[PHOTO: Ross Parker/R&A]

Ever since golf was first played, the objective for players on the greens has not changed: knock the ball in the hole, dead centre. For some golfers, that means using a putter where the shaft is dead centre as well.

Lydia Ko won last week’s AIG Women’s Open at St Andrews using a Scotty Cameron by Titleist P5 GSS centre-shafted tour-only prototype. Ko’s win goes along with some victories on the men’s side this year featuring centre-shafted putters, from players including the late Grayson Murray, Matthieu Pavon, Taylor Pendrith, Bryson DeChambeau and Jhonattan Vegas.

Centre-shafted putters date back to the early 1900s when Australian-born Walter Travis enjoyed great success with his Schenectady putter. Although not the first centre-shafted putter, the Schenectady may be the most famous. Travis, known by his contemporaries as “The Old Man”, didn’t take up golf until he was 35 years old. But by the time he turned 43, he had three US Amateur titles plus a British Amateur to his credit, primarily due to his superiority on the greens.

Unfortunately for Travis, his win in the 1904 British Amateur led the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews to take a closer look at his odd-looking putter. Although it did not impose any changes until 1909, the governing body outlawed centre-shafted clubs – a ban that lasted until 1952. Ironically, Ben Hogan won the British Open a year later using a centre-shafted putter.

In ensuing years, centre-shafted putters enjoyed sporadic periods of increased usage. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Bullseye putter proved popular. Later, many of the initial long putters employed centre-shaft designs. Then, Payne Stewart and Zach Johnson won majors using SeeMore’s FGP model – a centre-shafted putter.

What type of putting stroke might benefit from a centre-shafted model? Players who position their eyes directly over the ball are prime candidates because when you set up like that, the putterhead tends to stay basically along the target line throughout the stroke, as opposed to moving on a curved arc. If this sounds like you, most of the putters on the Golf Digest Hot List feature centre-shafted models.

“A centre-shafted putter is a lot like a face-balanced putter because the shaft is running through the centre of gravity,” John K. Solheim, vice-president for Ping, told Golf Digest several years ago. “That definitely benefits a player with a straight-back-straight-through stroke. That’s one of the reasons many of the long putters tend to be centre-shafted. Players tend to have their eyes positioned over the ball when using the long putter.”

According to Johnson, one of the reasons he liked a centre-shaft putter is that he could see the whole putterface, which gave him better alignment in getting the face squared up to the ball.

And getting the face back to square definitely helps achieve the objective of rolling the ball in the hole, dead centre.