Geoff,

Really enjoy your website and your thorough knowledge of putting! I am a PGA Professional who has played professionally at one time. My putting has always been my downfall.

My problem seems to stem fron the fact that when I use a putter with a line on the back and I think the line is pointing to my target, the putterface looks CLOSED! I then don't trust my aim and make some sort of manipulation.

I have been recently working with a local Pro who has me working with the Putting Arc. I've noticed that when we changed the lie of my putter to a much flatter degree and I putted a la Justin Leonard with my eyes well inside the target line, I putted much better. Any thoughts or suggestions on my alighnment problems???! I've just recently started wearing contacts to see if that might help!!! So far the verdict is still out!

Thanks

Stan Bickel
PGA Professional

Dear Stan,

Are you by any chance left-eye dominant putting right-handed? If so, let me know and that's a different kettle of fish.

Assuming not, then your problem is mostly your gaze direction being too much down your cheeks. That makes you sense that the target is more to the right than it actually is when you look from beside the ball to the target, so the putter-face as aligned from behind the ball looks to you from beside the ball as aiming too much inside or left. You would have the same problem lining up the logo of the ball and then setting up beside the ball and looking from ball to target: from behind the ball, the logo looks pointed correctly straight at the target, but from beside the ball, the logo looks aimed left. The fault is in HOW you turn to look from beside the ball.

From behind the ball, HOW you look is not complicated. You position your dominate eye in line with the ball and the target and face forward. Facing forward is well-known to everyone from millions of times that we do just that as adult humans. From beside the ball, HOW you look from the ball to the target is not straight-forward and some ways of doing this are better and give a more accurate sense of the target's true location than other ways. Most golfers use a way of looking that is NOT accurate, including tour pros. The difference is in the direction of your gaze when you turn the head.

If the gaze is straight out of the face, it is the same as when standing erect in front of a mirror looking directly into your own pupil in the mirror, facing forward. If you were wearing glasses, your line of sight in this gaze would be level or parallel to the floor and would pass thru your lens (dominate eye) thru one and only one spot. This "aim spot" of a straight gaze is about 1 inch inside the bridge of your nose. Most golfers (95%+) set up to putt with the gaze directed a bit down their cheeks, not straight out.

To see why this is not good, hold a stick or shaft up at your pupil while facing forward and have the stick or rod represent your line of sight. Make the rod level to the ground and pointed straight out of your face. Then tilt it downward a bit. With that downward-directed gaze, bend to a ball at address until the gaze points at the ball. This is the normal flawed setup of almost all golfers. From this position of head and eye, now turn the head to direct the line of sight from the ball to the target and watch what happens to the line of sight as the head turns. The line of sight curls hard to the inside, like a search light's beam sweeping around a prison yard. Because the combination of downward gaze and a normal head turn produces this effect, the golfer unconsciously corrects the effect by letting the top of the head wander backwards instead of simply rotating in place as the turn to the target progresses. The end result is that the golfer mis-perceives the target as being more to the outside than it actually is. Then when he looks at the putter-face, the putter-face is aimed at the actual target location, and it "feels" or "seems" to be aimed well inside or left. It all starts from the gaze being directed down the cheeks.

Instead, if the gaze is kept pointed straight out of the face, and then the head is bent to look at the ball, the end position at setup has the gaze at the ball being pointed straight out of the face. Then, when the golfer turns the head to "look" from ball to target, the head turn is like a barrel turning on a stick or axis up from the center of the neck out the top of the head, and this axis just rotates in place, and the top of the head stays in the same location while the line of sight is directed along the ground in a straight line to the target. The target is then perceived where it actually is, so the putter-face does not "feel" or "seem" to be aimed inside or left.

Working with a flatter lie moves your head and eyes back from the ball more. If you keep the same degree of bend in your head to look at the ball as before, then the upshot of moving the eyes back from the earlier location is that it redirects the gaze back up from the cheeks closer to straight out the face. It has nothing to do with the putting arc.

Make a tube with your fist and look thru this tube straight out of the face, then bend to the ball until the ball shows up inside the tube. Then turn towards the target and see if the target actually shows up inside the tube, with the top of your head staying in the same space as the head is rotated. When you setup beside the ball, your gaze has to be straight ahead like this, not angled down, so your sense of the putter-face aim from behind the ball will match your sense of the putter-face aim from beside the ball.

