Let’s start off with a basic admission, a dirty little secret most golfers are unwilling to admit to. The putter you’re currently playing with day in and day out is no better or worse than any other.

Grab any putter, new or old, priced dirt cheap or sky-high and see if you can’t get the ball to drop into the bottom of the cup. Between reading the slope of the green, identifying the fault line, analyzing the grain of the grass, judging the pace and making a steady-handed stroke, the putting apparatus in your hands, while certainly not inconsequential to the result, is but a single factor that determines the number of strokes you take to hole out.

So imagine the kind of audacity I had arguing my point of view with Dave Billings, the President of Dogleg Right, better known as the inventor and designer of Machine Golf, one of the most highly respected boutique putter manufacturers in the industry. The conversation could’ve gone sideways in a hurry, but Billings let me off the hook; he’s got a Southern charm that makes you feel at ease. Plus, he’s been around long enough to have heard it all.

Billings has been tinkering with golf equipment since he was a teenager. The self-professed club junkie has been making significant contributions in putter design for the better part of two decades. His innovations have been awarded a dozen patents so far and his Machine putters have been coveted and purchased by die-hard enthusiasts at every conceivable level of the game. So while Billings didn’t agree with my claim that “any old putter will do,” he acknowledged that putters, more so than any other piece of equipment in golf, are judged primarily based on how they look and how they feel in the hands of a golfer standing over his or her ball.

“We’re finally seeing technologies that have come into play that allow us to get into more of the performance than in any time in the past,” says Billings. “It’s a little counterintuitive like a lot of things in golf. People say things like, ‘putting should be simple,’ or ‘I can putt with anything.’ But what we really know now is that a putter has a real impact on how you swing it. We see really remarkable results when we do it right — when we take the time to really get to know the golfer and figure out how to appeal to both the performance aspect and the visual aspect of their wants and needs.”

Machine Golf, while certainly not the only independent company specializing in custom milled putters, has perhaps more than anyone, come to embody the concept of made-to-order, or bespoke design. The company went into business in 1994 with very little seed money, a lot of big dreams and a successful product launch focused around an experimental putter that took the hands out of the equation.

“It started with something that was very innovative, something out of the box, namely the HOG putter,” says Billings. “The first ones were radical in their design. The head was oversized, almost as big as the MacGregor Response [ZT 615] was. The shaft and the grip were equally oversized. That innovative product looked like no other product, performed like no other product and got attention wherever we showed it. We started selling them very quickly in our first year, all around the world in fact.”

Machine putters, if you’re not familiar with them, are anything but run-of-the-mill. Imagine if someone had asked the surrealist painter H.R. Giger to submit a design, the end result might look like something that belongs in the Machine portfolio. A typical Machine putter is modular; the sheer number of customizable options is unmatched. Most Machine putters will incorporate at least some level of innovation, whether it’s adjustable weight and convertible flange technologies, unusual hosel and/or head designs, proprietary milling patterns and grip technologies. In some cases, the innovations lie exposed like a mechanical chassis, in other cases a more refined approach is used.

“We make a broad array of designs from the very classic-looking to those that can be described as being very technology-driven,” says Billings. “With one model we can say it’s more art because it’s Damascus (steel) and it’s a real traditional head. But when you look at the interchangeable flanges and weights, and the internal milling — that’s more about the science. I try to have a balance between those things and it’s a push and pull in different directions for different customers.”

Machine putters aren’t for everyone; perhaps that’s true of customizable putters in general. The sheer number of options that can be adjusted can be overwhelming to comprehend. What Billings, as well as other putter designers were able to impress upon me is that even the slightest change, say for instance the type of hosel used or its offset, can have significant impact on how a putter will swing. So while anything can be used for the purposes of putting, not every putter (certainly not the kind that are randomly chosen off the rack) are a good match for their respective owners, says Billings.

“There’s a lot of pride in being able to buy something that’s handmade as opposed to mass-produced,” he adds. “I think there’s a big draw for that, especially when [a golfer] can become part creator and contribute to what at the very least is a customized product.”

What I’ve come to recognize about the custom milled putter business from speaking to Billings is that it’s a fellowship of gear heads who risk everything in a pursuit to transform metal into art.

“For anyone who goes into the boutique putter business,” says Billings, “it’s a labor of love. You have to put in the hours, the blood, sweat and tears. There’s not necessarily a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

The kind of hand-crafted putter design that Billings and his contemporaries are engaged in is a fringe business within the putter market, which in itself vies for a tiny fraction of the total dollars spent every year on golf equipment.

So how big, or rather, how small is the pie?

