Dear Steve,
Darn tootin'! What a coincidence that you live in Memphis. I've been spending the week with the Memphis Mafia of the PGA Tour in Charlotte, especially Shaun Micheel.
The "release" is recently described by Hank Haney in the March 2003 issue of Golf Digest. Here is my summary:
Hank Haney, Roll It ike a Pro: The Key is Learning How to Release the Putterhead, Golf Digest (Mar 2003), 195-199 - keep the left wrist flexible instead of fixed so that the putterhead moves thru impact with a slight release that shows itself with a subtle "breakdown" of the left wrist, like Tiger Woods and Mark O'Meara [note: Tiger ranked 83rd and O'Meara 99th in 2002 Putting Stats -- plenty of room for improvement; Hank's tip is really more against stiff-wristing the stroke thru impact than it is promoting any real "breakdown" - see Stay relaxed and steady on crucial putts. BY MARK O'MEARA Winner: Masters, British Open, World Match Play From Golf Digest, January 01 1999].
The Mark O'Meara reference is:
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0HFI/1_50/54390593/p1/article.jhtml?term=haney
You might notice that this is pretty inconsistent with the stock advice to prevent "left-wrist breakdown" at all costs. So, what gives?
It seems to me that avoiding left-wrist breakdown is something amateur high-handicappers need to worry about more than pros. The pros play faster greens and have much better distance control than amateurs, and usually have a mostly shoulders-only "dead-hands" stroke style. This combination greatly reduces concern for pros about 'flipping" thru impact in order to power the putt, with all its problems of direction. Amateurs are much more handsy due to slower greens, poorer distance control, and a general lack of stability in their technique, so they lapse into "flipping" thru impact out of unclearness about how to send the ball rolling the correct distance. Better amateurs grow out of this style with better and better "touch" for distance, a better tempo, and a more stabilized technique.
So why would someone on Tour advise getting back to more looseness in the left wrist?
If you grow up hearing that you have to avoid left-wrist breakdown, and so you listen to all the advice about how useful the "reverse overlap" grip is for "stabilizing" the left wrist and preventing breakdown, etc., you tend to get stiff-wristed while the stiffness is becoming less and less useful. The "release" advice on one level is just saying that avoiding left-wrist breakdown is not that big a deal for golfers with good touch so you ought to incorporate more relaxation in the stroke, including in the wrists.
There is still a problem, on the other level, with this advice. The advice clearly suggests that not only should you have relaxed wrists, but also that your left wrist should in fact fold in the follow thru. This is hokum and will lead to bad line control. There is a BIG difference between keeping the wrists relaxed and deliberately going for a left-wrist folding thru impact. In a dead-hands shoulder stroke, the ideal is to keep the butt of the putter handle pointed into the body the same way throughout the stroke, from start to top of backstroke to top of follow-thru. This can ONLY happen when the shoulder-frame as a whole stays perpendicular to the putter handle and shaft. If there is any folding of the wrists thru impact, the handle will not stay pointed into the body the same, but will quickly run its pointing to the back side of the rib cage.
Let's explore this just a bit. This wrist action is the dominant style in putting from the 1950s and 1960s, exemplified by Billy Casper. The greens were rougher and slower then, grainy Bermuda was more common (including at Augusta National until 1981), and a handsy style in general prevailed. What people probably don't realize is that Casper worked very hard then on managing the orientation of his wrists thru impact to keep the ball on line. he did this by fixing his left arm along his thigh so that there was a constant reference to left-wrist position and orientation from his stable left leg, and he also concentrated on returning the putterface to vertical right before impact. Both of these techniques cooperate to PREVENT left-wrist breakdown from causing problems with line. So, in that era, the left-wrist action arose from handsiness, slow greens, and a general lack of the dead-hands shoulder stroke. None of this means left-wrist folding thru impact isn't dangerous to line control!
Another important aspect of all this is shown by Casper's variation in technique depending upon the length of the putt. The longer the putt, the more Casper incorporated arm swing, so that his stroke took on a combination of armsiness and wristiness. Even then, he was extremely careful to get his putterface back to vertical with the proper wrist orientation to the line thru impact.
Today, most pros I've talked with don't really understand how the shoulder stroke works on long putts. Really, this confusion fuels a lot of very strong belief that the stroke and putterhead "has to" gate to the inside going back, and gate more the longer the stroke. They then get the idea that a "gating" stroke is "the natural" stroke pattern and therefore the most "comfortable" and least likely to breakdown under pressure. The drive for comfort, combined with this belief in a "gating" stroke pattern, leads pros to sign off on the notion that the putterhead "might as well release" going thru impact. It sure feels "natural" but is it optimal?
