Really enjoyed your article on Short Putts. I learn best and improve when I delve deeper & deeper into the science and empirical data. I've concluded that what makes golf so hard for most (and for me sometimes) is that many of the moves and principles are "counter" to what we've biologically evolved to do well, and the only way to improve in golf is to understand that fact, learn then feel the correct move(s), and then train the mind & body. The old "biological" or "hard wired" habits keep creeping back in, which is why it's so critical to be vigilant.
That being said, you've whetted my appetite for more. Like every golfer, we know logically that putting is 40% or more of the strokes; well, I finally know that not only logically, but viscerally. So, I want to improve my putting so that my scores really reflect how well I can play and am striking the ball.
To do that, I need my putting to be "solid". On average, I waste 4-7 strokes per round on putts (either a missed 4 footer; or a dreaded 3-putt due to a poor lag). To get down to 30-32 putts per round, I don't necessarily need to nail 10 to 12 footers; rather, I must simply eliminate the wasted putts.
What more do you have? What's the "magic wand putting instruction"? What training drills / exercises (physical and mental) do you find successful?
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Frank Tobolsky
Cherry Hill, NJ
Thanks for the kind words -- that's something coming from a golfer in Cherry Hill!
Here's the short version of what I've got:
1. Distance control first and last.
2. Good mechanics are only useful for a straight stroke, so use them for that.
3. Targeting plus Tempo = Touch (distance control again).
4. Without Tempo, there is no Touch.
5. Once you have Touch, Targeting becomes most important.
6. Once you have Targeting, Technique becomes most important.
7. Once you have Technique, Tempo is more important then ever.
9. With Tempo, Targeting works better.
10. With Tempo and Targeting, Reading Putts is a lot easier.
11. Some tricks and gimmicks help with the above but only if you know why they help.
That's enough for about four years right there. Want to get started for real? I'm more than glad to spend my time via email or telephone trying to be helpful.
All my tips are gathered together on my Tips page, http://puttingzone.com/tips, or just from my Home page, http://puttingzone.com. If you join my Newsletter, http://puttingzone.com/newsletter.html, you'll get my tips as soon as I write them (two to five each month). I hope to hear from you often! If you ask me questions, I swear I'll be a lot less glib abd a lot more specific!
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 10,000 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
Thanks so much! Really appreciate your generosity. And if I discover something that might have empirical appeal to you, I'll forward it.
I've read & re-read Pelz several times, and his science is fascinating and because it's grounded in data, it supports the "why". You may have a different take, as you've developed your own theories.
Regards,
Frank Tobolsky
PS: My renewed interest in this aspect of the game is because last Friday I tied for first in a winter league tournament, with some really stiff competition; I had 29 putts, lots of up & downs, and later I realized that at every level of competition, once ultimately it comes down to a putting & chipping contest.
