Geoff,
I was watching Stan on TGC the other night and he was describing his method. He said he like to see the shoulders rotate perpendicular around the spine. This moves the club on plane like a mini golf swing. Therefor, he says the clubhead will slightly arc like a regular golf swing. He likes to see the left forarm rotate in sequence with this arc so the face stays square to it. He also talks about how the clubhead will arc up and down as well and he likes to see the putter strike down slightly on the ball. He wants the eyes inside the target line as well.

He was saying how the "rocking" motion of the shoulders can cause the player to tilt the spine and can lead to falling backward on the forward swing. I know his theories kind of contradict your method. Can you discuss both methods a little bit because I know that each one is "correct" if you perform it right. Thanks.

Sure!

By the way, the TGC Academy Live will air again October 21 at 1 pm. I'll try to watch.

Let me start by saying that I advocate a particular technique as the one I believe is optimal for a number of different reasons, taking all things into consideration. I also work hard to understand a wide array of alternative techniques, including the pop putt, the wrist putt, the "arc" putting of David Lee, the styles of Crenshaw, Roberts, Locke, Charles, Furyk, Faxon, and many others, including the technique that Stan Utley is teaching these days. Whatever works best for specific individuals depends somewhat on where they start, what their special talents or disadvantages may be, and their capacity and willingness to master a given technique. So what is "optimal" for most golfers in the abstract may not be the best way to help a specific golfer.

That said, let me first discuss the two techniques and then compare them later.

STAN UTLEY’S STYLE.

In Utley's style, there is a belief that the shoulders rotate "around" the spine. He uses the word “perpendicular” in describing the rotation of the shoulders around the spine. In his SI article, he says the fellow in Missouri who originally taught him this technique described the movement as moving the lead shoulder at the chin. Utley also says he wants the left forearm to rotate in sequence with the arc. The reason he gives for preferring this sort of movement pattern is he feels the shoulder stroke causes head movement and something like a tilting back in the through-stroke.

Properly considered, I believe Utley’s stroke is a throw-back to the 1950s and 1960s, but not quite as good as that earlier stroke style, for the reasons discussed below.

It doesn’t seem to me that Utley is accurately describing what he wants the golfer to do. The reason I say this is because I have spent years examining the relationship between the shoulders, spine, upper arms, elbows, forearms, wrists, hands, putter shaft, and putter face, and the way Utley describes the motion has some contradictions in them that seem to go beyond mere issues of terminology.

The contradiction: If you really move the shoulders “perpendicular” to the “spine,” then there is no necessity to rotate the left forearm to keep the putter face square to the stroke path (Utley’s “arc”). In fact, if you rotate the left forearm on the backstroke with such a shoulder motion, you cannot keep the face square and the face will fan open to the stroke path.

Apparently, since Utley is pretty clear about rotating the forearm, he must not be describing a truly “perpendicular” rotation of the shoulders around the “spine,” so let’s examine that a little more closely to try to get to the bottom of this issue.

The “spine” is not a straight line at all, especially the way most golfers stand at address in putting. The spine in good upright posture is very much S-shaped, and this shape alters in bending the torso and neck forward depending upon just how it is done. There is NOT a single “line” of the spine from tail bone to base of neck about which the shoulders can be turned in a “perpendicular” fashion – there are different vertebral segments from sacral, to lumbar, to thoracic to cervical, and at each segment along the way, there is a different orientation of the spine. So what establishes the “line” or axis of the shoulder rotation as described by Utley?

I strongly suspect that the axis Utley is attempting to describe is the one that basically runs from the middle of the pelvis up to the base of the neck. There’s no anatomical structure here, so it is basically just a geometric relationship. It is also possible that Utley is basing his notion of the “line” or “axis” of the spine on the cervical spine, which means the neck. Because he thinks the eyes should be slightly inside the ball, this says to me that he wants the forehead to be higher at address than the chin, and this means that the angle of the neck to the ground is tilted up off horizontal, but not as much as the angle of the back or torso as a whole. The base of the neck can easily serve as a reference “plate” that rotates about the axis of the neck like an album on a turntable and spindle. Perhaps this is what Utley means about rotating the shoulders “perpendicular” to the “spine.”

