At 03:04 PM 8/13/2007, Ed Reeder wrote:
Here is the latest http://puttingzone-news.newslib.com/story/6057-3233797/
This is absolutely nuts. Unless you hit the ball in the exact
center of the clubface you are sure to miss. Just think of the old
Carbite Putter Ball training aid, with less of a curve.
That's a pretty good analogy, though I'm sure they will say that the
quantitative difference matters. Personal opinion: it matters only
inasmuch as it does less damage to your putting stats. More on that later.
Another analogy that comes to mind is the teardrop putter. Same myth
about why it works -- and it doesn't work any better than this does.
(Well, it DOES avoid the errors introduced by the horizontal curvature.)
At 03:29 PM 8/13/2007, TOM FLANAGAN wrote:
First off, the face isn't "concave", it's convex. It's
called "bulge and roll" drivers, etc.
You're absolutely right. But I didn't see anything in either Ed's
note or the web page that said "concave".
Second, there isn't a putter in the world that puts
"topspin" on a ball. The ball will always skid a
little before it begins rolling.
Finally, if any manufacturer ever comes up with a club
(legal) that will get the ball into the hole nearly
every time, I'll be first in line to buy one.
I agree with everything that TFlan the empiricist says here. Let me
offer a little theory on why he's right.
Spherical Blade argues that the curved surface causes the ball to be
struck above-center, which causes topspin -- thus rolling. Let's
examine that argument.
Contact between the ball and the putter face is not high-enough
momentum to cause noticeable compression, nor rolling up or down the
face. So the contact area is little more than a point. Of course, the
ball doesn't know the entire shape of the face, just the part that is
in contact with the ball during impact. That part of the face is so
small that the only thing that matters is the angle of contact (and
thus the point of contact on the ball, since the ball is a sphere).
So what is that angle, and ideally what should it be? Every putter
swing, combined with every putting green surface, has an ideal loft.
That loft is typically 2-5 degrees. (Higher loft for slower greens or
a stroke with more forward press.) More to the point, it is NEVER
negative, unless the golfer has a stroke where the hands
significantly trail the clubface at impact. A decent putter stroke does not.
But this putter claims to "give the ball top spin by striking it just
above the equator and makes the strike more forgiving with mishits."
Striking it above the equator is the same thing as negative loft. The
impact area is a point, so curvature is a non-issue, loft at impact
is. So all a vertical curve does is make the loft at impact a
variable, depending on how precisely you can repeat the height of the
putter from stroke to stroke. Werner and Greig did a study in 1991 or
so, that showed that even the best golfers had some height variation
in their putter stroke. So the contribution of the Spherical Blade
putter is just to introduce a random loft effect to your putting.
That CAN'T be a good thing.
So their claim for vertical curvature is bogus. Not only that, it's
already taken (by Teardrop), as they will discover if/when they apply
for a patent.
That leaves the horizontal curvature, which they claim "counters
manual twitch - that last-second involuntary action that's prone to
sending the ball off line." They give no explanation for that one,
and I am unable to visualize what it might be. All I know is that, if
the strike is not centered heel-toe, the horizontal curvature WILL
send the ball off line -- because it will behave as an open or closed
face. (And the Werner and Greig study showed that heel-toe
inconsistency in putting is much greater than height inconsistency.)
So this is indeed an insane design. All of which means it will be a
commercial success for a while.
No cheers this time!
DaveT
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