BGT Stability Putter Shafts Can Drop More Putts?

[Vasco]

With 46% of your strokes in a round coming from your putter, maybe you should consider changing the "stock steel" shaft in your putter to the new STABILITY putter shaft from BreakThrough Golf Technology.  

Is this realy good?

 

[Pretzel]

49 minutes ago, Vasco said:

Is this realy good?

If you have to ask because you've never heard of the product before, the answer is almost certainly no.

In this case the answer is a resounding NO.

The shaft in your putter has no effect on the golf swing so long as it is the correct length and the bend of the shaft allows you to align the putter correctly every time. It's not flexing at all, so you could use a piece of rebar and get the same results as the current shafts because the dynamics of the shaft don't do anything. Weight distribution of the putter is personal preference, and that personal preference would be the only reason to change the shaft (but you'd more likely add lead tape or weights somewhere instead) - not because you would see any measurable difference between shaft performance.

[iacas]

The shaft helps the putter remain more stable… after impact, from the 30 seconds I spent looking into it. The ball is already gone. It doesn't matter much at that point.

I think @Mr. Desmond has one of these.

[Mr. Desmond]

Here is a post I put together six weeks ago as to the BGT Shaft (around Sep 21) - too much rain to give you data, but I do feel more energy imparted to the ball. I can't give you too much about the results or debate it - too much work lately. It's not like the UST frequency filter shaft, which affected feel (I still own one of those in a putter).

Breakthrough Golf Technology is located just north of Dallas proper and I called to bring my putter to them. Once I arrived, I met with the crew, who had easy smiles and invited me in as a friend. We talked shop and they explained that the shaft not only gets the face square and vertical at impact but it moves the balance point slightly downwards so you obtain more clubhead feel, which also helps those with lighter weight heads for feel. You might notice the shaft is larger diameter towards the top, and stiffened again about 9 inches before the head where a smaller diameter steel portion of the shaft attaches to the putterhead.

The crew spoke about feedback with players on Tour and they are adding players every week even if you don't see the BGT shafts in the bag, the pros may have the shafts as their backup until they play more with them.

As to some of those who are skeptical, they've given the shafts to older tour players (Tom Watson), and some of those players want to "feel the lag", believe it or not, in a putter. They found those players putted better with the BGT shaft even though they did not "feel the lag." The discussed tour players going back, forth, and then back to it as they grew to appreciate it. We discussed that it may not be for the long and flowing Crenshaw type stroke only due to the fact that they want some twisting (feel the lag), but for modern players, the stroke is shorter, and faster.

The data showed that regular steel shafts do twist - now remember, we're talking about getting a golf ball into a 4.25 inch diameter hole - how many of your putts are lipping or burning the edges? You hardly have any margin for error in putting. And as heads have gotten heavier over the years, the shaft has remained the same. I remember putting with 320g heads 20 yrs ago; those heads are now 340+ grams, and it's common for blades to come in at 350g and mallets at 360-420+grams. Putting is precision, and if you're off just a lip out, it's still another stroke. 

The BGT shaft is not about affecting feel, but obtaining a square and vertical face at impact. Hope I said that right.

The installation was quick; I'd brought a grip and within 30 minutes or less, I could have been out the door. But I stayed for the quick tour and took a look at the Quintic - see the screen.

Results? The shaft did not affect feel, but the putter itself felt smoother through the ball - something was different (more energy? consistent strikes?). I performed a Blast Golf Sensor test afterwards and after about 20 putts - I looked at the data and my forward and back rotation were closer to equal (previous to the shaft, they were not that close), the lie angle stayed more constant, and the loft change was negligible as compared to pre-BGT. My tempo was more consistent - about 1.8-2:1, and the stroke timing was better - faster and with less effort from .9-1 second.

And as soon as it stops raining (Oct 31 now), I'll have it on the course more. I may not know the results until Spring.  The guys are great, I even met the guy who developed and idea and also, Barney Adams again - I'd met him before Adams went big when I bought his first set of "almost" blades over 20 yrs ago. Barney is usually near Palm Springs, and I was fortunate to see him.