That said, either way Utley is still not describing a shoulder rotation perpendicular to a line. Even if the back in general or the neck is the axis instead of the spine, a truly “perpendicular” rotation of the shoulders around either line will move the arms and hands so that the putter face will stay square to the “arc” without any changes in the forearm whatsoever. But, hey, don’t believe me – just look for yourself!

Try this: bend forward and put both hands together like a prayer gesture with arms extended down before your lap as if in a putting setup. The two thumbs aim straight at the ground going out from the body and aim backwards into the body at the sternum in the middle of the torso or possibly at the base of the neck, depending on how you hold your hands. Now rotate the shoulders perpendicularly to any “line” you chose running up and down through the middle of your body – the back, the spine, the neck, etc. In this turn, you have a “triangle” with three sides – the two arms and hands plus the line between the two shoulders. Turning the line between the two shoulders in a rotation will necessarily carry the arms and hands around with the rotation, so the angles between the shoulder line (base line of triangle) and the two arms will stay constant as you turn. In other words, the arm pits will not alter shape, and the line of the thumbs will stay aimed at the middle of the torso. There is NO independent movement of the arms in relation to the shoulders. This is usually described in golf jargon as “keeping the triangle intact.”

Doing this, which is standard shoulder stroke advice, keeps the face of the putter square to the path of the stroke at all times. The putter face and palms stay perpendicular or square to the base line of the triangle. The outward line of the thumbs indicate the stroke path point by point as it progresses, and the inward line of the thumbs stays square by NOT changing in relation to the shoulders.

So why does Utley want the left forearm rotating? Basically, he is not making a shoulder turn, but is instead altering the shape of the triangle by making an “armsy” stroke that changes the arm pits as the stroke goes back. In simpler terms, his technique sends the arms farther along going back than the shoulder turn. But the arms won’t normally turn “perpendicular” around the “spine” in the way the shoulders do, but instead will move more like a straight back flapping for the first foot or so and then will curl rather sharply back around the hip. Even when the shoulders are moving and the arms have some independent movement going back, so that the two movements are “melded” to some degree, the independent ahead-of-the-shoulders movement of the arms sends the hands away so that the thumb line changes from pointing at the middle of the body to sweep somewhat to the right of the torso’s middle (right-handed golfers). In plain terms, the armsiness makes the hands tend to stay “closed” to the line unless there is some manipulation. Hence, Utley needs to “open” the putter face going back with some rotation of the left forearm in order to put and keep the putter face in a square relation to the stroke path as it goes back.

He wouldn’t have to do this at all if his armsiness didn’t get the hands orientation out of square to start with.

This armsiness is exactly the same reason that Horton Smith found the need to “hood” the putter face in order to put and keep the face square with an armsy stroke path made straight along a yardstick. While Utley’s stroke “arcs” inside closer to his feet than a straight stroke, and his armsiness requires an “opening” of the putter face to keep it square to the arc he wants in the path, Horton Smith made the opposite “arc” with an armsy stroke. Whereas the crescent shape of Utley’s path, looking down at it from the golfer’s point of view, looks like a frowny face, Horton Smith’s armsy path looked like a smiley face crescent. Utley opens the face going back to keep it square to the armsy path and Horton Smith closed the face going back to keep it square to his armsy path. Once you start this game of changing the putter face in the backstroke, you need a good plan to finish the game going forward. In both cases, the whole problem is avoided by just keeping the triangle intact without independent arm motion in the backstroke – the putter face just stays square with dead hands and no armsiness.

George Low, the great putting teacher of the 1950s and 1960s, adopted an arc stroke path just to avoid the complication of forearm / hand rotation used by Horton Smith. Low advocated NO hand manipulation of the face in the stroke, albeit his path was arcing inside going back. He also advocated allowing the putter to rise going back, to allow the wrists to hinge going back, and to strike the ball with a slightly descending trajectory with an abbreviated follow-through. Utley’s stroke is very much similar to George Low’s stroke, except that Utley rotates the left forearm whereas Low would not.

