My name is Tim Sheredy and I am currently Assistant Director at the David
Leadbetter Golf Academy in Bradenton, Florida.
I find your info very interesting. Where did you find the
pictures of the all time great putters and what in your mind makes up a solid
putting set-up (elbow position, ball placement, etc). Thank you for your time
and I'll talk to you soon. My email address is tjsheredy@hotmail.com.
Thanks for the note! and the questions! I love getting questions like that.
The pictures come from my research. I've read everything significant about putting from the 1880s to today, and of course I've also read a lot of other golf books. As I come across photos that illustrate an important point of technique or history, I keep a record and usually scan the photo into a digital format in my computer. That includes other golf teachers. (I've got two of you!)
As to setup, speaking about a conventional putter, I build the setup from the stroke ideal back. So, I want a straight back, straight thru (for at least 1' either side) path with square impact and dead fingers hands and arms and shoulders that sends the ball square out of my setup exactly the same every time with a nice roll. This ends up being something like the following, but it actually varies somewhat with the putter, the build of the golfer, and the actual stroke dynamics:
Set gaze first straight ahead level with good posture
Feet apart about as wide as shoulders
Set head with gaze straight vertical down above the ball so that chin and forehead are about the same elevation (no tilt in face)
Weight distributed slightly towards balls of feet for balance and weight even on both feet left and right
Itty bitty knee flex with butt out but not noticeably so also for balance
Let arms hang so that upper arms hang straight down like posts hanging on rope (this requires a grip low on a 35" putter or a shorter putter; otherwise your elbows get forced in to your hips too much or you get pushed back away from the ball)
Forearms match lie angle of shaft Inside edge of forearm and top of thumbs make a flat straight line, so wrists are angled down a bit
Hands hanging with centers of palms in mid-thighs halfway between knees and crotch
Hands just a wee bit out from elbows due to forearm angle & wrist bend
Looking down at ball, thumbs appear just inside line across both big toes
Ball position forward in stance just inside left heel about two inches forward of bottom of stroke
Putter not gripped until after final fine tuning of face aiming
Putter face sweetspot EXACTLY behind the very dimple on the back I intend to contact or at worst a wee wee bit inside and never outside this dimple
Putter face EXACTLY perpendicular to a line thru the center of the ball from this back dimple out the front dimple (which line matches the start line of the putt)
Palms opposing on the handle so that all joint pairs are parallel left of startline, especially shoulder sockets I have an unusual grip but I don't insist on it (triple overlap last 3 on right on top of last 3 on left with right fingers offset forward to the gaps with both index fingers down shaft and both thumbs pretty straight and a bit side by side and a bit right on top and 1/2 a thumb lower)
Grip pressure light and never changes once stroke set to begin The setup can vary somewhat from golfer to golfer, and targeting is more important than setup, but some features of setup help targeting (gaze, especially).
In the above, the distance of the ball out from the stance is determined solely by the body -- the distance from the pupils to the shoulder sockets with the head above the ball and the gaze straight (about 8-9 inches from almost all golfers). With the chin and forehead at the same height and the gaze straight ahead, there are certain perceptions and relations that converge that are not otherwise available. This is also the ideal expert pattern up until about 1975 and among some of the top putters even today (e.g., Faxon). If the golfer sets up a little farther from the ball than his body, he will have to have his face tilted up (forehead higher off ground than chin). This almost always requires the golfer to direct his gaze down his cheeks (often as much as 30 degrees), and this causes targeting problems. An important safeguard here is to make sure that IF the golfer has to have his head up, this does not necessarily mean he has to have his gaze angled down. And it is really the gaze angle, and not the face tilt, that causes the biggest problems. So, keep the gaze straight ahead no matter what the ball-eye relation, and you can avoid most of the misperceptions. (The flat face is still better, though, for other reasons.) Faldo has a pretty good setup. David Gossett does not.
Faldo's head is fairly flat above ball, but not totally. Gossett's face is tilted about 25 degrees up and his gaze is a little down the cheek (not too bad, though). He's currently 120th in putts per GIR, which ain't good enough in the long haul.
On the page Setup I have a photo of Jim Flick looking to the target as seen from the target. Notice Flick's glasses frame - the line across the top of his glasses is now vertical, indicating he was able to make a smooth head turn to the target without eye muscle changes or odd head motion compensations. So, that's what a "straight gaze" is about -- optimal targeting by eliminating extraneous eye and head movements to allow vision and body position-sense to teach the golfer the true location of the target.
There is a lot more to putting than setup. It's mostly how a consistent setup and stroke technique can be aimed as a whole movement in 4 dimensions. Most of aiming boils down sooner or later to tempo, which ought to strike you as a fairly novel notion. Pelz is VERY wrong on tempo, by the way.)