Yes, I definitely have a different take on the value of Pelz's work. I've read all he has published, and studied it deeply, and here are my conclusions:
1. 95% of Pelz is derivative from the pioneering work of others, although he appears to claim the credit for himself (specifics: physics of impact, face orientation, twisting and the like: Daish, The Physics of Ball Games, and others; shoulder stroke: Bob Charles and George Archer; ball roundness and balancing: Bob Charles and Golf Digest (Larry Dennis) in the early 1970s; "lumpy doughnut": Golf Digest and the "volcano" in the early 1970s plus Cochran and Stobbs, Search for the Perfect Swing, 1968; pro golfer putting performance percentages: Clyne Solely, How Well Should You Putt, Conchran and Stobbs, PGA Statistics studies, US Open statistics studies)
2. The other 5% that is original is either not very helpful (Perfy the robot confirms the biomechanics of the shoulder stroke and stroke path dynamics) or based on very questionable science (17-inch rule: actual data never mentioned by Pelz in articles or books since 1977, when it was initially reported in Golf Digest, a magazine that does not pay him now since he works for the competition Golf Magazine; the 1977 data very clearly and explicitly does NOT support Pelz's oft-repeated claim that he has "scientifically proved" that 17 inches past the hole is the best speed for all putts regardless of length, or grass type, or surface condition -- as he has done as recently as 1998 in a paper in the World Scientific Congress on Golf, again without any data mentioned; in fact, his study at that time proved the same thing every professional golfer who spoke of it had already said, that the optimal drop speed depends upon grass type (bent v. bermuda) and condition (tournament-ready v. shaggy and well-trodden); Pelz actual data says, for instance, that the optimal speed for tournament bent grass is 5" to 10" past and the optimal speed for poor bermuda is 24" to 40" past; Pelz appears to have made up the 17-inch rule as some sort of amalgalm of his data, for his 1989 book, probably under the suggestion of his ghost writer Nick mastroni in order to have something "original" to claim, but it obviously has no bearing on a real green anywhere; a recent study by Werner and Grieg, How Golf Clubs Really Work and How to Make Them Better, once again confirms this basic lore of golf, specifically mentions how their data disproves Pelz's assertions, and adds data about how handicap correlates with optimal go-by speeds -- a truly original contribution).
3. Pelz is very weak in almost everything he writes about HOW the movements or techniques he recommends should be learned or performed, apart from his training gizmos (e.g., impact tape and stroke track). He simply says "make it happen in this pattern, make it happen repeatedly, use my gizmos to foster this, and there you have it -- you're optimized." This approach is founded on a stale motor-learning approach from the sports psychology of the early 1970s (so-called "muscle memory" and "grooving" patterns of movement) that has been left way behind by sports science since then in favor of acknowledging the major advances in neuroscience and motor behavior (learning and performance) that incorporates the importance of cognitive structures for appropriate processing of relevant perceptual cues and the staging and integration of targeting with movement. In short, you have to know why things are supposed to work the way they do so you can pay attention to how best to make them happen. The payoff is in the "how best to make them happen" phase. For example, the best way to make a straight back stroke with a shoulder pendulum style putting, according to Pelz, is what? How do you do it? That's what I teach.
4. The reason Pelz doesn't really teach HOW to do what he says is best to do is because he takes a "robotic" or "machine" approach to putting and does not know very much about how the human brain and body work for targeting and stroke movement. His Perfy is the perfect example: Perfy is worthless unless a human a) designs him; b) assembles him; c) positions and aims him; and d) moves him. In real putting, it is the human's positioning and aiming and moving that matters. Pelz tells you something about how the physics ought to end up working (PILS) but doesn't know how to get you there in a stable, consistent, confident, optimal way. The concept of "muscle memory" so often tossed about by jocks and gurus is never mentioned as such in neuroscience. Instead, in the neuroscience of movement, there is a complex system of neural components that contribute aspects to the movement each time (basil ganglia, cortex, cerebellum, spinal cord, etc.) coordinating basic systems (arousal, attention) with the specific situation (body-sense or proprioception, targeting and spatial mapping, muscle-activation patterns for balistic force, direction and timing with antagonistic muscle-activation for braking timing) in an integrated way (spatial mapping from somatosensory inputs guides the motor cortex in its selection of the muscle-activation pattern for direction and distance in processes like neural population survey coding). While there is some long-term potentiation that somewhat fuses various body-sense and other cues in a "straight stroke," every putt is actually different and there really is no "distance" or "touch" muscle-memory that can be learned once and committed to memory like a multiplication table. The real process for purposes of optimizing performance is more subtle and complex, but not that hard to master if you know how it works and how to use it. That's what I teach.
If you want to know, you have to ask. If you ask, I'll be glad to share what I know.
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 10,000 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
1. I didn't know Pelz passed off others' work as his own; but as a compilation, I dervived interesting ideas. However, I find it offensive that when others ask him "why does so and so -- a successful tour pro -- seem to hit off toe, or heel, or die at hole", his answer "Well, imagine how much better & more tour wins he'd have if he followed my methods"! We all have different skill sets, and if we can find a consistent way to make them work, then that's the ticket.