Todd Sones, author of Lights Out Putting and an advocate of an armsy stroke rather than the shoulder stroke, and for pretty much the same reason Utley gives for not liking the shoulder stroke, has recently said he agrees with much of what utley says about the arcing path of the stroke. But Sones does not advocate altering the face orientation with any forearm rotation or hands manipulation. Sones says the face simply moves back to square with the “natural” arm motion, and he seems to believe the face stays square to the path of the stroke “naturally,” although he is not clear about this.

So, among the arc-path advocates George Low, todd Sones, and Stan Utley, Stan is alone in advocating the rotation of the left forearm. This suggests to me that Utley really uses and avocates more arms action and less shoulder turning than either Low or Sones would use in their personal “blend” of the shoulders and arms in motion. That creates a problem for Utley’s style not shared by the styles of Low or Sones – getting back to square by an un-rotating of the forearm.

So what’s the plan for finishing the stroke going forward, once the putter face has been rotated going back? Horton Smith clearly had a plan, and that was to “undo” the counter-rotation of the forearms that closed the face going back by opening the face going forward. It’s not real clear to me that Utley advises a similar thing – that is, opening the face going back and then undoing this going forward with a mirror-image closing or rotation of the forearms the opposite way. In his SI article, he says this explicitly. It not really necessary to re-close the face going forward, if you know what you are doing blending stroke path and face angle at impact, but I don’t think this is what Utley has in mind. So far as I can tell, he advocates a re-closing of the putter face back to square at impact by re-rotation of the left forearm (and hands) and then a continuing arcing of the stroke path around his feet going past impact.

I seriously doubt that he advocates a continued closing of the face with continued forearm re-rotation past impact. He wants a continued arcing path, but not a continued rotation closed of the forearms. I believe that Utley is describing a return of the putter face to square at impact with the forearm closing rotation, but thereafter the forearm pretty much stops rotating. This can be checked by seeing whether an Utley stroke has a slightly abbreviated follow-through – a tell-tale sign of ceasing forearm rotation.

Another thing to look for is some bending or folding of the right wrist going back and unfolding of the right wrist coming forward. This is a subtle sign, but it is part of the thumb line getting out of square to the path unless this wrist bend is allowed. This action is very evident these days among pros following the herd instinct. The typical stroke these days seen on the putting practice green at PGA Tour events has the right wrist cocking a bit going back with a touch of left forearm rotation, and then an uncocking and re-rotation coming back to square at impact, and then a ceasing of the forearm rotation but a continuation of the right wrist straightening out going past impact.

If Utley is actually advocating a continuation of closing the face with forearm rotation past impact, I don’t think pros are actually doing this to any great degree. Instead, I believe pros have learned the hard way that, at impact and beyond, the putter face needs to stay square headed squarely down the target line at least until the ball-putter contact has ended, and that usually requires a few inches at least. The smart play is to avoid any face changes at all during impact for sure, and to be safe, for a decent length past initial impact.

In Utley’s style, even if the face is not being closed any more at and after impact, he is clearly advocating a continuation of the arcing stroke path in the follow-through. This has its own issues, mostly about consistency of ball position and correctness of ball position in the stance to get the impact square so the ball leaves the setup always in the same square way. Slight variations in ball position OR in the consistency of squaring the putter for impact unquestionably result in pushes and pulls. Here, plain-jane physics undeniably rules.

This is not to say a continuation of the arc per se is necessarily a bad thing, so long as the arc is sufficiently mild through the impact area. David Lee certainly can putt well with his “tangent line” impact using an arcing path that is nearly circular in radius. It is just to say that ball position and returning to square precisely at the right time is critical.

So, to summarize, I believe Utley’s style is a throw-back to the style of the 1950s, which explains why he learned it from an elderly player in Missouri as a young golfer. However, the lore passed along to Utley years ago seems to have gotten a little garbled in transmission about the way the shoulders move and whether the forearm should be rotated open going back. This is more than just a quibble over terminology or the way he describes his style. I believe that even as an armsy stroke, Utley’s style has unnecessary complications that make it slightly inferior to the model from whence it is derive (George Low) as well as slightly less sound than the technique described by Todd Sones.

