Harry Vardon on the Search for the Perfect Putter

I stumbled across this paragraph in Harry Vardon's 1905 book The Complete Golfer. Vardon here talks about carrying two putters, but what he says applies equally well to the modern search for the perfect putter. Vardon was positively anal about details, about getting things right, so this is an interesting take on "finding the perfect putter."

I have stated that the golfer may carry two putters in his bag; but I mean that he should do so only when he has a definite and distinct purpose for each of them, and I certainly do not advise his going from one kind to the other for the same sort of putt. There is great danger in such a practice. If he is doing very poor putting with one club, he will naturally fly for help to the other one, and the probability is that he will do just as badly with that. Then he returns to the first one, and again finds that his putts do not come off, and by this time he is in a hopeless quandary. If he has only one putter he will generally make some sort of a success of it if he can putt at all, and my private belief is that the putter itself has very little to do with the way in which a golfer putts. It is the man that counts and not the tool. I have tried all kinds of putters in my time, and have generally gone back to the plainest and simplest of all. I have occasionally used the aluminium putter. It has much to recommend it to those who like this style of implement, and Braid always does very well with it. The Travis or Schenectady putter, which was so popular for a short time after the Amateur Championship last year, owing to the American player having done such wonderful things with it, I do not succeed with. When I try to putt with it I cannot keep my eye away from its heel. But the fact is, as I have already indicated, that you can putt with anything if you hit the ball properly. Everything depends on that—hitting the ball properly—and no putter that was ever made will help you to hole out if you do not strike the ball exactly as it ought to be struck, while if you do so strike it, any putter will hole out for you. The philosophy of putting is simple, but is rarely appreciated. The search for the magic putter that will always pop the ball into the hole and leave the player nothing to do will go on for ever.

I'm not going to dissect what he says here; it's really pretty clear, isn't it? But I'll pull out a handful of quotes that sum up his opinion.

My private belief is that the putter itself has very little to do with the way in which a golfer putts. It is the man that counts and not the tool.

That's pretty straightforward.

But the fact is, as I have already indicated, that you can putt with anything if you hit the ball properly.

Given that he just finished saying that he struggles with a particular type of putter, this strikes me as a very interesting statement. It appears that, while he says you can putt with anything if you hit the ball properly, he also admits that your ability to putt can be affected by things other than your ballstriking. That particular putter that gave him problems? He said he couldn't keep his eyes off the heel of the club. So we have to assume that if the club doesn't look good to you, you won't hit the ball well.

Finally, he says:

The search for the magic putter that will always pop the ball into the hole and leave the player nothing to do will go on for ever.

In other words, there is no such thing as the perfect putter, folks. If you want to putt well, find something that looks good to you and then learn how to hit the ball properly. That appears to be the Vardon approach, and he was known as a deadly putter back in the day.