testing – Golfing Networks

These are the two most import parts of putting when testing putters

admin — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 20:43:05 +0000

When looking for a new putter, many golfers tend to focus, like Fully Equipped co-host Johnny Wunder, on strike and alignment.

“I look at putters like if I can aim it and I can hit it out of the middle,” Wunder said on this week’s episode.

But is that enough?

On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, Wunder posed that question to PGA Tour putting coach and GOLF contributor Stephen Sweeney. Sweeney responded that there’s a bit more to it for most accomplished golfers.

“I think once you get below, certainly in a single figure handicaps, you’re definitely leaving some meat on the bone there,” he said.

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Sweeney explained that he often tells people who ask him about getting a new putter that the real keys are making putts inside of eight feet and speed control from 30 to 70 feet.

“If a PGA Tour pro makes 25-footers at a 12 percent clip rate, if a consumer only makes, or a regular golfer only makes 2 percent of their 25-footers, they’re only 10% worse than a tour pro,” Sweeney said. “I mean, there’s no other area of the game that you’d say, ‘Hey, I’m only 10 percent worse than a tour pro, right?’ But you could be legitimately — from 4 to 8 feet, — you could be 40-50 percent worse than a tour pro.”

His point is that pros make so few of their 25-footers; looking at how many 25-footers you can make with a new putter is irrelevant.

What really matters is making short putts and not three-putting long ones.

“And on distance putting, you could be 70-80 percent worse than a tour pro on your proximity,” he continued. “So that mid-range level of putting is not that important to the average golfer, but… 3 to 8 feet and then outside 30, you need something sure, you can aim, you can start online, you can hit out of the center, but there’s definitely a weight component there for the speed putting, that I think the average consumer with a 7-handicap, they don’t match that up fully to take full advantage of what they’re investing in.”

So the next time you’re looking for a new putter, don’t go trying to make 10-20 footers. Make sure you can make the shorter ones and your speed control is good on the long ones.

For more from Wunder, Sweeney and co-host Jake Morrow, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.

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Callaway Quantum Mini Driver Testing

admin — Sun, 17 May 2026 12:07:02 +0000

True Spec Golf, the premium brand-agnostic club fitting company, took the Callaway Quantum Mini Driver straight into the bay to see what it can really do. Same head, two setups. Heavy weight back for stability and forgiveness, then flipped forward to chase speed and lower spin. Then it was put it to the real test… off the deck. Ball speed, launch, spin, versatility. Let’s see which setup actually wins.

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Collin Morikawa explains why he keeps testing putters at Arnold Palmer

admin — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:24:31 +0000

Fresh off his Pebble Beach win, Collin Morikawa admits the equipment tinkering never stops, especially when it comes to wedges and putters.

I saw Collin Morikawa was testing putters Tuesday at Bay Hill, less than three weeks after winning, and had to ask him about it. pic.twitter.com/0my9J7cC9c

— David Dusek (@Golfweek_Dusek) March 4, 2026

ORLANDO — Seventeen days ago, Collin Morikawa shot a Sunday 67 to beat Min Woo Lee and Sepp Straka by a shot and win the 2026 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. At 29, he has won two majors and played on the United States Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams. The win at Pebble Beach was his seventh, and heading into this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge, the former University of California star has more than $47 million in career earnings.

He also has a disease that afflicts weekend golfers around the world: He can’t stop tinkering with his gear.

Spend a few minutes listening to Morikawa talk about equipment and you quickly realize something. The obsession that drives a 12-handicap to pull three different putters out of the garage before a Saturday morning round is not all that different from the impulse that sends one of the best players in the world down a rabbit hole of testing. The stakes are higher, the tools are better and the feedback is more precise, but the instinct is the same.

“Yeah, I’m the worst,” Morikawa said Wednesday afternoon. “You should see my house, and you should see my conversations with the TaylorMade guys, they’re really fun,” he added, laughing at his own sarcasm. “I’m sure they hate me by now.”

The reason for the 29-year-old’s compulsion is simple. For Morikawa, feel matters, and feel is not something that can be measured on a machine like loft or weight.

“Feel’s very hard to explain to people and to club fitters and even other players because everyone’s different,” he said.

Morikawa explained while the numbers may tell one story, his hands and his eyes can tell another, and while his head may now say a club will work for him, he’ll just know it’s not right.

“So I do that a lot (of testing), but not necessarily on irons,” he said. “When I find my woods, I leave my woods alone, but wedges I tend to mess around with a lot, 60s, and putters.”

True two form, Morikawa had two 60-degree wedges in his bag on Tuesday.

Having won less than three weeks ago, you might suspect that Morikawa’s bag and setup is locked in place, and having been victorious with a TaylorMade Spider at Pebble Beach, his quest for the ideal putter would be suspended. You’d think wrong.

“So I brought up to James, who, James Holley, who has fitted nearly all of us in our Spiders,” Morikawa said. “And I was like, look, we’re going to be going on a lot faster greens, they’re going to look a lot faster, they’re going to play faster, they’re going to be baked. There’s a certain ball speed I like off the face.”

On Tuesday, Holley, who is TaylorMade’s PGA Tour rep for putters, brought Morikawa three Spiders to try ahead of this week’s tournament, each with a slightly different insert.

“The insert I’m using, I believe is the same insert as what Scottie, Rory and Tommy (use). It’s kind of the stock insert that a lot of people use in the Spiders,” Morikawa said. “And for me it’s just like, let’s just check a box.”

In classic Tour-player fashion, the testing process itself was brief. A 10-minute putting session on the practice green confirmed to Morikawa that he’s using the ideal putter. Ten minutes might sound casual to the average golfer who has spent an hour in a store trying to decide between two nearly identical mallets, but Morikawa explained that elite players tend to know very quickly whether something works.

In the end, all that tinkering led Morikawa right back where he started. The putter he had been using stayed in the bag.

“But I’m very, very happy, I’m sticking with the same one I’ve been using,” he said. “And it’s nice because it just confirms that like what I’m feeling over this putter is kind of what I’m looking for. I just wanted to test other ones to make sure that.”

If that sounds like the equipment version of checking the fridge three times to confirm there’s still no leftover pizza, well, welcome to the mind of a professional golfer.

Asked whether there will ever come a time when the experimentation stops, Morikawa didn’t hesitate.

“No,” he said. “No. Sadly not. At least not for me.”

For the TaylorMade reps that support Morikawa, that answer might inspire a groan or two. For golf nerds everywhere, it’s oddly comforting.

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