www.Go To The Mountain - Musings of a Potential Guru

Odyssey is synonymous with putters. Ely Callaway became successful with textiles and vineyards and he was also an avid golfer. His favourite golf club brand was Hickory Sticks whom he later bought over fully in 1984 and renamed  it Callaway. Much later in 1996, he also hired Roger Cleveland, founder of Cleveland Golf to design Callaway wedges. By 1997, Callaway also bough over Odyssey Sports famous for their putters. In 2017 Odyssey launched the O Works putter range. There are so many type of putters and exploring which one really works for you takes some time. There are the very expensive CNC-milled and there are those that are cast with inserts. Then there are the mallets, half mallets and blades. CNC milled putters are machined out of a solid piece of steel and the process creates an extremely precise outcome with pure tolerances.  Not only that, what about the different necks and hosels? Are you a straight putter or do you putt in an arc? Of course the chunk...

What constitute a good putter? The one that puts the ball in the hole most frequently. Drive for show and putt for dough they say. If your $50 putter does the trick more than a $500 one then that is the best stick for you. I started with mallets and half mallets and eventually to blades and I got fascinated with milled putters so I got one which has been to this day my favourite. That is the Scotty Cameron (Studio Select) Newport 2 once used by Tiger Woods. I didn't buy it because Tiger used it. I did so because it is a CNC milled putter by the legendary Scotty Cameron (by Titleist). The Newport 2 I have is one with a full shaft offset which provides good lag when putting. Till this day, it is the softest feeling putter one could find made for finesse putting, period!  Then I have one by Odyssey, the #1 Metal X released not so long ago which came with a head that is all black. It will not reflect sunlight that can hit your eyes when lining up a putt and it gives a very nic...

Odyssey is said to be the number one putter company in the world and although they have milled putters, they are noted for their putters with face inserts. There are all kinds of putters out there with face inserts to make the putter feels softer than the metal itself. To some golfers, however, the feel of the putter is even more important than any other club in his bag. He may thus prefer one with crisp feedback like the sound of a metallic "ting" of "click". Those that are milled like a Scotty Cameron are very soft though they have a fully metallic face but before you even start to consider what kind of face you like in a putter, you must first carefully consider other important factors like whether you putt in a "straight back/straight forth" manner or with a small or accentuated arc because different neck or hosel designs are not cosmetics but were built for a particular purpose. Also consider what is the best alignment aid for you, shaft/hosel typ...

The most under-used and most easy to give-up club in the bag is the number three 15 degrees fairway wood for me. A fairway wood is nice and easy to use off a tee on a tighter fairway simply because it is shorter than a driver and has a higher loft of 15 compared to a driver's 10 degrees, therefore, useful as a second driver. However, hitting one off the deck with consistency is a different story favouring those with a flatter swing plane. I have tried them all including all the major brands and models over the years in particular those that lay claims to be the most forgiving which usually means a bigger head. I came to a point where my longest club after a driver is a number two hybrid of 18 or 19 degrees. This however, is not sufficiently long to put a two-on on a par 5 or long par 4 or when you are playing off the Blue tee. Any hybrid of lesser loft and longer shaft is no longer as friendly. So that brings me back to be between a rock and a hard place. Titleist did not appe...

If you do a simple analysis, putting appeared to be the simplest thing to do in golf don't you agree? You hit with a driver, wood, hybrid, iron, wedge from long distances, over obstacles and hazards then when you put the ball on the green, all you have to do from so near is to putt? So why do we sometimes put three on the green on a par 5 over 400m and then go on to do a three putt from 10m? It is the same for soccer players who can bend the ball into goal from 25m or cracked in a 30m scorcher from free play but when they have to take a penalty after extra-time they do all kinds of funny things except put the ball in the net from close range. It is because it is the clincher. Clutch mentality sets in. The pressure is more unbearable as it is expected of you to score, to put the ball into the hole. Today, there is a putter out there for everyone, even for the worse of you out there. When you hit a golf club onto a ball, a one degree angle of difference on the impact zone wi...

Odyssey, owned by Callaway is one of the top selling putter brands in golf if not the top-selling in the world. They have a wide variety and many of which are in play in PGA Tour like their famous Two-Ball and Sabre-Tooth. A couple of years back they introduced the Odyssey Black "milled" putter series. As you may well know, going milled means taking on the big boys of specialised milled putters like Scotty Cameron and Bettinardi. It's like going into a purist's heaven. What you see here is the Odyssey Black Series #1 putter which featured all the hallmarks of a great milled putter with advanced technology for elite and ultimate performance. It was given a multi-material construction and is a thing of beauty and performance. The head has a nickel-plated finish and is milled from 1025 carbon steel and tungsten to create a deep centre of gravity and has pure roll characteristics. A precision milled head will create optimal balanced weighting to promote...