BACKWEIGHTING PUTTERS
First off, I love you Frank and Valerie. Always love your sound info and wish you had a show on GC.
I just tried a back weighted putter and they ask you to choke down. It was the same model as my old putter. Wow, it felt awesome!!
I know Nicklaus did this with drivers. What are your thoughts with back weighting putters?
–Dan
Dan,
I believe that Jack has said that his driver was counterbalanced. This was not by more than about ½ the weight of a golf glove.
A golf glove weighs about 0.7 of an ounce and if placed on the grip end of a driver will reduce the swing weight by about 5 points. So when you wear a glove – which becomes part of the grip – you reduce the swing weight of the club, and this is equivalent to back weighting or counterbalancing. You don’t need to add weight to the grip: just wear a glove.
Jack’s driver was 42.628 inches long with a D3 swing weight. Jack needed to add about 0.25 of an ounce to the standard wooden head to bring it up to D3 to account for the shorter club.
The overall weight of his driver was 13.75 ounces or about .50 ounces above standard, 0.25 of which was needed in the head and not leaving much to add to the grip.
So if this difference in weight (.50 -.25 = .25 ounces) was added to the grip end it would reduce the swing weight by about 2 swing-weight points. Bottom line is that Jack’s driver may have been counterbalanced but not by very much, in fact by less that ½ the weight of a golf glove.
You need to back-weight a putter by a lot more than this before you will even notice it or before it will have any effect on your performance .There is no connection between weighting drivers and weighting of putters.“Putting is a different game.”
I am not an advocate of back-weighting putters. However if it works for you then go for it, knowing full well that you will probably change back to the original weighted grip when you lose the magic.
Hope this helps
Frank
franklygolf 