WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Mizuno’s M.Craft X putter line-up, which was developed on the principles of multiple hosel configurations in a mallet shape with blade-like feel and weighting, now adds a fourth hosel that brings the stroke stability of “zero-torque” to the interchangeable putter family. There also are two new head shapes added to the line to bring the total offering to five heads and four hosels for 20 possible putter combination heads.
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PRICE & AVAILABILITY: Australian pricing is still TBC. Available at retail from October 30.
3 Cool Things
1. Sticking their neck out. Introduced last year, the M.Craft X line-up for 2025 started with three neck or hosel offerings geared to matching up a player’s preferred look and stroke pattern with the corresponding toe hang seen in different heel-shafted putters. (Toe hang is the way or the degree to which the toe side of the putter hangs when it’s balanced on the shaft.) But as putter technology has embraced the option of “zero torque”, where the putter is balanced so the toe hangs in any direction, Mizuno’s team saw an opportunity for a fourth hosel orientation. The idea with a zero-torque hosel, or what Mizuno is calling the Z-Hosel, is to align the shaft axis with the club head’s centre of gravity, said John Freeman, senior product engineer at Mizuno.
“There’s a lot of different executions out there, and I feel like ‘zero torque’ or ‘lie-angle balanced’ are used interchangeably, but this hosel is designed to be perfectly zero torque, so the shaft axis going right through the centre of gravity,” he said, noting that the result is what he calls “infinite toe hang”. “That means the head should rest at any orientation, unlike a plumber’s neck or a slant neck, where it’s going to come to the same position every time. What that does is it increases stroke stability by eliminating any putterhead influence during the stroke. That ultimately gives the player complete control of the stroke path, and any face twisting throughout the stroke.”
The Z-Hosel achieves that alignment of shaft axis and CG through a crank neck kind of style that features onset instead of the typical offset. That position and more vertical angle means the shaft axis projects to a point in line with the head’s centre of gravity.
2. Head games. The Z-Hosel will be available on two new head shapes in the M.Craft X line-up. The Z2 features a wide-body blade shape with a slight indentation, what the company is calling a “triple-wide” design. The Z3 is more of a rounded mallet shape with a domed centre section. Both feature centre alignment lines, and both shapes also work with the three other hosel options: plumber’s neck, double bend and slant neck. The zero-torque Z2 and Z3 models will feature the SuperStroke TLT Pistol 1.0 grip with 1 degree of tilt to better position the hands to match the onset effect of the Z-Hosel.
3. Modular home. The Z-Hosel options in the M.Craft X, as well as, the two new head designs will continue the modular design approach of the current line. The M.Craft X features a two-piece design where the face and neck are a single piece of 1025E forged carbon steel (with a smooth CNC milled face finish) connected to a 7075 aluminium body with heel and toe sole-weight screws. Those weights can vary between seven, 14 and 21 grams each, but on the Z-Hosel versions the weights must both be the same mass so the centre of gravity remains lined up with the shaft axis. The more dense steel front of the putter (compared to the lighter aluminium body) shifts more mass forward to give these mallet shapes more of the forward centre of gravity feeling commonly experienced in blade putters.
