Dear Stan,
I recommend a) stroke straight, the way the face is aimed; b) aim straight, square at a target; c) read well, to get a target to aim at. I can only talk about a) in this post.
This is building success from the inside out, from the body to the target, instead of from the hole back to your body.
Putt straight. Every stroke is the same, so the ball always leaves your setup in exactly the same way every putt. The ball always leaves by rolling down the line that is perpendicular out of the putter face. However you aim the face, your stroke has to send the ball straight away from the putter face. SO... once the face is placed behind the ball, you "bring" your body to the putter as the sole rests flat on the surface with the face aimed square thru the ball at the target. With the putter just waiting there behind the ball, set your feet and stance and adopt your grip on the putter SO THAT you feel your stroke action will send the ball straight away. This is bringing your stroke to the putter face. What I do personally, is aim the face with my left hand only, squaring the face thru the ball at the target, and then place my left foot in its accustomed position so the ball is slightly inside the left heel and the toe is squared to the putt's startline; then I widen the stance solely by placement of the right foot. The left foot never moves once I have squared it. Both feet establish ankle joints in a line that is parallel left of the putt's startline. I visualize how far offset my feet would be if I were setting up to a ball right at the target itself, and then aim my ankles to those visualized feet. With ankle joints parallel, I then work up thru knees, hips, and shoulders -- all parallel left. Now I set my gaze straight out by facing forward and looking to the far horizon with head posture erect. Then I bend the upper torso and head until the ball comes into the gaze -- making sure I don't allow my gaze to direct itself downward more down the cheeks. With the lowering of my shoulders in bending, this lowers my hands down the grip, so I allow them to hang as far as they want to in a totally relaxed way, insuring that my elbows hang directly below my shoulder sockets. Then I set my grip pressure soemwhere around 2-3 on a scale of 1-10, and keep it the same until the putt is concluded. With balance, my shoulder sockets end up directly above the balls of my feet. At this point, the stroke I want ought to feel like it will make the ball roll dead straight away from the putterface down the line. This line runs perpendicularly away from the putterface and its sweetspot centered behind the ball, and always passes over a spot directly out from my left big toe a certain distance from the toe to the putt line. The distance from the toe to this spot and from the ball to this spot is always the same. I see this relation establishing an "L" shape from ball to spot to toe. Another "L" shape is defined by target to spot to toe, so I feel like I have a Carpenter's Square when I am setup correctly and when the putterface is aimed at the target squarely.
Being setup square to the way the face is aimed, my job now is to make a straight stroke. I note that my "eyeline" matches the putt's starline and crosses the putterface perpendicularly. My "eyeline" is the horizon line across my eyes' two pupils, and includes the bridge of my nose, the inside corners of each eye, the outside corners, and my ears. My left pupil is aimed at the back of the ball, and my right pupil is aimed about 2 inches behind that at the ground. I turn the head to gaze in a straight line along the ground with a head turn that keeps the top of my head in one fixed location in space as I turn and this axis rotates. This head turn, with gaze direction held steady, runs the line of sight of both eyes right along the putt line straight away from the putter face, with the "eyeline" staying on the putt line as the head turn progresses. I wait to see where my gaze ends up as my head turn completes and the target "area" comes into view. If my dominate eye's gaze ends up right on the target, this confirms to me that the setup is aimed squarely. (If not, I adjust the whole setup and putterface aim, feet and all, and try again.) I then make a head turn back on the same line to the ball. I can now forget about the target and concentrate solely on making a straight stroke. This mostly means I terminate the targeting process and shift into stroke mode, which mostly leaves the eyes out of it as I go into the feeling of moving the body a certain way. Personally, I cue this transition from targeting to stroke by gazing at the ball once the head returns the gaze to the ball, waiting for the ball to emerge into sharp focus. Once I see the ball's surface start to shine clearly in view, I start the stroke. This waiting for the ball to shine clears my conscious mind, and also clears up my concern or attention on where the target is -- I just forget about it on the conscious level, knowing that my non-conscious brain has a real good bead on it.
For the stroke movement itself, I think of the stroke in three phases: 1) push away to the top of the backstroke, 2) allow the putterhead to drop solely from gravity into the impact zone, and 3) finish the stroke by raising the left shoulder socket straight up and thus lagging the hands straight down the line. So, push, drop, lift.