2. I never felt that a mechanical robot was the answer, because we're human.
3. Some of my ideas are necessarily culled from what I've read, seen and heard, but here goes:
A. We evolved over millions of years, and are extremely able to adapt. Think about how complex driving a car is -- we rely on spatial cues, our feel, sense of timing, proprioceptive, visual, etc. -- and we can rent a different car, borrow a friend's car, and within a few minutes comfortably navigate. Another analogy -- a skilled secretary who changes jobs. Different keyboard and monitor, but can within a few minutes acclimate and get job done as well. So, we have an innate ability to process automatically and adjust by feel.
B. What makes putting and the golf swing so vexing is that what we're biologically designed to do -- focus on the target -- is the nemesis of a good "swing". That's why successful athletes (including myself) can't fathom why we can play other sports so well, and not consistently hit a static object. But it's because it's static that makes it so difficult UNTIL one breaks through and learns to feel the clubhead or putterhead moving and accelerating THROUGH the object, rather than hitting AT IT.
C. What I'm working with right now -- aside from good solid mechanics -- is training to trust myself to stroke firmly through the ball, and not be so ball oriented; when I'm putting well, I see a 3-5 inch "blurry white line" for the path through the ball that I'm trying to get my putterhead through. But that comes and goes; I think first one has to learn what it feels like for the pendulum/ centrifugal and centripedal forces to be at work, and then to 'remember' to let oneself feel them each time.
D. And yes, I completely agree that each putt is a different event. It's funny, but 3 years ago to try to be more precise, I tried plumb bobbing -- never did it before, and it really messed up my head for 2 months. Why? Because my game is based on touch & feel. Pelz would say I'm wrong, and you might disagree, but I truly feel that with as much experience playing, that I assimilate the feel, speed and slope instinctively, without looking at the grain, measuring the dewpoint, looking where the sun is setting, where the mountain or lake is, whether the grass clippings near the hole are rought or smooth, etc. For a type A obsessive like me who already has enough in my head, that's too much. I really feel that I somehow sense automatically the feel, slope, etc. by observing my chip on the green, or seeing how others roll, etc. That's just experiential -- now I"m not always good at TRUSTING it (which is amazing -- I can spot where the apex of the break may be, yet still not roll the ball to that spot).
D. So what tricks / tips to allow myself to trust to roll through the ball and completely to the hole? Why do so many of us putt short of the break, short of the hole, lag short, chip short, etc.? It's so universal, there must be a reason, and there's gotta be a "trick" to "trick ourselves". For example, and again, when I'm putting well, I'm not even looking at the cup -- if it's a fast green, for me I might imagine a 'hole' 1/2 in my line, and putt to that ; if a slow green, the imaginary "hole" might be 3/4 of the way to the hole, etc. -- that's a personal preference, based on my own "feel" and how I putt --- I actually putt worse when I'm trying to putt "to the hole" -- on those 3-6 footers you talk about.
Let me respond specifically to what you write (your observation, followed by my comments):
1. I didn't know Pelz passed off others' work as his own; but as a compilation, I dervived interesting ideas.
// Sure. Anyone who makes you think about putting will help you generate interesting ideas. I've read every book ever written about putting (in English), and all of them have something interesting in them. The question for a specific teacher is how does he approach the material and make use of it as he sorts it all out. The question for the student golfer is whether that approach is the one that will do him the most good at this point in his skills development. Pelz is very good for golfers at a certain skill level, and then he loses his charm. He helps bad golfers stop being so bad, sort of like getting kids with crayons to start coloring inside the lines in the coloring book. But Pelz is not very good at helping at the next level.
However, I find it offensive that when others ask him "why does so and so -- a successful tour pro -- seem to hit off toe, or heel, or die at hole", his answer "Well, imagine how much better & more tour wins he'd have if he followed my methods"! We all have different skill sets, and if we can find a consistent way to make them work, then that's the ticket.
