Heavy Putter D3-DF Putter

I love my Heavy Putter. It’s a B-1 model from a couple of years ago and is the best I’ve every played. It’s astonishingly heavy (as the name implies), and as such encourages a smooth, wristless putting motion. It’s deadly from ten feet in, and once you get used to it, pretty good on the lag, too.

The D3-DF model shown here is the latest from the company. It’s humpback design raises the center of gravity which, together with the deep face, is supposed to encourage better contact with the sweet spot. The rails on the bottom of the club are supposed to make it sit perfectly on the green, eliminiating stubbing.

But here’s the main feature: the head weights 465 grams, and there is a 250 gram weight in the grip end of the shaft that creates a balance point that is 75% higher up the shaft than a conventional putter.

He ain’t heavy ... he’s my putter.

Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

Odyssey Sabertooth Putter

I think that Odyssey’s new Sabertooth Putter takes the award for coolest looking putter of the year.

Those weighted fangs contain 37% of the putter’s weight, increasing the Moment of Intertia, and thus the putter’s stability. The body of the putter, it seems, is constructed somewhat like a golf ball, with an elastomer core, and a urethane outer striking surface.

Odyssey Golf Marxman X-Act Putting Wedge

Designed to help your short game, the Odyssey Gof Marxman X-Act is a chipper—a club that looks like a putter with an angled face. The idea is that when you get to those tricky, just off the green shots, you can use this club with a relatively straightforward and safe putter stroke. The angled face will pop the ball up and then quickly get it rolling toward the hole.

In addition to the putter length and the angled face, the X-Act has a wide sole to help eliminate stubbing, and a two-stripe alignment system. A polymer insert like other Odyssey putters has no grooves and is supposed to limit backspin, allowing the ball to roll more true.

I had the opportunity to try one of these and really liked it.  The only question would be which club you would remove from your bag to put this one in. I’d actually suggest the driver, since most higher handicappers—the ones who most need a chipper—should be teeing off with a three wood anyway. But if you really can’t give up the big dog, you could get rid of that lob wedge you can’t consistently use.

PING Karsten Series Anser 2 Putter

Karsten Solheim invented the putter as we know it.

A general electric engineer, Solheim was invited to a golf outing and found that putting was his major weakness. So he applied his engineering skills to the problem. The result was a putter with additional mass moved to the heel and toe. Although the putter looks familiar to today’s golfers, it was quite different from the familiar bulls-eye putters of the day. Solheim left GE in 1967 to found a golf equipment company and applied his thoughts on moment of inertia to the creation of the first cavity back clubs. Today, everyone copies his original designs.

The “Ping” comes from the distinctive sound of the original putters.

The new Karsten putters feature the same heel-and-toe weighting, and also include a new elastomer insert for enhanced feel. New cavity shapes have greatly increased the moment of inertia.

TaylorMade Rossa Spider Putter

So many clubs these days are breaking the mold when it comes to clubhead shape. Freed by CAD and materials science, designers now can let their imaginations run wild in pursuit of ever higher moment of intertia.

The TaylorMade Rossa Spider Putter combines a steel wire frame and aluminum core with TaylorMade’s trademark moveable weight system. It also has the ASGI+ face, which features small likes that are supposed to promote forward spin.

I think the ASGI system does indeed make a difference. My Rossa putter is one of the most accurate I’ve ever played. The weight system also works, although I use it less to change the left and right distribution than to increase the weight of the head; I add two heavy, but identical weights to the back of my Rossa’s clubhead.