Hockey Putters - A Story of Inevitability

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Inevitability - a word describing something which cannot be avoided. Something that one day down the line will, with certainty, exist. When a concept so obvious and so logical pops into your mind, you’d take a minute to think if you have ever come across it in the past. But when it is not there – you might sit and wonder just why it isn’t there. Now, some people might just leave it at that and carry on with their lives – no shame in that – but others might feel a sense of duty to bring that very thing into existence themselves.

In my mind, Hockey Putters was inevitable. As a lifelong hockey player, I cycled through countless sticks, skates, helmets, and everything else as I grew up. Some of the equipment I threw out, some I passed down, and others I kept. As I sat in my basement on a cold Michigan night in late 2017, I found myself looking at one of our old hockey sticks laying on the wall not ten feet from me – quite a prolonged glance. I was an avid golfer at the time, spending most of my nights practicing my putting back and forth with the many training aids laid out on the carpeted floor. By some unknown force, it occurred to me that the shape of the hockey stick on the wall (and likely every hockey stick in existence) oddly resembled that of the putting grips many professional golfers were using on Tour. These hockey sticks were also hollow all the way through. Right when I had that though, I instantly decided that if the opening in the hockey stick were large enough to fit a putter shaft, it would work as a perfect grip.

The next day, I bought some materials at the hobby shop and went out to my driveway to test this theory. This was an experiment which would prove to be the first step toward the eventual business in operation today. I cut down the hockey stick to about two-thirds of its length and placed it right over the gripless putter. Voila – a perfect fit. I proceeded to fuse the two together, and immediately created a horrific mess all over the brushed concrete – a mess which is still ingrained in the slab to this day, at a house which I no longer live. Despite the mess, what came out was a prototype which not only made it more fun for me to practice my putting in the basement, but one which caught the eye of almost everyone who came across it. The stick I used was also my father’s old Warrior Kronik, the stick I remembered him using while we would play one-on-one against each other on our backyard rink every winter. I didn’t realize it at first, but I had created something able to bring back all of those beautiful memories again, and again, and again, with a stick that otherwise would have sat idle in the basement until it would be inevitably thrown in the trash. As I write this, it’s obvious that those games on the backyard rink, with my mother watching through the kitchen window, were some of the best memories of my entire life. Unfortunately, I put that prototype back in the basement and went back to college, living my life normally for several years before ever thinking about the putter again. But one day I came back home and found myself in that all too familiar place, looking at the putter I decided to make years ago. This time, however, I wondered if it was possible for others to have this very same experience. The experience of being able to relive those childhood hockey memories without having to actually play, which for many in their adult lives becomes harder and harder as time goes on. It was not a difficult conclusion to reach – it made perfect sense to me that the world should be able to experience this emotional homecoming.

To confirm my suspicions, I invited a friend over and asked what he thought of the putter. Not even a hockey player or fan, this friend told me something along the lines of “I can’t believe this isn’t already a thing – you might actually have to do this.” After some research, it turned out that Hockey Putters truly was inevitable. I was, in fact, not the first person to combine a hockey stick with a golf putter. But what I saw was not in alignment with my personal vision – it could be so much more in my mind – so I decided to be the first one to perfect it.

Work soon began on a better design. The first putter was too long, and the hockey stick came much too close to the ground, interfering with the natural golfer’s view of the ball. I created another putter – this time at a standard length of 35 inches and experimented with different lengths of hockey stick to find the most aesthetic ratio of hockey stick to putter shaft in the downward view of the golfer. It did not take long before I found what I decided was the perfect looking putter.

How large of a part of my future what I had in front of me was about to become was unapparent at that moment. The creation evolved from a one-off craft item to a real, professional product. I then acquired as many broken hockey sticks as I could from local rinks and stores, purchased golf club shafts and blade heads – soon, I had an inventory. I then created a simple website and took my idea to market - this was February of 2020. Since then, Hockey Putters has sold hundreds of units, made multiple improvements to our putters, all refining the on-course performance while keeping the main thing the main thing – that beautiful novelty of being able to channel a lifetime of hockey memories. The design, weight, balance, and materials have all been altered to further upgrade the performance and aesthetics of our putters, and we will never cease to improve upon each latest iteration. The Hockey Putter has its sights constantly set on perfection. 

Our mantra is “Novelty meets Performance,” but further than that, we want to perfect the synthesis of novelty, performance, as well as aesthetics in the game of golf today. New products could very well be in store, but our standard for what we would possibly offer is very selective. It doesn’t just need to make money – it must be able to allow our customers to channel an emotion that would not otherwise be able to get out. Hockey is a sport which molds you into a specific kind of individual, especially as you grow up playing the game. When you are able to express such an important part of yourself as you live your life and perform your hobbies in a way that is concurrently subtle, effortless, and beautiful, you are able to combine the memories you have made and the feelings that you longed for in a way that shines brightly through as an embodiment of a true representative of the greatest game in the world. Winning the Stanley Cup Final against your father in the backyard. Playing street hockey against what seemed like every single person in the neighborhood until the sun went down. Playing in your first NHL game. Hockey Putters is bigger than one person. Hockey Putters simply is. 

My name is Francis Scheff, and I was born and raised in Rochester, Michigan. Thank you for visiting my site.