number three, number three, Yeah, coming to expert.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But we're we're going to talk about putters and a
lot of very fun things. How it's kind of a
very hot topic in the industry right now. Putters, how
they feel, what you're sensing? Uh, And I think Eric,
that's kind of where I want to start with things,
is we're looking at a bunch of different putters here.
(01:00):
They have a lot of different history to them, a
lot of different hozzle configurations and kind of waiting. But
you know, I think let's let's start the conversation with, uh,
just the concept of you go in, you pick up
a putter for the first time. What is the golfer
experiencing holistically there with what they're feeling and sensing?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, so keyword there is sensing. Right, So you pick
up a putter for the first time, we have these
five senses, right, and with putting typically not locking your putter,
so taste isn't involved. Maybe you want to smell it,
but really it's it's touch, right, It's it's it's the visuals,
and then it impact is what it sounds like, right,
(01:41):
And so each of those plays a role in our
experience as we execute a putting stroke with a putter
or various putters. And I think when you first put
it down and there's no motion, right, that's going to
be really dominated by visuals. Does it sit right? I
know Tony, our principal putter designer, spends a lot of
(02:03):
time making sure each of these models sits square to
the eye right, and and what are the different alignment
aids that will help somebody, you know, set this thing
down and have confidence that they're pointing it in the
direction that they want to put in. So site is
that first one. I think the second big one both
(02:24):
at setup. If you're hovering your putter, you're gonna feel
the weight of it. It may have a little tendency
to maybe want to rock open as you hold it,
and we'll hit on that a little bit, and well
that may be important and what that does to how
you you know, feel like you're you're you're pointing the
putter and then obviously you're gonna start moving it right,
(02:47):
and so the balance, the weighting of it. You're applying
forces and torques to the putter to move it and
make a putting stroke, so tactile feel. This word called
appropriate option right is really important and we're going to
dive into that one too, and then it impacts sound. Right.
We have different we have paying off for different groove
(03:08):
depths and patterns that really influence the acoustic Different ball
you use can influence that experience. So each of those
senses has its place. Looking into sensing, I was kind
of fascinated with, you know, which one is kind of
the most important. How fast can we process data? And
(03:30):
I was really surprised. Initially, I thought, oh, surely it's
sight right, speed of light fast. Yeah, But you got
to process that. And so actually, if you look at literature,
they would suggest that from a human response standpoint, sound
is actually the quickest thing we can respond to. It's
I don't know, processing is like say one hundred and
fifty milliseconds, and then touch is actually a very close second.
(03:53):
So what we feel is that we we react to
that very quickly, and rules is actually like lagging quite
a bit behind those two. And so as we want
to execute a putt right, we're using all those senses
to execute that task. Uh. And so how we design
(04:15):
a putter uh and how they interact with all those
senses is really important.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Let's break it down into what you kind of feel like,
you know, just aiming. We know that aiming is important,
whether you're trying to aim perfect to your intended intended
start line. We've seen a lot of great players maybe
aim slightly left or slightly right right, and then you know,
try to we try to optimize for the consistency of
the delivery. But let's talk about what the player, what
(04:42):
what physics are in play when the players just lining
up the putter, so so not swinging it yet.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yep, And so I think let's just say you're hovering
it right, yeah, and so h to to hold that putter.
You're first kind of holding it at an inclined angle,
So there's this to maintain that putter at this inclined
angle and for it to not just drop down.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
This is the li angle.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, this is the liingle. There's a torque that you're
applying right in your hands, you feel it to keep
that putter from, you know, not just dropping straight down.
Depending on the depth of that center of gravity in
the putter head, so a mallet may have a really
deep CG. A blade might have something that's a little
(05:31):
closer to like the shaft axis. You can move that
shaft axis and we'll talk about onset and offset relative
to that center of gravity. But the deeper that CG,
the more that putter might want to open up. So
you end up having to at setup if you're hovering
that putter, provide a torque kind of about the grip
(05:52):
axis or about the shaft axis to keep it from
rocking open at times. And I'd argue that's not a
bad thing. It's a signal. It's something that you can
use to understand where the face is pointed right. It's
it's it's something it's a response that you're having to
kind of react to, and that could be a good thing, right,
It's something you can use to set up. And then
(06:13):
obviously you're you're holding it up right, So there's this
force that you're you're using to kind of hold the
putter above the ground.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So depending on where the center gravity is, where the
hozzle position is, you're you're going to be probably no
matter what the putter you're going to be, you're going
to be applying some torque to maintain the liing goal.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
And then and then the amount of you know, kind
of about the grip torque your appliing is going to
be dependent on the hozzle position, center gravity relations. Okay,
now that's what you're doing kind of just statically, you're
aiming it, maybe you're hovering it, you're kind of light.