The thing the pros don't seem to understand about the stroke pattern in a shoulder stroke is HOW to turn the shoulders, interestingly enough. The shoulder-frame is powered by the gut and lower back muscles, not the shoulder muscles and pecs. If you tunr the shoulderframe as a unit, both sockets move in a coordinated way. With dead-hands, the putter handle will naturally stay aimed into the body the same way at all times. pros can do this fairly well on short putts. The trouble is on longish putts. Then the turn back goes past a certain point so that the lead side's rib cage is coming into conflict with the pelvis structure. Avoiding this without paying attention to how it is avoiding is done by having the shoulder-frame swivel lead socket forward and back socket behind the neck's pivot. That's why a "gating" stroke feels comfortable. The technical problem is for the body to keep track of the actual changes in position of the shoulder frame going back, so the forward action will deliver a square putterface thru impact down the line. Ben Crenshaw and Bobby Locke figured this problem out, and there backstroke was pretty different from the forward stroke as a result. But today's pros don't really separate the back and thru patterns of movement, and thus those who "gate" going back also believe it is "natural" and "comfortable" to gate going forward as well. That's not what Crenshaw and Locke did, though. In the thru-stroke, they both emphasize(d) sending the square putterface squarely thru the ball down the line. This business of discomfort on long putts in the backstroke, causing the gating inside is easily avoided with a relaxed torso and a smooth tempo. The pros generally also don't quite know how the body acts going thru impact and into the follow-thru in a shoulder stroke. While the positioning of the arms and putter in a fixed "triangle" going back sounds like a good idea and can be done fairly reliably, the same is not quite true past impact. The uplifted "triangle" and shoulder-frame position at the top of the backstroke easily promotes a pendulum-like dropping into and thru impact, but thereafter is another story. The same meat of the body and bones that helped drop the triangle thru impact also retards a free-flowing follow-thru. The result is the shoulderframe rocks down naturally enough, but then stalls out around level and resists rocking up in the follow-thru. This makes the arms "flap out" under the shoulder frame, as the arms keep going while the shoulder frame stalls out. The end result is "triangle" breakdown thru impact, which is a pull. A left-wrist breakdown is really the same sort of flap. With an armsy stroke, the srms can stall out while the hands keep flapping. The cure for the pros and anyone using a shoulder "no hands" stroke is easy enough -- just artificially keep the lead shoulder socket headed in the same way it was earlier falling, with a mirror-symmetric movement in terms of both trajectory and speed (deceleration up in follow-thru matching earlier acceleration down). Harold Swash teaches this, Bobby Locke did this, and Ben Crenshaw does also. If the shoulder frame then completes the symmetric pattern in the follow-thru, there simply is NO ISSUE of left-wrist breakdown OR wrist tightness. The mild centrifugal force of the stroke keeps the relation of putter handle, hands, arms, and shoulder frame "naturally" coordinated and the "triangle" remains intact. This eliminates worries about left-wrists action thru impact adversely affecting line control.
Those who advocate "release" of the putterhead ought to be a little clearer. The release is something of an historical hold-over from earlier days when handsiness was the style and greens were slower and has application really mostly in longer putts, and it is perpetuated today by golfers not real clear about how a shoulder "no hands" stroke style best handles the biomechanical tendencies of the body. Both the "gating" stroke path and a "release" action in the wrists are occasioned by failing to see how the shoulder-frame turn happens naturally going back and then happens a bit artifically going forward. The gain supposed to come from "gating" and "release" (a "natural" and "comfortable" feeling that helps relaxation and touch) is really illusory, and the golfer opting for them simply doesn't know the alternative technique that is not only also "natural" and "comfortable", but also better promotes touch and line control.
Davis Love II is the most prominent example of a pro being taught to gate in his stroke. Jack Lumpkin and others have Davis using a Putting Arc that is an aid based on the notion of the shoulders and arms swiveling back and then repeating the trajectory coming forward. I have previously discussed the differences between a "planar" stroke movement of the shoulder frame and this sort of "non-planar" action, so I won't repeat that now. Suffice to say, the gating pattern places a well-known premium on ball position in the stance and learning how to repeat the gating symmetrically so as not to send the ball off early (push) or late (pull) in the pattern. None of this is a concern with a "planar" stroke movement. I see quite a few pros with quite noticeable left-wrist breakdown these days, and I suspect it is all coming from the same sorts of advice that "gating" is good and "release" is also good. You even see some pros with belly putters trying to get the left wrists to "release" thru impact, which looks pretty rediculous really and does not promote control. It's a passing fad.
So, to sum it all up, if you are a high-handicapp golfer without good tempo and distance control, stay the heck away from the advice to "release" the putterhead, with the possible exception of loosening up a bit on longer putts. Once you start getting good tempo and distance control or touch, forget about the wrists entirely -- they aren't the problem. The problem is how to move the shoulders for optimal line control -- and gating and putterhead release aren't necessary or helpful in that project.
--
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone.com
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