Hi Geoff

Yes it is me again. Please tell me if you find my questions tedious as I don't want to appear a nuisance, but I am really trying to understand putting.

I am having difficulty getting my mind around the main idea in your article "Set up to the ball, then the putt".
This is how I see it and would appreciate your input.

In shots through the green (where you can't handle the ball and therefore can't use a pre-marked line on the ball to fix a line on your target) the golfer sets up to the ball by placing his club behind it, aiming the club face at an intermediate target (eg a discoloured bit of grass). He then adjust his stance, setup accordingly. No problem here.

However, in putting the golfer has the ability to pick a line from behind and fix its location permanently by placing the ball in such a way that the pre-marked line points towards the target. In his pre-putt routine he can then set his putter squarely behind the ball, and then bring his stance into a square position with no further adjustments of the putter face needed. Your article suggests further fine tuning.

Here is my dilema. From what I have read so far in your articles and elsewhere you can aim more accurately from behind the ball than you can from the side at 90 degrees. This is for reasons such as your head position being somewhat tilted instead of flat, your eyes being inside rather than perpendicular to the target line etc. Consequently your perception of the correct line at address can conflict with your perception from behind the ball.

My son has this exact situation. He sights the line from behind using the pre-marked line on the ball to pinpoint the target. However, when he is over the ball he is filled with doubt as it appears then that the pre-marked line on the ball is aimed either a bit left, or a bit right of the target. If he then changes the putter face to fit his altered perception (in turn adjusting his stance), the pre-marked line on the ball is no longer square to the putter face. In ther words it doesn't form
a T.

Consequently he does not like using a pre-marked line on the ball. I have said to him that his aim from behind will be more accurate than his aim from the side and he must trust that the ball is lined up correctly, and commit to this line during his stroke. He is wrestling with this now.

I read somewhere that pros because of the problem of altered perception, use the pre-marked line as the final solution.

What would your advice be?

Gratefully

Nev from Oz

Dear Neville,

Unfortunately, the processes we typically use in BOTH aiming from behind the ball and aiming from beside the ball have problems. (More of that anon.) Ultimately, you want to get rid of all the problems in both processes, and then the issue becomes making the aiming from beside agree with the aiming from behind. Then there is no doubt, and there is also no "better than." At this point, the only relevant fact is the sequencing -- first behind aiming, then beside aiming. In this sequence, the last step naturally has priority, and any problem requires recycling. In recycling, you can either start all over or (if you know or strongly suspect what process or step in the process was mishandled) then you can simply recycle from that flawed step onward. When the two aiming processes agree, then the aiming is unified and you are in an especially propitious situation to pull the trigger.

Anon.

The problems with aiming the line on the ball arise from the physical steps and positions and movements used to build the perception that the line is accurately aimed. If you crouch at the ball and fidget with the line, you will find yourself looking from ball to target, back and forth, from a bad position of the eyes to get the perception accurate. You are basically struggling in this posture. If you then stand back from the ball to try and check the line from that perspective, the perspective is indeed better suited to an accurate perception, but there are other problems. The directionality of the line on the ball is now a matter of a small visual image some distance away seen from an odd tilt downward, and you are attempting to judge very fine distinctions in the orientation of this line. Even if you get a judgment you like about how the ball must be adjusted, then you move, as you walk to the ball, and this changes your visual perspective and wreaks some havoc with your fix on how to adjust the ball. Once the ball is adjusted, you have to step back and check the line again. When you are behind the ball, facing the line, you really should use only one eye -- your dominant eye -- because it is giving the best signal about direction. Most golfers use both eyes. If you use the dominant eye, your body should be facing the line alright, but with the pupil of the dominant eye ON the line, instead of the middle of your body or some other arrangement. And the movement of this eye from ball to target (assuming the head is still) is basically moving the eyeball in the head vertically a short distance, depending upon the angle up from ball to the distant target. This angle varies with distance and green contour, but it is never much of an angle. Whose making sure your eyeball is doing this accurately? What really happens for almost all golfers is they aren't aware of these potential pitfalls so they just sort of look at the "situation" from behind the ball. And even if you get the line oriented the way you want, when you step beside the ball at address, the line is viewed from an angle. You are not looking into a ball with a line through the center of the apparent circle of the ball, but at a circle with the line somewhat on the far side. And this line on the ball doesn't really appear as a straight line across a 2-dimensional circle, but as a curved line on the top of a ball seen from the side. None of this is very encouraging for the belief that this lining-up process is free of problems or accuracy, or that the line visually promotes a square stroke through the center of the ball. You can improve things a bit if you know the angle downward that you will view the ball from at address, and then tilt the top of the ball and its line over to that perspective. Then you will look down to the ball and see a line across a circle.