You've seen some players kind of lightly tap the plutter
things of this nature. Uh, Then what happens like when
(06:56):
you're making your main stroke? What what what's at play?
What a golfer's feeling and sensing in that aspect.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, So you did a lot of research on this
right when we first started, and it's kind of how
we are fit for stroke philosophy, It kind of evolved,
and so looking at you know, when you start moving
that putter, there's going to be players that don't rotate
the face a lot. You're kind of, I'm keeping this
thing square pendulum. You know, maybe they bend over a
(07:27):
lot and try and keep it so the face doesn't
rotate a lot during the stroke. And then you know,
you think of some other really prominent, you know, really
good putters in the game. Right you see their their
face swinging open and closed. And so when you do that,
you're you're using the center of gravity to feel where
the face is pointed, and you have to apply some
(07:48):
different torques and forces to get that putter to move
and that face to rotate kind of along the path
that you're you know, it feels best to you. And
so you know, you take something that's really he'll shafted.
This is an old Carston III. And if you don't
apply any torque and you pull it back, it's natural
tendency is to shut a little bit and then open.
(08:13):
But during anybody who takes a you know, putting stroke,
they're probably going to open that face a little bit.
So they're providing a torque to counteract a tendency for
this to shut by opening it, which, again, like we
can debate whether that's a good or bad thing, I'd
argue that that actually helps provide some feedback to the
player of where the face is pointed right, and so
(08:38):
that definitely has a big influence where that center gravity
of the putter head is, or the center gravity of
the full putter is on what you feel when you
make that stroke. And ultimately, you talked about consistency, right,
Our goal is to match up that waiting and that
balance with a player's natural movement tendencies provide a very
(09:00):
consistent stroke, repeatable and so constantly trying to match those up,
and there's gonna be maybe some different combinations that work
for different players as a result of that.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, I always think of Kevin Sullerland, who was one
of our players that had the very he almost he
was the one that almost sometimes on it. We got
him on iping closed the face almost slightly on the backstroke,
and he always used like a center center shafted putter.
You know, Louis had the beautiful stroke, just a lot
of rotation. You could, you could so much so you
(09:32):
could see it visually even when you didn't put him
on iping right, yep. And he always liked the heel
shafted you know, the ZB and some of other very
strong arc putters. And I think what's interesting with that, Eric,
is that is what happens in the backstroke. You know,
I always find that interesting the more we go down
this rabbit hole of what the player's doing in the backstroke.
(09:53):
So talk a little bit about that, and then how
that response to that manifests itself in the ford stroke
and maybe with different hozzle types, what is the result
on like the delivered face angle, which ultimately that's what
we're trying to Yeah, it's the king of hitting your
start line here.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
So with you mentioned Louis so, I remember when he
came in. It was right after he played in the
open one. It's twenty ten and uh he won it
with an answer five right, So something very similar to
this model. So a blade where if you looked at
(10:36):
the shaft axis relative to the CG, it was right
in front of it, so face balanced, and came in.
We measured him and he had all this rotation in
his stroke and we're like, hmm, okay, well this is
counter to what we were expecting, right yep. And then
we started asking him some questions about why he gravitated
(10:57):
toward that model, and uh, what he said was, well,
I was really struggling missing to the right, pushing my putts,
and I picked us up and it just like it was.
It was fantastic, Like it seemed like it just eliminated
that miss to the right and I could just swing
with confidence. And so for him, his mess tendency kind
(11:20):
of outweighed what he was experiencing kind of during the stroke.
And so that leads us down to a path of like, okay,
well he's this is Louis just won the open you know,
that's what he's talking about. Let's let's dive into this
a little bit more. And so sure enough, we ran
some testing with heel shafted putters and face bounced putters
and realized, okay, uh, yeah, he's right, something that a
(11:44):
heel shafted blade ends up being delivered a little more
open then face bounced one, and that then let us
down a path of doing some more kinetic studies. And
so I think you've had Sasha on right yep.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Ye.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
So, and you guys, you guys, are tight, start business together.
So caught up Sasso and asked them about the kinetics involved.
So kinetics, you have kinematics, which is the study of motion.
You have kinetics, which is okay, the forces that create
that motion, the forces and torques like so what, let's
(12:20):
run a little study here and see what's going on.