STRAIGHT SHOULDER STROKE

The advantages of the straight shoulder stroke over an armsy stroke include

1. a clarity in the stroke path versus an armsy stroke with varying sorts of arcing paths;
2. an easy repeatability because the motion is very simple with only one moving part headed towards another body part that is always in the same place;
3. a more stable falling of the stroke into impact; no issue of ball position versus face trajectory through the impact area; and
4. the absence of any need to transition from an arcing stroke to a straight delivery of the face down the line through impact.

These are advantages over an armsy stroke whether or not the stroke style includes any forearm rotation. Let me explain these points.

1. Clarity of path. There are arcs and then again there are arcs. The degree of radiusing of the curved path in reference to a point directly below the putter sweetspot on the ground varies from person to person and will also vary from stroke to stroke unless one specific arc is practiced. This is the reason the makers of the Putting Arc training aid on their website advise serious golfers to get individually fitted for their specific custom arc shape, as the arc aid sold over the counter is a one-size-fits-all deal. In addition, there is a separate vertical dimension in the stroke path, and armsy strokes have variation in this dimension as well. There is only one straight line along the ground. A good shoulder action sends the putter sweetspot on this very clear line exactly every time. And in addition, with a dead hands and arms stroke, the rising arc of the putterhead in the vertical dimension does not ever change or vary either.

2. Simplicity of moving parts. The armsy stroke has moving shoulders, moving arms, and moving wrists (and probably moving elbows as well). The shoulder stroke has the lead shoulder socket moving down and back – down at the balls of the lead foot and then curling back along the line from front foot to back foot. There is no motion of the arms, the elbows, or the wrists.

3. Easier fall back to impact. In the armsy stroke, the putter rises only slightly and goes around laterally to the inside substantially. If someone shot the golfer in the head at the top of the backstroke so that he completely relaxed at that point, the putterhead would fall at his rear foot. In contrast, with a shoulder stroke, shooting the golfer at the top of the backstroke so that he completely relaxes results in the shoulderframe dropping back to level, which just so happens to move the putterhead straight down the line naturally into the back of the ball. If you like relaxation in the stroke, and like the perfect reliability of gravity to assist the squareness of the stroke rather than to conflict with it, then you should love a top of the backstroke position that will drop the hands square at the ball without you having to do anything. To be sure, an armsy stroke sort of “feels” like it naturally returns square through impact, but that is not actually the case. If an armsy golfer really relaxed to drop the putter through impact, his putterhead would fall inward towards his feet and pass in a line inside the ball. And if you also rotate the left forearm going back, and then “drop’ the putterhead through, you would have the putterhead wide open dropping down a line across the toes well inside the ball. An armsy stroke requires a deliberate effort to move the putterhead BACK to the putt line from the inside position.

4. No need for transition of path from arcing to straight at impact. As I said above, I believe that good putters have learned the hard way that the putter face needs to be square and moving square down the line for a nice little way at and past impact. This is true regardless of what you believe about the vertical dimension, whether the putter should stay low to the ground or rise somewhat. Bobby Locke had this transition from inside to square to straight down the line through impact even with a flowing follow through and I believe Crenshaw and other “arcing” golfers also make this transition. Those golfers who use an abbreviated follow-through are doing the same (e.g., George Low, Bob Rosburg, Don Pooley, Gary Player). I also believe those pros who adopt Utley’s style basically don’t fully accept the rotation of the forearm past impact or the continuation of the arc through the hitting area, even if the putter later falls off to the left after the real business is done. Instead, what I observe watching pros is an subtle unfolding of the wrists through impact that effectively extends the putter face square down the line, despite any leftover arcing in the path. When the wrists are moving slightly ahead of the arms at this critical section of the stroke path, the functional effect is to temporarily suspend the arcing, so long as the orientation and direction of the wrists’ unfolding is properly handled. The so-called “release” of the putter through impact is very much this move. Well, the straight shoulder stroke has no need for any of this business.

