Dear Albert,
Thanks for your kind words!
The gist of excellent putting is 1) distance control, 2) a straight stroke out of a consistent setup, and 3) green and putt reading and targeting. Away from a golf course, you can work on the first two and some skills involved in the third.
Distance Control: The key to distance control is tempo plus taregting. It works like this-- Whatever tempo you like, stick to it for every stroke, regardless of the distance of the putt. The tempo is the time your stroke requires to go from top of backstroke to top of thrustroke (and others include the time from starting the stroke to the top of the backstroke as well). So, obviously, for different distances, your stroke LENGTH will vary and get longer for longer distances, but the total time of the stroke will stay the same. The result is longer strokes move faster, and a little longer stroke moves a little faster, so that any given stroke length correlates EXACTLY to a putterhead speed at impact. And this correspondence of length and speed remains stable every day on different greens. The $64,000 question is how do you establish the stroke length for a given distance of putt. The answer is simple: targeting.
The elements of distance control are 1) heft of putterhead, 2) weight or mass of ball, 3) green surface speed, 4) tempo, and 5) targeting. Clearly, the heft of the putterhead and weight of the ball are fixed every day (don't switch from balata to surlyn balls, by the way -- stick with only one type for practice and play). Likewise, you have nothing to do with green speed other than to familiarize yourself with it for that day or that green. If you take my advice, your tempo is also fixed from practice at a preselected timing. That leaves only one variable: targeting. Inside the brain, these elements are combined in the cerebellum, which then instinctively programs the length of your backstroke before you pull the trigger. Here's how--
The cerebellum receives input from your eyes, sense of balance, and sense of body positions and muscle states. In sending or rolling the ball the correct distance, the cerebellum takes into account the putter, the ball, the green speed, and your body's location and well-learned stroke movements in the selected tempo. You then turn to look at the target, and the changes in perception from the eyes, inner ear, and body positions from turning the head and neck feed the target location into the mix. The cerebellum then simulates the stroke that will apply just the right timing in your tempo to send the ball just the right distance to the target. This mental simulation of the stroke is not something that occurs in the conscious mind, as the cerebellum is unconnected to the cortex and consciousness. It's more like a cauliflower stuck on the back of the head -- you just can't listen to it or talk to it at all. None. So don't try. Just say to yourself, "Stroke with my tempo and let the targeting establish whatever backstroke length happens." Or-- "Roll the ball all the way into the hole."
So, at address, you know quite a bit about the green speed and the distance of the putt, and you final targeting movements (looking from the ball along the path on the ground to the target) feeds your cerebellum the missing ingredient that sets the backstroke length inside your tempo. You then pull the trigger and your conscious mind has nothing to do other than observe whatever backstroke results, sticking to your tempo like a conductor leading an orchestra.
The tempo can be whatever you want, really, but you should want what is best for sinking putts. According to my way of thinking, a tempo of about one full second from top of backstroke to top of thrustroke is very good, because it is a hitless tempo that relies on the regularity of gravity to power the stroke, so you get a VERY consistent pattern that does not rely upon human-body variableness day to day. When I putt, I target as sharply as I can and think: "One potato" as I take the putter back and let it coast to its full backstroke extent, and then on the downstroke to impact I think "two" and make solid contact. This keeps my stroke in sync with the pendulum movement fostered solely by gravity, so my hands and grip are simply riding the putter handle and NOT MESSING IT UP. To see the same tempo totally without muscle action, just hold your putter between the fingertips at the top of the handle and let it swing like a pendulm back and thru and count "one potato" from one side to the other, or say "two" as it moves from top of backstroke to the bottom of the arc right at impact. Then replace both hands on the handle and make the same tempo stroke and feel your hands simply riding on the handle, not pushing or pulling it.