The push starts the putterhead back by moving the lead shoulder socket straight down towards the balls of the left foot. keeping the triangle of arms and grip and putter intact, this socket dropping sends the whole triangle back as a unit -- pushes it back. The shoulderframe as a whole rocks down and back like a coathanger rocking on its hook on a closet rod. The point is that the "coathanger" rocks so that the flatness of the coathanger's shape stays oriented vertically, and each corner of the "coathanger" (each shoulder socket) moves vertically only. The shoulderframe does not twist around the top of the spine, with the right shoulder twisting back behind the body away from the putt line. That twisting is the hallmark of a gating stroke. keeping the shoulderframe moving in a vertical orientation makes the putterhead go straight back and straight thru, with the face staying square at all times to the stroke path AND the putt line, and with the sweetspot of the putter staying directly above the putt line. The sweetspot will naturally rise higher above the putt line on either side of the bottom of the stroke, but this doesn't matter. The rising is not much near the ball, so as long as you don't use the hands independently and just keep the hands staying as low as they started at address, the putterhead will move low thru the impact area for real solid contact. The push also insures that the sweetspot does NOT travel across the putt line (away from the feet) on the way back. This is the most common flaw in amateurs, and it happens from starting the putterhead back with the hands pulling the putterhead into motion initially, rather than pushing the triangle back with the left shoulder socket. To practice this push action, set up with the toe of the putter very close to a baseboard of a wall or to a plank on the green; start back and simply observe that the toe stays the same distance away from the toe of the putter as the push back progresses, with no tendency to get closer or farther from the baseboard.
The drop is just relaxing the same muscles that you used in the push. These muscles are in the gut and lower back. relaxing these, while keeping the triangle intact, results in the shoulderframe rocking down under the influence of gravity alone. The sockets retrace their paths, with the right socket dropping straight at the balls of the right foot, and the left socket rising straight up from the balls of the left foot. I have found that this drop is very straight so long as you don't get the arms or hands involved. The putterhead accelerates under the influence of gravity and reaches its peak speed right at the bottom of the stroke in the middle of the stance. The sole of the putter returns to flush right at the bottom of the stroke, and the face stays square the whole time as it was originally aimed. So long as the pivot in the clavicle area does not drop lower or sway, the putter's sole will not get any lower than it way at the beginning of the stroke, so stubbing the putter is not a concern, nor is artificially trying to "keep" the putterhead low thru impact. It's all perfectly automatic and natural -- just a drop.
The lift is necessary because of the structure of the body. The shoulderframe will drop nicely enough from gravity alone, but it really will not continue upwards after the bottom of the stroke, as a pendulum would do. Instead, the shoulderframe will naturally stall out once it gets level and resist rising, so that the arms "flap out" under the shoulderframe, continuing forward and up as the shoulderframe nearly stops. This "breakdown" in coordination of the triangle is really not a Wrist breakdown so much as it is a triangle breakdown at the arm pits. If the lead arm pit flaps open past impact, then the shoulderframe is stalling out and not keeping up with the forward / upward motion of the triangle. The shoulderframe needs to stay as the base of the triangle. If the arms "flap out" in a breakdown, then the left elbow will invariably (and naturally) curl back to the inside and you will pull the putt. The natural human action, then, is a pull, and a good putt has some artificial finish in the action to prevent the pull. In order to make sure this coordination between shoulderframe and arms stays together thru and past impact, the left shoulder socket has to be raised straight up so that the socket makes the left arm and hand lag behind it. This lagging action up of the shoulder makes the elbow stay headed down the toe line, instead of curling back inside. Both the left elbow and the hand stay moving on a parallel left path towards the target, and this keeps the putterface moving sqaurely thru impact and down the line maybe five or six inches past impact. After this artificial lift-lagging is done, you can relax about the putt, as the ball has cleared off the putterface and is beyond your control.
The whole action viewed only from the point of view of the left shoulder socket is: starting from level shoulders, left socket moves straight down at ball of foot 2-3 inches, the droipping of the shoulderframe back down to level sends the left socket back straight up to level again, and then the socket is artificially lifted straight up another 2-3 inches and finishes higher than it started.
That's the setup and stroke. The aiming-placement of the face square thru the ball at a target, and the reading and locating of the target are the remaining parts of putting.
I forgot to recommend a putter style. I like a simple center-shafted putter that is face balanced and a little on the heavy side. The center shafting helps with solid contact and a good roll, and the face balancing helps avoid the putter naturally gating on its own in the stroke, as heel-toe weighted putters and some heel-shafted putters tend to do. A heel-shafted blade putter that is "toe balanced" so the toe hangs straight down when balancing the putter on the shaft about 10 inches up from the hosel does not gate much. The old Spalding Tournament putter is like this.
Aside from this, it also helps if the putter's center of gravity is a) low and b) recessed from the face.
You might also stay open to the idea that more than one putter or more than one stroke style will be best for different putts (long versus short, especially). Some people find a bit of a punch action for real short putts is better for them or a belly putter works better than a conventional putter for short strokes, and others have trouble with belly putters or long putters on long putts.
-- Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone.com
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