And so with the heel shafted putter, you see that
somebody has to be very active in what they apply,
which you would expect, right. You have this center of
mass that's kind of off the shaft axis, and they
have to be very active, like I talked about earlier,
to kind of open and close the face. So you
(12:41):
see this signal and their torque about the grip that's
pretty prominent, and you don't see that with the face
balance putter. And so the other really fascinating thing though,
is that, okay, they have to be really active with
their torque. In that study, all the players with the
heel shafted answer putter ended up having a higher angular
(13:02):
velocity coming into impact, so the rotation rate, the rate
at which the face was closing was higher. But it
was almost like okay, I realized I got to square
the face up.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
And so you turn up your torque to do it,
but you still leave it open. And it's just like
I mean, you put a bunch of lead tape on
the tower driver, it's going to be harder to square up.
And so you have this balance of Okay, we can
match kind of the overall feedback they're getting from the
putter with the balance of it. Right, So how much
(13:32):
signal do I need to make a repeatable stroke, repeatable
face motion? But then you can kind of influence it,
influence the delivery. Then that delivery a little bit by
also moving the center amiss in tone. And so there's
the different variables that you spent a lot of your
(13:52):
time studying fitting that you can use to kind of
match a putter up to a player.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah, And that's what I love about that Louis story
is that you know, our normal fitting methodology would be
and he and he has used as he's changed, maybe
his aim and players evolve over time. Maybe it changes
aim a little bit. He he fixes his push tendency
in another way, he would go into more of a
towdown putter. Yeah, the ZB or whatever slide slide arc
(14:18):
putter in our vernacular and still putt great. I think
it's interesting in that study we round with Sasho, it's
kind of always hard to wrap your brain around this,
that the that the closure rate is faster, so the
to is going faster than the heel, but the face
is still delivered open. Yeah, but fitting one on one,
(14:39):
I think even if you can't measure your stroke, how
much face rotation you have, Uh, there's this great signal.
And we've we've run this study many times that if
you pull your putts go to more totdown putter, if
you push your putts go to more face bounce putter.
That's what we saw with louis one hundred percent. And
what percentage eric of the stone art line of the
(15:00):
putt is the face angle? Right?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, it's about ninety and so done a bunch of
studies on this through the bag, right, But for a putter,
face is really important. It accounts for ninety percent of
where that ball is going to start.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, let's uh, we're looking at some fun putters here. Yeah,
let's look at this one where it all began. Tell
us a little bit about the the one A and uh,
and just I think what's fun to think about with
this one is in the way I kind of think
about this Putter Eric is that it brought in forgiveness
(15:36):
for mishits yep. And then when Carston really put ping
on the map, it was maybe forgiveness for your stroke.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah right, Hell, I love how you frame that.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Okay, we'll give us your thoughts on the one A yeah,
and then how Carston kind of evolved his way and
into into the plumber's neck and in the answer.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah. So this is one of the very early the
uh one as it is called a no model because
there's no model on there. And what's fascinating to me,
so the these you know, come from the archives with
Rob our historian, and what's fascinating to me about this
one is that it's one of the first one A's
(16:18):
obviously he's he'll toe waiting right, put all put all
the weight as far to the heel and the toast possible,
maximizing m y It's just it's been in our DNA
from the very beginning, and he did what I would
have done too. I just stuck the chef right in
the middle, right like right through uh where the center
of mass would be on this potterhead. So it's uh
(16:43):
it's pretty zero torque if I may.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Uh so, if you kind of hang it on your finger,
twist a lot of resistance.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And so I think when we talk about torque, and
let me kind of expand on that a little bit,
but I think that turn has been thrown around a lot.
We talked about the torque to keep it on incline plane.
We talked the torque that's being applied to kind of
open and close the face. That idea of zero torque
or torque and putters right now, it's applying a lot
to the opening closing in the face. And I think
(17:16):
in particular when you set up right, so there's this
kind of resting moment that tends to open the face.
If this center of mass is off the either shaft
axis or grip axis. If the grip is not in
line with the shaft, there's some grips out there that
are maybe a little crooked. So what's important is Okay,
(17:36):
that's the axis about which I'm grabbing it, and so
that's going to have a tendency to maybe those low
torque zero torque putters might not have a big signal
where the face is pointed, just it's set up when
you hover it. So when I say zero torque this
one right, it's the shaft is going and the grip
acxs is going right through the center of mass. What's
(17:56):
fascinating to me is like, this is the first one,
but anybody who has a one an at home. I
realized that, actually that shaft is no longer right through
the center of mass.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
He did that early on and realized, h I got
to move it off that, and so we started moving
it toward the heel. There's a lot of putters in
Rob's office where he started bending the shaft right, had
a couple of them here. We did that, and he
was constantly trying to use an offset from the center
of mass of the putter head relative to the shaft
(18:28):
or the grip to give that player that haptic feedback,
you know, to execute a putt. And so that was
something that was just embedded, like in Carson's DNA. He
went away from this and kind of never looked back.
