Adventures in putter-building: Frankenstein III

If you have been following my posts here for long enough you will have read (I hope…) several columns on the subject of putting, from why putting is hard, to how counterweighting your putter can help you make more putts, and how a graphite putter shaft can help (but not for the reasons generally touted by the folks who sell them.)

Like most golfers with something of an equipment addiction I own several putters, and consistent with my education and experience as a mechanical design engineer, I like to tinker with them. The five putters which I actually play (I have two or three more which are essentially antiques, of value only as curiosities) have all been bent more upright (within USGA limits, of course), tweaked as to loft (I prefer minimal to slightly negative loft – here’s why) and counterweighted for better balance and therefore better speed control.

The most recent addition to my stable is a self-built putter based on a Ben Hogan Golf BHB-01 plumber’s neck blade putter head. I installed the shaft that came with my Odyssey Golf Tank Cruiser 1 putter—which was re-shafted, for a while, with an early version of the BGT Stability Shaft (about which more here)—and my preferred Odyssey White Hot pistol-style grip. I drilled out the threaded fitting in the butt end of the Odyssey shaft to allow me more options for counterweighting than just the 15- and 30-gram counterweights that came in the Odyssey’s weight kit, and opened up a hole in the end of the Odyssey grip to allow the fitting of one of the range of Super Stroke Counter Core counterweights (25-gram, 50-gram, or 75-gram). I also filed an alignment mark on the top line and filled it with white paint.

The Odyssey Tank Cruiser, meanwhile, had the BGT Stability Shaft replaced with a $15 standard steel shaft. To reduce toe hang I removed the weight from the toe port in the sole, replacing it with cork, and installed a 20-gram weight in the heel port. I installed an Odyssey White Hot pistol-style grip, and opened up the hole in the butt end to take a Super Stroke counterweight. 

While the Ben Hogan-based putter is a “bitsa” build—put together from “bits of this and bits of that”—the real Frankenstein’s monster in my putter stable is the continuously evolving build that started out as a $17 new-old-stock Tight Lies blade putter that I purchased online. This putter, in one of its several modified iterations, was the one that I had in my bag in May 2019 when I played Pebble Beach during the USGA’s media day for the U.S. Open. It was a day that had its ups and downs, but one in which I had a great round on the greens, with eleven two-putt greens, and four one-putts.

Aside from a bit of tweaking for lie and loft, the first big change for this putter was the installation of the stock Odyssey shaft (with the 30-gram counterweight) when my Odyssey Tank Cruiser was getting fitted with the BGT Stability Shaft. From there I went to a more radical change, cutting down and transplanting a graphite shaft into the Tight Lies head—the shaft, an Aldila 350, came from a donor club: the driver that was part of my first set of garage-sale used clubs. As I explain in my column about the benefits of a graphite putter shaft, removing mass from the middle of the length of the club increases stability and improves speed control; “Frankenstein”, as I have dubbed the Tight Lies putter, was my first test bed for the benefits of this concept.

This putter went through several subsequent iterations that involved increasing amounts of lead tape on the head, with corresponding increases in counterweighting, all intended to bring it up to the same overall mass and swing weight as the modified Odyssey Tank. Damage to the shaft that occurred during a bout of loft/lie adjustment spelled the end of that particular experiment, so I decided to take it a step further.

Enter the latest iteration of the Tight Lies putter, dubbed Frankenstein III. It now incorporates a brand new graphite shaft, this time a Mitsubishi Rayon KURO KAGE Black Parallel iron shaft, stiff flex, .370 tip, cut down to yield my preferred 35-inch total length. To make the installation of a butt-end counterweight cleaner I sacrificed a Super Stroke grip for the threaded fitting which takes the Counter Core family of weights. Previous grip modifications to accommodate a grip weight involved drilling a hole in the butt end of the grip to a size that allowed the threads on the counterweight to bite into the rubber of the grip; gluing in the plastic threaded fitting from a Super Stroke grip makes the installation a bit tidier.

