When I first started playing, I was putting with a Scotty Pro Platinum Laguna (blade), played that starting in high school golf in 2001 and played with it until about 2014, then I got a really good deal on a Scotty Cameron GoLo3 (rounded blade), played with that from '14-'21, picked up the Scotty Select Squareback 2 (almost a blade/mallet hybrid) and played that from '21-'25, and I've been playing the LAB OZ1 midshafted mallet since '25.
I really thought I wanted to go back to the Squareback, and I went to ChatGPT for some feedback, it gave me a few drills to run through with each putter. I had sold the Laguna, but I did the drills with all three, GoLo, Squareback, and LAB.
I ran two different drills, one of them was hitting 10-20 putts with each putter from 20', 40', and 60', not necessarily trying to make the putts, but seeing which one left me the most makable second putts.
The second drill was just hitting one ball from 6-10' with each putting and just counting the make percentages.
The results were somewhat surprising, but what I found, the LAB outperformed both Scotty's, and the Squareback was better than the GoLo.
In my mind, I wanted the squareback to be the better putter of the group, but the results showed that I left myself more makable putts with the LAB, and from 6-10', the repeatability of made putts with the LAB was significantly better than the other two.
So yeah, I want to like blades, but I perform better with mallets. I went through this with my irons not to long ago too. I am currently a 0.8 handicap, down from a 4.5 earlier this year, but I made the switch from true blade irons, Mizuno Pro 221's to a mixed set of Mizuno Pro 243/245's and my game has gotten far more consistent. I was able to shoot -2 with true blades, and I can carry that story with me, but for where my game is today and the practice time I actually have, the added forgiveness is a much needed thing for me.
Hope this helps.