In so many words, the tip that the eyes should be directly above the ball is not right, and neither is the tip that the eyes ought to be slightly inside the ball. Both don't take into account the direction the eyes are pointed out of the face. If the gaze is straight out of the face, it doesn't matter whether the eyes are directly above or slightly inside the ball -- the "look" from ball to target by turning the head will run the line of sight in a straight line to the target and give you a sense of the target's actual location.

Another way to see this is to hold one hand up like a salute level just below both pupils, whil standing erect and facing forward. Then bend the head down towards the ball until the ball "rises" above the salute into view. The hand prevents you from gazing below the salute and so your gaze stays straight out. Now turn the head toward the target and watch how the line of sight runs straight along the ground to the target. Keep the gaze steady and just rotate the head about the axis inside the neck out the top of the head.

The moral of the story is a gaze looking down the cheeks when "looking" to the target from beside the ball is guaranteed to give you a mis-perception of the target's location as if it were outside or to the right of where it actually is. Avoid this with a straight gaze, whether the eyes are directly above the ball or slightly inside.

The flatter lie got your gaze straighter out the face by happenstance, so you don't really need a flatter lie either.

And thanks for asking, by the way. I appreciate it!
--
Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor

The PuttingZone.com
http://puttingzone.com
The Future of Putting Now -
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
Over 45,000 page visits each month and growing strong...

518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC USA 27401
336.230.0612 home
336.402.1602 cell

geoff@puttingzone.com

Join the PZ for the free Newsletter, Tips, and Updates: just send me an email with "yes" or "ok" or "subscribe" or "sure" etc. in the subject or body and I'll add you. Or, go here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PuttingZone/join

Geoff,

You're the first person to be able to explain the cause of my alignment problem!!! I really enjoyed the info you sent me and I can't wait to get to the course to work on it!! Thanks for the info!!!!

Stan Bickel
PGA Professional

Hi Geoff, as I see there is another person now that have discovered the magic of straight gaze in aligning for a putt. I had the same problem until 2 month ago and with your tip I just get thru this in a very short time. But now I'm reading at the beginning of your post that for those who are right-handed, left eye dominant you have another suggestion.
Since I'm that kind of putter can U tell me more...

Thanks a lot

Sure!

Golfers who are left-eye dominant but putting right-handed (Jack Nicklaus is the best-known example) often feel more comfortable when aiming from beside the ball with a slightly open stance. This really doesn't have too much to do with the gazing direction of the eyeball, and relates more to the nature of eye dominance.

Eye dominance is not solely the way the brain prefers to get a bead on a direction. It is more about how the brain gets a bead on ACTION in response to some target or location in a certain direction. It is a full-body response, not just a pure exercise in gathering direction information just for the heck of it. In that sense, eye-dominance is closely related to sidedness. A left-eye dominant golfer relates to a target location with a slight bias to reacting to the target with his left side (hips and torso and limbs). This full-body orienting to the target seems to make the target-location-awareness sharper and more closely tuned to the forthcoming action.

The problem is that a left-eyed but right-handed golfer is usually taught to adopt a setup that is "square" to the line of the putt. Nicklaus' setup posture is just thought of as idiosyncratic or just his personal eccentricity that may or may not make sense for others with his same pattern. But actually, I think, the problem is that a left-eyed but right-handed golfer who sets up square basically eliminates the involvement of his left side in orienting to the target, at least in the address. The line thru the shoulders points parallel left of the line to the target. Human body response to the target by the left side is necessarily a pivoting of the left side AT or towards the target, but there is no pivoting remaining once the golfer sets up square. Thus, to regain some of this responsiveness, these golfers might try standing a little open when targeting from beside the ball. In particular, they might try getting both the feet and the shoulders a little open to the target.

When I have suggested this to left-eyed but right-handed golfers, they have invariably said the openess makes them feel more comfortable and secure in their targeting and appreciating where the target really is, and that they had always felt somewhat frustrated and hemmed in when setting up closed.

Now, with all that said, I suggest there is a choice from this point forward whether these golfers ought to make a stroke while standing slightly open, or whether they should graduate to a square stance for the stroke after this initial targeting. If the golfer is going to make a stroke standing open, the shoulders may nonetheless be either open or square. I have experimented extensively with both open shoulders and square shoulders to satisfy myself whether square shoulders are actually needed to make a straight stroke path, and so far I'll be darned if I'm convinced yet. I thinbk that within reason, one can have open shoulders and yet still make a stroke with a path that matches the line of the intended putt. Naturally, it is probably better to have the advantage of square bioomechanics to promote this straight stroke path (i.e., square shoulders), but because of the nature of the shoulders, sockets, and shoulderframe, and the nature of movement control, it is not all that difficult to make the same stroke path with a modest openess in the shoulders. So the golfer can experiment and see for himself what works. Nicklaus used a "push stroke" powered by the right hand moving straight down the line of the putt to override the slightly open orientation of his shoulders. I really don't like this as much as I do a pendulum flowing stroke, but it is clearly a workable solution.

