Controversial Golf Club, Banned for 47 Years, Was Invented in Upstate NY City

With golf season now fully underway, golfers in the area are still trying to find the best ways to improve their game. Whether it's better swing technique, a different style of golf ball, or even a new set of golf clubs, every golfer in your life is willing to try just about anything to improve their score.

This concept was still true over a century ago, when a Schenectady-based golf enthusiast invented a new type of club, one that eventually changed golf forever.

We were left asking ourselves this question, though: if so many people loved using this club, why was it banned from golf for nearly 50 years?

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Why the 'Schenectady Putter' Was So Great, That It Was Banned from Golf

The New York State Golf Association and the United States Golf Association are two of the organizations who have gone back through the history books to tell the incredible story of the Schenectady Putter.

The story begins with a Capital Region golfer, A.F. Knight, who was the top player at Mohawk Golf Club in Schenectady, NY, according to the NYSGA. Knight was an engineer at General Electric by day, and used his skills to invent himself a new type of putter to help with his own game.

His idea? Change the shape of the putter from a blade (thinner design) to a mallet (thicker design), and move the location where the shaft meets the mallet so that it's closer to the center.

With those two changes, and a change in the material used to craft the mallet end of the putter, Knight's putting game improved drastically. He lent the putter to a famous golf course architect, Devereux Emmet, who showed it to two-time U.S. Amateur champion Walter J. Travis, who requested his own Schenectady putter.

From 1903, when Travis first began to use the putter, until 1910, the Schenectady putter took the golf world by storm.

It was in 1910 that changes were made to the Rules of Golf, and the mallet style of putter was deemed no longer permissible to use. That decision was upheld until either 1951 or 1952, depending on which source you read, when the R&A and the USGA jointly agreed that the Schenectady putter could once again be used in competition.

From that point on, the mallet-style putter has been one of the most popular additions to the golf bags of golfers across the world. There are only a few people know the story of it's invention, however, which happened right here in the Capital Region.