Everything since then has some sort of offset between the
(18:49):
grip access for the shaft and then the center of
mass of the head.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So this original we're looking at here not a lot
of torque. Would be the idea of maybe pushing something
at the CG versus pulling it.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, So he always wanted to use the center of
gravity relative to the shaft axis of their grip to
your advantage. And so we always wanted to either be
pulling it straight through or pulling it around. And so
I had this young engineer right I'm at my desk,
this is fifteen years ago, and I was like, man,
(19:24):
I got this idea for power. It's gonna be great.
And I was like, he's going to max out, moi.
John A's gonna love it, right, And so its a
big five inch square basically, and I put all the
mass out in the corners him high, MOI. And I
was looking at kind of this inertia. It's called a tensor,
but these terms on a putter that influenced kind of
(19:47):
those forces and torques, and I'm like, I'm going to
minimize all of them. It's gonna put the chaft right
through the middle. And so it's it's pretty much like
this putter, except imagine it as a big square a
bunch of onset on it, like two and a half
inches of onset. So the front of that putter is
going to be moving up at the bottom of the stroke.
It's going to roll great. And John A comes by
(20:09):
my desk and you know, I'm just getting to know
him and hands on my shoulder, what are you working on?
This is like this very fatherly tone, like it's incredible,
like just imprinted on my mind this conversation. I'm like, well,
I'm really excited about it. Click, got damn oi really
high and I got this idea where I want to
minimize all this and he's and he's like, well, are
(20:32):
you going to know where the face is pointed? It's like,
you know, it's going right through the center of gravity,
Like you can use that to understand where the face
is pointed. That's that's a good point. And he's like
and he's like, if ever Carston used to talk about
this world barrow analogy? Did you ever have you ever
heard that? And I was like no, no, I hadn't.
And so he's like, well, when you go up a
(20:54):
curb with a wheelbarrow, what do you do. I'm like, well,
you turn around and pull the cg up the curb
cause it's way more stable, and he's like exactly. And
then he got up and went on and and and
visited with some others. And so he if you think
about and I ran this analogy by him last week,
(21:16):
like a water skier kind of going behind a boat,
and uh, and if the boat's going straight, if the
water skier gets a little offline like that, that water
skiers like the CG. And this analogy, right, like he's
going to keep going back to the center line, right,
because he's pulling away, and it's always going to square
back up to where the boat is traveling and the
(21:37):
direction the boat is traveling. So that's pulling the CG.
That's like face balance putterer. And then if the boat's
taking a turn right and and and the water skier
is kind of going around still a stable movement, right,
that's more like a heel shafted putter pulling the CG around.
(21:57):
And so again, Carson always wanted to use center of
gravity to his advantage and to provide feedback to the
player and help them make a consistent like stroke. And
I thought those two things totally influenced how I viewed
putters moving forward and the type of research. It's really
cool about this, right, there's so much history here, yeah,
and elements that of how Carston philosophy has evolved and
(22:23):
now we have all this technology to then go out
and like actually like prove a lot of those things
that he found by just intuition.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, Eric, one test I remember doing, you know a
year or two or ago, was you know, you conduct
it yourself, went into went into the lab and you
had us I don't know if you blindfolded us or
had us close our eyes and you took away that sense. Yeah,
what tell us a little bit about that experiment you ran.
(22:52):
It relates exactly to this is of kind of like, hey,
how are you going to know where you're point in
the face? Yeah, and what you found with that experiment, and.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
The seed was planned for that back with that conversation
I had with John a like during my first year here,
and so the idea came about. I started looking into
this area called dynamic touch, and it's basically the study
of haptic appropriate reception and the idea of how it
does what we feel and the balance of objects influence
(23:22):
our ability to complete a task. And so I wanted
to kind of maximize the sense of touch being inspired
by dynamic touch. And there's for those kind of listening
or watching, there's a really cool if you google Ian Waterman.
He's an individual who had a really rare condition where
(23:46):
he lost all basically haptic appropriateception, all feeling kind of
from the neck down. So we had to learn how
to operate, balance, move his hand purely by looking. So
he has to use his site to execute any task
because he can't feel, like when you walk, you're constantly
(24:08):
feeling yeah, pressure in your feet and and and it's
fascinating how much our touch influences how we're able to
operate as humans. So I'd encourage people to kind of
google that, and because it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Reverse of being blindfolded exactly something exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And so he lost his touch, I'm like, well, okay,
like let's find out the importance of that with putting.
And so I had four different prototypes, all of the
same model, and then I oriented ended up orienting the
grip axis in different points. One ironed the graph axis
right through the center of mass of the putter, one
(24:50):
way forward, one way to side, one way heelside. And
it was a round grip like three D printed, put
it on there, and I'd put it in no flats,
no flats or anything. So you're you're purely dependent on
the balance of that putter to understand where the face
is pointed. So I put it in your hands and
random orientation. I'm like, set it up and point the face.
