Club Champion Putter Fitting Review - Warrensville Heights Ohio Studio

It's the simplest and slowest swing we make in golf.  The distance between starting point and destination is the shortest of any shot we take.  Yet put a putter in someone's hands and too often we become something like Mayhem from the Allstate commercials.  That's where a putter fitting at Club Champion comes into play.

Using a putter that doesn't fit your swing creates a laundry list of problems.  Your ball skids, your ball rolls off line, your ball comes up short or blows past the hole.  But get fit for a putter at Club Champion that works for you and not against you?  All of a sudden you're Daniel-San catching flies with chopsticks on the greens.

Now listen, yes of course we need good technique to be a good putter.  But just as important and maybe even more important, we need a putter that fits our unique swing.  And no one will get you there better than Club Champion.

I'm going to take you along in this review on my recent Club Champion putter fitting and really show you step-by-step what makes this fitting so outstanding.  I'll show you how extensive and comprehensive a Club Champion fitting is.  I'll share the real and proven benefits you can 100-percent expect from this experience.

And then I'm also going to send one of you to Club Champion for your very own putter fitting.  They will fit you into the best possible putter for your swing, build your new putter to exacting specifications, and you'll be on your way to conquering the greens.

Don't be a Tool of Your Tools

A quick word about putting technique before we get started.  Just swing your damn swing.  The putting stroke is probably the most varied of any swing we make in golf.  Wide stance, narrow stance, upright, hunched over, straight-back straight-through, and arced.  They all work for different players.  Forget about quick putting secrets because there are none.

What feels most natural and comfortable is always going to be your best bet.  And then getting a putter in your hands that fits your unique swing is where the magic starts happening.

 

Whatever Your Heart Desires

At Club Champion you can try pretty much every driver, wood, hybrid, iron, wedge, and putter head imaginable along with shaft and grip options that give you over 65,000 hittable combinations.

Club Champion is Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory for gearheads.  They'll have what you want to try.  They'll have what you didn't know you wanted to try.  Club Champion has everything.

Down the Rabbit Hole You Go

When you arrive for your Club Champion putter fitting you can bring your current gamer or just start from scratch.  My fitter Mike in Warrensville Heights is the absolute best.  Mike loves what he does completely and his experience and skill are second to none.  If you have a chance to get fit at Club Champion in Warrensville Heights, ask for Mike.  It's a fun, engaging, and ultimately successful experience with Mike.

We started my fitting with Mike wanting to get a little idea of my tendencies on the green.  Mike asked me things like what my speed control is like, what my typical miss is like.  And from there Mike got an ideas of what kind of putter to begin testing with and also to get a baseline on numbers and tendencies for my swing.

My speed control is generally good, and I told Mike my typical miss is to the left.  So Mike grabbed a few putters with a little more toe-hang right off the bat (as opposed to face-balanced) as test heads.  Mike also asked me which of the putters looked most appealing to me (blade, mallet, mini-mallet etc.).  And this is a good time to mention you should really engage with your fitter as much as is comfortable for you.

Ask anything, say everything.  The more your fitter knows about your likes and dislikes, preferences, consistencies, and inconsistencies in your swing the more they can help get you into a putter that's absolutely ideal for you.  And I mention this because fast forward to the end of my fitting.  We had it down to three putters that all fit me absolutely perfectly.  But my own preferences on things like appearance and feel are what helped Mike broaden the options available to me at the start.

 

SAM Putt Lab Sees All

Remember above how I told you a Club Champion fitting is an exhaustive and complete inspection of everything in your putting stroke?  I wasn't exaggerating.

Loft, lie, offset, and length are reviewed.  Toe-hang, head shapes, and weights are addressed.  Club path, face angle, and head rotation are analyzed.  Even grip styles and sizes and face design and texture come into the Club Champion fitting equation.  By the end of your fitting you can have complete confidence Club Champion has put you into a putter to that's going to improve the results of your stroke.