// What I find is that it is not really best to approach putting as a matter of coordinating our set of skills as they have individually developed. From a deeper point of view, it is all about developing the most effective set of skills. One of the main problems in existing golf lore for putting is that it doesn't go deep enough into the human body to work with and tap its potential for movement control, instinctive or mechanical. Golfers, from a biological and neurophysiological point of view, are all pretty much alike and the fundamental skills in putting are pretty much the same for all players. Different players start out with their skills operating closer to optimum, and with a whole set that works better together than others may have, but most of what I do is take a lifelong golfer and show him how to develop the skills to make him much more effective as an athletic performer.
2. I never felt that a mechanical robot was the answer, because we're human.
// And neither is a robotic approach to putting. You simply cannot tell a golfer: this is the way a perfect robot putts, so it's just a matter of "monkey see, monkey do" over and over again until you're putting nearly as well as my robot.
3. Some of my ideas are necessarily culled from what I've read, seen and heard, but here goes:
A. We evolved over millions of years, and are extremely able to adapt. Think about how complex driving a car is -- we rely on spatial cues, our feel, sense of timing, proprioceptive, visual, etc. -- and we can rent a different car, borrow a friend's car, and within a few minutes comfortably navigate. Another analogy -- a skilled secretary who changes jobs. Different keyboard and monitor, but can within a few minutes acclimate and get job done as well. So, we have an innate ability to process automatically and adjust by feel.
// These concepts "process automatically" and "feel" are too vague to me. It's not that I don't think they are helpful to understand or that they are not very important -- it's just that I want to understand what is meant by these vague phrases specifically, in terms of biological and neurological process (not especially psychology, by the way) and in operational or functional terms about what happens and how you foster the process of adjustment and feel. I spend almost all of my time "mining" neuroscience literature so that I can understand what I call "the mechanics of instinct" so I can tell golfers very very specific things to notice and do to GIVE them feel or to help them get in contact with their sense of feel.
B. What makes putting and the golf swing so vexing is that what we're biologically designed to do -- focus on the target -- is the nemesis of a good "swing". That's why successful athletes (including myself) can't fathom why we can play other sports so well, and not consistently hit a static object. But it's because it's static that makes it so difficult UNTIL one breaks through and learns to feel the clubhead or putterhead moving and accelerating THROUGH the object, rather than hitting AT IT.
// There's that key concept again: "feel the clubhead or putterhead moving and accelerating THROUGH the object, rather than hitting AT IT." Now this isuse of "feel" is slightly less abstract and doctinaire than the notion of "feel" in golf. Here, "feel" means experience the changing positions and movements of body parts and their relations in the course of the stroke, and monitor this pattern to help make it conform to learned expectations about how the pattern should register as a "feeling" of the stroke. The trouble with your formulation of the experience is actually one of the neurology of HOW the stroke is made. Your approach is to "feel" the clubhead as it moves. This is a specific mode of using your somatosensory cortex, and it is only one of several ways to skin the cat. Another is to "feel" the hands moving back and thru. Another is to "feel" the shoulderframe rocking down and back and then returning up and forward. The point is that in the brain we can consciously attend to specific areas of our body in the movement, and we can imaginatively construct a "feel" for a part of an object connected to our body as it moves. The choice activates one area of the brain more than another, as a matter of habit. In putting, when you really get a routine way of doing things, you want to stick with one and only one pattern of cortical activation for the stroke itself -- one "way" to feel the stroke. When you make the choice about this, it should dovetail with what else you know about putting's problems and what is the best mix of solutions. In my approach, the total coordination of the body with the action of targeting and stroking comprehends the hands, putterhead, arms, shoulder, torso, abdomen, and lower body, and all the rest together as a functioning unit. This approach elevates "tempo" as the King and Queen of movement coordination, and tempo underlies the skill of coordinating "feel" (regardless of your focus on body part or putterhead) of the whole collection of moving parts. Because of this, tempo is the foundation of accuracy in stroke movement. If you have a stable repeating tempo, your stroke will more accurately match the intended line of the stroke and your pattern of motion in the stroke will be consistent. Because of this, tempo is also the foundation of targeting as well. That's because in targeting for "action" of the putt itself, the brain relies upon your pattern of movement (coordinated by tempo) to imaginatively simulate the future as it investigates and sorts out the aiming of your setup, in anticipation of reproducing the stroke on this occasion. Learn the stroke first, and always use the same stroke pattern (except for amplitude). Aim this stroke. Never aim (identify a putt path of start line or target destination) and then make a stroke to make the ball go where you intend. Aim your stroke. If the stroke is not aimed so that your stroke MUST send the ball down the startline, over the path, and to the target, you haven't finished aiming yet. Once aimed, you simply make a stroke. There is of course the matter of how fast the putterhead needs to be moving at impact, but that is also mostly tempo.
