Best face-balanced putters

Start here: TaylorMade Spider Tour X. A face-balanced mallet with a big, stable head and strong alignment lines — the easiest place to start if you want a straight-back, straight-through stroke to feel automatic. It's also the most widely reviewed of these, so you know what you're getting.

Who the others suit:

• Zebra Milled 001 — budget-conscious first face-balanced mallet, milled carbon-steel feel, mid-size grip.
• Meridian Charleston / Tybee — face-balanced with zero toe hang; the Tybee adds head-weight and length options if you're fitting to a specific build.
• Odyssey DFX #7 — classic #7 shape, simple and forgiving for a mallet newcomer.
• L.A.B. Golf DF3 — lie-angle balanced rather than face balanced; worth a look if you want the head to stay square with almost no hand input.
• Scotty Cameron Phantom 11 — premium milled feel and a mid single-bend neck for a clean straight-stroke setup.
• LAZRUS LAZ2.5 — zero-torque mallet at a mid price, with a big head weight for stability.

One caveat: face balance is a weighting property, so check the neck and length on the exact model you buy — a single-bend or double-bend neck is what keeps the face square.