• The two largest golf markets in the world, the United States and Japan, netted a combined $8.8 billion in equipment and apparel sales in 2013 according to a World Golf Market Report released jointly by Golf Datatech and Yano Research Institute.
• Out of the total cited above, only 3.3 percent came from putter sales in the U.S. ($173 million) and 2.6 percent in Japan ($98 million) respectfully.
• If that isn’t sobering enough, putter sales declined by 8 percent in the U.S. in 2013 and 18 percent in Japan. That’s no hiccup. Since 1997, unit sales of putters at big box stores and green grass shops have declined by nearly 42 percent.

Market conditions would appear to suggest that the custom-milled putter is an endangered species. But that hasn’t stopped craftsmen like Machine, Bettinardi, Byron Morgan, Edel and Bobby Grace from competing with the larger OEMs, many of which are producing less expensive cast molded putters.

Joining them within the last few years are a vast number of independent designers; companies such as Low Tide, Piretti, Nead, Bellum Winmore, Carnahan, Carbon, Buzelli and BPutters.

So what convinces these golf enthusiasts to sacrifice time, money and occasionally their common sense to pursue an expensive hobby with no guarantees of success? I looked to Italy for the answers.

Born For The Big Shot

It takes a certain leap of faith to order a putter over the Internet, from a designer overseas, someone just getting started in the golf industry. Sure, I had seen some sample photos online and I had a few terse conversations (over email) with the owner of BPutters, Antonio Biagioli. My hopes were high. Luckily, the model that arrived from Cesena, a town near the eastern coast of Italy and a two-hour drive from Florence, was a real beauty; or as they in Italian, molto bella.

My model, coined the Coyote by Biagioli, was almost too delicate to wield. That is to say, I didn’t want to leave a smudge on the reflective black pearl finish or wrap my hands clumsily around the refined leather pistol grip with raised stitching running across the spine. Biagioli designed the putter to closely match the specs of my Scotty Cameron Del Mar. Four degrees of loft, 34 inches in length and 350 grams of weight in the head. For what it’s worth, the Coyote felt much heavier. Something about it was quintessentially Italian; perhaps it was the clean lines, the feminine-like curves or simply the handcrafted feel.

Italy, as you might imagine, doesn’t have a strong golfing tradition. Biagioli estimates that there might be 80,000 golfers in his country, a number that is actually contracting. Like many Italians, Biagioli grew up playing football and knew nothing about the game until he was dragged to a golf course in Ireland on a business trip almost 20 years ago. He fell in love with golf immediately but his subsequent adventure as a putter designer took a long time to plan and execute.

Biagioli has been working in the automotive industry for most of his life, primarily as an executive manager where he coordinates between suppliers and producers — a boring job as he chooses to put it. Boring though it may have been, the job gave Biagioli a chance to study engineering first hand.

“I started to work closely with the engineers and see the production happen on a daily basis,” says Biagioli. “We work on transmissions and power steering, both hydraulic and mechanical, so we have a lot of work with metals. From that I started to take little pieces at a time and began learning about how suppliers finish metals, how they actually mill metal. It became kind of a second job for me.”

While continuing to work in the automotive industry, Biagioli launched BPutters about year and half ago, combining his love of art, engineering and of course golf.

“I’ve always been intrigued by putters because of the intimacy of their use,” says Biagioli. “I’ve always felt that putters are something so personal compared to a driver or an iron that you carry in your bag.”

He came out with four models initially. One of them, the Hammer, looks like a traditional blade-style putter, the others are adaptations of a mallet design. To come up with these designs, Biagioli says he began sketching on paper.

“I go through at least three or four phases before I can prototype a 3D model of the putter,” he says. “I use a very simple 3D printer to get an initial perspective of the putter itself. It’s a plastic model that ends up becoming a steel prototype.

“That is probably the longest process because you have to program a CNC machine,” he adds. “It’s not that easy and I do have a professional CNC programmer working with me on this project. Once we have a prototype, we test it many times. We make adjustments to the weight distribution, adjust the shape and try to decide which finish can be applied to that model. It’s another three weeks just to test finishes. If we’re talking about carbon steel, it takes more than a month.”

Aside from his role in designing putters and managing the production line, Biagioli spends his remaining time promoting his brand. If you think it’s difficult for an American putter craftsman to breakthrough in the U.S., try doing it from a far-flung town in Italy. Undaunted, Biagioli has learned how to leverage social media. Many of his posts are tagged with his signature motto — born for the big shot. They feature plenty of product shots of course, but Biagioli has also posted many candid shots of himself, his home in Italy and has made some genuine friendships with golfers over the Internet.

His social media strategy (if you want to call it that) complements the sincere approach he takes to running his small business.