A related problem is the notion of "accelerating" through the ball and stroking thru and not AT the ball. Unfortunately, golf lore is the repository of "preventatives" to avoid ills as well as "prescriptions" for doing well. The "preventatives" are for golfers stuck at the "help me stop being so bad" level. Beyond this usefulness, the "preventatives" are simply wrongheaded and do more harm than good. One of the worst offenders is the constant drumbeat from golf instructors and other golfers of the absolute necessity of "accelerating thru impact" in the putting stroke. This is a piece of flotsam floating on the fetid seas of the collective golfing mind. The advice helps golfers who have a bad movement pattern by "forcing" something more in the functionally helpful direction, but fundamentally that's a stopgap approach to understanding how the stroke movement works in an integral way with tempo and targeting. The antidote to this poison is to take a closer look at pendular motion as a matter of physics (now, not during every putt). In a pendular swing, the bob starts at rest at the top of a backstroke and GRADUALLY and SMOOTHLY gains speed as it falls, reaching its maximum speed at the bottom of the arc, and then symmetrically repeating the motion pattern in reverse as it GRADUALLY and SMOOTHLY slows down to a complete stop at the end of the stroke. Gravity causes this pattern, and our gravity on earth depends upon how big and dense the planet is. But thank goodness the gravity on earth doesn't change much from day to day or place to place. So, gravity makes a pendular motion that inherently requires ACCELERATION, and acceleration of a very specific character (from 0 to X at a steady rate of increase set by gravity, and the rate is 32 feet per second faster for every second of fall, or 12x32= 384 inches per second faster for each second the pendulum is falling.) The total amount of time it takes for any specific pendulum to move from one side to the other does not depend upon the weight of the pendulum or even how far back from the bottom of the arc it starts. For any given pendulm, the only thing that matters for this amount of time is the LENGTH of the rod from pivot to bob. For an adult holding a 35" putter, this length is about four to four and one-half feet from top of sternum (pivot) to bottom of putterhead (bob) (48" to 54"). The amount of time such a pendulum freely swings by gravity from one side to another is its TEMPO. This tempo is simply physics, not human action. The time is always the same, and is very close to one second (as it happens). To see this, suspend a putter between your thumb and index holding the top of the handle, pull the putterhead back 10 or 20 inches, and release it and watch how long it takes to get to the top of the other side.
The point of all this is that every stroke will NATURALLY have a perfectly repeating pattern of acceleration in it, UNLESS YOU MESS IT UP with your muscles. If you try to use your muscles to get something close to this free-fall pattern, it is a little like trying to play a Hadyn trumpet sonata by blowing on the handle end of a toilet plunger. You might make some kind of noise, but good luck! The very definition of "hit" is voluntary muscle activation to propel the putterhead in a certain pattern of motion that is gaining speed as it nears impact. ANY voluntary muscle action is "away from the direction of goodness," as the Morton Thiokol engineers so poetically described what happens on the Challenger Space Shuttle when the rubber O-rings sealing stages of the rocket get too cold and allow the raging conflagration of exploding rocket fuel to spew out the side and cook the attached fuel tank. So, your formulation of the problem has an unresolved conflict embedded in it: yes, acceleration is a goal, and hit is to avoided, but your approach to acceleration REQUIRES "hit." The advice "accelerate thru impact" is a way to get golfers to add a positive sort of "hit" to their stroke pattern to avoid a bad stroke pattern (decelerating). Forget all that, and try to have a stroke that stays pretty close to a natural pattern of motion without "hit." It's got plenty of accleration and not an ounce of deceleration, so what's the need for the "hit"?
