Dear Greg,
Your point about the role of equipment in feel is well taken, but the way the "feel" system of the body works is more adaptable than your words suggest. It mostly a matter of understanding how the body combines targeting with "good feel" movement, and this understanding indicates how to pay attention to equipment differences and have good feel anyway.
"Feel" is making a body movement calibrated to send an object a certain distance across or through a certain medium (grass or air). The components are body, tool, object, and environment. The tool is a putter, heavy or light, long or short, metal or insert, lofted or not, ect. The object is a ball, surlyn or balata, etc. The environment for putting is the green, bent or bermuda, shaggy or tight, moist or dry, undulating or flat, etc. In all of this, the one that really matters is the body. In the 1950s there was a pro who putted with the crosspiece of his shovel's handle, just like the gag in the movie Tin Cup, as a show of chutzpah. Greenskeepers play against each other in the morning -- when the super is meeting with the fertilizer rep -- by putting with the handle end of a hole cutter or the stob end of the flag.
"Feel" in this sense is what I call "touch" or distance control on a specific green at a specific time with your putter, ball, and body. The way it works is to find a way to make a movement that works for the other components. So "touch" relies upon an immediately valid sense of the weight and response characteristics of your ball, the heft and stroke dynamics of your putter, and the playing characteristics of the surface at that time and place. The way I teach it is that getting an asessment of these non-body components is fairly simple, and the tricky part is then coming up with the appropriate movement dynamics. So I don't really agree that golfers should have a hard time reestablishing good touch after an equipment change, or indeed when moving from one type of green to another.
My tip the Core Putt is about relating these four components of "touch" and calibrating them to a specific green.
http://puttingzone.com/MyTips/core.html. The pre-round exercise doesn't take that long (maybe five minutes), and it gives you just the feedback you need from your ball, the putter, your stroke, and the green. This calibration then is useful for the rest of the day, assuming any differences in green conditions on the course are noticed and factored in. The key is TEMPO. Your "touch" system interrelates the four components and your assessments of the equipment and environment in reliance upon a stable, repeating tempo. (This is true for chipping, driving, sand play, and iron play as well.)
"Touch" is "timing" of the body movement in light of the ball, the putter, the environment, and the target. from putt to putt, the only variable that ought to be changing much at all is TARGETING. So, "touch" is body "timing" that depends upon Tempo and Targeting, and the tempo is already set for all putts. So how does Targeting yield good touch ALL BY ITSELF?
The answer seems to be that the cerebellum is an exquisite timing mechanism that coordinates body movement to targets. What happens is that the cerebellum tracks the body position, and "knows" the ball, the putter, and the green. Targeting perceptions relate the starting body positions (at address, stance, hands, torso bend, head and eyes postions, etc.) to the target itself and the route along the way from ball to target. So long as the tempo is stable, the cerebellum "knows" how long the total stroke will take from top of backstroke to top of follow-through, and will also "know" your characteristic pattern of acceleration of the putterhead, and will also "know" where the bottom of the stroke is (in terms of body positioning, kinesthtics, and visual appearance) and where impact will occur. The brain can then "simulate" the stroke and the intended putt's rolling. This "flight simulator" mode of mental cognition is a standard main function of the brain -- seeing the future in advance so that present movements are effective in light of accurate appraisals from past experiences. Once the appropriate future stroke is calibrated by this cerebellum-sponsored simulation, the cerebellum programs the motor cortex for the amplitude and direction of the stroke. The length of the backstroke is set by the cerebellum "instinctively" simply by giving the cerebellum and its assessments of the ball, putter, surface, and body your target for the stable tempo. There is nothing to "think" about in terms of how far back to take the putter -- instead, let your athletic non-conscious cerebellar processes do what they are good at -- rolling the ball all the way to the target across this green.
In terms of "feedback," there are three sorts -- before, during, and after the putt. Before, practice feedback, past experience, and the last putt you made, plus carrying the putter in your hand, knowing how much a ball weighs, knowing this course from playing it before, and other sources, have given you feedback galore about the four components of your "touch" system. Plus, just the fact that you are a normal functioning adult with decades of movement experience under your belt has given you millions of feedback patterns to rely upon. All of these sources of feedback cooperate to allow you to simulate the putt stroke accurately with a specific tempo and a specific target.
During, the hands on the grip monitor and sense the movement of the putter and its heaviness. The eyes and body monitor the progress of the stroke for direction or path, pace, amplitude, and other relations to the starting address positions, the ball, and the body.
After, once impact has begun and after impact is concluded, the ball-putter contact gives an auditory signal that reaches the ear a few microseconds later, and produces a vibration in the putter that travels up the shaft to the hands. It also gives a rebound action to the putterhead, including off-center twists. The ball reaction to impact entails the visual feedback of seeing the ball get launched on its way, see it skid and roll, see any wobbling, see it's trajectory along the ground, see it taking break, and the like. Hopefully, after-the-fact feedback includes seeing and hearing the ball go rattling into the cup and the reactions of your playing companions or spectators and your body to the successful putt. After feedback then joins the ranks of before feedback as you head to the next putt.
Most golf instruction focuses upon the before-after feedback, when it should focus more on the during feedback. Anyone who has ever worked hard to get a straight stroke path and square face orientation at impact will understand this point starkly. This is not to say that before-after feedback is unimportant or has little or no positive role to play in gaining and keeping excellent putting, but it is usually grossly over-rated. This is mostly just the natural result of not appreciating the during feedback enough instead.
So, to get back to what amateurs should think about feedback, I believe that the during feedback is HOW you generate rewarding before-after feedback, regardless of the equipment. To focus on this during feedback, the golfer has to stay in the moment, target precisely, keep focus, rely upon a stable tempo, and allow the cerebellum's factoring in of all the components to generate the appropriate backstroke length instinctively. Then your stroke dynamic is always consistent, your tempo vitally the same, and you have a system that can factor in the variations of different balls, putters, or surfaces with relative ease.
To test this yourself, take some surlyn (hard cover) balls and some balata (soft covered) balls and hit Core Putts with both sorts of balls on the same green with the same putter. The surlyn balls typically go a foot or so farther. So what? You can SEE THAT and so the cerebellum can take it into account immediately. Then you can start targeting putts with your tempo in mind, and the surlyn ball is just a piece of the puzzle for that day.
Obviously, there is always a slight period of adjustment with ball or putter changes, but the period is pretty short! A good training technique for "touch" is to vary your balls and putters on the green and see how short you can make the adjustment period. True, pros want there to be little or no adjustment from day to day, and also want all sorts of specific forms of feedback the way they like it, but fundamentally these are minor details. If you keep the same balls and putter and technique from day to day, it just boils down to green speed recognition and sticking to your tempo with good targeting. That's always the case for all golfers, pros included. Changing balls or putters, though, don't make good touch all that difficult to recapture. The real issue is whether something about the ball or putter is making tempo irregular, which a light putter or a real hard ball can do in combination with faster greens. There is probably a day-to-day best combination of ball and putter for the various greens you typically play, but that's a different issue altogether.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
The PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced putting instruction.