Frankenstein III, in all its glory

Shiny-new stiff-flex graphite shaft

Logo partly covered by the grip
shows that the shaft has been cut down

To complete the build I installed a 75-gram Super Stroke Counter Core weight. With a head weight of 391.8 grams, a shaft weight of 56.2 grams (less than half the weight, and at $29.95 less than 1/6 the cost, of the BGT Stability shaft), a grip weight of 67.2 grams, and an actual 74.0 grams of counterweight (plus a smidge for grip tape and adhesive) yields an all-up weight of 592.2 grams, or about 1 lb 5 oz. Thanks to the lack of the added lead tape that had previously been wrapped around the shaft of the 75-gram counterweight, this is about 20 grams shy of the weight of the previous iteration, and that of the modified Odyssey Tank. Loft remains at -1º, and the lie angle is 1º shy of the USGA limit, at 79º.

The 75-gram counterweight installed
in my preferred Odyssey putter grip

The swing weight of “Frankenstein III” is E5, making it a touch more head-heavy than its previous iteration at E4, and considerably more so than the modified Odyssey Tank, at D4, and the Hogan BHB-01 build, at D0. The new build feels well-balanced, and I have found it to be consistent and controllable when practicing on my office carpet (which stimps at about 13–14); I can’t wait for our current bout of rainy weather to end so that I can go try it out on real greens.

Playing around with putters is considerably easier and less critical than building or rebuilding full-swing clubs; because of the lower forces experienced by a putter during use you don’t have to worry so much about whether you got the crucial head-to-shaft bond exactly right. Even if you don’t go so far as to re-shaft a putter, a little bit of tinkering with counterweights in the grip and lead tape on the head may surprise you with the benefits that are derived from improving the balance of your “flat stick”.

Pistol-style putter grips from Super Stroke may be right for you

You are probably familiar with Super Stroke putter grips, the fat grips designed to help minimize wrist motion for a more consistent putting stroke. You may have discounted their straight, constant-diameter grips if you are, like me, a pistol-style putter grip aficionado, but if you are in the market for a change in your putter grip the lineup of Super Stroke pistol-style grips may be worth a look.

There are three models in the Super Stroke line of pistol-style grips: from slimmest to fattest they are the Pistol Tour, Pistol 1.0 and Pistol 2.0. The Pistol Tour weighs in at a nominal 69 grams, the 2.0 at 83 grams, and the 2.0, though the widest grip in the lineup at 1.32 inches, comes in at the lowest weight – a positively svelte 51 grams.

The Zenergy Pistol Tour is the slimmest of the
three pistol-style putter grips from Super Stroke.

Besides the larger grip diameter, the other notable feature of the Super Stroke putter grips is what they call the Tech-Port – an internally-threaded plastic insert located in the butt end of the grip that allows the installation of the Super Stroke putter weights. The weights come in 25-, 50-, and 75-gram sizes, and are very handy for fine-tuning the balance of your putter. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will be familiar with my thoughts on counterweighting in putters – this is a feature that I am very enthusiastic about.

I recently did a trial run with the Super Stroke Pistol Tour, the slenderest model in their lineup of pistol-style grips, to get a feel for what these grips, with their compromise position between standard grips and the really wide-girth constant-diameter grips, can offer to the golfer who is looking for a change. Compared to my usual putter grip, the standard Odyssey White Hot Pro pistol-style grip, the Pistol Tour is nearly identical in weight, with only a couple of grams difference between the two examples of each grip that I measured; the main difference between the two lies in the shape of the grip rather than the weight.

While the Pistol Tour has the contoured shape that you would expect in a pistol grip, it has a noticeably greater girth than the White Hot Pro. I measured the Pistol Tour at 1.07-inch wide at the butt end of the grip, with a width of .95-inch at the bottom end. Compare this to the White Hot Pro’s .87-inch and .70-inch dimensions for the same locations – a 20% taper compared to the Pistol Tour’s 11% taper. The Pistol Tour also tapers less front to back than the White Hot Pro, from 1.25-inch to .88-inch at the bottom, compared to the White Hot Pro’s 1.17-inch to .70-inch (it is circular at the bottom end.)

That small amount of taper is the reason for the most noticeable difference that I found in the “Before ” and “After” configurations of my Odyssey Works Tank Cruiser 1 putter when I swapped out the White Hot Pro grip for the Super Stroke Pistol Tour: despite a 2.5-gram difference in weight between the two grips (the Pistol Tour is heavier), and a minus 1-gram difference in weight after the swap (there was some tape buildup under the old grip), the swing weight of the putter with the Super Stroke grip went from D4 to D8 – a noticeable shift toward a head-heavy setup.