The DISADVANTAGE often claimed for the shoulder stroke is that it is difficult to perform without head motion. I don’t really disagree that keeping the head still is a little easier with the armsy stroke, but I would make two points in response. First, the difficulty is not that great and the armsy stroke does not make holding the head still that much easier to the extent the little extra care on this aspect renders the rewards unattractive. To the contrary, keeping the head still with a shoulder stroke is not that hard at all, and I believe the rewards are definitely worth the trouble. Second, so what? A good shoulder stroke even with a little head roll following the shoulder rotation still gives a very straight stroke, so long as the actual pivot between the shoulders and the head in the base of the neck and the axis of rotation (line from center of base of neck out top of head) stays stable OR so long as any motion of the pivot or axis through the head is returned reliably to square as at address when the stroke returns to impact.

If you want to practice feeling a good shoulder stroke with a steady head, just hold your putter horizontally like a battering ram and stare at a point on the floor. Then rock the shoulder frame as a unit down and back to move the shaft straight above the ground, with neither end arcing off this line. The back end of the shaft will rise up but stay above the line, and will not curl inside towards the hip. Doing this with a fixed and steady head is not that hard at all. But you can also make the same motion with the shaft with a freer head and less concern about it.

The sense of tilting back through impact that Utley describes is real, but this does not mean the head moves, the pivot moves, or that this sense makes solid impact difficult. In fact, this very sense is a great anchor for the sense of body motion to get the stroke and the roll dead straight and solid. The golfer with a good shoulder stroke positively seeks out this sense of hitting into a firm left side and contacting the ball slightly on the upstroke through the ball-forward position and sending it away straight down the line. The shoulder frame absolutely tilts up as the ball is sent away. But the head can still be kept steady and unmoving if that is what you want. In fact, Ben Crenshaw has a noticeable movement in his through-stroke of the right knee – it bends and and moves slightly forward down the line with his follow through. This results from his torso tilting back through impact, so his ribs pressure his right hip, and the right knee gives to make room. It’s all very subtle, but there nonetheless. The same thing CAN be used in a good straight shoulder stroke. You don’t need the lower body of a metal robot to putt straight with a shoulder stroke.
In the final analysis, I am saying golfers should aspire to a good shoulder stroke, but if that proves too difficult for a specific individual, then some armsiness might help out. But the right sort of armsiness would not include left forearm rotation, in my view. Certainly, young kids perform better with a little armsiness in their stroke because the focus and slight artificiality of the shoulder motion is not quite within their motor development ballpark yet. But once more coordinated motion in general become part of the growing repertoire, the slight artificiality of the shoulder stroke is not really much of an obstacle in exchange for its nice advantages. If ballet dancers stopped developing their motor skills repertoire to avoid artificiality, then all ballets would look like a gang of ducks waddling across the stage. So it is with golf – a little form goes a long way.

I better stop at this point. Let me know if I’m getting all this cleared up any.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
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Over half a million visits through October 17, 2003, and growing strong …

That does clear some stuff up. Utley did say on the show that he likes a free arm swing, so I do think you are correct about him using more of an arm stroke with just a little shoulder rotation.

I am still a little confused about shaft plane. If the putter were to stay on it's shaft plane, wouldn't it have to arc inside the target line? Do you teach an off-plane stroke, but a straight path stroke? I work on my regular golf swing a lot using a plane board or a laser and the clubhead can arc inside the target line, but still be on plane. As long as the laser is pointed at the target line, it would be on plane. I guess I am confused on the path/plane relationship of a straight stroke. The way I understand shaft plane, the stroke must move back, in, and up going back, and down, out, forward coming down...always striking the ball downward and outward.

I have been working on a straight stroke off and on for years and just can't ever get it to feel right. I try resting the toe of my putter against a flat surface and then stroking keeping the toe on the surface. In order to do this, it feels like I really have to push my arm outward to stay on the target line. I also always seem to want to roll the face open going back.

P.S. I really admire the time you spend on here giving thorough and clear explanations. Most instructors wouldn't ever even think to do one fourth of what you do. Thanks.

Here are some ways to understand what is up about the stroke plane in putting.