(25:12):
And the ones where people were more repeatable pointing the face,
it might have been in the wrong direction, but they'd
set up in the same way the farther away that axis,
that grip axis was from the center of mass, right,
It wasn't going right through it. It was you were maximizing
that kind of offset between that axis and the center
of mass in the head. The one one of the
(25:33):
grip went right through it. People like, I have no
idea where is appointed and this blindfold random. This is blindfolded,
So no beneficite using just purely your your feel in
your hands. And so in doing that, right, You're like,
why would I want to take away that sense? Right,
I'd want to turn that up. That's what they can
(25:54):
use to, you know, be more consistent. No where the
face is pointed. And it goes way back to like
John A said, man, how do you know where the
face is pointed if you don't have any any torque
to feel it?
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah? Interesting, Yeah, I know. I Equally as much as
the popularity of you know, on set lower torque putters
and what have you, is a lot of folks using
heel shafted ballants, right. Is that you know we've made
the floaky in the hardwood and some of these putters
where we do maximize that distance. Is that kind of
(26:27):
the theory behind that for some players?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Yeah, And so the deeper that CG is, you're kind
of maximizing it rest that kind of resting moment that
helps you point the face. And then with those heel
shaft ones, you're moving that CG kind of or the
shaft heelside right maximize. So during their stroke when they're
trying to open and close the face, they're getting a
(26:50):
really good signal over where that face is pointed. And
it could be more repeatable. Right, It's it's it's greater resistance.
And so I think there's a good connection between resistance
and precision in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Uh, let's take a look at Eric, Let's take a
look at this favor I'm looking at the and it's
pointed out ahead here, and tell us what's going on
with this with this putter from the archives.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, so there's a number of bends in this one.
So rob was kind to us and gave us a
shaft not only with a bend that people are probably
familiar with right down here, uh, you know, about five
inches up from the head, but there's also a bend
right under the grip. And Carsten designed the Balnamic shaft
(27:43):
to have the grip tilted in such a way that
it pointed toward the ball both in front of the
potter head at the ball, and then it's tilted a
little bit up toward the toe. And so you know,
I made you take some strokes with this to feel it,
(28:03):
because it's a it's an incredible feeling when you make
a stroke with this, and it highlights the reason he
did that was he's going back. I want to pull
the cg right. So I want to I know, the
center of mass of my head is back here. How
can I get my grip access to be pulling that
while I'm going to bend the shaft. Fortunately, the oshad
wasn't a big fan uh and uh, and so he
(28:26):
wasn't able to do that anymore. But what that led
him to do was invent the plumber's neck, which is
really cool. Right, So, all right, speed bump on the
road I'm going to get innovative and try and fix this.
And so he ended up creating the plumber's neck. And
for those of you when I say plumbers neck, aren't
(28:49):
familiar with that. So basically that's the common hozzle that
you see on most answer stylezz potters right now. And
so he was able to get that shaft axis pointed
at the all by putting a bunch of offset on
his hozzle at the top of the hozzle and created
that sensation of pulling the center of mass by incorporating
(29:12):
offset in a plumber's neck. Is just it's crazy to
me that he just was like, Okay, well fine, I'll
find another way to do it and created one of
the most i mean the most famous hozzle geometry and
putter design.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, still out there on a lot of putters today
for that reason. So so just going back to the one,
A a lot of inertia that comes into play if
you don't hit your putt perfectly right, you know, heel
and toe and then everything we're talking about with pulling
the CG that's even more stability or forgiveness during the stroke.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Correct. Correct.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I've also seen some research in our golf science stuff Erica,
where we've looked at face angle variability during the stroke, right,
and how putter properties Hazzele position can influence that. Now
that we have these tools to kind of X raym right,
(30:14):
tell us a little bit about face angle variability kind
of during the stroke and the impact of Hazzle position
on that.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah. So I mean this goes into our fit for
stroke philosophy, right, And I think depending on how much
rotation you have and just cognitively how you respond to
that balance of a putter, there's gonna be an optimal
center mass location that leads to greater consistency. And so
(30:44):
that's what drives our fit for stroke philosophy. I think
it goes to the resistance, right, the resistance to rotation
leading to precision. And then that also another study where
we ended up using kind of an iron grip and
(31:05):
moving the cg back and similarly kind of put had
people try to orient the putter multiple times and looked
at how repeatable they were when they had to orient
the putter without the benefit of sight multiple times, and
they got way more repeatable. The bigger that offset was,
the bigger that torque was, because it was a bigger
signal for them to adjust and feel. And so I
(31:29):
think what's really kind of cool about all that is
that there's there's a huge fitting nugget in there, right,
Like you can improve your repeatability if you're well fit.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, and yeah, let's don't a click on that idea
of a resistance for precision where else? I know I've
heard Sasho talk about throwing darts and somebody putting on
like their wedding ring, switching out for one hand to
the other.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, give yourself a little more precise. Yeah, what other
uh sports.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Domains applications do you see folks kind of getting the
right resistance to enhance their precision.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, so I mean surgical tools, right, you know you'll
see a really lightweight surgical tool. Right. They all have
some resistance to them meant to improve precision. Right, we're
going to be opening somebody up. You want to be
very precise, don't want to nick the wrong thing. Uh.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
To me, it's a golf pencil. I always have a
hard time with my Yeah, pencils too light, you know,
I can't feel where it's pointed.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I think you see it. You know, heavy piano keys
right on a grand piano being able to, you know,
have that tactile feedback on on piano keys. I think,
you know, my son's fourteen, and he's like, hey, Dad,
I want to start going to the gym. Great, and
(32:53):
so go to the gym. I ended up calling up
Sasha and I'm like, dude, some wants to start, you know,
lifting ways you know how me out proke sure I
don't give me a little program here to make sure
I'm not putting him down the wrong path. And so
we chatted and it was really crazy to me. As
he got him down on a bench, give him two dumbbells.
