Putter DesignsModern Putter Designs are more the creation of marketing efforts to outsell competitors than a concerted attempt to engineer a putter that will assist in making putting easier for the average golfer. It is difficult to conceive that the perfect putter has not yet been invented. The game as we know it today has been played for over four hundred years with the same objective of rolling a small ball into a round hole over a prepared surface. 
Yet we continue to believe that there are ways to improve the design of a putter that will jump start a revolution in our putting ability. It is said that Julius Caesar remarked that 'Men believe what they want to believe' and this observation of our human gullibility is as true today as it was then. We want to believe that the secret to better putting hinges on having the right putter head construction at the end of the shaft. Although putter manufacturers continue to tinker with grip and shaft configurations, most of their focus is on the putter head. Our eagerness to believe the spin of the marketing message stems from our hope that we can achieve success through cash rather than through practice. Certainly there have been enhancements in how putters are built, but the central principle of a flat slab of durable material with a top or sight line perpendicular to the aimline remains a constant. 
Putter manufacturers are faced with a dwindling number of ways to package an already over-engineered product. It is a game of diminishing advantage. However, each launch is heralded as a breakthrough in technology. Certainly most new putters enjoy a short honeymoon period of success as putting is linked to confidence. Because you believe that you will putt better, you do. The prediction becomes the performance. However, your initial success will soon wane unless you address the underlying skill problems that precipitated your desire to change. If this appears to be a somewhat cynical assessment, it is because any hope for improvement is an expensive pursuit if it is not accompanied by hard work. The best way to putt better is to understand the various areas of skill that must be mastered and then practise them until you have a degree of proficiency. 
The answer to improving your results on the green lies more with time and effort than with opening your wallet to buy a new putter. Unless your current putter is out of whack, it is more likely that the problem of indifferent putting is not with your equipment, but with your inability to execute an accurate stroke on the ball. Would it be so easy that the way to solve all your putting problems was a simple case of buying the next new and improved putter on offer. Putter manufacturers would have you believe so with their latest putter designs, but their job is to move stock, not necessarily to improve your putting.
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