The reason for this significant change lies in where the weight is located; the more uniform thickness of the Pistol Tour grip places more of its mass down the shaft, farther from the butt end, with a commensurate increase in swing weight. This characteristic of the Pistol Tour is not necessarily a negative, it is just something that you need to be aware of if you are contemplating changing from a more conventional grip to a Super Stroke model.

Another grip characteristic that is very important, of course, is feel. The Super Stroke putter grips use a rubber material with a soft surface that is grippy but not tacky, and which holds up well with a bit of regular cleaning. In addition, there is a simulated stitched seam down the back side of the grip that acts as a position reference to help you place your hands on the grip consistently shot after shot.

If you are looking for a change in your putter setup, but aren’t ready to jump from your standard pistol grip all the way to a full-on constant-diameter grip, the Super Stroke line-up of pistol grips might be just what you are looking for – with the added bonus of being able to fine-tune your putter’s end-to-end balance with the Super Stroke putter weights.

Golf Pride Concept Helix grip: Innovation at the other end of the club

 The folks at Golf Pride, Winn, Super Stroke, Lamkin, and all the other grip manufacturers aren’t going to like hearing this, but golf club grips are kind of, well… boring. I mean, let’s face it, the really exciting stuff happens at the business end of the club—the club head—right? And even shafts (which only have to be stiff and light, despite all the fancy talk that goes on about them) get a lot of attention for how they (supposedly) affect ball flight.

But grips—what’s exciting about grips? As long as they’re not slippery, they’re doing their job, right? How much room for innovation is there in the design of a tapered rubber sleeve that fits over the end of a club shaft to make it easier to hold onto the golf club? Well, based on what I have seen with the new Concept Helix grip from Golf Pride, there’s plenty.

The Concept Helix grip does away with the adhesive tape and solvents that conventional grips depend on to secure the grip to the shaft, utilizing instead some sort of mechanism that mechanically tightens the grip to the shaft (about which more later).

When I first learned about these grips I read that they require a minimum inside diameter in the shaft. I thought, “Surely they must mean outside diameter”, having in mind the idea of gripping the OD of the shaft, but upon inquiring, I was informed that the mechanism at the butt-end of the grip requires a minimum .480-inch inside diameter to fit inside the shaft. So what mechanism had they come up with that fits inside the shaft yet secures the grip to the outside of the shaft? My engineer’s curiosity was piqued.

The inquiry that answered my minimum-installation-diameter question led to an offer to send me a sample kit—three Concept Helix grips and an installation tool—to try out for myself. When they arrived I had just acquired a 3000-gram-capacity (6.6 pounds) precision scale and a swing weight scale for another equipment-related project, so I was all set to try out these intriguing new grips and get some quantitative data at the same time.

Installation

Installing these grips is a mechanically simple process, but it is also a pretty good hand and forearm workout. After removing the old grip and all traces of tape and adhesive from the target club, you slip the installation tool (the “horn”) over the club shaft just above the ferrule, prongs up. The horn is then slid up the shaft to the butt end and inserted into the open end of the Concept Helix grip.

Bracing the club head against the ground with your feet, you then slide the grip down the shaft, with one hand pushing the horn down while the other guides the top end of the grip. You will hear/feel a bit of a thump when the top of the grip is seated on the end of the shaft, at which point you remove the horn, reverse it, and place the tool’s hex over the “nut” in the end of the grip.

This is where the workout begins. Gripping the club head in one hand and holding the horn in the other, you twist the horn clockwise (remember—“right-tighty, left-loosey”). The instructions tell you that about 30 full turns of the club will do the trick, but then you remove the horn, and while gripping the club head again, twist the grip itself—bottom, middle, top—and then the white end cap, repeating until you can’t twist anymore. A few final turns with the horn on the nut (eight or ten will do it), and you’re finished.

All told, the install time for the Concept Helix for the first time was comparable to installing regular grips—maybe a bit longer if you are well-practiced with the usual grip-tape and solvent drill—the big advantage being the non-messy, non-smelly process.

How do they feel?

