How A Putter Fitting Can Help Your Scores Plummet

How A Putter Fitting Can Help Your Scores Plummet

Have you been custom fitted for your putter? The stats suggest you probably haven’t, and that you have for your driver and irons, despite the putter being the most used club in the bag. To educate golfers on the putter fitting process and the importance of understanding your stroke, we teamed up with SIK to give two golfers their first ever putter fitting, help them understand more about their putting stroke and fit them for one of the latest models in the SIK range.

VIDEO: Watch two golfers go through the SIK Golf putter fitting experience

SIK offers golfers 120 different combinations through its comprehensive fitting process. Under the watchful eye of fitter Oli Leett in his putting hub at Tickenham Golf Centre, 2.6 handicapper Mike Chapman and 20 handicap Matt Morrison tested out new SIK putters, including the Flo C-Series and Pro C-Series models, and began to understand their own strokes. Using the SAM Putting Lab, Oli was able to show the positives and negatives of each slight change he made to a putter set-up, allowing him to establish the ideal specs for each individual.

Despite the difference in handicaps, Oli revealed both Mike and Matt had very similar tendencies in their strokes that caused the ball to roll poorly. Both fittings really focused on roll and launch conditions and both were able to achieve more consistent putts thanks to some of SIK’s proprietary technology. Descending Loft Technology (DLT), found in the faces of the entire SIK range, delivers consistent launch angles no matter where the ball is struck. More loft at the top of the blade and less at the bottom means that inconsistent strikes don’t lead to inconsistent launch.

“The rule of thumb for the ideal roll characteristics is seeing the ball launch off the face for the first ten per cent of its journey, bounce for the next ten per cent and then reach its true roll after 20 per cent of the total distance,” says Oli. “With their old putters, the ball was still bouncing after that window,” Oli explains. “As soon as we changed into SIK putters, we saw both of them achieve that pure roll of the ball without having to drastically change anything about their strokes.

"Mike was hitting it high on the face and adding loft, while Matt’s hands were a little behind the ball at impact. We were able to give them both the equivalent putter in the SIK head and the performance changed massively, thanks to the DLT launching the ball in ideal conditions.”

Without having to change much in the way of putting strokes, SIK putters in the hands of our two readers immediately saw them rolling the ball more consistently with better pace control. From there, it was all about choosing heads in the range that suited Mike and Matt.

Mike was fitted into the SIK DW 2.0 Plumber’s Neck putter and noted how the quality of strike instantly improved, which really helped get the ball rolling quicker without having to change his technique. Matt, meanwhile, ended up with the SIK Sho Double Bend putter in 35”, a crescent mid-mallet that was aesthetically very different to his old flat-stick but commented that the roll improved regardless of where putts were struck across the face.

After such a successful and educational session, both our readers came away with more knowledge and understanding of their putting strokes, as well as a new putter to breathe more confidence into their short games. The DLT faces were standout pieces of technology for both players, and the wide range of combinations on offer meant that Matt and Mike left in the knowledge they had new models ideally suited to their own idiosyncratic strokes. “I found it fascinating,” admitted Mike, with Matt revealing he “became robotic from 10ft”.