[iacas]

So… hook, line, and sinker eh @Mr. Desmond? 😛

As I noted above, those are after impact, and I would be really curious to see where the ball was hit (their text implies it was on the sweet spot, but I'm skeptical). The charts aren't even showing the same stroke - one was going about 8.5 "something" at impact and the other was 9.5 "something" at impact.

I'd love to see some more data here… because I think this is pretty much bupkis. If you're missing the sweet spot that frequently, you're missing putts by inches, not mm, and I don't think the margin of error is going to lead to any more holed putts over the course of a full season. Is $200 worth it to make one more putt every 1800 holes you play? I don't know about that. Particularly when for $200 you could probably get two putting lessons and just become a better putter.

Putter heads don't twist a bunch, and given how firmly you grip a putter, I don't see this shaft as stopping that twisting from occurring in a very meaningful way.

P.S. Messaged a Tour putting instructor I know, good friends. His reply: "I've tried it. Very stiff. Less feel."

[Pretzel]

I checked out the website of the shaft company, and their graphs appear to actually contradict their claims.

This is what they use to try and show that there's a problem with using a steel shaft in your putter. Except here's the problem: the ball doesn't care in the slightest what your putter does once it's left the face. The ball only cares about how the club presents itself at impact, the same as it does when you are making a full swing. The impact duration with a putter is even shorter than that of a full swing (the ball doesn't compress much, it's a far more inelastic collision), meaning even the gear effect is severely minimized for off center hits.

In fact, the Stability Shaft actually has more oscillation where it counts, on the downswing prior to hitting the ball. It's clearly not as smooth when you're swinging the putter towards the ball, giving you a minute amount less control over the face angle at impact.

Interestingly enough, this is a classic example of what a PID loop looks like when you crank the proportional value too high. The system will attempt to return to "zero" with too much force and will overshoot, causing the oscillatory behavior. It would appear as though the excessively low torque Stability Shaft does not have any sort of damping to account for this behavior, which results in the graph above. The steel shaft, while not as rigid, clearly has better torsional damping than the Stability Shaft to create a smoother velocity curve for both the toe and heel of the golf club

I also noticed they either used a different swing (be it from using a different golfer, robot, or clubhead) between the two charts they provided. At equal toe velocities, the gap between the toe and heel velocity is approximately 50% or more larger for the swing on the right (the difference is approximately 2/3 on the left when the toe is moving at 7.5 of whatever units they use, and it's over 1 of those same units for the swing on the right). This indicates that the swing on the right has a much more pronounced arc (tighter radius) to it than the swing on the left, because the face angle is changing more rapidly. This is more than a little deceptive on their part, since they refuse to show even an apples to apples comparison between their shaft and a traditional steel shaft.

 

EDIT: I see @iacas and I had similar thoughts and even used the same graph to make our points, just from different perspectives. I only saw his post once I hit submit on mine, they weren't written together or anything like that.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Pretzel

[iacas]

6 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

The impact duration with a putter is even shorter than that of a full swing

OT… but… it may actually be longer… 🙂

At lower speeds the ball deforms less (be careful using the word "compresses"), but it also has less "reason" to "get away from the face" too, and the putter head is moving slower with more mass, so it retains more of its energy and thus speed too.

Last I read 450 microseconds was a reasonable estimate for a lot of types of golf ball impact durations.

[Mr. Desmond]

Apparently, quite a few Touring Pros were also "taken". Some people are pioneers and they get the arrows in their back. Appreciate it.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Mr. Desmond

[iacas]

1 hour ago, Mr. Desmond said:

Apparently, quite a few Touring Pros were also "taken". Some people are pioneers and they get the arrows in their back. Appreciate it.

