Thread by @LukeKerrDineen

Why are blade putters going extinct?

This concept was explained to me the other day, and I found it super interesting

Quick 🧵

There's a lot of hype around the idea of forgiveness, which is a benefit, but it's a secondary benefit.

Wrote about it here but as @SashoMacKenzie explains, off-center hits aren't usually the reason why you miss putts.

It's face angle.

golfdigest.com/story/sasho-ma…

And along those lines (pun!) the main benefit of the bigger heads are the alignment benefits they bring with them.

For example, these are two lines the length you'd find on a standard blade.

- One is completely flat

- The other is slanted 1 degree

It's incredibly difficult to tell the difference, but the difference matters.

A 1 degree misalignment means on a perfectly flat putt, you've just missed a 10-footer

But simply making the line longer, which you can now do because of the bigger mallet head, and it's easier to see the crooked one.

(the right lines are the crooked ones, if you've haven't guessed yet)

Then when you add complimentary lines, it suddenly becomes way easier to spot the misalignment.

Anyway I'm sure @engineeringolf can explain way better than I just did, but it's one of those obvious-in-retrospect things I found super interesting.