So, to help you stroke thru the ball rather than "hit" AT IT, forget about accelerating thru the ball by voluntary muscle activation and try to see how the putterhead "does the work" if you just leave it the hell alone. (I'm not plowing virgin soil here. Loren Roberts and Michael Corcoran in the PGA Tour Manual of Golf agree with me, although neither quite understands the matter fully, as do all those golfers who repeat the mantra "let the putterhead do the work.")
From a neurophysiological point of view, it is worth commenting in passing that the notions of "stroking thru" the ball versus "hitting at" the ball rely upon distinct collections of neurons. First, there is the internal representation of the important features of space at and around the ball. For "hitting at," the neurons activated are those that focus on the back of the ball and monitor the putterhead's motion into this point in anticipation of the timing of contact. (These are somatosensory neurons combining visual and body-sense inputs from the eyes and our body during the stroke motion.) For "stroking thru," the focus is not so much visually on the back of the ball and the impact is not anticipated with such precision as an event in itself, and instead there is a place for the trajectory of the putterhead (really the middle of the putterhead) like a flight path coming into and thru the ball, and the ball just gets in the way. (This is activating a different collection of neurons in the somatosensory cortex -- related, close, a little overlapping, but not the same.) In developing your "skill," you probably ought to choose one of these two patterns consciously and then use it all the time, but I suspect it's not quite that clear cut, and that on some occasions you need to retain a little flexibility to handle other problems as they present themselves. In general, if you generally plan to use one almost all the time, and get in that habit, it's ok to vary off the pattern every once in a while. And with a "habit" you are excused from the necessity of consciously having to "intend" to use a specific pattern, so that's helpful, but consciously intending is not harmful and is ok, too.
C. What I'm working with right now -- aside from good solid mechanics -- is training to trust myself to stroke firmly through the ball, and not be so ball oriented; when I'm putting well, I see a 3-5 inch "blurry white line" for the path through the ball that I'm trying to get my putterhead through. But that comes and goes; I think first one has to learn what it feels like for the pendulum/ centrifugal and centripedal forces to be at work, and then to 'remember' to let oneself feel them each time.
// I agree that learning the "feel" of a pendulum stroke is an essential ingredient of a consistent stroke pattern as you describe, but there is usually some confusion over that that pattern is or ought to be. As you speak of stroking "firmly" thru the ball, I would encourage you to concentrate instead on tempo and a smooth pattern of acceleration that is gradually picking up steam all the way to impact, and is not being forced to be "firm" in any particular way. Any stroke that keeps accelerating up to impact is good enough to avoid the main problems of bad golfers. The real problem is golfers steadfastly refuse to "trust" that this is good enough to send the ball far enough over the surface. (The concept of "trust" to me means -- "don't mess it up!" It's not really a positive thing to do, or even a positive way to think about the stroke. Instead, just don't mess it up! Messing it up is part of trying hard, and trying to manage the stroke in ways that aren't especially helpful or effective. There are many many things golfers figure they need to be doing in the action of a putt that they would be much better off forgetting about altogether. In this sense, "trust it" means quit getting involved in the action as an ad hoc problem solver - you aren't that good at it!) As to how far the ball will go if you use a natural acceleration pattern that lets the putterhead do the work, the answer is: "More than you'll ever need on any green in the World." So, it's possible to putt without the "firmness" business in the stroke, and I believe it is better. But let's discuss firmness just a moment.