I just watched The Greatest Showman, and sometimes it feels like it's true that there's a sucker born every minute. You often seem to be that sucker Jerry. 🙂

It's a $200 putter shaft that probably actually succeeds at doing only two things: increasing the putter's swing weight and separating fools from their money. The PT Barnum part of this is "okay, this costs us $18 to make, so we could charge $79. Or $99. But if we charge $199 (!!!), people will assume it's awesome and pay through the nose for it!!"

The video makes the claim that a traditional putter will twist 0.5 to to 0.7 degrees on an off-center hit with a traditional shaft, quoting the Barnum Putting Company, but doesn't point out that a fraction of that transfers to the initial launch direction of the ball (nor that the path is still a measurable contributor to the starting direction).

Spoiler

 

They also say that you can make a 12' putt if the face is 0.5° open (true), and that you'll miss if it's hit a half an inch toward the toe and the face is open another 0.5°… then state that if the twisting is reduced by half that you'd make the putt again. At 0.75°… you're probably still missing the putt:

tan(0.75°) = x/144", x = 144" * tan(0.75°), x = 1.89".

The hole is only 2.125" wide from center at perfect speed.

 

But never mind all that. Also never mind that you just missed a 12' putt half an inch toward the toe (i.e. you're a sucky putter).

• PGA Tour pros are, not surprisingly if you've spent time with them, suckers too. You'd be shocked at the number of PGA Tour players who are surfing YouTube looking at golf instruction videos. More in the next one…
• The guy I messaged last night, putting instructor to a number of high-ranked PGA Tour players, said what he said above about how stiff the shaft feels, how it lacks feel. He's said he's seen a few guys on Tour taking one of these putter shafts… but the guys on Tour are like everyone else in that way, too: they take free things given to them. Doesn't mean they're doing anything with them - he's not seen anyone put one in the bag in competition.
• You've had two scientifically minded guys on here (myself and @Pretzel) question their graph, and point out how the one piece of "science" they've put out there to support their claims doesn't even have a unit of measurement on the important side of the graph, wasn't hit with the same type of stroke at all, does not indicate at all where the strike was on the putter face (or what kind of putter was used - for all we know these are two very different putter heads, too), and perhaps even more importantly… the graph indicates that the Stability putter head is actually less stable heading into impact than the "cheap steel shaft."
• It's not the Barnum Putting Company saying it, but the dude in the video says that the hosel and the shaft contribute to the COG of the clubhead and, while true to some extent… it's often not much at all, and putter companies don't put the line or dot on the center of the clubhead's mass - they account for the small shift of COG to the heel and put the line slightly that direction. Plus, even most heel-shafted putters project through or near to the center line on the putter head. That's why they're bent.
• All told that video is a trainwreck, scientifically and from a review perspective. Where's the side-by-side testing of the same putter head with a different shaft? Where is the display of "okay, you hit this one with a 0.35° open face, 7mm toward the toe, and the ball launched at 0.55° right, but on the Barnum shaft, this 0.32° open face hit 8mm toward the toe launched at 0.37°!" There's nothing like that. Hell, the guy in the video hits his putts with negative loft, drilling the ball into the ground (~18:30). Never mind that they say things like "You had a perfect storm. You had a face angle that was 0.35° closed, with an impact that was 0.5° open." So… was the face 0.5° open to the initial alignment, which was 0.35° closed to the target line, or 0.5° open to the target line (the latter would make more sense). And how is that anything like a "perfect storm" unless it's the former?
• At 22:40 or so, the guy says he felt it was a toe strike, and asked how much… and was told 0.3°. That's not a measurement of how far on the toe the ball was hit, and the guy putting said "that has reduced that by almost half." Compared to what? If you mis-hit it less, the number goes down, regardless of the shaft in the putter.

Watch these three videos (goofing around with the Phantom camera at 12,000 frames per second, trying to do some different putting strokes to get different amounts and kinds of spin. Watch how much the head twists on these… and how much of that twisting occurs WELL AFTER the ball is gone.

Just like you see in their goofy graphs.

Let's look again at that graph:

Let's ignore that the graph has no units of measurement on the left and that the strokes were different, and hell, maybe even the putter heads, strike location, distance of the putt, etc. Let's ignore that these are two completely different putts.

