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  • Practicing with a mallet but gaming a blade?

A few weeks ago we had a forecaddie in our group who is a mini tour player that mentioned a local PGA Tour player who would practice with a 38-40" Mallet but then game his normal blade during rounds. I chocked it up as just some quirky habit he had. I then run into an Ole Miss golfer who had both a mallet and a blade and he said practices with a mallet and games his newport 2 during rounds. Is this normal or am I right to be asking if I'm in some golf meta-twilght zone? I always considered mallets as the forgiving tool when you can't rock a blade.

What makes me even question things is the fact that I have stuck with a center shafted mallet for 15 months and things went sideways about 3 weeks ago so I said the hell with this. I'd rather 3 jack with a blade and rock my fun putters if I'm going to stink and what do you know? I'm rolling a blade great! Any thoughts on the mallet for practice to help using a blade for rounds theory?

Putterho Honestly, if anything the reverse might make sense for me. Practice with a blade and then get the added stability of a mallet during play. I think TW has mentioned practicing with an 8802 in order to work on his stroke.

For me, I've discovered that it's propably in my best interest to spend the little time I have on the practice green with the putter I plan on using later on 😄

    Putterho This sounds weird to me, maybe certain mallets that are more blade styled like the 5.5. But isn't the swing for a mallet supposed to be more straight back and forth and a blade around a curve.

        iennis

        In general more mallets are more face balanced therefore traditionally encouraging a SBST stroke yes, but there are a lot of mallets now that give more toe hang so the gating motion is more similar to a normally shafted blade.

        As for the practice routine, I'm with @Golfingfanatic, I practice with a blade more than a mallet, and then use my mallet for slow greens and blade for fast ones, but that's more down to headlight and grooved insert vs flat face.

        I say game the putter you want to game, then adapt your stroke to fit it. I remember reading the story about how Spieth in his fit would intentionally hit bad putts with what clearly fit him better so that Scotty and Co would give him a 009, because that's what he wanted. It's served him well no?

        But what are we talking about, practice?

        Giphy - Philadelphia 76Ers Basketball GIF

          carry on playing the putters and covers you love, by all means.

          IRT the bubbas practicing with mallets but playing something else, Chalk it up to individual idiosyncrasies, because IMHO that makes zero sense. All that’s doing is introducing more static noise in their improvement process.Giphy - The Big Lebowski What GIF by MOODMAN

          This idea blows my mind, because I think it should be the opposite. Normally, I'd stop coming back, because it isn't going to make any sense to me........but any thread that gives me AI and The Dude in the first 5 posts is a winner in my book

            Not that odd really. I practice with 460cc SIM2 Max driver and SGI irons but play persimmon and Miura baby blades on the course.

            Read that back a few times. Makes no sense.

            This seems weird to me. Also, what is interesting is that MGS (not that I really promote them) did a testing which showed blade putters overall were more "forgiving" in terms of closer to the hole/making more putts. When I read the results it actually lined up with what I always see anytime my dumba** decides to try a mallet. Anything inside of around 6-8 feet is almost automatic, but outside of that I lose all feel and it's all over the place. I "Might" make one more putt with a mallet inside of 8 feet than with a blade, but I guarantee I miss way more long ones (or lag them woefully short/long) with a mallet versus a blade.

            I mean let's be serious. Some putters fit the eye better. Moi doesn't mean crap if you can't line it up and get the ball started on line. My track is all 1 and 2 % breaks. You can hit some putts a few times in a row late in the day and they all will do something different (not over foot prints). It is always the never ending search for your own elder wand.

            This seems backwards..

            Whew! I thought I was beginning to lose my shit when I heard that theory twice. Mods, you can lock this up now that the real OG’s have spoken to reconfirm I am not going insane. 👍🏼

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