The targeting is mostly the way you turn your neck, and not all that much about what you look at or see. So long as you gaze is controlled by your head turn and not shifting of the eye mucles to redirect your gaze direction, your head turn will "run" your gaze or line of sight along a certain path on the ground during the head turn. If your gaze is directed straight out of your face, and not down your cheeks, the head turn will run the line of sight in a straight line on the ground (assuming the head turn is oriented in the plane of the putt). It's sort of like your head is a Ferris Wheel with only two buckets or gondolas on it (one for each eye), and the axis of the wheel is your neck. The gaze direction starts out straight down as the gondolas are at the bottom of the wheel, then you turn the head (wheel) targetward and the two gondolas ride in the plane of the putt up to the left a certain angle, depending upon how far away the target is. This ANGLE is what the neck sensors register and feed into the cerebellum to teach you the location of the target is relation to your body position at address.
The second aspect of the neck input is HOW FAST the head/wheel turns to the target. For this, it helps to imagine during the head turn that you are simply following a perfect putt as it rolls along the ground into the hole. Your experience shows you how to simulate this rolling pattern, as the ball nears the hole and starts to slow down, and covers the last foot or so at just the right speed, and then drops solidly into the cup. Simulating or visualizing this perfect roll as you turn the head gives your neck turn a certain pace and pattern of speed. So your neck feeds your cerebellum two key sorts of info: ANGLE and PACE. Once you target this way, and then turn the gaze back from the target to the ball, your cerebellum uses the input to establish the backstroke length. All you have to do is STICK TO YOUR TEMPO and your distance control will be dead on. So, in the final analysis, it's real thoughtless or brainless putting: think tempo, look to the target, pull the trigger ("one potato, two"), and roll the ball all the way into the hole with good speed.
To practice this, set a tee peg upside-down on a carpet some ill-defined distance away. Then setup at the ball, targeting the path between the ball and the peg as described above, and roll the ball so that it just touches but doesn't knock over the tee peg. Get at least 6 feet to 12 feet away, since too close doesn't work well, but go as far back as you want and vary the distances to keep the drill on the targeting plus tempo. You can also just practice learning your tempo. There is a computer metronome available on my Science page under the discussion of Movement Timing, and you can set it to 60 beats per minutes or just a bit faster (say, 65 bpm) and practice indoors. Make different length strokes in the same amount of time. Then connect this up with your targeting, to let the cerebellum pick your stroke length "instinctively."
To read more on this, try my tips on
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/stonecold.html -- Stone Cold Putting,
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/gaze.html -- Gaze Dead Straight for Dead Aim,
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/tempo.html -- Tempo, and
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/hickory.html -- Hickory Dickory. The tip
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/core.html -- Core Putt is all about getting a sense of green speed, but it uses a gravity-tempo stroke to show you the green speed and fosters a hitless tempo and stroke. To learn more about the eyes, read <a href="
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/eyes.html"Putt Out Your Eyes and try learning your eye's aim spot and directing your gaze along a line on the floor with a Ferris Wheel style head turn for angle and pace. The tips are all available on my website, from the Home Page (
http://puttingzone.com/ziptips1.html -- Mainline to My Tips) or from the Tips page.
Straight Stroke out of a Consistent Setup. The importance of this is that the consistency of body positions leads to consistent movements, and this allows you to have better AIM or TARGETING and better DISTANCE CONTROL. It's not really that you want consistency for consistency's sake, but you want it so the brain can use the consistency as it simulates the putt for puposes of targeting distance and for putterface control at impact. The more consistent you are, the more meaningful the feedback from your efforts, and hence you learn faster and more efficiently what is good and how to get more accurate for line and distance.
The most important aspect of straightness in the putt is whether the putterface is aimed or oriented down the starline as the putterhead moves thru impact. This is more important than the shape or path of the stroke thru impact (best if it's straight back, straight thru at least 5-6 inches either side of the ball) or whether impact occurs with the putterhead sweetspot or off the sweetspot some. So, the trick will be to use your good tempo in such a way that the putterface stays square thru impact. Everything that follows is designed to help this happen.
