Players forming emotional attachments to certain clubs is nothing new.
Scottie Scheffler has his driver. Ben Hogan was famous for his 1-iron. And Roy McAvoy never missed with his 7-iron.
But the easiest club to make emotionally attached is the shooter. Some golfers use the same golf clubs for years, while others customize them to represent their personality.
So can the players get in the way of those emotional connections with the players? Maybe not!
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-host Johnny Wunder asserted that finding the right putter is almost as much about the “heart and soul” of the player as it is fitting. Wunder said he often adjusts for the setter in a Quintic machine or one various placement analysis machinerybut the emotional connection usually wins.
“In my experience, what happens is that shooters are such an emotional thing that they can … It’s specific to put as well,” Wunder said. “I would say it’s 55% fit and 45% the spirit, the soul and the emotional connection of it. I think most good players will do something that they like to watch. They can aim, work, because they just… It’s something in their soul like, ‘No, I know that other one.’
PGA Tour putting coach and GOLF contributor Stephen Sweeney didn’t necessarily disagree. It’s something he sees all the time.
“These machines, from a technology standpoint, whether it’s Quintic or Vertex, regardless of the Gears and the things we use, we’re going to see a lot where players obviously have better numbers with one product than another,” Sweeney said. “But then, like you said, they have a crazy emotional connection to this shooter that they either like the look, the sound, the feel, or they have fond memories of an important shot they made with it.
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“And they sometimes go back to it just for emotional reasons, nothing else.”
So is this a bad thing? Sweeney doesn’t necessarily think so.
“I’m not going to say the player, but there’s a player out there, world-class, like, you know, top three or four in the world that I put him with a shooter that I look at and just go, I don’t feel like he’s very good at it, but he just likes it,” Sweeney said.
He also gave an example of his work with Ludvig Aberg, which until recentlywas one of the few top 20 players in the world who still used a blade shooter. Before switching to a hammer hammer two weeks ago, Sweeney and Aberg were changing the loft on his Odyssey Ai-One blade.
“We changed the loft, we changed the inset, and you know, as far as the numbers go, it was perfect,” Sweeney said. “And then he faced horrendous on some events because the ball was just coming out too fast for what he was reading his side of the shot. So even though in a controlled environment, you probably do the right thing, especially at the PGA Tour level, these guys are so dialed in with their feelings that the smallest change can really affect something very massive.”