“I don’t want to sell putters in bulk,” Biagioli says. “I just want to sell the right putter to the right person. To establish that sort of a relationship with a customer — I see it as a privilege.”

It’s unclear whether BPutters will have the staying power to succeed. Biagioli tells me that the response from the golf community has been overwhelmingly positive so far. He’s made some in-roads selling to the Asian and Western European markets. Orders from America have also starting trickling in.

“I still have a lot of things to learn,” says Biagioli. “But at the same time I very much enjoy it. Otherwise it would be absolutely impossible for me to do both my job and what will hopefully become my full time activity in the future. I know the entire golf industry is not doing well over the last few years. But I’m taking this as an opportunity to do something that I feel is really important.”

The Scotty Cameron Effect

Unfortunately I can’t take credit for the phrase. That distinction belongs to Golf Digest Equipment Editor, Mike Stachura, who used it to describe how a single putter designer was both able to hold significant market share, while enabling other designers to raise their prices exponentially to keep up in a sort of arms race.

First and foremost, Scotty Cameron deserves his due — he makes fine putters. But it would be hard to deny, even for a casual observer, that Cameron benefited greatly from the many relationships he’s had with PGA Tour superstars over the years, including Tiger Woods who used a Newport 2 prototype for most of his career. Concerning the price of his putters, even Cameron at one time admitted to Golf Digest, “The price points on my putters are relatively high, but you aren’t just buying performance. You’re buying confidence. It’s human nature to have greater faith in something you’ve paid a premium for.”

Tim Shaughnessy, co-owner of Bellum Winmore, a tiny start-up that launched only a year ago, says “Certain manufacturers have pushed that increase. Scotty Cameron has a kind of rockstar status. And at some level Bettinardi has kind of the same thing. I think the more press individual manufacturers receive and as their status increases, it ends up driving the overall cost in the market for putters.”

Shaughnessy and his partner Zac Nicholls, who live on opposite ends of the coast and are lifelong friends and golfers, went into business together with a simple idea: release a quality milled putter at a price everyone can afford.

“We tried not to be in the same realm as say a Byron Morgan who is doing a lot of stamping, Damascus and exotic stuff,” says Shaughnessy. “We weren’t going to be able to compete if we were out there for $350. We don’t have the brand recognition.”

Shaughnessy’s company focuses on three basic things: design, material and process. All Bellum Winmore putters are precision milled from a single block of 303 stainless steel and then bead blasted to a matte finish. There isn’t much variance from model to model, but Bellum Winmore does provide limited finish options, and a wide range of grip weights (10 grams to 100 grams), offering what Shaughnessy feels are the most custom back weighted options of any company out there.

“Our overhead is negligible — almost nothing,” says Shaughnessy, when asked about keeping his price points so low. “I handle everything from a design standpoint to the assemblies, the painting, customer service and anything else from New York. Zac focuses on machining and prototyping [in California] and we have an overseas facility that does the production.”

The one common denominator for companies like Bellum Winmore and BPutters is the Internet. While I’m not suggesting that the Web, more specifically social media, has allowed individual putter designers to take on Scotty Cameron and companies of that size directly, it has at least allowed them to co-exist in the industry. Billings, who launched Machine Golf back when dial-up was considered high-tech, believes that entering the marketplace is easier now, but it’s far from a cakewalk.

“The Internet has definitely lowered the barrier,” says Billings. “You don’t have to have sales reps to take your putters to the local golf shops. On the other hand, most people still want to look, feel and try before they buy. So making that switch from over the Internet to traditional retail is a bigger barrier now because there are less golf shops that want to pioneer a new brand.

“Twenty years ago you had great guys like Edwin Watts who always liked to bring in something new and put it in their catalog or over the Internet before any of the smaller companies even knew how to make a good website,” he continues. “We had great guys like that who would get your brand distributed across the country or even around the world. You don’t see much of that anymore; the big companies just don’t want to gamble on smaller brands for a lot of the obvious reasons. It’s kind of sad that it’s gone away because it can be a great shot in the arm for a small company to be able to partner with them and receive a lot of exposure.”

The one thing everyone I spoke to tended to agree upon is that differentiation is the key to survival when operating in a niche market. If your product fails to connect with a core audience, you won’t be in business for very long. And when it comes to golf equipment, putting attracts the most diverse, passionate and opinionated connoisseurs in all of golf.

“On one end of the spectrum, you’ve got the guy who’s so proud to have found a putter out of a barrel that he paid five bucks for and makes everything with it,” says Billings. “On the other end you have someone like Arnold Palmer who’s had 5,000 putters. Let’s just say it — it’s a chase for the next magical wand. It’s part of the fun and adventure of getting a new club and discovering what it might mean to your game.”