All About Balance, Forgiveness and Precison.  This was all basically ripped from a post by a mod some time back and sums everything up great IMO:  

 

 

Balance works with the putter's precision rating and represents consistency throughout the different distance increments of your putter.  The higher the balance rating, the more you can rely on the ball consistently going the distance you've struck your putt, especially so on longer putts.  Balance also works with forgiveness in a very similar manner to help reign in the effect of off-center hits, also making them react more consistently on longer putts.

 

 

Club Forgiveness v Precision

Ultimately you want precision, if you can handle the meter speed.  The more precise the club, they more it will go where you want it when you ding a shot.

 

 

All About Balance, Forgiveness and Precison.  This was all basically ripped from a post by a mod some time back and sums everything up great IMO:  

 

Forgiveness shifts the precision circle left or right (and usually short) depending on how much you mishit and what the forgiveness rating of the club is.  Clubs with lesser forgiveness ratings shift the circle left/right more on mishits.

This is why (especially on low precision clubs) you can mishit slightly right of the mark and have the ball go left instead.  Mishitting right shifts the circle to the right, but part of the circle is still "leftover" on the left side of the flag, so it has the potential to land there

 

The game is pretty simple.  Precision controls your accuracy.  Imagine it's like a circle that surrounds the flagstick when you aim at it.  The size of that circle is related to the precision rating.  The higher the rating the smaller the circle.  Your ball can land anywhere in the circle on a dinged shot (left or right, long or short).  It will ALWAYS land in the circle on a ding shot, though sometimes it may land in the center of the circle and sometimes it may land on the very outer edge or anywhere in between those two points.  When it lands on the outer edge this is what you guys have come to know as "the beast".  Was the shot pre-programmed? Does it know you're standing on the 17th hole at Kiawah?  No, it's just unfortunate timing.  The result you see is the logical spread dictated by the precision rating of the club over 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 shots taken on the site.  No matter how big or small the sample it'samazingly consistent because it is after all only a simple mathematical formula.  The shot data is spread out amongst all users, so there will be times when you run into a lot of "edge cases" (aka deviations, aka outside edge of the precision circle) and times where you seemingly can't miss the center (even when you mishit).  This is the ebb and flow of the game and it's always been there.  In the short term you will have "bad" days and "good" days.  In the long term (providing they are using the same clubs) any one player will see the same amount of "edge cases" or "deviations" that the rest of the players do..

 

Picture to help explain the circle: