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Presented by PGA Tour Superstore
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - How much would you pay to become a better putter?
How does "nothing" sound? Believe it or not, it's possible if you take advantage of one of the more underrated and undervalued experiences in golf retail.
Every Saturday, PGA Tour Superstore locations across the country offer free putting clinics followed by free putter fittings, typically running from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. local time. It might just make you a better putter without forcing you into a $500 purchase. Their putter fittings are conducted with the help of a SAM PuttLab machine, which I had heard of before but never gotten to use. A separate putter fitting is usually $100, but as part of this Saturday putting hangout, it's free.
Surely there's a catch? You could be forgiven for thinking there's a hard-sell aspect to the enterprise, but the attitude is decidedly more pragmatic than some clubfitters, constantly upselling golfers or putting the timeshare-style full-court press on them. "That's part of what I enjoy about working for this company," said Joe Gorman, manager of PGA Tour Superstore's Palm Beach Gardens location. "It's relationship-building."
Yes, some golfers do come away from Saturday's instruction-plus-fitting enticement buying brand-new putters. But many others come seeking greater knowledge about a putter they already have, and perhaps even love. Many times, those golfers are a loft, lie and/or grip adjustment away from more confidence with their gamer. Other times, they may just need some clear data reminding them that it's the hunter, not the arrow.
I have loved my Evnroll ER5 putter since the day it arrived nearly six years ago, and I had zero intentions of being swayed towards any of the admittedly strong crop of new putters for 2024. I have half-joked that the putter will have to be buried with me long in the future. So I approached my visit to PGA Tour Superstore with some trepidation. The last thing I needed was more doubt heaped on top of my already streaky-at-best putting.
After hitting only a dozen measurable putts using the device, I came away feeling the hour drive each way would be worthwhile, thanks to the opportunity to use the SAM (Science And Motion) PuttLab to study my stroke. Funny enough, it only took a dozen putts to learn what I do well, and what I need to work on.
Gorman set me up astride the store's SAM unit, which looks like a cross between a launch monitor and a pair of futuristic football uprights. He affixed a triangular instrument to the shaft of my putter and had me hit several putts of about 10 feet on the indoor putting green. The machine took copious data from each putt and synthesized it into a PDF report.
Signs of putting strength
Much as golf tries to beat it out of me (and all of us), I strive to be an optimist, and the SAM PuttLab report on my handful of diagnostic putts provided some good encouragement.
The system breaks a golfer's putting stroke into several constituent parts including aim, path, impact, launch, rhythm and timing. In most cases, it provides two metrics side by side. The first is an average expression of how close the given putts come to the ideal of each aspect of the stroke. The second deals with how consistent that aspect of a golfer's stroke is from putt to putt.
For instance, the face of your putter could be aimed too far left or right in a given stroke. SAM PuttLab will show this bit of error in the data. But if over a set of several putts you tend to aim the same amount off-line each time, your Consistency score will be high. A high Consistency score should tell any golfer that their stroke is relatively sound and that some setup adjustment might be all that's needed. A low Consistency score would suggest inconsistent mechanics.
Nearly across the board, I was relieved to see high Consistency scores (denoted by a green graph bar). Interestingly, I was the most consistent - a 96% score - when it came to face rotation, even if my overall rate of rotation was at a still-decent but lower 76%. That suggests that my stroke is a good match for the physics of my putter, which is a mallet-style head but has just a slight bit of toe-hang that would seem compatible with my moderate natural face rotation.
Room for Improvement
This is where both the SAM PuttLab data and Gorman's experience came together to help me. On the "Impact Spot" measurement, I measured a hilarious 0% on both the location of impact and consistency of impact. This confirms a suspicion I have always had: that I can actually hit the center of the clubface more consistently on a full iron shot than a medium-length putt. It sounds bizarre, but it's my golf truth. The majority of my test putts were struck woefully close to the heel, except for one way out towards the toe. It's clear that I need to work on a drill or two that trains center putting contact.
Gorman noticed something in my stroke that brought some clarity. When I hit putts outside the SAM PuttLab, he noted that when I set up with the heel of the putter slightly off the ground, I tended to strike putts more solidly. The machine confirmed this: those inconsistent impacts came when the toe of my putter was nearly 2 degrees up.
The (accidentally) right fit
Having been fitted for it six years ago, I ordered my Evnroll putter with a lie angle of 69.5 degrees, which is noticeably flatter than the standard of 72 degrees. "Metal has a memory," Gorman told me, meaning that over time, putters that have been manipulated will tend to return to their default specs. Indeed, my putter's lie angle measured at 71.25 degrees. That turned out to be a good thing because my stroke is more upright now than it was in 2018.
All in all, I was impressed with both the SAM PuttLab's abilities to efficiently and clearly demonstrate my putting strengths and weaknesses, as well as PGA Tour Superstore's nifty Saturday putting sessions. If you think you could use some fine-tuning of your putter or just general insight into your own putting stroke, you might want to wander over to your local location on a future Saturday. You never know what you'll learn.
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