Dear Peter,
As I was reading your observations, I kept thinking "left eye dominant, right handed putting". That's why you like to stand open putting right handed. Your description of testing your dominance was off a bit. It's not a good idea to test eye dominance with only one hand extended. Instead, place both thumbs side by side like a gun sight and extend both arms. Sight a distant target (pole, tree, sign, light switch, door knob) with both eyes open. When you focus on your thumbs you will see a "fused" (single) image of the thumbs. When you focus on the object beyond the thumbs, you will notice that the thumbs become a double image. So far so good. Now close one eye. The target object will either stay in the sights or jump to the same side as the open eye. If the target stays put, the open eye is the dominant eye. If it jumps, the closed eye is the dominant eye. To check, repeat this and close the other eye to see if you get the opposite result.
Eye dominance is not as stable as hand dominance, but it comes about more easily and can be changed more easily and ignored on occasion in favor of using the other eye for sighting. But if you have a hand preference, it is unlikely you do not have an eye preference.
So, my prediction is that you have eye dominance in the left eye. The differing setups for how you like your hands ahead or behind the ball probably has to do with a combination of eye dominance and head posture in the setup.
Left eye / right hand putters like to feel they are looking from behind the ball, so they can "take in" the tiny start line right in front of the ball and match it with the major portion of the putt path and the target. (This is true to a lesser ectent with same-side eye/hand combinations, and may be part of the explanation for many golfers raising their heads in the stroke to "peek".) When the shoulders are a bit open, too, this means it is very easy for the ball to get too far back in the stance. So the golfer instinctively shifts the ball forward, and then the head is behind the ball, the shoulders open, and the hands would also be back too far now, making the golfer feel like he has to flip the wrists thru impact. To overcome this bad feeling, the golfer instinctively moves the hands farther forward, putting a forward-press like bow in the back of the left wrist with hands ahead of the ball slightly. The total setup makes you feel like you ought to push the stroke straight at the target. With this setup, such a stroke makes the left elbow move away from the hip parallel not to the shoulders (they are open) but to the startline of the putt. The consequent is that the left shoulder feels like it is going behind a bit in the thru-stroke and not upward vertically. That's all as it should be.
From this setup, your stroke path sounds like a genuine problem. Never, ever allow the putterhead to wander outside the puttline going back -- it causes pulls and other problems. If you extend the startline of the putt that goes away from the front of the ball out the back of the ball, don't let the sweetspot of the putter go across it. Straight-back is best, but inside is better than across, and across is usually fatal.
Since you open your shoulders, there is a good chance you are also allowing your hips and knees and ankles to get open a bit also. Are your toes square to the startline (a line across the ends of both feet parallels the startline)? I've found that one of the most common causes of pulls is allowing the hind foot to creep too far forward toward the startline. So check that the feet are square to the startline and maybe even pull the hind foot back from the line an extra inch or two in comparison to the front foot, thus "closing" your feet slightly while your shoulders stay open. The line of your feet ought to be the same as the line your elbow will follow out of your open shoulders. If you could paint the air traveled thru by your lead elbow in the stroke, and then transfer that line of paint to the ground, your toes need to point along the same line of a line very closely parallel to the elbow-trajectory line. (The same is true when you setup with shoulders square.)
The final problem is how far are you standing from the ball? Wherever that is, if a line down from your eyes to the ground hits the ground between your feet and the ball, you probably have a "gating" action in your stroke. The "gating" action is an ever-present tendency in the stroke movement that comes solely from the biomechanics of your setup, and not from you messing up. When the hands reach out to the ball a bit in the setup, the body is preset to make a "gating" action back and thru. The only counter to this is wrist manipulation. To see this, place a yardstick or golf shaft on the ground and setup and try to make a stroke back and thru in which the putterface stays over the ruler and also keeps the face of the putter aimed along the ruler. If when you do this, your wrists rotate counterclockwise going back and then un-rotate clockwise going forward, your hands are "out" towards the ball, instead of directly below your shoulders. Now try standing so your eyes are directly above the ruler and your hands hang directly below your shoulders, and repeat the effort. There should be little or no need to rotate the wrists, at least within 1 to 2 feet of either side of the ball.
A "gating" stroke is only square to the startline right at the peak of the rainbow-shaped stroke path. This peak is opposite your sternum. So if your shoulders are "open", your peak will make the face point left of the target and will also be farther forward in relation to your feet than for a square-shoulder putter. The point in a gating stroke that is truly square to the startline of the putt, when shoulders are open, is further back in the stance. But this directly conflicts with your preferred head and eye position behind the ball a little (although it is consistent with hands ahead). So if you have hands out too far toward the ball, your stroke gates; if it gates, you need the ball back in the stance or else you have to manipulate the gating stroke on the forward side of the peak as with a "push" action; if you gate but don't handle this requirement well, you will pull your putts.
Altogether, this combination of left-eye / right hand and hands too far out from the shoulders would seem to explain your complications. I would suggest you try two modifications: 1) hands closer to hanging directly beneath shoulders (and eyes closer to directly over the ball at setup, or at least the right eye closer to the startline, but the hands position is more important than eyes for the gating) for a straighter backstroke that doesn't cross the startline, and 2) right foot squared up or even pulled back a wee bit to set a line of movement across the toes of both feet for the left elbow to move along going thru impact and down the line (make the toe line parallel the startline).
Your setup putting left handed sounds about right for a left-eye dominant golfer. I putt left-handed on occasion even though I'm right-eye / right-handed, since this way I test the truth of what I have to say about how the body works and the value of a shoulders-only stroke. I surprise myself left-handed, but I don't think I'm better that way than right handed. If you are better left-handed, then by all means putt that way. But it comes down to sinks and closeness of misses time and again, so you have to judge the two ways objectively.
Let me know if the suggestions help. Maybe we haven't quite got a handle on the problem yet. I hope so, but let me know, so we can be sure to keep you in the game!
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone.com
http://puttingzone.com
The Future of Putting Now -
Elite instruction from the World's most comprehensive resource.
over 12,000 page visits each month and growing strong...
518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC USA 27401
336.230.0612 home
336.402.1602 cell
336-574-2324 fax
geoff@puttingzone.com
Join the PuttingZone:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PuttingZone/join