How to choose a putter: length, lie and balance

A putter is the club you use on nearly 40 percent of your shots and the one most golfers buy on looks alone. Three measurements decide whether a putter helps you: length, lie angle and how the head is balanced. None of them is expensive to check, and all of them matter more than the brand stamped on the sole.

There is a fourth thing, which is aim, and it turns out to be the most important of all. A golfer who aims a particular head shape straight will putt better with it than with a technically superior putter they aim two degrees left, and two degrees is a missed putt from ten feet.

Length: most putters off the rack are too long

The standard 34 or 35 inches was set for a taller, more upright stance than most people actually use, and it persists because that is what fits a retail rack.

If the shaft is too long, your hands sit further from your body than they want to be, your eyes end up inside the ball rather than over it, and the face aims left of where you believe it does. You then compensate, usually by manipulating the hands through impact, and the compensation is what you take to the course and what abandons you under pressure.

The check takes a minute. Set up as you normally would with your arms hanging naturally, and have somebody measure from your hands to the ground. If a shorter putter puts your eyes over or just inside the ball with the arms hanging, that is your length. Many golfers end up between 32 and 34 inches, and shortening an existing putter costs very little.

One consequence worth knowing: shortening a putter makes the head feel lighter, because you have removed shaft weight and changed the balance. A good fitter adds head weight to compensate, and a putter that feels dead after being cut is usually a weighting problem rather than a length mistake.

Lie angle: the sole tells the truth

Put the putter down as you address the ball and look at the sole. If the toe is in the air, the face is aiming left at impact. If the heel is up, it aims right.

Either way you are starting putts offline before the stroke begins, and no amount of practice fixes a static aim error, because the error is in the equipment rather than in the motion. It also gets worse the further you are from the hole.

Lie angle is adjustable on most steel-shafted putters and any fitter with a bending machine can do it in a few minutes for a small fee. It is the single cheapest putting improvement available and almost nobody has it done.

Balance: match the head to your stroke

Balance the shaft across your finger, a few inches below the grip. If the face points at the sky, the putter is face-balanced, which suits a stroke that moves relatively straight back and through. If the toe hangs down toward the floor, the putter is toe-weighted, which suits a stroke with a natural arc.

Most golfers have some arc, because the shoulders rotate around a spine that is tilted forward and the club is not vertical. Face-balanced mallets are popular because they look forgiving and because they photograph well, but a golfer with a pronounced arc will fight one for as long as they own it.

This is the easiest thing to get right in a fitting bay and it takes five minutes: the fitter watches your stroke, tells you which family suits it, and half the rack disappears from consideration.

Head shape is aim, not fashion

Blade or mallet is less about forgiveness than about how easily you aim the thing, and aim is enormously individual.

Some golfers aim a simple blade with a single line perfectly and cannot aim a large mallet with three parallel lines to save their lives. The reverse is just as common, and neither has anything to do with ability or with which putter is objectively better.

Ask a fitter to check your aim with a laser on two or three shapes from ten feet. The results are frequently startling, and they narrow the choice faster than any other test. Buy the one you aim straight, whatever it looks like on the rack.

The one thing a fitting will not fix

Distance control. A fitted putter gets the ball started on the line you chose; nothing about the club decides how hard you hit it.

Since three-putts are overwhelmingly a speed problem rather than a line problem, a golfer who buys a putter to cure three-putting has bought the wrong solution. Ten minutes of long putts on the practice green before each round does more for that number than any purchase.

What a fitting fixes is the start line, which is where putts from inside ten feet are won and lost, and that is a genuinely valuable half hour.

Grip size and the anchoring rule

Oversize putter grips reduce wrist action and suit golfers whose hands take over under pressure. They are legal, they change the balance of the club, and they are a matter of preference rather than of correctness.

Anchoring is not permitted: you may use a long putter, but you may not hold any part of it against your body or use a forearm as an anchor point. Arm-lock putters, which run along the lead forearm without being anchored against the body, are legal and have their own length and loft requirements. If you are considering either, have it fitted rather than adapted.

Where to buy in the U.S.

Some large U.S. golf retailers have putting studios where you can try several models on a real surface and have length and lie adjusted on the spot, often with aim and stroke measurement included in a putter fitting session.

Independent club fitters, including those listed through the Association of Golf Clubfitting Professionals, tend to spend considerably longer on aim and stroke type than a retail bay does, and are the right choice if you have tried several putters and not settled.

For used putters, some specialist resellers grade condition and take trade-ins, which makes it realistic to try a shape for a season and move on without losing much. The used market is the sensible place to experiment with head shape.

Your club’s pro shop is worth a call as well: many keep demo putters you can take out for a round, and most will fit length and lie for the price of the adjustment. Trying a putter on the greens you actually play, at the speed you actually face, beats any indoor mat.

Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any of these retailers or fitters and earns no commission on what you buy.

Before you spend anything

• Check your current putter’s lie by setting it down as you address the ball. Half of all fixes start there.
• Balance the shaft on a finger and find out whether your putter matches your stroke.
• Have your aim measured with two or three head shapes before you shop.
• Try any new putter on greens running at a speed you actually play, not on a store mat.
• If three-putting is the problem, fix speed on the practice green before buying anything.

A fitted putter you already own beats a new one that does not fit. Start with the measurements, and only then go looking at what is in the rack.

Where this shows up on a course

Three courses from our directory where the round is decided on the green.

• The Country Club of Birmingham: Two Ross courses in Shades Valley, one of them reworked by Robert Trent Jones and then by Pete Dye: three architects on one routing, and what guests make of the result.
• Olympia Fields Country Club — North Course: Willie Park Junior’s North Course, built in 1915 south of Chicago: a par 70 over 7,350 yards with a slope of 150, and a championship record that is still current.
• Ravisloe Country Club: Founded in 1901 as the first Jewish country club in Chicago, redrawn by Donald Ross, closed in 2008 and reopened to the public: small fast greens at a public price.

We have not played these courses; each page says what it is based on.