Heavy Putter Mid-Weight Series CX2 not light - but just right

The Mid-Weight CX2 by Heavy Putter is still plenty heavy but is trimmed down from the original Heavy Putter lines. (Courtesy of Heavy Putter)


Various models of Boccieri Golf's new Heavy Putter Mid-Weight Series have been turning up everywhere recently, from the golf bag of one of my well-known, low-handicap, golf-writing colleagues during a recent junket to Arizona, to the bag of none other than John Daly and those of several other PGA Tour pros.

The Mid-Weight Series builds on the success of the tried and true Heavy Putter recipe of extreme weighting. The guiding principle is to use a well balanced yet extremely heavy putter to force golfers to use their big muscles to putt, eliminating handsy or wristy strokes.

However, the new Mid-Weight flat-sticks are, as the name implies, somewhat less heavy than the original Heavy Putter, and this new recipe seems to appeal to a wider variety of putting tastes.
How the Heavy Putter Mid-Weight CX2 plays

The Heavy Putter Mid-Weight Series comes in five models. The K4 (played by the likes of John Daly) and the CX2 (reviewed here) are both traditional blades. The K4 is a "toe-droop" balanced model with a half-shaft offset, while the CX2 is a traditional, face-balanced blade with a plumber's neck and full-shaft offset.

I took the CX2 ($169) over to the Lake of the Woods Golf Course in Mahomet, Ill., where I played it on the familiar greens and practiced extensively with it on the practice green. I also enlisted three other mid-handicap golfers to provide feedback.

None of the other golfers had ever held a Heavy Putter before, and each one exclaimed about the weight of the CX2 when I handed it to him.

Karl Newton, of Mahomet, Ill., noticed the weight of the grip-end right away. "It's counterbalanced," he said. "I like that. It keeps the head from feeling too heavy."

"How heavy is this thing?" asked Randy Feese of Lincoln, Ill. When informed that it weighs 750 grams, and that it was considerably less than the original Heavy Putter model, he said, "This is heavy enough." After some practice, Feese noted that the CX2 was forcing him to use his large muscles to make the stroke: "You can't hardly flip your wrists if you try."

John Patterson, of Mahomet, agreed. "You can feel it pulling your shoulders into the stroke," he said. "I could really get used to this, but it would take a good bit of practice."

Patterson's comment found immediate support from the others: All agreed that they could learn to use it - and learn to use it well - but it would require concerted practice to get used to the weight.
The verdict on Heavy Putter's Mid-Weight CX2

If you want to have some fun, take a Heavy Putter over to your local course, and hand it to a few players on the practice green. Just watch their faces as they almost drop it, completely unprepared for the heft.

Although the Mid-Weight Series is lighter than the original Heavy Putter models, it's still plenty stout, and it will take some getting used to. However, despite the fact that none of the golfers recruited to test it out had ever tried a Heavy Putter before, they saw immediately the utility of the weighting.

The CX2 wasn't the favorite "out-of-the-box" pick of the four putters I asked them to test, but all three men agreed that with practice, they could learn to love it.

This feedback is consistent with my previous testing of earlier Heavy Putter models, in which techniques for both long and short putts had to be somewhat re-learned when using the Heavy Putter. But once I had figured out how to adapt to the weight, the results were excellent.

Recent testing by Hot Stix Golf - the industry's leading, independent, custom, club-fitting and equipment-testing lab - also showed the Mid-Weight Series K4 to be more stable than any other blade on the market, thanks to its weighting scheme.

The bottom line on the CX2, and all Heavy Putters, is that it is ideal for players fighting against the faults that result from too much use of the hands and wrists and not enough use of the shoulder-driven "pendulum stroke."

John Daly can get a little handsy with his putts (probably because he has arguably the best hand-eye coordination of any golfer playing today), and, thus, the Mid-Weight is a perfect choice for him.

It's also a great choice for average golfers fighting handsiness on the greens.