First, the putterface needs to be aimed correctly at address. This is no small trick. Over 90% of all golfers, pros included, are NOT GOOD at this, and their putts are doomed from the beginning. If you have a laser aid that shows you how your putterface is aimed by directing a beam over the top of the face to a card standing directly behind your target, and you only activate the beam once you THINK you have finished orienting the face squarely to the target, almost all golfers miss the target by a surprising margin left or right, inconsistently from one try to the next. This is because they are not trained to work at the aiming process in a consistent and reliable way.
To get the putterface aimed correctly, start from behind the ball about the same distance back as the putt is long. Position your dominant eye in the plane of the putt (above the line on the ground of the putt) and use this eye to sight a straight line thru the ball to the target. The ball will look like a circle from this (or any perspective), but since you have lined up the ball and target correctly, the center of this ball-circle is the location of the only dimple on the back equator of the ball you want to know. To help see this, hold your putter shaft up like a ruler, connect the ball and the target in a line along the shaft, and hold the shaft so its edge cuts right thru the middle of the ball. In the center of the ball is the dimple. Use the rule shaft to notice a spot on the ground directly behind this dimple and possibly one in front as well. Then walk into the dimple, by walking on the line into the back of the ball keeping your dominant eye on the dimple and possibly keeping the ruler lining up the ball and the target as you approach. Keep your dominant eye on the putt plane as you walk in. When you arrive behind the ball, place the putterhead's forward tip directly behind the back dimple so the face from heel to toe bisects the ball at this dimple. Then step around to the side, leaving the putterface oriented that way. Then assess the dimple again from the side by associating the back dimple like a south pole with its opposite dimple on the front equator like a north pole. These two dimples establish the start line of the putt right thru the sweetspot of the ball. Now turn the putterface and set it squarely behind the back dimple so it's sweetspot is oriented right thru the back and front dimples. You have to look at both dimples to get a sense of this line, and then look at the putterface to make sure it is truly perpendicular to this line like adjusting a picture on a wall that is slightly askew. Nothing short of perfectly square thru the heart of the ball is acceptable.
So far so good, but this doesn't really get the job done well enough. Once you try to check whether this procedures actually aims the putterface at the target, the issue becomes "what physical procedures give you reliable and accurate perceptions of how the face relates to the target?" The answer again is a gaze straight out of the face and a Ferris Wheel turn of the head. (If the eyes are vertically above the ball, the Ferris Wheel is upright like a real wheel and the plane of the wheel matches the vertical plane of the putt; if the eyes are inside the ball but the gaze is still straight out of the face, the Ferris Wheel is tilted back off vertical but the turn still stays in its plane and the line of sight still stays straight along the putt line.) Setup with this gaze over the ball and notice the startline of your putterface orientation thru the ball's two dimples. Then check to see that this is the same line your Ferris Wheel turn will send your gaze along. Then turn toward the target but don't prejudge where you'll end up arriving with your line of sight -- just wait and see to let the procedure TELL YOU where your setup and face orientation is aimed. If at the end of the head turn your dominant eye's gaze is pointed directly at the target, your setup and face are correctly aimed. If not, but your gaze ends up pointed left or right, then shift the whole setup as a system to another startline thru the ball and try again. This means rotate the putterface behind the ball so that it points thru two OTHER dimples, then repeat the head turn to see where this new aiming goes.
A couple of tips on this are:
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/deadeye.html -- Dead Eye Putting,
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/eyes.html -- Putt Out Your Eyes,
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/light.html -- Light Up the Target with your Putterface.
Once the putterface is aimed correctly, then and only then do you finally setup with your shoulders parallel to the startline and your feet comfortably squared also. Once your shoulders and feet are squared to the putt and your arms hanging comfortably, take up your grip without crooking your elbows to do so. Leave your hands low.