I'm like, I'm going to give him the lightest things
(33:13):
I can find because I don't.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I don't want to hurt him.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
And and he's never done a bench press before, right,
and so it's like this giraffe learning to walk thing him,
you know, because they're super light. So he's having a
hard time even you know. And I'm like, oh, he
needs he needs more weight so he has some resistance
and he can like feel where it's going. I don't
want to get him too much weight, right, because then
(33:40):
other things will happen. Put a little more resistance in there.
All a sudden, his form got way better because I
added some resistance to his motion, And I thought it
was a great analogy of like, you know, how adding
some resistance some inertia can improve precision. And so as
we're talking about putters, have somebody who's rotating the face
(34:01):
a lot, you know, you give them something, he'll shafted
and the cg's off that off that hostle access that
grip access a lot. They're gonna have more resistance, but
that resistance is going to help them be really precise
because they need it. They if they're moving their face
around a lot, there's a lot more degrees for them
to square up. If they're opening it a lot on
(34:22):
the backswing. Yeah, yeah, versus somebody who maybe doesn't, I
don't need as much resistance when they go back, but
you still want to be pulling the CG right. So
that's Carson, you know, ended up gravitating a lot toward
the face balance putters because he felt like, hey, that's
stable coming through. But there's that magic mix depending on
how much rotation you have to help improve precision and
(34:44):
provide the right resistance right for a given player to
help them be as precise as possible.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
I think that's a big thing we've tried to do
in our fitting philosophy, whether it's ipaying, handicap score, just incentivizing,
trying to incentivize and measure that repeatability. I mean, it's
all the fundamentals of a fitting with ipaying. Here in
the putting lab is somebody is not matched to the
right resistance for them effectively, and we get him into
(35:10):
something matches better, their repeatability goes up. We can measure
it and then have success out on the golf course.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, and walk away with a lot of confidence.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
So, Eric, let's transition to a little bit to onset offset,
because you pull the CG using offset.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
But here we are we have we have Corey Connors,
one of our best putters and players, using our Alley
Blue onset putter. Yeah, so tell us a little bit
about the benefits of onset and what physics properties are
in play here that still allow him to Is this
thing still pulling the CG or not? Great question.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
So we've there's a number of different variables at play
with this design, right, and so to answer your first question, yes,
it is still pulling the CG. The CG is located
off that shaft axis right, it's a little bit of
toe hang on this, but it definitely keys in at
a certain angle when you hold it up like that,
(36:17):
and that helps Corey and players who use this model
still feel where the face is pointed. It's set up
and relative to maybe an alley blue with like a
plumber's neck. The cg's not as deep relative to that axis,
so it's going to feel as it moves through the
(36:38):
putting stroke for Corey less like a mallet and more
like a blade. Because we've moved that shaft axis back
closer to the center of mass. It's not in line
with the center of mass. It's not above the center
of mass toe side of the center of mass, it's
forward of the center of mass, and healside. It's going
to have those torques that maybe he feels with a blade,
(37:02):
but give him the forgiveness in the footprint of a mallet,
which is really cool.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
So something feel wise that might be a little bit
more like an answer, ye.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Okay, somewhere between an answer and I'd say B sixty.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
And what have we seen. We've done a good bit
of testing just on onset in general. What have we
seen with some of the benefits of onset for certain players.