Even their graph has issues:

• Toe "velocity" reaches the low point post-impact about 14 frames - or 0.0056 seconds after impact. Putters are in contact with the ball about 0.0004 seconds, and only the first half of that time actually matters - 0.0002 seconds. How many frames is 0.0002 seconds? Half a frame.
• This means that the blue line in the graph above… is actually wider than entire impact interval. The ball is on the putter face just over half the width of that blue line, and the ball receives all of its "instructions" by the middle of that interval, which means that the blue line is over 3x as wide as what matters. Whatever their left-hand axis numbers, the only bit that matters is how much those lines change during the first third of the part covered up by the blue line.
• In other words, all of the "wild oscillation" shown in the right-hand graph is well, well, well after impact and has absolutely no effect on the ball. It does, however, still register with the guy holding the putter.
• Not for nothing, but the putter stroke on the left is pretty bad. Look at how the peak velocity occurs well after impact.

The simple facts are that this company is making claims and not backing them up at all with any actual science. This would be one of the easiest things in the world to demonstrate: put the same putter head in a putting robot. Hit the ball with a square putter face 1/4" and 1/2" toward both the toe and heel, and show everyone the numbers (and/or the video). Show everyone how much "straighter" the ball starts on a 15' putt with identical strokes and strikes changing only the putter shaft out for one that costs 10x as much.

That they haven't done this, combined with some basic physics, implies that they don't have this data to share, which says to me that this putter shaft is a waste of $200.

One might reasonably conclude that someone keeping an extra four $50 bills in their back right pocket would do more to improve their stability and putting performance than this putter shaft, which again according to my friend and putting instructor to top-ranked PGA Tour guys…, which robs you of "feel" as well.

Is the above a bit of an over-reaction to your snark, Jerry? Yep. But the fact remains that the science here is pretty simple and doesn't really suggest that there's much of an improvement to be had, and that it's going to come at the loss of feel.

P.S. Show me I'm wrong! Please, Breakthrough Golf Technology, Barney Adams… let's see some high-quality testing and some high-quality data from tests with integrity. Data is just data, and if you want to prove me wrong, that's how you'd do it. Until then, the data you have put out is pretty bad, and while it may fool the rubes into parting with their Benjamins… it makes your product appear worse to me because it's so poor than if you'd just said this stuff. The Barnum company would have been better off not releasing any data than releasing these graphs.

P.P.S. Notice how much the "velocity" drops in the Stability graph before impact, despite the putter accelerating post-impact. I wouldn't put much stock in these charts being accurate to the thousandth of a second just based on that.

P.P.P.S. Velocity ≠ speed. Velocity has a directional component to it.

[Mr. Desmond]

@iacas

Funny. I don't think any of us are immune to a suspect purchase. Let those who have not been taken in their life, throw the first stone. Barney Adams put out some quality product in his time, and a certain trust factor exists with his name.  TXG seems to like it.

Me snark? - a little.

Anyway, instead of raking BGT over the coals, why not call them at their phone number? It's easy to talk behind people's backs, as we all know and all of us have done, it's better to call them on their claims, see what they see, tell them what you don't see, and share an intelligent discussion. The inventor of the shaft was at the facility when I stepped in. Call and then share it with us. You have more knowledge and analytical skills than most in this area. Give'em a call.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Mr. Desmond

[iacas]

1 minute ago, Mr. Desmond said:

Funny. I don't think any of us are immune to a suspect purchase. Let those who have not been taken in their life, throw the first stone. Barney Adams put out some quality product in his time, and a certain trust factor exists with his name. They have a passel of touring pros either playing it or it's in their bag to try out.  TXG seems to like it.

I don't care what TXG "likes." That video was lousy.

I commented on the Tour pros angle above from two angles: they're actually more likely to be "taken" because they're not paying for the stuff, and I doubt very much that as many as they claim are "playing it." I'll go with what my friend on Tour says over the company trying to promote their products.