Your question refers to the "shaft plane," so let me start there. The stroke plane is what you are doing with your body, and the shaft plane just results. The two are not necessarily or even usually the same. In the shoulder stroke, if you imagine a stick-man bent at address for a putt, with a dumbbell for shoulders, the stroke plane in a shoulder stroke moves the ends of the dumbbell inside a single plane of motion. The angle of the shaft of the putter and your hands position in reference to your body are irrelevant to whether the putterhead will move on a line with the face staying square to the line and the path. The position of the hands will affect the degree of rising off the line on either side of the bottom of the stroke, but that is pretty insignificant in a shoulder stroke, so you have a lot of freedom in your setup if you want it or need it, but your shoulder action has to stay in plane, at least for the critical segment of the stroke path approaching impact and a substantial way past impact. This is the ONLY thing about the body that moves or changes in a shoulder stroke -- this dumbbell.

Your question -- "If the putter were to stay on it's shaft plane, wouldn't it have to arc inside the target line?" -- focuses on the movement of the putter, when you should focus on the movement of the body that moves the putter. Setup over a line on the floor and forget the putter; just move your lead shoulder straight at the balls of the foot and watch what happens. That is a VERTICAL stroke plane.

If you want to see a TILTED stroke plane (which is more similar to the way the full swing looks), then move both shoulders at and away from the line on the floor that indicates the putt line, just like each shoulder socket is attached by a cord to a pulley anchored straight out from the socket on the putt line. This body motion of the dumbbell establishes a plane of motion that is tilted at the same angle that the dumbbell move, or that the cords extend from sockets to pulleys on the putt line. This is NOT the same angle (usually) of the putter shaft. However, this BODY motion does in fact move the shaft in its own plane on its own angle.

In a VERTICAL motion, the putter face stays on line and stays square to the line and the path, which are the same, and rises somewhat on either side of the bottom in a crescent oriented vertically above the line. No hand manipulation is needed or wanted. Just move the shoulders in a vertical plane up and down. End of story.

In a TILTED plane, the putter "looks" like it arcs inside, but that is a matter of perspective. Seen from directly above the putt line, it does not appear to stay on the line and appears to move inside. But from the perspective of your pivot in the center of the dumbbell, the putter's sweetspot never strays off the line at all, but simply rises above the line on either side of the bottom. This rising action is identical to the "crescent" shape in a VERTICAL stroke, except the shape is now tilted with the TILTED plane of motion, at the same angle to the ground.

Your point about the laser is valid but your understanding of what is involved is a little off. You write:

"I work on my regular golf swing a lot using a plane board or a laser and the clubhead can arc inside the target line, but still be on plane. As long as the laser is pointed at the target line, it would be on plane. I guess I am confused on the path/plane relationship of a straight stroke."

Let's separate out the "plane" of motion of the body (and the resulting plane of motion of the shaft) from whether you are twisting the shaft as it moves back. The laser out the bottom of a shaft will continue to point along the shaft plane even if you twist the shaft while it moves along the plane. The laser beam is just a beam or a dot. The real question is whether the face of the putter stays aimed along the putt line.

The Waiter's Tray. If you have a laser out the face of the putter 1/2 inch up from the sole, at address the face aims down the line horizontally at a target and hits the target 1/2 inch high. What happens when you make your stroke motion?

In a VERTICAL stroke plane, the putter head rises goiung back and the face aims progressively more down at the line, but the laser beam stays on the line. The dot of the laser on the ground moves closer to you and eventually passes thru the ball and keeps heading backwards along the line as your lead shoulder keeps going down and back. The shaft stays pointed at the line too, as would be indicated by a second laser aimed out the bottom of the shaft. Ultimately, when the shaft of the putter is horizontal and parallel to the ground, the face of the putter is pointing straight at the ground, and the laser beam is hitting the putt line, too!

Going in the opposite direction, as the shoulder comes back up, the face retraces its steps back to the bottom of the stroke where the beam is again aimed at a target straight down the line, and then the stroke continues going forward in the through-stroke. As the shoulder rises past level, the face starts to tilt to the sky while the shaft keeps pointing down the line. The shaft stays pointed at the line as before. When the shaft points far enough along the way to reach the target, the face is tilted up somewhat. Ultimately, if the motion of the body continues until the shaft is horizontal to the ground, the face points straight up at the sky so you could place a tee peg upside down on the putter face. The face is perfectly parallel to the ground at this position (which we are assuming is not tilted, too).