What might somebody need to do. We're just starting to
incorporate this in the lab with these putters from a
fitting standpoint, based on how it's delivered and things of
that nature.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, I would we as a team, we're fascinated to see. Okay,
we're changing going from offset to onset, but with that,
we're also changing the balance of a putter. And so
we had limit curves for center of mass relative to
the shaft, axss, heel, toe, and deep, and so we're like, okay,
we're moving closer to the center of mass, so it's
(37:58):
probably going to be delivered little more closed, not more open,
right you go, heel shafted, more open, more face balance
more closed. So we have that variable going. But then
we also have limit curves on offset and no offset,
and we knew that as you take offset off, people
tend to set up and deliver the face a little
(38:19):
more open, which like, this has both those going on.
It's got one variable at saying this is going to
be a little more open because I'm taking away my offset,
but maybe I'm going to square it up a little
easier because I'm moving the center of mask closer to
the shaft axis. And so what we found in our
testing is with this particular model, players comparing that to
(38:43):
something that's say got a plumber's neck on it, or
maybe a double bend with a little bit of offset,
they're tending going to tend to deliver it a little
more open. And if somebody, say typically use a face
balance putter or a s balance mallet and then miss left,
this might be a really good option left for a
(39:03):
right handed golfer if they pull their putts, this might
be a really good option because it biases because it's
got on set. It's biasing a player to be a
little more square if they tend to pull their putts.
And so it's a cool addition to our kind of
mix of putters and fitting options because it can fix
(39:27):
a miss tendency in a way that if we just
went facing, there's only so much you could do. You
either gonna have to put them in a heel shafted
putter to get them to like leave the face a
little more open. But now you're messing with what naturally
might work for them from a face rotation standpoint during
the stroke and give them something that will kind of
(39:48):
help fight that miss tendency of.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
A polls new fitting, new fitting option, the.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Unlocked a new fitting option.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
So that's what I'm very excited about. I also love
the when we worked on this putter, Tony Serrano or
our principal putter designer, he made a bunch of different versions, right, Yeah,
tell us a little bit about the how we landed
on the fifteen degrees toe down and you know how
deep the CG is where we placed the hoesle, etc.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah, so we had a five degree He was kind
of doing it in terms of toe hang, but basically
he's moving that shaft access. He's there closer to the
center line of the putter or more heelside. And we
landed at the fifteen for this particular model because it
fit right at the center of the bell curve of
(40:37):
our fitting philosophies. So we we categorize this as like
a for somebody who fits into our slight art category,
which is a good sixty to seventy percent of all
players fit into that category. And so we have some
options on tour right now that maybe if somebody's a
little more straight back straight through, we go to the
(40:59):
one where the uh, the shaft is inserted a little
closer to the center line. Somebody's got a lot of rotation,
we'll give them the option that tony design that's maybe
got that, or that has that shaft axis inserting a
little closer to the heel, and so all those have
the onset so you get to see the full kind
(41:19):
of top rail, right, So no distraction of hozzle geometries
if that's something that you're sensitive to. So another good
benefit of this sort of design. And so yeah, right
now that fifteen is kind of the most popular one,
but that's just because that's kind of fit in the
center of the bell curve.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Luz, there's so much there's so much, so much fun
in this top Yeah. One other piece and I remember
doing this when we were working on late some Ladies
driver's research. Was, Uh, we were just asking a bunch
of our target customer to kind of look at some
sizes of the driver and tell us what we're the
most comfortable with. And at the time I was, I
(42:03):
was working on our Ladies driving design and I max
it out to the USG limit five inch by five
inch box and a lot of the ladies said, hey,
this the headweight was light you know, it was like
one hundred and eighty eight grams, and a lot of
the ladies were like, well, this looks heavy, you know,
like it's just it's gonna be too heavy. Yeah, but
the actual mass was the same. Tell us a little bit.
(42:25):
We start off with the optics is one of the
first piece of feedback to the putter of how size
or maybe what you're feeling dynamically with the CG offset
impacts the weight of the putter. And I think you know,
one thing I always like to do to test us
with folks is set up to a putter, then you
flip it one hundred and eighty degrees upside down, close
(42:46):
my eyes, kind of swing. It feels very light. Yeah,
why why is that? And then maybe the optical piece too.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Oh, there's so much in there. So there's this I
mentioned dynamic touch, and this whole study area of dynamic touch,
and one of the studies that's been redone by a
number of different academics is studying the size of weight illusion.
And so if you can imagine, you know, you have
(43:13):
I don't know, you got a twenty five pound kettlebell, right,
and then you blow that thing up three times its
size and keep it at twenty five pounds right, and
then shrink it down to you know, the size of whatever,
like a quarter or something twenty five pounds. That quarter
is going to feel so heavy, right, because you're not
(43:35):
expecting something that small to feel like twenty five pounds.