1 minute ago, Mr. Desmond said:

Anyway, instead of raking BGT over the coals, why not call them at their phone number?

Because that'd be a waste of time.

1 minute ago, Mr. Desmond said:

It's easy to talk behind people's backs

This isn't "talking behind their backs." It's a public forum, and the facts are what they are.

"Discussing" it with them isn't going to change that, just like "discussing" anything with, say, the Directed Force putter people will accomplish anything when the facts and physics are what they are. If these Stability shaft people had valid scientific data or claims to have made, I suspect they'd have published them.

[Mr. Desmond]

I must talk with people all the time in order to discover their point of view. I may not like them, I may disagree, but I may learn something. Saying it's a waste of time seems like an excuse that you might find something you haven't thought about. Just sayin'.

As to feel, I did not see a decrease in feel but then I am no expert.  I'm just a sucker, as you say. Yes, that is a snark, and I am trusting to an extent. At the same time, other people are developing putter shafts, but yes, not at $200. 

Truthfully, I like to try new equipment. I know it may not work, but it's my mad money. And yes, I tried it on a DF putter. As I said, I don't spend much time on sites, and am busy. But y'all enjoy - that's not a snark. Fairways and greens to all, even you Erik. Good luck!

Edited November 1, 2018 by Mr. Desmond

[iacas]

1 minute ago, Mr. Desmond said:

I must talk with people all the time in order to discover their point of view. I may not like them, I may disagree…

This isn't about an opinion or a point of view.

1 minute ago, Mr. Desmond said:

Saying it's a waste of time seems like an excuse that you might find something you haven't thought about. Just sayin'.

Says the guy who shelled out $200 for a putter shaft.

If I thought there was a reasonable chance of learning something, I'd give them a call or send them an email. I don't. This isn't groundbreaking, new science.

Time is money, and if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and a scientific inquiry says it's a duck, then it's almost certainly a duck.

[ChetlovesMer]

Come on now! 
Next thing your are going to tell me is that the Hammer isn't really the world's longest driver. Or that isn't not really turning the golf world upside-down. 

[Pretzel]

33 minutes ago, Mr. Desmond said:

I must talk with people all the time in order to discover their point of view. I may not like them, I may disagree, but I may learn something. Saying it's a waste of time seems like an excuse that you might find something you haven't thought about. Just sayin'.

I prefer to have evidence that something will work prior to investing in the equipment in a way that reduces my overall liquid assets. This can come from many places:

• Launch monitor testing data
• Purchasing something used if the item is popular like my MP4's were (I bought a used set of MP4's first to test side by side against a set of raw 716MB's I had picked up at a bargain, sold both used sets for more than what I originally paid)
• Comparable scientific testing data that shows the difference between two pieces of equipment, with the new piece of equipment outperforming the old

Because this is a putter shaft, I can't use the first bullet point to test it out really since there's no putter "launch monitor" and I don't have access to any type of high quality putting analysis tools where I can get fitted for a putter shaft.

Because this is a niche item, I cannot find any of them used. Also because it is a niche item, the odds of me being able to sell it for a price similar to what I paid is slim to none, since the demand for it is very low.

This leaves the third item as the most reliable way for me to get evidence that something will work before purchasing equipment. The issue with that is that their data is not scientific (multiple factors were changed between the left and right side of the one graph they produced, only one data point for each provided), and the data actually appears to show that the club is providing a decrease in performance rather than an improvement.

More importantly, the worse performance can be logically explained based on a lack of torsional damping which often appears when items are made too stiff - which is the entire point of this staff (to have increased stiffness for reduced torsional flex). A comparable example to this is a drivetrain of a car, which requires torsional damping from the engine, transmission, the joints, and the wheels to help ensure a smooth flow of power from the power unit to the wheels despite having incredibly rigid rotating components (which are necessary to properly transmit all that power from the engine without twisting and breaking).

57 minutes ago, Mr. Desmond said:

Call and then share it with us. You have more knowledge and analytical skills than most in this area. Give'em a call.

