The Sunday Bag: Blades vs. Mallets, No Gimmes, Keeping Your Head Down
5/31/26
Happy Sunday everyone. Hope you’ve had a great week. I had an interesting one. I shot my best round of 2026, and followed it up by shooting my worst round of 2026.
As soon as you think you’ve got it all figured out…
Today’s quote:
“Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening – and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.”
-Arnold Palmer
Blade vs Mallet Alignment
If you’ve paid attention to putting trends over the last few years, you’ve probably noticed blade putters slowly disappearing from the game. Larger mallet-style putters now occupy the majority of bags on both tour and your local muni — and despite the resistance from putting “traditionalists”, the data continue to point in the same direction: mallets produce better results for the majority of golfers.
Most of you are probably familiar with the idea that mallets are more forgiving on off-center strikes. But Luke Kerr-Dineen recently shared a thread on X that outlined a different benefit I hadn’t heard before.
Take a look at the image below. The two small lines represent the face of a blade putter. As LKD explains, one of the lines is square to the target, and the other is pointed off target by 1 degree, which is incredibly difficult to see.
Now take a look at the second image. He shows the same two lines, but longer — which represents the face of a bigger/longer mallet head.
As you can see, it’s significantly easier to distinguish between the square face and the face that’s pointed 1 degree off target. This is essentially the argument. A larger putter head makes alignment easier.
To give you some context: a 1 degree misalignment on a flat 10-footer is a miss.
I still haven’t given in to the mallet... I simply enjoy the feeling of hitting my blade too much. I know there are many others like me. Stay strong gentlemen. We may be fully extinct before long.
Record Your Swing
How many of you regularly record your golf swings?
Well if you don’t, you need to start. As most of you know, feel and real are very different things, and seeing your swing on camera is the only way to reconcile them.
I haven’t accepted sponsors on the newsletter because I don’t want to promote something I wouldn’t use. But KineVision is one I genuinely recommend.
I’ve used dozens of swing analysis apps over the years, and they all felt a little bit laggy and cheap. But not KineVision. The interface is sleek and easy to use, and it has every tool you need to analyze/compare your swings. And for the coaches out there, it makes exporting analysis to students extremely easy.
You can download KineVision on the App Store HERE.
This Week’s Premium Post
This week’s premium post will be
A preview:
“There’s a theory in putting that goes like this: the slower the ball arrives at the hole, the more likely it is to fall in.
Not marginally more likely. Dramatically more likely. The physics and data behind this are solid, and they should change the way every serious golfer thinks about hitting a putt.”
This post will be for premium subs only. If you’d like to upgrade, I offer a special discount for The Sunday Bag readers HERE.
Putt Everything Out
A few weeks ago at the PGA Championship, a clip went viral of Cameron Young missing two straight putts inside what looks to be about 3-4 feet. You can watch the video below.
So I quoted the post and captioned it as this:
The amount of times I've played with guys who just pick up and give themselves these putts is mind-blowing.
Tour pros make this distance look automatic, but I promise you'd miss a ton of them if you forced yourself to putt everything out.
It also does you no favors if your ultimate goal is to become a better putter.
All the mechanical errors get exposed from this distance. Don't hide it. Embrace it.
The post blew up, reaching just under 1 million views.
I think most serious amateurs have experienced this reality firsthand: three-footers aren't gimmes. And if you actually want to improve your putting, you have to treat them like every other putt — same focus, same routine.
Definitely an interesting topic, and one I may do a full post on in the future.
Keep Your Head Down?
I’m sure most of you are familiar with the legendary swing of David Duval.
I posted the video below to X with the caption “Keep your head down.”
I got dozens of replies from confused golfers who couldn't square what they were seeing with advice they'd been given their whole lives: “keep your head down!”
Keeping your head down seems to be an antiquated tip that more and more instructors are slowly abandoning. Letting the head rotate frees the body to rotate — which is something the vast majority of amateurs would benefit from.
Definitely something worth looking into if you’re curious.
That’s it for today. Hope you all have a great week, and I’ll see you Wednesday!
If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email me at tourswingstommy@gmail.com. I read everything.
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If you haven’t read them yet, check out some of the most popular Scoring Letter posts below:
My daughter had a coach who worked with lots of accomplished amateur players and one accomplished current pro on the PGA Tour. He said he had watched thousands of golfers on video for 20+ years and had never seen one who wasn’t looking at the ball at impact. Maybe Duvall would have been the first but you can’t really see where his eyes are looking. Annika Sorenstam made a similar move. Telling an amateur to keep their head still, or down, or to keep their eye on the ball is horrible advice which will usually result in a restricted swing.
FYI two weeks ago I also had my best round (5 pars in 9 holes) followed by my worst round (don’t ask)