From beside the ball, the variables to control are gaze and head turn. Controlling the gaze is not too hard -- just aim the dominant eye straight out of the face and then don't move the eye. Controlling the head turn is not too hard either -- once the straight gaze is pointed at the ball and the shoulders are square to the approximate sense of the line (whether from a line on the ball or spot aiming or otherwise generated from behind or beside the ball), simply turn the head targetward so that the top center of the head stays put in space and doesn't wander about, especially backwards. The head turn is also guided by your shoulderframe, since the eyes run on a line parallel to the shoulders, and since the chin stays the same distance from the shoulders at all points in the turn. This combination will move the gaze of both eyes in a straight line, one after the other, and you can tell whether your vision is running askew, like the difference between drawing a line with a piece of chalk and dragging the chalk sideways across the blackboard. This "look" procedure will tell you where your stroke is aimed -- not simply whether your setup is aimed square to the target. It will also tell you if your aim is not square, and by how much. You just look straight from the ball to wherever your are aimed, and wherever your dominant eye's gaze stops (on the cup, or to the side of it), that is where your stroke is aimed. As it happens, the angle of turn experienced by the neck is fairly large, especially compared to the very minor movement of the dominant eye looking from ball to target from behind the ball. The size of the neck turn is all to the good, since this gives you a "roomy" physical process with many cues to check to make sure you're doing it correctly. And the neck turn actually sets up something of a clutch plate between the shoulders and the head, first turning the head to the target with shoulders fixed, and then a reciprocating motion about the clutch plate of the shoulders moving the opposite way in the stroke with the head now fixed. So the aiming from beside the ball is at once a check on not only how you have aimed the ball, but also on how well you have setup to the ball and oriented your body to stroke the ball on the intended line. And as a bonus the process teaches your body how the shoulder stroke should feel by referencing your sense of the movement of the shoulders beneath the clutch plate of the neck.

So your son is correct about looking at the ball and not feeling right. The way to look at the ball and feel right is to get BOTH the aiming process from behind the ball AND the aiming process from beside the ball free of bugs and on the same wavelength.

My tip about setting up to the ball, then the putt, is that there is no assuredness that you are on the same wavelength until after you do some targeting from beside the ball. You will, whether you mean to or not. As your son obviously does. If you just aim the line (even in a bug-free manner), and set the putterface square to that orientation of the line, you still have to take up your body position at address in reference to the putterface-ball relationship, or the stroke movement is not yet on track.

So, I say, aim from behind the ball (with a line or with some other technique), place the putterface accurately based on that aiming process (this isn't free of problems either), adopt a setup that is square to the ball-putterface relationship, and all this constitutes setting up to the ball. From this point forward, you are checking your squareness and your body's readiness to make a stroke, which you haven't been able to do yet. Targeting from behind the ball needs to agree with targeting from behind the ball, and the only way it really will is if you get the bugs out of the process and build an accurate perception of where your body is aimed.

I hope this is a bit clearer.

--
Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor

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I got this sentence goofed:

"Targeting from behind the ball needs to agree with targeting from behind [should read: beside] the ball, and the only way it really will is if you get the bugs out of the process and build an accurate perception of where your body is aimed."

I don't mean to give the impression that one procedure is superior to the other. That MIGHT be true. What I really want to get across is that when BOTH procedures are done well, you are aiming not just the ball or the putterface, but your whole body and its forthcoming stroke. We are not really comparing lining up the ball and setting the putterface and then getting a setup looking at the putterface and then putting without ever looking at the target again VERSUS setting up to the ball and targeting from beside the ball and making an adjustment in the setup so it matches the target line and then putting. We are integrating the two procedures.

But I have to say that if you made me use ONLY one of these two procedures, I personally would aim from beside the ball and get everything working that way (personal preference after years of putting). I could learn to do as well with using only the lining up of the ball and setting the face and then putting without looking again to the target, but it would take a bit.

Cheers!

Geoff