I will give them a call and ask questions (as well as invite them to participate in the discussion) this afternoon, but I don't expect a large amount of information. The phone support workers likely don't have much technical information on hand beyond what can be seen on their website, so it may be more prudent to send an email instead.

[iacas]

21 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

This leaves the third item as the most reliable way for me to get evidence that something will work before purchasing equipment. The issue with that is that their data is not scientific (multiple factors were changed between the left and right side of the one graph they produced, only one data point for each provided), and the data actually appears to show that the club is providing a decrease in performance rather than an improvement.

@Pretzel, look at this stuff too:

2 hours ago, iacas said:

Even their graph has issues:

• Toe "velocity" reaches the low point post-impact about 14 frames - or 0.0056 seconds after impact. Putters are in contact with the ball about 0.0004 seconds, and only the first half of that time actually matters - 0.0002 seconds. How many frames is 0.0002 seconds? Half a frame.
• This means that the blue line in the graph above… is actually wider than entire impact interval. The ball is on the putter face just over half the width of that blue line, and the ball receives all of its "instructions" by the middle of that interval, which means that the blue line is over 3x as wide as what matters. Whatever their left-hand axis numbers, the only bit that matters is how much those lines change during the first third of the part covered up by the blue line.
• In other words, all of the "wild oscillation" shown in the right-hand graph is well, well, well after impact and has absolutely no effect on the ball. It does, however, still register with the guy holding the putter.
• Not for nothing, but the putter stroke on the left is pretty bad. Look at how the peak velocity occurs well after impact.

Namely the scale of the x-axis and the amount of time the ball spends on the face of a putter - it's so minuscule that I imagine it's essentially negligible, and even when it's non-negligible it's likely from a strike that's really quite far from the sweet spot that the stroke was just trash to begin with.

[ChetlovesMer]

6 hours ago, Mr. Desmond said:

Apparently, quite a few Touring Pros were also "taken". Some people are pioneers and they get the arrows in their back. Appreciate it.

Darn, those Simpsons. I can't watch this video. I'm just giggling thinking that dude sounds just like Groundskeeper Willie. 

[Pretzel]

11 minutes ago, iacas said:

@Pretzel, look at this stuff too:

Namely the scale of the x-axis and the amount of time the ball spends on the face of a putter - it's so minuscule that I imagine it's essentially negligible, and even when it's non-negligible it's likely from a strike that's really quite far from the sweet spot that the stroke was just trash to begin with.

Yeah, I figured that it wouldn't really have much impact on the golf ball's trajectory just because clubface rotation through impact doesn't really even affect full swing shots. If it did, we'd all be swinging super low torque shafts (which, incidentally, I prefer simply because my swing isn't the most smooth and high torque shafts feel whippy to me) instead of the wide variety of torque ratings that golfers are fit into currently. We'd also all be trying to hit some kind of shot like a pull cut where you're attempting to hold off the natural rotation of the clubface through impact to minimize the effects of it.

It's also why I mentioned the gear effect, since I believed that to have a large impact on the line of the putt than the rotation of the face through impact, even if I did get it a little backwards in terms of whether it would have more or less time to act during a putt. It would be a bit interesting to see what kind of impact the gear effect has on initial starting line of a putt, since on full swings it seems to primarily affect spin (with the bulge and roll of a clubhead acting to help launch the ball opposite the direction that the gear effect spin will curve it). I know you'll lose a ton of distance on off-center putter hits, so to me it's never really mattered since I knew I'd be missing the putt anyways on distance if I missed the center of the face during the stroke.

This is the one claim I could see having validity, that with less twisting through impact you might have more consistent distance control on off-center hits, since more of the energy from impact might go into the ball rather than being absorbed by the twisting of the shaft. This does assume perfectly rigid wrists for the golfer though.

 

EDIT: Added a scenario where the Stability Shaft could potentially be an improvement, but no data available to prove or disprove this.

 

Edited November 1, 2018 by Pretzel