Golfers forming emotional attachments with certain clubs is nothing new.
Scottie Scheffler has his driver. Ben Hogan was famous for his 1-iron. And Roy McAvoy never missed with his 7-iron.
But the easiest club to become emotionally attached to is the putter. Some golfers use the same putter for years, while others customize them so they represent their personality.
So can those emotional connections to putters hold players back? Maybe not!
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-host Johnny Wunder claimed that finding the right putter is nearly as much the “spirit and soul” of the putter as it is the fit. Wunder said he often gets fits for putters on a Quintic machine or a different putting analysis machine, but the emotional connection usually wins out.
“In my experience, what happens is putters are such an emotional thing that you can… It’s specific to putting too,” Wunder said. “I would say it’s 55% fitting and 45% the soul and spirit and emotional connection of that. I think most good players will make something they like to look at. They can aim, work, because they just… It’s something in their soul is just like, ‘No, I know that other one.’”
PGA Tour putting coach and GOLF contributor Stephen Sweeney didn’t necessarily disagree. It’s something he sees all the time.
“These machines, technology-wise, whether it’s Quintic or Vertex, whatever Gears and stuff that we use, we’d see a lot where players definitely have better numbers with one product than another,” Sweeney said. “But then, like you said, they have a crazy emotional attachment to this putter that either like the look-off, they like the sound, the feel, or they have good memories of an important putt they made with it.
Scotty Cameron 2026 Phantom 9.2R Custom Putter
View Product
ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA TOUR Superstore, Titleist
“And they sometimes just revert to that just out of emotional reasons, nothing else.”
So is that a bad thing? Sweeney doesn’t necessarily think so.
“I’m not going to say the player, but there’s a player out there, world class, like, you know, top three or four in the world that puts with a putter that I look at and just go, I don’t feel like he puts really good with it, but he just likes it,” Sweeney said.
He also gave an example of his work with Ludvig Aberg, who, until recently, was one of the few top-20 players in the world still using a blade putter. Before switching to a mallet putter two weeks ago, Sweeney and Aberg were changing the loft on his Odyssey Ai-One blade.
“We changed the loft, we changed the insert, and you know, numbers-wise, it was perfect,” Sweeney said. “And then he putted horrible with it for a couple of events, because the ball just was coming off way too fast for what he was reading his putt side. So even though in a controlled environment, you maybe do the right thing, especially at the PGA Tour level, these guys are so dialed in with their feels that the slightest change can really affect something pretty massively.”