I would love to drop by Bradenton some time and make a presentation to you or anyone else serious about putting. Over the past ten years, I've covered a lot of ground, and most of it is not represented in the conventional lore. I teach golf professionals for free so long as I can get there, and in the case of Florida I go there fairly frequently. I'll be in the La Quinta area later this spring, and then I'm coming to the Jacksonville-Daytona-Orlando area in June for a week. Perhaps I can get over to Bradenton then. Let me know if you're interested.
By the way, I'm a regular reader of the Bradenton Herald! and a friend of Robert Winters from NBC Sports' Golf.com, where I wrote putting articles. I also met Jonathan Yarwood at the PGA Merchandise Show this past January. (Swing gurus don't seem too interested in putting, as a class.)
Thanks for your time and email, I have more questions since I am enthralled about learning all there is about putting.
What is straight gaze? What is Pelz wrong about with tempo, please explain?
Do you believe the longer the stroke the more it will eventually go inside?
It would be great if you could stop by Bradenton to speak to some of us. A Saturday around 12:00 would be perfect, you could speak for the afternoon. If you need a place to stay I could set something up with IMG. Let me know the date and if you can come. We have had Scotty Cameron, Dr. Craig Farnsworth and Tony Kiew from Maya golf here to give putting presentations, so yours would be great.
My golf background is as follows; Graduated Ferris State with a PGM degree, then worked at Grand Cypress Academy of Golf for two years. I was Phil Rodgers assistant in his short game schools. After Grand Cypress, I began working for David, I have been with him for the past five years. I was in Las Vegas for DLGA for one year and Austria for one year, the remaining years I have been in Bradenton.I am a Class "A" PGA Professional.
I work with some of the top junior players in the world. We have over 180 full time students here at the academy. It is very exciting to work here. I am extremely enthusiastic to learn and I am a sponge to knowledge about the game of golf. So, I greatly appreciate your time and efforts. Mark Reid and Jonathon Yarwood both work at this academy.
The images you sent were not available, there were no pictures. Thanks again for your help, let me know about June and next time I will discuss some of my views, but I am off to the lesson tee.
A "straight gaze" is what you have when you stand with good posture on the shore and look to the ocean's horizon at a ship. Your two eyes are pointed directly out of your face, so that your line of sight is parallel to the ground and perpendicular to a true vertical and also perpendicular to the "plane" of your face (so to speak). By far, most golfers over the ball at setup have their gaze directed at an angle downward, like when you are reading a book. The gaze runs down somewhat across the cheeks. When the gaze is straight out of the head, straight ahead, your dominant eye's field of vision is framed by your nose and your eyebrows and only the merest suggestion of cheek.
You can notice that if you wear glasses, the aim spot of a straight-ahead gaze passes thru the lens in only one spot, and this spot is always the same. You could paint it with a magic marker as a training aid. If you setup by placing your head above the ball looking thru this aim spot, you will not see the ball unless your head is positioned the way Billy Casper, Bobby Locke, Bob Rosburg and most great putters position their heads. That is, with the back of the head flat, the forehead and chin the same distance above the ground. If you wear glasses, the side frames would be perfectly vertical. In the above drawing, imagine peering thru a drinking straw held parallel to the surface and then keeping the straw at this orientation to the face and head as you bent the head over to look down at the ball. You will not get the ball into the straw until your head is flat.
Why is this important? Again, imagining the straw held to the pupil of the dominant eye, but this time the straw is angled down a bit (say 20 to 30 degrees down from horizontal). Now, when you bend to "look at" the ball, the ball comes into view before the forehead lowers to the same height as the chin, and the head is not flat but tilted up (also about 20 to 30 degrees, the same angle as the straw). Keeping the straw ay this orientation, turn towards the target to "look at" the hole off to your side. Watch what happens to the direction of gaze thru the straw -- it runs hard off to the left in a curling manner. This is why golfers with this setup have a targeting problem. I strongly suspect the recent "fix" of Charles Howell's putting setup was not a good fix, but I would have to see exactly what he is doing. Golfers with the gaze angled down the face at address cannot simply turn to the target and observe the "line" along the ground with a quiet, still eye position. Instead, either their heads are constantly adjusting or their eye muscles are constantly adjusting or both, to compensate for the curling off line of the gaze due to the angle down the face. It is possible to look straight out thru a straw as described and stand back from the ball a bit, and then bend the head until the ball comes into view. This also results in a tilted face with the forehead up a bit, but this time there is a significant difference: the gaze is straight out of the face and not down the cheek. This time, when you turn the head towards the target, the gaze moves straight along the true target line on the ground with relaxed unmoving eyes and without odd head position compensations. So, it is not the face tilt that is causing the poor perceptions; it is the angle of the gaze.
