Inside the mind of Logan Olson, designer of Scottie Scheffler’s new putter

How does it feel when the No. 1 player in the world puts one of your clubs in the bag?

Logan Olson, the founder of Olson Putters, called it “surreal” and said he rode the roller coaster of emotions last week after he learned that Scottie Scheffler was using one of his putters at the Hero World Challenge. Of course, Olson’s emotions surely peaked Sunday when Scheffler completed his victory at Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas.

It’s a boon for any manufacturer when an elite player starts using one of their clubs. But it takes on a whole different significance when you’re a small shop like Olson’s. Then it can be a life-changing experience.

Especially when, like Scheffler last week, that player excels with the new club. Scheffler not only won the Hero World Challenge but he also ranked sixth in Strokes Gained: Putting (+0.77). After his well-publicized struggles with the shortest club in the bag this season, that was a marked improvement for Scheffler.

Scheffler became the first person to lead the TOUR in both Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee and Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green in the same season, but he ranked 162nd in Strokes Gained: Putting (-0.30) in 2023.

Scheffler began working with renowned putting coach Phil Kenyon after the TOUR Championship. The Hero World Challenge was Scheffler’s first tournament with one of Olson’s putters in the bag. Olson is a putter designer and craftsman who runs his own “Olson” bespoke putter company out of Fortuna, California.

“Nice to see some putts go in,” Scheffler said last week. “I'm rolling it good.”

So, who is Logan Olson? What makes his putters any different than what’s already on the market? And, how does a niche putter company end up working closely with the No. 1 golfer in the world?

For that, GolfWRX.com recently caught up with Olson to learn more about his story, how the Scheffler switch happened, and how he was feeling during Scheffler’s winning week in the Bahamas.

GolfWRX.com: How did it feel when the No. 1 player in the world started using your product and then won? Was it nerve-racking?

Logan Olson: Having Scottie put that putter in play last week was surreal. I was riding a roller coaster of emotions once I caught wind Wednesday afternoon. I was confident that with the progress we made together over the last few months that it was a matter of when, not so much a matter of if.

The “when” definitely showed up much sooner than I anticipated. My emotions were first covered by the massive excitement rush, then immediately followed by that gut-wrenching feeling of, “Oh no…”

It’s that super exposed feeling where, to some degree, it feels like you are out there making the putts with him. You live and die with the emotions that go along with how the rock is being rolled. I was stuck in this constant zone of trying not to watch but also not being able to look away. It helped that I had a few big projects I was working on all weekend here at the shop, so I had a bit of a distraction. I’m sure if I was at home watching, it would have been rough.

From my office seat on Sunday wondering how the day was going to go was excruciating. To be fair, the man is an absolute machine, so it’s a joy to watch, but it still was a nerve-racking day, no doubt.

I think it was after 15 or 16 that it started to set in – this was happening. The flood of emails, texts, IG messages, DM’s, calls and social media craze was a bit intense after he finished out on 18.

How long have you been working with Scottie on the putter design?

I’ve been working with Scottie rolling back into September of this year. We met up in Dallas and started the conversation around what he’s looking for. I brought a few putters with me to put through the paces, and we really opened up the canvas of what he was looking for in that first day we met.

I’m sure this doesn’t come as a major shock, but the putter he put in play was not the first, or the second, or the third that I made for him. I had the fortune to meet up with him on three separate occasions to really work through the maze and pick apart every piece of it. It might be tough to tell for the standard onlooker, but literally every piece of that putter from top to bottom changed quite a few times during the process. We played around with weight, sole draft, lie angle, loft, width, length, sound, feel, sight options and swing weight – the whole kitchen sink.

You look at the list of past golfers who’ve really done what he’s doing with the game right now, and you see a more classic take on this modern game we play. He’s unconventional, and is so in tune with the feel and awareness of what he’s doing – so much more than technique or traditional motion. He’s in touch with his golf feel in a way that’s intimidating.

I remember in one of our testing sessions, bringing five or six new putters out. He picked one up, and within about half a second, without hitting a putt or anything, he was like: “Nope, not right.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Granted we were trying a bunch of different stuff that particular day, but it was impressive to see that level of feel and connection he has to his game.

What are the technical customizations that Scottie needed, or requested, such as materials, hosel, face design, length and alignment lines?

There’s a lot to unpack, but things like the sound and feel off the putter face were always the big ones. Creating that consistency across the face from top to bottom and heel to toe in the strike area was big.

So much of sound is feel, and so much of feel is sound, and they are so intertwined that pulling them apart in an effort to change just one or the other was a mountain to climb. Also, every time I did a geometry adjustment to the putter, the acoustics changed so much. It felt a bit like trying to hit a moving target.

That was the biggest challenge for me as a putter maker. The other massive piece that was pivotal for getting this in the bag was alignment. I’m sure by now there are plenty of questions rolling around the Internet on the alignment piece of that putter. It came up almost out of coincidence as we were talking about ball placement on the face. From time to time, he had historically struggled with setting the ball in the middle of the putter face at address, and that alignment bar up top completely addressed that issue.

It started as a “quick fix” just to try something we’d talked about, and it stuck. It ended up being hugely successful and something Scottie wants to see on all the putters moving forward.

What makes a Logan Olson putter different than other putters on the market? And how can consumers best go about getting a putter for themselves?

Man, if I had a dollar every time someone asked that exact question. Inspiration is a funny thing. I think to some people, there’s no easy way to peel apart the layers of what that question is. Truly taking the time to look deeper than a quick glance can be hard. For me, that deeper look, that longer consideration, and that attention to detail is what I believe sets my putters apart from the rest. I was never taught, or trained, on how to be a putter maker. There were no steps to follow or rules to abide by, so I just stumbled my way through the weeds over the course of time.

I think of it a bit like the Matrix movies (stay with me here on this one)... Once you’ve forgotten about the rules that create your reality, or no longer are wearing blinders because “that’s how it’s always been done,” you can really reach beyond and approach some of these problems that people have been working on for so long from a new light. You can start to move in slow motion.

I like to tell people I don’t make putters, the canvas of a putter just gets in my way. I try to make rocket parts, or jewelry, or a Swiss watch. It just happens to be on that platform of a putter. Sure, like many, myself absolutely included in this, we are re-imagining concepts that have been around for quite some time now. But it’s in the way I try to approach these problems that I believe creates my difference.

From start to finish, I put my thumbprint on this process in my own unique way. It’s a twist on what’s expected and executed in my own language. The deeper you look, the more you find.

My shop neighbor here in Fortuna works on old custom cars. Just beautiful stuff. He said to me once when we were talking shop on a Friday looking at one of his cars, “If you see this drive by, it needs to look like a Mustang. It has to be instantly recognizable. But when I park it, and you really can take a moment, every single line on this car is different. No piece of this is what it used to be. It’s still a Mustang, but it doesn’t share a single curve, sweep, part or component of what it came in here with. I’ve left my mark on every single part of this car I’ve touched. The people who truly appreciate what it is, and truly understand, those are the people that I make this car for.”

For me, that car is the putters I am creating. And the car gear heads who really appreciate the difference? Well, that’s the No. 1 golfer in the world.