And it all starts with SAM Lab.  Sam Lab locks on where your ball is and where the cup is (10 feet away in my fitting), and all you have to do is aim and try to start making some putts.  Mike hooked up a Bluetooth device on to my putter that connects to and calibrates the main unit.   And this is basically how your fitter sees and learns everything there is to learn about your putting stroke.

I won't go over all the details of what SAM Lab measures because that could be an article in itself.  But some of the things Club Champion looks at are how much face rotation is in your stroke, the arc of your putting stroke, the loft of your putter face at impact, where your putter face is at impact (open or closed), rotation to impact, start of forward swing, rotational consistency, truly all kinds of data.

 

Throughout my fitting Mike talked with me about every aspect of data SAM Lab collected.  The Club Champion fitting is incredibly educational as well.

It took just seven putts to collect all the data and get a baseline reading of my swing.  From there Mike began to analyze everything and started formulating ideas of the types of putters and necessary adjustments that might be best for me.

Step 1: Head Type

We first we looked at a top view of the path arc of my putter swing.  The black square in the top of the picture (below) is the golf ball.  The grey line is an imaginary perfect straight line so to speak.  The dotted line is my takeaway, the full line is my forward stroke, and the colors represent my seven putts.

The recommendation was that a blade is best for me.  This was interesting because my path arc is considered moderate (the grayed out area which suggests more of a mallet type of head).  But the rotation of my putter stroke is very high,  I was open 9.0 degrees to start my forward swing (about double the average of most golfers).  And at impact my putter face was 1.0 degrees closed, which is too closed for my putts to remain on line.

This is when Mike and I officially started geeking out. It could have been a stand alone podcast if I was recording it.  We started talking about shaft offset, toe hang, how they work together, and more.  And I'll share a little of this now just below to help you better understand the fitting process because these characteristics are like ingredients Club Champion mixes together in choosing between different mallet, blade, or square head models as our ideal.

Mike explained how the amount of offset you have plays a huge role in how you look down at your ball, how you aim, and how pleasing it appears at address.  In the simplest terms hosel determines offset, it's what takes the shaft into the putter head.  A short-slant hosel is a half-offset.  That means the shaft hits into the face half way and sits off the face half way.  By comparison a plumbers neck puts the shaft completely off the face of the putter.

 

All this matters because different hosels can open or close your aim and stroke.  And a Club Champion fitting leaves no doubt as to the best configuration for you to get your putts rolling straighter and on line.

Mike and I also talked toe-hang.  In a nutshell toe-hang affects the feel of your putter.  It can make you move the putter (and close the putter) at a faster rate.  Or if it's a heavier head it can actually slow down the toe and slow your close rate.  Again, Club Champion is here to help us figure out what's absolutely best for each of us individually.

Step 2: Head Balance

Next up was my Rotation Relative to Path.  In the picture above blue means the face is closed, red means the face is open, and black means the face is square.  Each line represents where the face is during my entire stroke.  And we saw the ball remain on the face of my putter for a long time primarily because I'm so closed at impact.

The recommendation was for something with 30 to 45 degrees of toe hand.  Mike explained how the more toe hang a putter has the more the putter head will flow open and closed.  A face-balanced putter with my putting stroke and face rotation would close the face at impact even more.  Mike also pointed out I make the same stroke every time.  The wheels were turning and Mike was starting to put the recipe of my perfect putter together.

Step 3: Aim and Shaft Configuration

Next Mike and I looked at my aim.  Was I setting up square or setting up closed?  He explained another way to look at is is how much or how little offset do I need?  Full offset?  Half offset?  The results showed my aim was already great.

It's interesting because you can go with a putter that's full-offset with more toe hang or half-offset with less toe hang to accomplish the same performance.  That choice would come down to visual preference.  I was setting up (in Mike's words) "pretty much close to perfect," at 0.4 degrees closed.  So it wasn't an aiming issue for me, set-up and aim were good.  Mike told me anything under 1-degree is considered fantastic even for a low handicap player.