I think that having the shoulders open, though, complicates the use of the head-turn and eyes from the address position to scan the line of the putt accurately. Unless the shoulders are square, the head-turn and gaze will require complicated movement and position tracking for accurate perceptions, so squared shoulders for the head turn are somewhat preferable. This accurate scanning of the line is part of the touch system and also part of the assessing of the accuracy of aim of the putterface at the target. Perhaps more importantly, it also serves to make sure the body is related to the putterface orientation approriately for the forthcoming stroke to have its best chance of being straight and accurate. Because I believe this scanning is an important component of optimal putting, I am loath to recommend anything that makes it harder to perform accurately.

So, what I finally come down to is that left-eyed but right-handed golfers should try to do two separate sorts of targeting from beside the ball, following on to the targeting done previously and especially from behind the ball that has generated a first-attempt at placing the putterface behind the ball. Once the face is aimed in this first attempt and the golfer moves to beside the ball, he has to target again as he moves into his final setup for the stroke. This extra targeting serves to orient the body for the forthcoming stroke (and so aims the body and the stroke itself in relation to the putter face) and then to make sure the body and the putterface are synced up in their targeting. The first phase of targeting beside the ball is open stance and shoulders, to get a more comfortable and more reactive posture for gauging the target's true location for purposes of action (i.e., stroking the putt to the target). Using this, the golfer assesses face alignment to the target. Once satisfied with the face alignment, the golfer graduates to the second targeting phase by squaring the feet and shoulders to the line. From this position, the golfer then uses the straight gaze and aim spot of the dominant left eye to scan the line between ball and target. This targeting is used to make sure the body is accurately related to the putterface for purposes of making the forthcoming stroke. But there is no sense ignoring this second targeting's role in also making sure (again) that the putterface aim is accurate. The upshot is that the golfer is looking for "go signals" at each stage of targeting, progressing from behind the ball to beside the ball standing open to beside the ball squared up. At each phase, the golfer needs to get a confirmation of what he has perceived before in terms of putterface placement and orientation of the body to the putterface aim for purposes of making a straight stroke.

In a nutshell, the only complication I add for left-eyed right-handed golfers is this intermediate phase for targeting that comes between walking into the putt from behind the ball and placing the putterface initially and taking up a beside-the-ball square address to make a striaght stroke that sends the ball straight away from the putterface as aimed. This intermediate "open" (stance and shoulders) aiming eliminates the sense of being hemmed in by going straight to a square stance without sacrificing the benefits of scanning the line froma square stance thereafter and using a square stance to promote a straight stroke.

Try this yourself and let me know what you think.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
PuttingZone.com
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.

Over 45,000 visits monthly and growing strong ....

Geoff...

At the risk of being a pest...I was reading some of your old emails and came across the letter from Stan on June 6th. Stan presented the problem of the face of his putter looking closed at address...you replied assuming that he was not "left-eye dominant putting right handed".
Would you please explain what you meant, as I am a lefty that swings and putts righty?

All this talk about left or right eye dominant is pretty interesting however a mail posted a few weeks ago sums up the situation. It depends on where the target is. If you putt right handed then the left eye generally becomes the dominate eye as the nose interferes with the vision of the right eye. it,s easy to check out by setting up normally, ie for a right hander aim to the target and close the right eye. Normally the view of the putter head will remain the same. Then try taking a left handed putter and aim normally, close the left eye and again using the right eye the view should remain the same. It depends where the target is, unless of course one is hugely left or right eye dominant or has no nose.

Dear Eric,

I like your common-sense approach to checking this out! I would add that in the checking, the golfer ought to sight first at the sweetspot with both eyes open by looking over his two thumbs held at arms length out at the sweetspot. This way, he will have an intermediate reference to tell him which eye is really looking straight (the one that stays locked on the sweetspot when the other closes).

There is indeed some sense in which the eye closest to the hole CAN or MIGHT be the dominant eye, even if the golfer is usually dominant in the other eye, but this is a sometimes sort of thing. Eye dominance isn't normally as definite and clear as most people assume.

So, by all means, every golfer needs to learn more about their specific visual tendencies, as this matters quite a bit in getting better at putting.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.

Over 740,000 visits and growing strong ...

518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC 27401
336.230.0612 home