When you repeat this exercise in a TILTED stroke motion of the dumbbell, the face in the backstroke stays pointed onto the line as it rises in the tilted crescent. The shaft stays pointed at the line too. At the extreme of the backstroke where the shaft parallels the ground, the face still points at the line. None of this requires or can exist with any hand manipulation.

In both VERTICAL and TILTED strokes, the thumbs stay aimed at the line too, or at least to a line that parallels the putt line. This also means that the flat surface of the putter handle stays oriented in the same plane at all times in the stroke.

Your confusion about the stroke plane in the full swing and the stroke plane in putting with a shoulder stroke is quite normal. You write:

“I guess I am confused on the path/plane relationship of a straight stroke. The way I understand shaft plane, the stroke must move back, in, and up going back, and down, out, forward coming down...always striking the ball downward and outward.”

What you describe is a full swing plane in which the shoulders turn but the arms move at first with the shoulders and then independently so that the lead arm flattens across the chest. This is like a collapsing of the triangle used in putting. That’s the same armsy action Utley teaches for putting.

If you examine the one point in the full swing that might allow comparison to a putting shoulder stroke, that point is when the shaft is parallel to the ground. In the full swing, because of the independent action of the arms, you want to rotate the forearms as the shaft really starts to climb going back, once it passes an angle to the ground from its vertical starting orientation to about 30-45 degrees as it heads to horizontal. Most full swing gurus teach an initial extension going back, and this is what collapses the triangle. So the golfer has to twist the forearms and the clubhead to keep the clubhead “square” to the path. This twisting (done properly) does not affect the aiming of the shaft at the line. Once the shaft reaches horizontal, the clubhead’s sole line should be aimed straight up so that if the golfer stopped and turned to orient his stance and torso the same way the shaft is pointing, and then lowered the clubhead to the ground, he would then be aiming in a setup just like he was at address. So if he started facing north and setup aiming the clubface west, and then turned on plane until the shaft was parallel to the ground and reoriented to the shaft, he would be facing due east aiming the clubface north.

In the putting on-plane shoulder stroke, you are not concerned with power or getting the shaft all the way to the top, and almost all the time, the shaft angle going back doesn’;t seriously get close to horizontal. There is no need to allow the armsiness or the face twisting / rotating. Just keeps the thumbs aiming straight and the flat of the handle staying in its starting plane. Don’t do anything at all with the hands or the arms except stay relaxed.

This brings me to your last concern. You write:

“I have been working on a straight stroke off and on for years and just can't ever get it to feel right. I try resting the toe of my putter against a flat surface and then stroking keeping the toe on the surface. In order to do this, it feels like I really have to push my arm outward to stay on the target line. I also always seem to want to roll the face open going back.”

If you focus solely on the “feel” of moving the shoulders in plane and forget the “feel” of the arms and hands, you should be just fine. The moving of the lead shoulder down and back in plane does “push” the triangle, and keeping the torso turning back to keep the triangle shape intact starts to get a little tough once the shaft going back aims at a spot on the line about 2-3 feet back from the bottom of the stroke. This is when the arms and hands want to get involved. But the shaft hardly goes much past this point.

So there are two different approaches concerning what to do once the putter shaft gets to this “trouble” angle going back. Yield to the “easy feel” of the armsiness or not. If you yield, your hands will open the putter face off the line and you will have to retrace this move coming forward. If you don’t yield, you embrace the slight discomfort going higher with the shaft angle, keeping in mind the ultimate position at parallel with the face aimed down at the line. From this position, you can use gravity to simply relax the shoulder dumbbell and let the putter fall straight and square back to the ball.

What really counts more than any of this, however, is the forward stroke. To keep the putter face square going into and through impact, it helps to think of moving the sweetspot down the line, keeping the face square to the line, heading the sweetspot and the shaft’s aim straight down the line all the way to the target (if the stroke gets that far), with the ultimate “Waiter’s Tray” position in mind. You do all this by NOT allowing the hands to change, by keeping the thumbs aimed at the line, by keeping the flat of the putter handle untwisted, and by not yielding to the “easy feel” of letting the arms collapse the triangle shape.