But then the thing that's really big right at twenty
five pounds is going to feel super light. And so
that's really important with putters is you got mallets and
you have blades, and you don't want to cross the
wires too much in the player and confuse them when
(43:56):
they're setting up over a putter. You want something to
feel like it looks right, the interaction between what you're
feeling and what you're seeing like. You don't want to
tax tax them any more than you need to cognitively
as they're setting up to that. So it typically mounts
are just a little heavier because if you make them
as light as a blade, we can do that using
different materials. But then it kinda it can get a
(44:20):
little confusing when you set up to them. And so
it's a really cool kind of area study this size
weight allusion something you can google. And then the other
thing that you feel when you set up and that
can influence perceived weight is the more that So for
a mallet, if you have a really deep CG, they
(44:43):
tend to feel a little heavier because there's this natural
kind of resting torque and resting moment that wants to
open and so you're you have to apply a little
bit of a torque and your brain thinks, hey, I'm
it's heavier. I gotta I gotta resist this thing just
holding it. And so all that plays into you know,
(45:06):
how we perceive weight. The experience that you had when
you're designing that Lady's driver, and we did I remember
before we found the body of literature, we went around
and like had some putters of the same weight but
different size, and did the whole like okay, feel these righto.
And then we say okay, close your eyes. And then
we asked them which one was which and they're like,
I don't know, right, Remember that it was pretty cool, yeah,
(45:30):
and so uh so, yeah, it's a it's a that
area of dynamic touch and how mass properties of an
object can influence what you perceive, what you feel, and
how well you can execute a task is uh yeah,
it's really rich and something that we're continue to implement
and the decisions we make with our putter designs.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Yeah, just did just the closed the lip on the
Ladies driver. So what we did there was instead of saying, oh,
I need to make the driver smaller, we put a
little decal offset from the silhouette so it it struck
the balance there. Yeah, right, so the the Ladies mind's
eye captured it smaller visually, right, then you can still
(46:09):
make it big.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
So as that's your plumbers neck finding another solution exactly exaction.
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
So I've been using the alley the alley blue, but
with the four houseley because I love tork Henrickson. I
love torq. I love to feel that resistance during the stroke.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
And it's awesome to now understand the physics of why
that is, you know, continuing down this journey to understand it.
Any last things there you want to touch on on
this topic in general?
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, No, I just think there's a it's an exciting
time in putters. I think we've got a lot of
cool stuff kind of cooking. We we've spent a lot
of time bashing around different technologies and ideas and so
you know, I just I want to highlight that you know,
there are you know, a variety of different ways that
(47:06):
you can wait to putter that match up with different
players strokes and abilities. And I think when you when
you take away, I just I hesitate to take away
a sense, right, Yeah, to like minimize one of those
knobs to the point where like, well, I'm now eliminating
its ability to like help somebody. And so that's just
(47:29):
a philosophy of ours that it's like we want to
maximize that. Like, we think a lot about what we're seeing,
what we're feeling, what we're hearing when we design a
golf club. All those things are really important, and you
don't want to minimize any of those.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Words of wisdom. Words of wisdom. The third time on
Doctor Eric Hennery is so much fun. This was a
fun one. We went down a little little history lesson
right to our contemporary design approach, and hopefully all the
listeners out there, whether they're club fitters or consumers in
the market for a new putter, helping them understand maybe
(48:05):
some putters they've liked in the past, what they're feeling,
what they're sensing. Hopefully there'll be some folks out there
closing their eyes trying to point some putters.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
I'll do it.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
That's a good way. That is probably a good way
for folks to.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
It.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Is that a good test for folks that do on
their own. Let's say you're going into a putting crawl. Yeah,
you're like, which one of these can I aim the best?
Is that a protocol folks can do one hundred percent?
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Right? I think it helps. What it'll do is it'll
help maximize that sense. Right, anytime you take away a sense,
all your other senses have to kind of go into overdrive.
So why not when you go into a putter crawl
and you know, not be biased by the alignment alone,
close your eyes and does this still feel as I
(48:49):
swing this? Like it could be precise with it? Yeah,
because you don't want your eyes to fool you, right,
and the visuals are important, right, but you're not staring
at the thing as you're swinging it, right, And so
by taking that away, it'll kind of heiden your sense
of you know, I see you close your eyes when
(49:09):
you do a point.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Absolutely absolutely, you're you're.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Trying to go in and you're trying to maximize what
you feel with your feet and minimize all the other senses, right,
Probably get your hands over your ears if you did too,
but yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
All right, let's end on that one. Thanks for being
with us, and we'll see everyone next time on the
Ping Proving Grounds Podcast
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