Fitzpatrick’s challenge was proving more difficult than Sam Bettinardi and the team originally thought.
“Out of all the players I’ve dealt with and worked with – I’ve been working for Bettinardi Golf for 10 years — … Matt has to be up there in the top three most discriminating players. I’m not going to say picky. I’m going to say discriminating because he’s arguably a top-five putter in the world. He knows exactly what he wants. And if the offset was a slight tick off, or it was one gram different, he could tell.”
Thirty prototype putters later, Fitzpatrick found an acceptable replacement.
“It was a very, very tough project for us, but after about 30 putters, he finally found one where he was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to put it in play,'” Sam Bettinardi explained. “I believe he put it in play in 2018 for a short period of time. He then took it out and put it back into play again in 2021 for most of the season.”
Fitzpatrick used his custom Bettinardi putter to win the biggest title of his career, the US Open, earlier this year. Ironically enough, it was on the same course in Brookline where he used a Yes! Golf putter to win the 2013 US Amateur nine years earlier. What is it that he loves about the C-Grooves? He explained Tuesday, saying, “If I just picked up a regular blade putter out of any milling, it feels very fast off that putter. Mine feels a little bit softer.
“Not only that, though, for me when I’ve hit putts with just a regular-faced putter I feel like it slides on the face a lot,” he added. “Like if I maybe don’t quite strike it perfectly, I feel like it slides off in a direction. With the C-groove that I have, I feel like it helps start it online much better.”
Although it was a long and complicated process, Bettinardi Golf learned a bit along the way, including the secret behind the C-Grooves’ success, allowing the company to improve upon the earlier technology.