Clone Putter - Odyssey White Ice D.A.R.T./SoooLong D.R. Technology Mallet Putter

So when I bought my new driver components, I though I would consolidate the shipment with some other components to make the cost of shipping a bit more cost effective. Putting has always been one of many Achilles' Heels to my success at golf (although I'm pretty sure Achilles himself only had two heels.)

Off to the golf store to try a few putters. I immediately liked the heavier mallet putters, as I had a tendency to leave long putts short and my thinking was that the extra weight would increase the momentum (and proportionally, velocity) transferred to the ball. I also struggled at times with short putts as I would chicken out of those and the club head would be decelerating through the ball. The larger mallet head putters seemed to give me more confidence, at least on the putting mat, and that combined with the target alignment aids on those deep putters would help me line up the hole (another of my putting weaknesses.) Aside from long putts, short putts and putt alignment, my putting was in great shape.

Narrowing it down to clubs, the clones of which I had already sourced, my choices were, the Ping Scottsdale Wolverine, the TaylorMade Spider Ghost and the Odyssey White Ice DART. I tried all three and found them pretty similar for feel and performance (on the mat,) added to that that I really like Ping (clones,) and Wolverine from the X-Men, I thought my choice was simple. I did however like the other two as well, the alignment aids on the Odyssey being especially appealing.

When I re-looked at the clones, I noted that the Ping clone, the Turbo Power Palmdale, had a steel painted face, whereas the TM and Odyssey had a milled steel face and aluminium insert face respectively. I looked at what technology of putter faces was supposed to do and found that although the milled steel face might give a truer ball roll, the aluminium insert would give better feel, previously an area of weakness in my putting, (forgot about that one.)

I ordered the Odyssey (SoooLong) with a standard three bend shaft for the 90 degree lie head and of course a Winn grip, favouring an orange and white midsize pistol grip which reminded me of Nemo from the Pixar movie. I also spotted a 100 gram counterweight which fits into the butt end of the shaft to give better "balance." I'll have one of those.

After assembly of the head and shaft, I tried swinging the club with and without the counterweight, and thought that it did feel a wee bit better WITH the weight, so I slotted it into the shaft, put some grip tape around it to hold it in place (which would later become a bit of a problem,) and fitted the grip.

Having a few rounds under my belt I noticed that my long putting was becoming consistently better and anything under four feet almost felt like a gimme. I know that there may be a bit of new club "bump" in this but I definitely feel that this was a good investment, especially since, having seen my new putter, a friend ordered one and I made a tidy profit from it.

The aforementioned small problem, as it turned out was that the club developed a rattle when I took it out of the bag, due to the counterweight not being stuck in place. This progressively deteriorated until the point where I've decided to regrip so that I can epoxy the counterweight in again. We learn from our mistakes.