Now is the time to do your final targeting that sets the backstroke length inside your tempo, so looking down at the ball-putterface relation, think tempo and watch an imaginary putt roll to the target with your head turn. Look back along this line to the ball.
Now, to pull the trigger, there is a problem for the straight stroke. If you start the heavish putterhead back with the fingers and hands, you will very likely introduce some odd speed pattern into the movement, which looks a little snatchy or jerky at the start. This movement irregularity almost always throws the backstroke headed outward across the startline for a bad stroke path going back, instead of straight back smoothly in tempo. Once the stroke path goes across the line headed back, your stroke and putt are probably cooked, and your putt will not go straight but will get infected by pull, cut or push action, plus impact off the sweetspot. So, don't use the hands to start the stroke. use the shoulderframe as a whole to start the "triangle" of both arms and putter back as a unit, but smoothly, straightly, and in tempo. The way I do this is to think tempo and push back with the left shoulder dropping down and back, which shoves the putterhead at the end of a fixed-position left arm straight back away from the ball. The sweetspot of the putter stays on the startline going back and the putterface stays oriented square in the backstroke.
Once the backstroke coasts to a stop at the top, the movement pattern is mirrored coming down, so the putterhead is not snatched or jerked down, but starts of its own weight and the weight of your arms and hands simply to start dropping down by gravity, swinging down beneath the pivot of your neck. This swinging action starts from zero at the top and gradually gains speed as it fall to the bottom of the arc, reaching maximum speed there. The actual speed it maxes out at depends entirely upon the length of the backstroke, which is handled instinctively by the cerebellum, so forget about it. Just let the putterhead fall freely thru impact with nice relaxed hands, arms and shoulders. The straightness of the roll comes from keeping the path of the sweetspot on the line, keeping the face oriented as at address, and keeping the pivot and triangle of the arrangement unchanged. This lets the shoulder arrangement just return to the setup orientation at impact, so the putterface hits the ball aimed correctly.
The followthru only matters for the time the putterface and ball remain in contact (about 1-2 inches max), but it helps to think in terms of at least 5-6 inches. During this distance past the ball, make a conscious effort to avoid letting the putterface orientation change. It will naturally want to swing the putterface shut after impact, but counter this natural tendency thru this critical area. Here's how: think of the lead elbow coming into impact along your toe line parallel to the startline of the putt. Just past impact, the natural tendency is for the elbow to drift inside toward your hip, as this is the standard human movement for turning to the left to look around while standing. This is not good for the putt and encourages a pull or cut action. So, practice keeping the left elbow headed down the parallel toe line for at least 5-6 inches past impact. This results in a feeling that the left shoulder is rolling stright up vertically, instead of wandering back laterally. This "uptick" thru impact is pretty important to a straight putt.
Some tips to read on this:
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/elbow.html -- Pushing or Pulling Putts: It's the Lead Elbow Stupid!,
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/nail.html -- Nail Your Putts,
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/hoop.html -- Roll the Hoop, href="
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/shadow.html -- Get Cozy with the Ball's Shadow,
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/box.html -- Putt the Sleeve Box, and
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/shoulder.html -- The Shoulder Move Plus a Stockton Tip for Straight Strokes.
Some drills on this are to simply practice straight putts to a tiny target, say a spot or mark on a baseboard, or a tee peg, or a dime. You can also check out my
http://www.puttingzone.com/aidshomemade.html -- Homemade Aids page for putting down a channel of club shafts, putting along a wall, putting beneath a string, putting a sewing spool sideways, putting a sleeve box straight, putting thru a distant gate only wide enough for the ball (use books or blocks, etc.). If you have balls marked with a stripe around the equator, try rolling them so the stripe doesn't wobble as the ball rolls true. Try putting two balls at once, side by side, with a square putterface square to both at once.
There's plenty more to get into, but this will have to do for now. Let me know how things are going.
--
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone.com
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