While I wasn’t able to get out and play with the two clubs I used in my installation trial, I made quite a number of trial swings with them out in the yard, and the grips felt very secure. The good news is that if the grips do loosen a bit, a few twists will snug them up again. (Whether this constitutes an illegal adjustment during play is a question for the USGA rules people.) The diameter of the installed Concept Helix grips fell somewhere between the Golf Pride Tour Velvet Standard and Midsize grips, and felt comfortable in my Cadet-Large glove-size hands.

Other factors

In preparation for this test I had weighed the two clubs on which I was going to be installing the Concept Helix grips—a six iron and a nine iron—and checked their swing weights. Those clubs, forged cavity-back designs fitted to True Temper Dynamic Gold S300 shafts with Midsize Golf Pride Tour Velvet grips, weighed in at 430.1 grams and 449.7 grams respectively, with swing weights of D4 and D3. The grips themselves weighed in at 55.1 grams for the regular Tour Velvet grip and 65.3 grams for the Concept Helix grip.

I rechecked the swing weight of the clubs after installing the Concept Helix grips and found that they had each gone down about one point, to D3 and D2, respectively—about what you would expect for adding 10 grams or so to the grip end, but not really noticeable to a normal golfer.

How do they work?

Lacking an x-ray machine to take a non-invasive look at the inner workings of the Concept Helix grip, I did what curious reverse-engineering investigators have always done—I disassembled one. (Actually, what I did was more of a dissection, because it involved sharp instruments and a patient that wasn’t going to be getting off the table under their own power.)

What lies under the butt end of the Concept Helix grip, I found, is a threaded rod running inside a rubber sleeve, with a nut (bonded to the rubber sleeve) at the end toward the club head, and a plastic ratchet mechanism at the other end. The rubber sleeve has an at-rest diameter of about .480 inches (hence the shaft ID requirement), and expands to grip the inside of the shaft when the nut is turned.

When I first saw the ads for these grips, influenced I guess by the graphics in the ads, I envisioned a helically wound mesh of wire or fiber which necked down and squeezed the rubber body of the grip against the club shaft. What I found when I opened one up was that the main body of the grip is just rubber, so the rest of the manner of operation of the Concept Helix grip lies, I believe, within the mysteries of the properties of the rubber that makes up the grip.

The properties of polymer materials (rubber, plastics, etc.) is not my area of expertise; in my career as a mechanical engineer I have most often dealt with, and am much more comfortable with, metallic materials. I do know that some rubber materials react to physical strain in interesting ways, and the engineers at Golf Pride, who obviously know a thing or two about rubber, have figured out how to make these properties work for them.

Does the pattern on the outside of the grip, a cross-hatch of shallow grooves about 4/10 of an inch in length, pointing up and to the left at an angle of about 45º to the long axis of the grip/shaft, crossed near the midpoint by much-shorter V-shaped perpendicular notches, have anything to do with it? I’m guessing that the answer is “yes”, but I’m also guessing that the Golf Pride engineers would change the subject if one were to ask.

The bottom line

It will be interesting to see whether the Concept Helix grips catch on. They are not necessarily that much quicker to install than conventional glue-on grips or compressed-air grips—but they are much less messy, can be very easily removed, and require only one tool, albeit a very specialized one: the horn. They offer no modification options—there is no putting a few extra wraps of tape under the grip here or there to fine-tune the fit—and they come in only one size (so far), but they offer a fit and feel that is right in the sweet spot of Golf Pride’s Tour Velvet models.

Their primary attraction may lie in the clean, simple installation process, for golfers who want to, or have to, be able to re-grip their own clubs but who lack the facilities—a workshop, garage, or a spare room and an understanding spouse—which conventional grips require. Whether that is enough to sustain them in the market, only time will tell.

(Cost of the Concept Helix grips is $9.99 each, with a minimum purchase of three grips, including the horn. For more information, and to order, go to www.concepthelix.com.)

Counterweighting: What it is, and how it will help you make more putts

Welcome to Part III of my totally unplanned three-part series on putting – counterweighting.

After the introduction to my review of the Stability Shaft turned into its own article on why putting is hard, and after spotlighting how counterweighting the putter I had rebuilt with that fancy new shaft helped bring back the feel I was accustomed to, I figured I owed it to my audience to expand on the advantages of counterweighting.

