ShopTalk: Putter face height

[Graham Little]

A friend is designing a line of putters and he asked for my advice on a number of matters. Without giving too much away it's a mallet style putter. He came up with a question today that has me thinking. What is the ideal face height and why?   He gave me the following figures. A golf ball is 1.68" in diameter. ie 42.67 mm approx. Therefore, the equator of the ball is 21.34mm off the ground. Assuming that the putting stroke takes the putter a maximum 5mm and the aim is to hit the equator of the ball with the centre of the clubface off the ground then the centre of the putter should be 21.38mm off the ground. One theory he is working on is that he wants the face height to be approx 38mm. This will find the sweat spot and have the top of the face roughly in line with the top of the ball. Given a bit more weight lower in the face or body this should work out.   My comment to him was that most putters I see are only 23 to 25mm face height. Let's assume an average of 24mm and therefore the middle of the face is 12mm. On thinking about it this means that to find the middle of the face (vertically) we would have to hold the putter approximately 9.34mm off the ground. This sounds like a lot to me.   Hope this makes sense. Perhaps I should just ask the original question. What is the ideal face height and why?   Graham   ps apologies to the guys on this forum who hate the techo stuff