Golf professionals such as Phil Mickelson and noted golf instructors such as Hank Haney have stated that the alignment of the putter face at impact is more important than the path of the putter.

There have been many attempts in recent years to develop a golfer friendly putter impact training aid that is easy to use.

To date, all of these training aids have had the same common problem, they were ultra-sensitive to impact alignment. If the golfer didn’t have the hand/eye coordination of a neurosurgeon, it was nearly impossible to hit the training aid correctly. Thus, almost all putt attempts failed and the drive drifted to the side. Only rarely would a “perfect” impact happen sending the unit smoothly forward.

The invention described in this article solves the “ultrasensitive” problem. In fact, it even offers adjustable sensitivity that the golfer can use to progressively control his pace as he improves.

Since I custom design and build putters, I have many sections of putter shafts cut up for scrap. I didn’t want to throw them away, but short of starting a product line of chrome tube “wind chimes,” I couldn’t come up with any ideas for using the scraps.

An old, rarely used impact training device was simply a roll of coins like nickels or quarters. It was ultra-sensitive, but it got me thinking about how to emulate it with the remnants of my severed putter shaft. And of course my goal was how to improve its performance.

I started with a six inch long putter shaft, but quickly found that it was “too hot” and “too sensitive.” And, the impact wasn’t always reliable because it was only about a half-inch in diameter, making it difficult for the putter to make solid contact vertically.

So my first development step was to add wheels to the end of the axle tube to raise it in height. Initially, the wheels were epoxy glued to the axle tube. Well, the wheels solved the vertical contact problem, but the unit was still “too hot” and “too sensitive.”

To desensitize the unit, I tried increasing the width and weight of the end wheels. This made a definite improvement on impact sensitivity reduction, but there was still room for optimization. The impact with the unit was hard and it was still quite “hot”. It jumped off the putter face on impact.

Instead of mounting the wheels hard to the axle tube, I decided to use a compression fit with a special material to dampen vibrations. This gave much better behavior. The impact with the tube was still a bit hard but acceptable.

My next step was to add another training feature to the impact trainer. I wanted to create a gate effect that could adjust to the width of the heel and toe of the putter being used. This would allow the golfer to improve the consistency of their stroke, as well as the squareness of the impact of the putter face. I decided to put two rubber “O” rings on the tube as adjustable “gate” rings. These “door” rings can be adjusted by sliding them in and out to set your space. They worked very well. I finally had my new putt impact trainer ready for the market.

Then came a breakthrough, I decided to put the rings together in the middle of the unit and try it that way. Wow, the feel was great (rubber instead of steel) and the sensitivity was next to none. I almost stopped there but decided to move the “door” rings an inch away. Well, the feel was still great, but the sensitivity had increased noticeably. To my surprise and delight, he had invented an adjustable-sensitivity impact shot trainer by chance. And it can be used by right or left handed golfers of all skill levels.