How far do club players really hit their drives, new Odyssey and PXG putters
While there are still plenty of excellent golfers on the PGA Tour who opt to use a traditional heel-toe weighted blade putter, a growing number of the game's top players are finding success with mallets. The top 10 players on the Official World Golf Rankings are expected to be in contention on Sunday at the PGA Championship, and seven of them -- Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas, Russell Henley, Sepp Straka and Shane Lowry -- use a mallet putter of one style or another.
Heading into this week's PGA Championship, Sam Burns is ranked No. 35 in the world, but he is also ranked No. 1 on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting and he's a mallet guy. So is the golfer ranked No. 2 in Strokes Gained: Putting, Sam Ryder, and No. 3, Jacob Bridgeman, and No. 4, Brandt Snedeker. The player ranked No. 5, Nico Echavarria .... mallet guy.
Decades ago, there was a stigma surrounding mallet putters. The thought process was that golfers who needed to use a mallet were just bad putters and not good enough to play a blade, but today, the golfers who earn a living by shooting low scores have come to understand that the added size of mallets makes it easier to get effective alignment systems on them. The added size of a mallet putter can make it more stable and more forgiving on mis-hit putts, and with a wide variety of hosel configurations and styles, today's mallets can be suitable for golfers who make a straight stroke, an arced stroke or a severely-arced stroke.
If you are in the market for a new putter this season, the best way to find the model that can benefit your putting stroke the most is to work with a good custom fitter and be sure the club is cut to the ideal length and bent to your ideal lie angle. Putters come in a variety of lengths -- typically 33, 34, and 35 inches -- and the lie angle of most putters can be adjusted easily. There are several new models from brands like Bettinardi, Cobra, L.A.B., Odyssey, Ping, PXG, Scotty Cameron, TaylorMade, Tour Edge, and Wilson.
There was a time when a standard iron set that recreational golfers bought was comprised of eight clubs, a 3-iron through pitching wedge, but the 3-iron is gone from nearly every set made for weekend players and even elite golfers rarely carry that club these days. I'm not sure that blade putters will ever go the way of the 3-iron, but the benefits of modern mallet putters are very hard to ignore.
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