I have a scientific paper on this gaze business now pending for publication with the World Scientific Congress on Golf and the paper goes into this issue somewhat deeper and discusses the related neurophysiology of perceptual processes, especially visual and proprioceptive processes of spatial cognition.
Pelz's tempo teaching is to place two bean bags about two feet apart and make strokes between them to a metronome that is initially set to your "walking pace". The "walking pace" is supposed to reveal something about your "characteristic" personality and movement tempo. (There is no theory here; it's hooey.) Most people instructed to walk while counting paces as someone times 60 seconds worth of walking end up with about 75 or more steps. Pelz believes this is a standard "gait" as if this is a "natural" tempo. Baloney. Even worse, he sets the metronome TO START WITH at this walking pace (about 75 beats per minute) and then advises the golfer to keep bumping the metronome's rate UP 5 beats per minute at a jump until the stroke "feels right." What vague garbage. The end result is that golfers end up with a stroke tempo of 85 to 95 beats per minute. This tempo relates to a total stroke time of something like 1.5 seconds from start to finish. Way too fast! Top pros have been timed from start to finish, and it's a lot slower than this! Nick Price was timed at 1.85 seconds and Chip Beck at 1.92 seconds from start to finish (I'm slower than that). Price's metronome setting would be about 65 beats per minute. Gravity moves the putter at about 60 beats per minute, and my tempo is close to gravity's. Pelz is off by at least 25% of the total timing of a good stroke, in a game where a 5% error in your timing consistency is HUGE. Pelz's approach is completely wrong.
The better approach is one that recognizes the fact that the cerebellum controls timing and fluidity of motion (or smoothness) and not the basal ganglia as Pelz suggests. The cerebellum can handle a wide range of tempos, and there really is not a natural tempo in the sense of a "main" tempo that one uses every day that is most suited for putting. That's why some "rap" putters are very good! The real question instead is what is a good tempo to choose and why. The way to sort this out is to pay attention to the physics of the stroke and to the processes of perceptions and movement control. Each of these areas of concern (physics, perception, and movement motor control) are intimately understandable as matters of timing. In physics, a slow tempo is better because the starts and stops of the putter are more gradual and less prone to jerkiness or snatching. In perceptions, visual processes require at least 1/4th of a second to get a good registration of objects in motion (as a pitched fastball in baseball). And in a 1.85 second / 65 beats per minute stroke like Nick Price's, there are really two separate parts (from ball to top of backstroke, and from top of backstroke to impact). Of these, the important one is backstroke to impact, and this is only about 1/4th of the total stroke timing. For a 1.5 second stroke like Pelz's, you have no more than 3/8th of a second as the putter comes into impact, and most of this is outside peripheral vision. Once the stroke gets well into the field of view, this 1.5 second stroke allows less than 1/4th second for error correction. This effectively eliminates hand-eye coordination in the downstroke. This is not a good thing. So, for perception, slower is better, too. And finally, in motor processes, there is a huge difference between "ballistic" motion and controlled or "smooth" graduated motion. A ballistic motion is totally controlled by the firing of agonist muscles from the motor cortex control centers. A smooth move, however, is a finely timed matching of agonist muscle activity controlled by the cortex with the braking antagonist muscle action controlled by the cerebellum. The timing is the key. For this, the cerebellum relies heavily on input signalling from body parts (proprioception) as the movement progresses and upon cross signalling with the cortex firing of the agonist muscles. Again, for the move to be coordinated well, slowness is prefereable. In summary, a SLOW tempo is much better for distance control, solid square impact, and other key aspects of putting. Pelz does not in the least understand this line of approach to tempo.
Yes, the stroke eventually goes inside, and I always teach that you want a stroke straight on either side of the ball, but beyond about 1 foot either way I don't concern myself with the straightness of the stroke.
I need to stop for now, but let's continue this later. I would certainly love to visit with you and others, and I will go ahead and start making some plans. We can discuss staying overnight later, since I can usually travel about 300-400 miles in a round trip without too much of a problem.
Thank you very much for coming down, we really enjoyed it. All of the instructors names on on our website, http://www.imgacadamies.com. Then click for our academy. Thanks again for your help, talk to you soon.
I've reproduced this correspondence on a separate webpage, complete with photos and graphic illustrations of the points we've been discussing. It's here: http://puttingzone.com/sheredy.html.
I do all my website stuff by myself and always have, so I come across tons of great digital pictures. And I also take along a digital camera when I go to pro events. If you need some of these photos in your instruction, you can get them fairly easily here: