PutterZone – Best Putter Reviews
Well, we thought we’d seen it all here at PutterZone, but apparently not…
As of today, there’s a new putter in the works via Kickstarter that aims to increase putting accuracy with an innovative “flexing” face. That’s right, upon contact with the ball, the J-Flex putter will actually flex slightly on miss-hits to create a compensating correction. The company’s bold declaration is that it’s “the most forgiving putter in the world.”
Says J-Flex’s Rick Gehman, “Think about it like a rubberband. If you stretch a rubberband across your fingers and hit the middle with a pencil, the pencil wants to bounce back towards the middle. If you hit the rubberband off center either way, it still wants to bounce back towards the middle. With our putter, those ends are the toe and heel of the club. The ‘flex’ isn’t seen to the naked eye, but even a tiny flex goes a long way.”
He adds, “The flexing is something that could be ‘adjusted,’ so to speak. The face plates are removable, which means they could be swapped depending on skill level. A softer face would flex more and make more of a correction while a more rigid face would flex less, presumably for the better player.”
The J-Flex putter may flex, but it apparently doesn’t bend the rules, as it has been preliminarily approved by the USGA. Now the company is hoping to get the J-Flex off the ground with crowdfunding. You can search for it on Kickstarter to see a video and more.
According to Gehman, the J-Flex’s efficacy has been proven with independent testing on a pendulum fixture. For example, on a 6-foot miss-hit putt with the putter face open by two degrees, a conventional putter misses its target by 3.2 inches, while the J-Flex misses by 2.5 inches. Presumably, that’s enough to make a difference between a lip-in and a lip-out.
We shall see how it all shakes out, as the putter is still in the prototype phase. File it under “intriguing” for now and let’s see if it makes it to a green near you.