"Firmness" in the stroke implies a pattern of grip pressure and forearms or possibly back muscles "powering" the stroke motion (and probably not the wrists of hands/fingers). This again is "hit." Try gripping a club handle and tightening and loosening the grip pressure WITHOUT involving the forearm's underside muscles AT ALL. You really have to work at it to REDUCE but not eliminate the forearm muscles, because these are the muscles that operate the hand in closing. The forearm ligaments tug the fingers closed. Put your thumb on your pulse at your wrist and open and close your fingers to feel this. So "firming up" the stroke most usually means activating the forearm muscles to add a little "power" to the stroke. Why do you want to do that? To avoid deceleration? To ensure you have sufficient send in the putt? To straighten the stroke path out? Let me suggest this: deceleration is not the problem for a good putter; power is a fake issue so long as you have a decent stroke motion and tempo; and the only problem with the straightness of the stroke is in not aiming your stroke as a whole system before you pull the trigger, and then it's a matter of "not messing it up" with something voluntarily attempted to manage the path. This all starts with a basic disbelief in your ability to control the distance without hit or firmness in the stroke. Unfortunately, so long as you depend upon a firm stroke, your ability to control distances precisely (or your "sense of touch") will remain diminished from what it could be. Real "touch" is not so much a matter of sensitivity in the fingers or elsewhere as it is a matter of getting the stroke's top accleration adjusted without coming out of the repeating pattern of gradual acceleration close to the pattern gravity makes. This is a matter of the length of the backstroke from which the stroke begins to come down, and not at all a matter of "choosing" or "trying to get" the "firmness just so. And the backstroke comes from targeting, when your brain is ready and planning on using the pendulum motion pattern and your controlling tempo. The brain just simply sets the backstroke's top or point of rest automatically or by instinct, as they say. How it works is the cerebellum relies upon the tempo and motion pattern you habitually use, and just adds targeting to the mix to set the backstroke. It's a transparent, thoughtless, effortless process -- so stay out of it and don't mess it up. If you have to tell yourself something, try "one potato, two" or "just roll the ball all the way to the target."
D. And yes, I completely agree that each putt is a different event. It's funny, but 3 years ago to try to be more precise, I tried plumb bobbing -- never did it before, and it really messed up my head for 2 months. Why? Because my game is based on touch & feel. Pelz would say I'm wrong, and you might disagree, but I truly feel that with as much experience playing, that I assimilate the feel, speed and slope instinctively, without looking at the grain, measuring the dewpoint, looking where the sun is setting, where the mountain or lake is, whether the grass clippings near the hole are rought or smooth, etc. For a type A obsessive like me who already has enough in my head, that's too much. I really feel that I somehow sense automatically the feel, slope, etc. by observing my chip on the green, or seeing how others roll, etc. That's just experiential -- now I"m not always good at TRUSTING it (which is amazing -- I can spot where the apex of the break may be, yet still not roll the ball to that spot).
// It's the "somehow" that I teach.
D. So what tricks / tips to allow myself to trust to roll through the ball and completely to the hole? Why do so many of us putt short of the break, short of the hole, lag short, chip short, etc.? It's so universal, there must be a reason, and there's gotta be a "trick" to "trick ourselves". For example, and again, when I'm putting well, I'm not even looking at the cup -- if it's a fast green, for me I might imagine a 'hole' 1/2 in my line, and putt to that ; if a slow green, the imaginary "hole" might be 3/4 of the way to the hole, etc. -- that's a personal preference, based on my own "feel" and how I putt --- I actually putt worse when I'm trying to putt "to the hole" -- on those 3-6 footers you talk about.
// More of this anon.
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 10,000 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
Yes, that's one of my mantras -- just stay the hell out of my way; amazing when I'm swinging well off the tee, I feel the bottom of the clubhead's weight and just let it do its thing, and the same with the putterhead.