Step 4: Length

Putter length was up next.  Whatever your posture is, however comfortable you are standing over the ball, the line from your eyes over ball is crucial.  Mike had me line up and saw my eyes were right over the ball (exactly where you want them).  So we knew my current length was perfect for me. 

A longer length would have pushed me away from the ball and pulled my eyes inside the ball (where a shorter length would have pushed my eyes outside the ball).  This is important because the wrong length putter can wreck havoc on the arc of your natural swing and require you to make difficult adjustments of feel, aim, and swing to be precise at impact. 

Step 5: Loft 

Too much loft on your putter will cause the ball to go airborne and hurt distance control.  Too little loft on your putter will cause the ball to skid and skip, also hurting your distance control and even throw your putts off line.  And there really is no ideal static putter loft.  The ideal loft comes from how you deliver the putter to the ball and getting this right will help your putts roll smoother and more consistently.

My stroke showed an ideal upswing and effective loft at impact so there was no need to change anything here.  If my loft at impact had been higher Mike said he might have dropped loft down half a degree.  He also mentioned how loft works in conjunction with setup and he might have gone back to check that if he wasn't seeing what he liked to this point.  Because I have an effective loft in the correct range this will work well on faster, well manicured greens I usually play as well as slower ones.

 

Step 6: Putter Lie 

Putter lie affects where you strike the ball both toe-to-heel and top-to-bottom.  I have a toe up tendency at impact which tends to produce more of a pull miss.  Dropping the lie angle would have been the recommended fit here.  But as Mike showed me my lie was extremely good with just 0.7 degrees of toe up.  And SAM Lab considers that lie level "perfect." 

Mike called my two heel misses "two little misses," but he also went back to look at my swing arc on these misses which showed me he was constantly analyzing all the moving parts of my swing to make sure they work congruently in the new putter build.  Even with the comprehensive SAM Lab analysis it's up to your fitter to take all the components of the putter build recommendations and piece them together in a way that best fits you.  Mike was finding the right mix of all these recommendations while maximizing every aspect of my putter performance.  I was getting excited.

Step 7: Grip Type

Sam Lab recommended I go with a normal size grip.  But a standard grip can make your stroke more handsy (more hand rotation) while a midsize grip can quiet your hands and not release the putter as much for those (like me) who miss left.  So why not midsize?  Mike showed me I wasn't going left initially because of my wrists,  In fact I take my hands out of the stroke almost entirely.

Mike said the amount of rotation and where the putter face was through the entire putting stroke was the same thing every putt I hit.  My (82-percent) consistency of rotation was pretty good.  The average rotation consistency for a Tour player is around 90-percent.  Mike also asked and we talked about grip texture and softness as that contributes to being perfectly comfortable in your stroke.

The Final Product

After slowly eliminating the contenders because of my particular preference for looks and feel at impact we got down to my ideal putter.  And I know you already saw my eyes closed, no-look video dropping 10 footers after Mike dialed me in.

The journey matters as much as the destination… But some destinations are better than others. 💯🔥

Let’s take one of you on a Club Champion putter fitting voyage next week. 👍

Meanwhile, just me dropping eyes-closed, no-look 10 footers after my fitter Mike dials me in. 😁 pic.twitter.com/2kNSGiFXpv

— Pete Pappas (@PGAPappas) August 29, 2024

I had even more consistent face rotation, tighter north-south and east-west impact location, and straighter, more immediate roll after impact.  All the boxes were checked off, every damn one of them.  And that's what a Club Champion fitting and fitter can do for you. 

They go above and beyond, and then above and beyond even more.  Sure you still have to read putts and breaks and judge distances.  But a Club Champion putter fitting comprehensively and absolutely dials you in.  Mike left no stone left unturned.  And the confidence you get from making more putts (at least in my opinion) might be the most confidence you can get from anything in this game we all love.