Dear Yuri,
I'm very glad you asked about this article, as I have it now on my desk, and like it pretty well.
The article citation is Nick Douygherty, "Putting on the Style ... keep the feel alive," Golf International (Aug / Sep 2003), pp 62-70.
Nick is a former player in the Nick Faldo Junior Series in England and has become Faldo's protege. He's 21. Golf International Magazine has Faldo as a Playing Editor and David Leadbetter as the Director of Instruction. Nick Dougherty was the 2002 Rookie of the Year on the European PGA Tour. His putting stats, however, are not good. He currently ranks joint 161st in putts per GIR at 1.832 (on the PGA Tour, this stat corresponds to 197th out of 200). His stroke average of 72.16 ranks 127th in Europe. he finished 2002 36th on the Order of Merit with a few top-tens, and this year he stands 55th -- not bad at all for a second year. Faldo personally taught him at first, but now he goes to Peter Cowen, Darren Clarke's former coach.
One thing he writes at the outset is good: "I like to create a nice angle at the hips so that my hands fall into the comfortable position, with the arms nicely extended. I have my putter adjusted to 34 inches in length to accommodate my posture, and you should check with your pro that the length of your own putter suits your style." The arm extension is really hanging the elbows directly below the shoulders and letting the hands hang heavily down, even if there is a slight bend in the elbows from normal muscle development on either side of the elbow joint. I also like to have the back of the left / lead wrist square to the line and facing the same as the putter face. This turns the forearm and in turn the forearm rotates the elbow inward, so the back of the elbow aims at the hips. The arm hang is very important to the straightness of a no-hands stroke, and keeping the back of the lead hand oriented the same direction throughout the stroke is also important. But, unlike what nick says, it is not really the hip angle that sets the arm hang. Instead, the positioning of the eyes out over the feet in a balanced way naturally locates the shoulder sockets above the balls of the feet, and this positioning of the shoulder sockets is what gives a good arm hang. The hip angle is just a byproduct of canting the torso forward to get the eyes in the proper position.
The eyes don't really need to be either over the ball or slightly inside, so long as the gaze is directed straight out of the face. It is physically possible to putt perfectly straight while standing upright, with no bend at all in the hips. And the position of the hands, the angle of the arms, and the angle of the putter shaft are all irrelevant to the functional geometry of a straight stroke. Only the motion of the shoulders with a fixed triangle of arms and hands and putter (in whatever configuration that is basically symmetrical, however the parts are angled to the body) is responsible for the straightness of the stroke. The real reasonm for tilting the torso out over the feet is to give the arms room to swing in front of the chest, and also to reduce the conflict in the waist area between the rib cage and the hips.
The tips on the website are not quite as extensive as those in the print magazine, but the website gives three basic tips:
1. Keep the head still, at least until the ball leave peripheral vision. This tip is pretty beneficial to the straightness of the stroke and roll, but it can be overdone. Fundamentally, the pivot in the base of the neck needs to stay stable, or at least to move symmetrically away and back to the ball for impact. This can actually be done with a little head roll and sometimes even with a little head and pivot sway. True, keeping the pivot still usually keeps the head still also. If you really want to keep the head still, you ought to keep the eyes still. That is, fix the gaze on a blade of grass between the face of the putter and the back of the ball and keep the gaze fixed on this blade of grass during the stroke. That will still the head and the pivot.
However, stilling the head and eyes makes the shoulder turn feel a little tighter, so you have to like the added tightness with a still head. Just don't let it rob you of rhythmic smoothness in the stroke, or make you stop the stroke short in the follow-through.
2. Lag to a 3' Circle Target. I don't like this advice. Nick writes:
"When I study a long putt, one that I’m happy to get close for a simple two-putt, I try to get this image of a three-foot circle around the hole. To be more exact, the semi-circle that extends beyond the hole is my real target area, as I’m always trying to get the ball up to the hole."
If you compared this to what Jack Nicklaus has written, Nicklaus aimed for the front of the circle, short, whereas Dougherty aims for the back of the circle. I've found that the key to targeting a long lag is to visualize the roll of the ball over the last five to ten feet (depending on how long the lag is). This approach uses the hole as the exact target, and the intent is to sink the monster, not miss, but the reall work of "targeting" is visualizing the roll of the ball as it slows and yet covers the last five feet.
