“Game improvement” conjures images of a very specific kind of golfer, but as Chris McGinley, Chief Product Officer at Performance Golf, explains, “There are a lot of golfers that need game improvement. There are PGA Tour players playing with what you would consider game improvement type clubs, like seven woods.” Simply put: every golfer on the planet should aim to be improving their game.
A few players on the Korn Ferry Tour and Champions Tour, including mainstays like Darren Clarke and Fred Funk, have embraced this philosophy with Performance Golf’s RS1 Putter, a decidedly professionally approved flatstick thanks to its innovative “forward-axis weight.”
As McGinley explains, most putters are designed to open and close through toe-flow, and the natural arc of a stroke opens and closes the putter face as well. This is a timing-dependent motion, one that opens itself up to lots of variables. McGinley and the Performance Golf team created a putter that helps keep the face more neutral, allowing for a more consistent putter delivery.
We caught up with McGinley to hear about what Performance Golf is working on next and how their putters ended up in the hands of some of the world’s best players.
GolfWRX: Performance Golf has had a lot of momentum recently with the RS1 Putter. It’s an exciting time.
Chris McGinley: Yeah, we’ve been having some fun, particularly in clubs and physical products. We’ve built a nice business there, probably bigger than most people would think. We’ve proven that we can sell product and we can come up with some solutions that aren’t out there in the marketplace. It’s been a lot of fun.
GolfWRX: For people unfamiliar with the brand, what’s the overall mission?
CM: We’re a game improvement company. We’re very solution-oriented. We look at things through a slightly different lens in terms of solving golfers’ problems, getting them to do the right thing, or giving them the right product to help them at the right time. We don’t want to make clubs and fit them into certain categories. You got driver, fairway, hybrid, iron, wedge, putter. There are lots of subcategories too, but we try to look for more problem areas for a golfer: a slice-fix driver, better contact with the ground on your wedges, getting the face square at the right time with the putter. We have that mentality instead of just going, ‘Hey, we’d like to have a fairway wood.’ Well, there are plenty of those out there.
GolfWRX: Game improvement suggests a beginner, but the Champions Tour now has some players gaming the RS1 Putter. What do you think it is about the putter in particular that has found its way up to the highest levels of golf?
CM: You make a good point about game improvement. There are a lot of golfers that need game improvement. There are PGA Tour players playing with what you would consider game improvement type clubs, like 7-woods.
It’s a broader category, and all golfers struggle with certain problems. With the RS1, we saw an opportunity to help players get the face square and keep it square. Most putters in the marketplace and putters for a long, long time have been designed with face opening toe-flow. We wanted to attack that and do it in a different way than, say, L.A.B. has done it. You can putt good or bad with any kind of putter, whether it’s a toe flow putter or a zero torque putter like L.A.B. or what we call a forward-axis weighted putter, which is our RS1.
I do think this is a really valid entry into a different way to balance a putter and help give a player some success. It’s great to see it have some traction now on some of the tours. We’ve been out for a few months now, so it’s still early, but we’ve got some guys on the Korn Ferry and some guys on the Champions Tour playing it. We were a little late to the game this season for the PGA Tour, but we’ve given a few players test putters, so we’ll see what happens there. We’re encouraged with what’s happening.
GolfWRX: What makes this putter different than anything else on the market?
CM: It’s the balancing, what we call forward-axis weighted. Seventy-five percent of the weight is in front of the shaft axis. That’s pretty radically different than what’s been out there. For 500 years, you could say putters have been mostly heel shafted and mostly with the weight behind the shaft axis, which drags the face open during the stroke. That’s the toe flow, that face opening effect. As a putter, as a player, your job is to get that face squared at impact when it counts. If the face is opening and then closing, that makes it a little more challenging; not to mention that you naturally, just by the arc of your stroke, open the face away from your intended target line and have to close it. Because you’re battling both your stroke and the balance and dynamics of the putter, we thought there’s maybe a better way or another valid way to get after that.
GolfWRX: What was the genesis of the idea for it?
CM: It’s a concept that I’ve liked for a long time. Like many things, a lot of these balancing concepts or weighting concepts have been done. L.A.B. wasn’t necessarily the first zero torque maker, but they certainly made it popular and brought it to the forefront. Forward-axis weighting, which in the past has sometimes been called face down face balance putters, have been around and they’ve had some tour success, but it’s been since the year 2000 or so since someone’s had a really legitimate entry in this way to balance the putter. I think we’ve done it differently. We saw an opportunity in the market to do something different.
GolfWRX: How did you connect with Darren Clarke and Fred Funk to get the putters in their hands? Did they reach out to you or did you reach out to them?
CM: It’s been a little bit of both. I’ve been around for a while, so I certainly have some relationships and some guys have reached out to me. Corey Pavin was one of them. It’s nice when a past U.S. Open champion and now Champions Tour winner reaches out and says, ‘Hey, I heard about your putter. I’d like to try it.’
We formally hired a tour rep, Curtis Thompson. He’s Lexi Thompson’s brother, so he comes from a really strong golfing family. His brother Nick also played on the PGA and Korn Ferry Tours, and Curtis has won a Korn Ferry tour event. He’s a really good player in his own right, and he’s got an affinity for equipment. We put him out there and he’s been trying to make some inroads. It’s been a little bit of that, a little bit of reaching out through my network and other people’s networks in the company to connect with players and say, ‘Hey, you should take a look at this.’
GolfWRX: What’s the goal with Performance Golf for the next year or two?
CM: We want to continue to grow the brand, continue to establish what we stand for in the market. We’re a direct-to-consumer-only brand, so you’re not going to see us in a retail store. We have a little bit of a different challenge. It’s nice to get some exposure through the tour and that pyramid of influence. Although that’s not necessarily our end game, we would like to have some good players using our stuff. That’s good for the brand. When you have a concept like we’ve done with the RS1, it helps validate that concept.