In this article I will explain, without, I hope, sounding too much like a science fair exhibitor, the physical effect that counterweighting your putter has on its performance, and why adding weight to the grip of your putter can help you make more putts.

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First, let’s talk about MOI

MOI, or moment of inertia, refers to an object’s resistance to rotation, and is a function of the distribution of mass. It is measured with respect to an axis of rotation, which is an imaginary line that passes through the object’s center of mass (commonly referred to as center of gravity, or CG.) The higher an object’s MOI, the greater the amount of force required to make it rotate; and the greater the force that is required to rotate an object, the more stable it is. As you can imagine, stability is a desirable trait in a putter.

MOI is a term that is bandied about quite a bit in connection with the design of putters, but it is usually spoken of in connection with the club head, not the entire club. The MOI of a putter’s club head is measured with respect to a vertical line through the club head’s CG. Move material away from the CG and the MOI goes up, reducing the club head’s tendency to twist around the vertical axis; that is, making it more stable.

Stability about the vertical axis is a good thing in a putter because it helps the face remain square to the swing path, which in turn helps to ensure that the ball comes off the club face in the intended direction. Putter designs have been taking advantage of this physical property ever since Karsten Solheim hit upon the idea of moving material to the heel and toe of a conventional blade putter, creating the ubiquitous Anser-style putter.

Coming to grips with moment of inertia

Stepping away from the putter’s club head, let’s look at the other end of the club – the grip. Putter grips typically range in weight from 50-55 grams to upwards of 124 grams – a fraction of the weight of the club head; the shaft connecting the two weighs, on average, about 110 grams or so.

In a hypothetical “typical putter” – thirty-five inches long, with a 350-gram Anser-style head, a shaft that weighs 110 grams, and a mid-range grip of about 60 grams – the total mass comes to 520 grams; a little over a pound. Nearly 70% of that mass is concentrated in the club head – the last inch of the total length of the putter – skewing the balance point, which is the CG of the full club, well down toward the head.

Add some weight at the opposite end of the club, in the grip, and the balance point moves closer to the grip – not by a lot, but it only takes a small amount to make a noticeable change in the way the club feels in your hands, especially in motion. But… while adding weight to the grip end of the club does affect the balance point, it is the effect on the club’s moment of inertia, its resistance to rotation about that balance point, that is the point.

It’s all about that mass – and where it’s at

Think of it this way: if you took a plain putter shaft and put the combined weight of the head and the grip of our hypothetical “typical putter” in the middle of the shaft, it would require little effort to rotate the shaft in a circle, like an airplane’s propeller, by holding it in the middle and rotating your wrist. Take that same mass (equivalent to about ten golf balls, by the way), divide it evenly in two and put the two masses at the ends of the shaft, like a barbell, and it would take much more effort to rotate that configuration – by my calculations, a bit over 10 times as much. 

Now think about what happens when mass is added to the grip end of a putter. With the mass more widely distributed toward the ends of the club, it has less tendency to rotate about the center of balance; it is more stable – like the “barbell” configuration in our example. Imagine hanging the “barbell” vertically by one end, and moving it through a putting stroke – with the mass so widely distributed to the ends of the shaft, the ends of the shaft move together, almost as one.

By spreading the main mass concentrations further apart along the length of the putter, increasing the moment of inertia, the putter moves more uniformly both backward and forward in the stroke, with less tendency for the grip to lead the club head. More stable, more consistent, motion means less lag, less head wobble, a more consistent strike in terms of both direction and speed – and as a result, better control of both line and pace.

When I transplanted the counterweighted shaft from my Odyssey Tank Cruiser into the club head of my bargain-bin Tight Lies putter, that 30-gram weight (plus a bit more for the threaded fitting in the end of the shaft) transformed a pretty good putter into a really good putter – more stable, and more consistent. Similarly, when I fitted the Stability Shaft in the re-shafted Odyssey putter with the 50-gram Super Stroke weight kit, I regained the smooth consistency that I had missed when the putter first came back with the new shaft. 

What’s the bottom line? Counterweighting works

The change in moment of inertia that is realized by adding 50 or even 30 grams of weight to the grip end of a putter makes a noticeable change in the feel of the putter in your hands – and has a positive effect on the level of control you have over the strike you put on the ball.

The result? Better control of ball speed, better control of direction – and all other things being equal, more putts made.