I have also found that exact targeting-plus-tempo can failo once the distance gets too far off. The reason is that past about 50 feet, the amount of visual information covered by incremental increases of head-turn angle gets very thin. From 0 to 45 degrees of head turn, the golfers sees lots of the surface, but after that, from 45 degrees out to about a max of 70 degrees of head turn, the golfer's vision is skimming across less and less visual information for the footage covered. So, there is a tendency to underestimate the ground that needs to be covered by the amplitude of the stroke. The golfer's typical reaction is to learn the look down the full line is not going to generate enough of a stroke to cover the distance, and then he "makes up" a bigger, harder stroke. This is a de facto abandonment of the targeting-plus-tempo system that sends the ball too far past the hole. The golfer, out of uncertrainty and fear of being short, "gasses" the tempo and the putt flies too far. One technique I have to address this is to "build outward from what you know," by taking a very long lag and dividing it in half. Target to the halfway point to generate a practice stroke with stable tempo; then build a bigger stroke to the 3/4th point and you will instinctively know to add about half of what the first practice stroke was or add a stroke 1/4th the way; then target the full length and add the same addition a second time or add a second 1/4th. This way, you use two or three practice strokes to build out from what you can see well, and keep your basic tempo steady all the way. This approach eliminates the fear of being short by limiting the problem to the last 1/4th of the putt only, and the golfer knows how to get to the beginning of tis last 1/4th and about how to add extra stroke to cover this segment perfectly.
A third thing I've learned about long lags is that lags that end headed uphill are dramatically easier to get close that putts that end up heading downhill. For a long lag that ends up going downhill, with a big break, there are two aspects to targeting: line and distance. The way I handle this is to pick a target off the green in the vertical background for line. Then, I pick a point along this line that is hole high, or on a line perpendicular to a line straight from ball to hole. Then I putt on this line as if I wanted to stop the roll of the ball at the hole high target. Combined with visualizing the last 5-10 feet of the roll downhill, this approach works very well.
So, I don't particualrly like Dougherty's targeting the far edge of a circle around the hole. It tells the golfer nothing about line and I don't think it's a good approach to distance control either.
Nick further writes about lagging: "Once you are set to go, it’s the rhythm and the smoothness of your stroke that is key to getting the ball to roll ‘end over end’. When you strike the ball sweetly (which the coin drill below will help you do) it really does keep rolling on and on."
I like his emphasis on tempo and smoothness. I don't care about the end-over-end aspect, and don't really aim for this as a goal. A good roll is more a by-product of stroke trajectory and ball position than it is tempo. And the distance a ball rolls is more a matter of solid impact and the fullness of the follow-through, not the tempo or smoothness. So, I disagree with what he says, but his advice is ok for amateurs and won't do much harm to anyone.
3. Coin Drill. Nick advises a slight upward trajectory of the putterface thru the back of the ball, and describes this drill:
"All you need is a thin coin, which you simply place on the green right behind the ball (left), just as if you were marking it. The idea then is that you make a smooth stroke and strike up and through the putt without touching the coin. The more you do this, the more you will develop a slight upstroke that imparts true roll on the ball. Aim to strike the ball bang on its equator as you release the putter smoothly. Try this drill on long putts for a better sense of pace control and also from three or four feet to hole out those must-make putts with extra confidence."
The fundamental to a good slight upward trajectory is ball position. Play the ball AT LEAST two inches ahead of the bottom of the stroke and the putter will be rising slightly at impact, naturally and without any kind of deliberate manipulation. I don't see any evidence Nick understands this. A better drill is to play the ball a full 6 inchres ahead of the bottom of your stroke and ignore the ball altogether, and make a straight stroke. The putterface will rise, but not so much it misses the ball or fails to send it off straight. In fact, the golfer needs to get away from hitting the ball altogether and learn to focus on the straightness of the stroke itself in all 3 dimiensions of space plus the 4th dimension of time. The ball just gets in the way of the square putter moving squarely and slightly up through the ball toward the target.
4. Stroke Channel of Two Clubs. Nick writes:
"Alignment is relatively easy. Whether you like to stand with your feet slightly open or closed, the key is to make sure that your hips and your shoulders are square to your line. That way you will be encouraged to swing the putter on a natural path. And this drill is fantastic when it comes to tracking your stroke and grooving a natural path that sees the putter swing back and forth on your line to the hole. Simply place two clubs side-by-side to create this putting corridor, leaving about half an inch either side of your putter head. Then it’s all about repeating your stroke and rattling the ball into the back of the hole."
"Having those tracks gives you instand feedback as to the line of your stroke – take it too far outside and you strike the outer shaft, take it on the inside and you touch the inner shaft. A true stroke runs clear all the way back and through, sending the ball straight into the hole."
If this drill is supposed to promote square alignment, I don't like it. The golfer needs to learn the look and feel of setting up square ONLY to a ball. The way to do this is to place the putterface aiming through the ball and then set up square to the aim of the putterface. There's a trick to this. The golfer has to recognize the line he or she carries around in the bones of the face at the eyes. There is a horizontal line across the face registered in the bones: the bridge of the nose, the inside corners of the eye sockets, the outside corners, and the temples. Taken together with the pupils, these nine points draw a horizontal line across the head that we carry around all the time. If you held a shaft up across your eyes, these points correspond to the shaft line. If you extend the shaft down toward the ball under your gaze, the shaft line and face line matches the putt line through the ball. When the putter face is squared up behind a ball, the trick is to get this face line / eye line to match the putt line defined as straight out of the putter face. Once the eyes and head are set this way above the ball and putter and putt line, the shoulders will necessarily be square to the line. With the shoulder square, everything below comes into place as well -- the hips, knees, and ankles, as well as the elbows -- all symmetrically square to the line.
In other words, the setup starts with the eyes and head and the relationship to the putter face aim, and then the body builds a square relationship down through the shoulders to the ground. Using club shafts instead short-circuits this skill altogether, so I don't like using shafts for alignment except very sparingly.
If the use of the shafts is to train a stroke path, I also don't like it, mostly because the stroke channel is always used to sink putts when it should be used at best without reference to a hole to train the internal feelings of a straight stroke. Using these artificial visual and physical guides to help get the stroke straight gives a false promise that the golfer is learning HOW to make the stroke. Learning HOW to make the stroke is more about the feeling of movement, and not how it feels to have a visual and physical guide define the movement.
5. Paint Brush Stroke Path. Nick writes:
"For a smooth and flowing stroke, I often imagine there’s a paint brush attached to the end of my putter, and then try to paint a line on the green as I make the stroke. This helps me to create a flowing action, and it works great on the short putts. Try it: paint that line on the green going back and then through to the hole – and watch the ball disappear."
This is his best tip in this article. What he describes is a straight-back and straight-through stroke, so he and I agree on this. The paint brush image, however, does not really clarify the most important aspect of a straight stroke -- which is keeping the wrists from rotating. An inattentive golfer who makes a stroke that he believes is straight almost always has his wrists rotating after some backstroke and after some through stroke. This reveals itself in the final orientation of the putter face at the top of the back stroke and at the top of the through stroke. The face will not be square to the stroke path or the line but will be aimed open at the top of the back stroke or closed at the through stroke. A truly straight stroke, if continued in the follow through until the shaft is parallel to the ground, results in the putter face aiming straight up, level to the ground like a waiter's tray. The only way this final orientation of the putter face can result is to AVOID any rotation of the wrists. Rotation turns the shafts and thus the putter face. No rotation keeps the flat surface of the putter grip in a single plane at all times. A "no-hands" stroke does this just fine, because the thumbs on the grip remain inactive. A handsy stroke has the thumbs being rotated and this turns the face out of square.
Applying this to Nick's paint-brush tip, the important point is to keep the width of the brush stroke full all the way. A turning of the putter face would narrow the stripe of paint. So, this tip is in the ball park but just not sufficiently clear.
The print version of the article has two other tips that don't appear on the website: 6. See the Line, and 7. Proper Posture Gives More Control to the Shoulders.
6. See the Line. Here, Nick is referring to visualizing the total "line" (path) of the putt from behind the ball all the way into the hole. Nothing remarkable here except to note his visualization starts behind the ball, and the ball is just getting in the way. Good!
7. Shoulder Control. Here, Nick is showing how to teach a junior golfer to get a setup posture that encourages less arms-and-hands "feel" and more shoulder control for the stroke. basically, hanging the arms more fully is the advice. That's fine, but inactivating the arms is the real goal. This means keeping the arm pits and elbows and wrists from getting involved in powering or guiding the stroke. So, this tip is a little half-baked.
All together, Nick Dougherty has some good points, especially for golfers at a certain level of expertise and in comparison to what else is generally available in the magazines. I can only surmise that his putting performance on Tour is hampered by lackluster targeting skills and mental management skills. he will surely improve with experience. Bully for Little Nick!
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
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