Now this all sounds extreme and difficult, but what really really counts is what happens near the ball on either side. So long as strokes in putting stay within a certain range near the bottom, an in-plane shoulder stroke, vertical or tilted, is easy as pie. AND an Utley style armsy stroke is not very different, and really should not involve much or any rotation of the forearms in this critical region.

So, if the “feel” of a shoulder stroke bothers you, and you don’t weant to embrace that special feel as a way to make the stroke have better form, that’s fine. Allow some armsiness in the longer strokes. But when it comes to the forward stroke, you better get square well before impact and stay square until well after impact.

I like the tip given by Phil Blackmar some years back with Jim Flick on the Golf Channel. He uses a spot about 5-8 inches in front of the ball on the line, and makes sure he rolls the ball over the spot. That’s nice, but you also ought to move the sweetspot of the putter over this spot as well. And in addition, the face better be square aimed down the line when the face covers this part of the stroke from back of ball to sweetspot over the forward spot. This is a nice way to putt.

But really you should extend this concept all the way to the target as a second forward spot, in terms of moving the sweetspot and keeping the face aimed during the whole course of the stroke going forward past the bottom. Show the face to the target. Point the shaft down the line. Move the sweetspot down the line all the way to the target or the end of the stroke. Don’t allow the hands to twist in the through-stroke. Keep the hands moving on a parallel line to the putt line by keeping the triangle intact. These are all very important points and should be adhered to religiously within as much of the range of the putt stroke as you can handle.

Let me know if I’m getting this any clearer.

Cheers!

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

Over 500,000 visits through October 17, 2003, and growing strong …

I saw the Academy Live rerun yesterday, and saw no surprises in what Stan Utley teaches. He acknowledges that his approach is not new, although he doesn't really seem to know where it came from. The basic idea that the putting stroke is a "miniature golf swing" has been around for a long, long time. A retired amateur from the Chicago area named Mark G. Harris once sank four 8-footers in a row using this method, in the 1930s, and they made a bloomin' movie about it!

As I wrote before viewing the program, Utley's method is a throwback to earlier days. The notion that his method is "natural" or "simple" strikes me as misinformed. His forearm rotation is MORE complicated than the old 1950s style popularized by George Low. Jack Nicklaus was early on a student of Low's, as was Palmer. Nicklaus later "lost the feeling" needed for Low's style and went to his piston stroke. Jeff Sluman told me this weekend that he had given up trying the Utley stroke because it was too complex. After trying his style this summer, Sluman missed 5 of 6 cuts, and now says he just wants to keep his stroke as simple as possible. This supports my observation that Stan Utley’s style is not simple at all.

The notion that this style stroke is “simple and therefore natural and therefore will withstand Tour pressures and will not break down under pressure” also strikes me as misguided. Because it is complex and depends for its faithful reproduction on very subtle feelings, it will break down under pressure more than a simpler stroke. Utley has a three-stroke lead in a Nationwide Tour event this summer and blew it over the last four holes, mostly with putting mistakes. He three-putted one hole from about 12 feet.

The notion that Utley is a great putter personally may or may not be the case. I’m sure he putts a lot better than most PGA Tour players, but his putts per GIR stat is as good as it is, by his own admission, largely because he is a notoriously poor ball striker and hits very few greens in regulation. That means the greens he DOES hit in regulation are greens he is approaching from close by with a wedge, so his total putting footage is not that great because he sticks these greens close. He also benefits from the total putts per round category from his superb pitching and chipping, since on the greens he misses his first putt is made from tight in at the pin. His record low 6 putts for 9 holes at the Canadian Open a few years ago was accomplished by missing most greens in regulation and by chipping in a few.

Arnold Palmer once complained about Casper’s low putting totals as coming from Casper’s missing lots of greens in regulation. Bob Heintz set the PGA Tour records for low putts per GIR in 2002 with 1.682, mostly because he is not a good ball striker and misses tons of greens. Gene Sarazen once complained that players who missed greens in regulation and then chipped and one putted were not suffering a big enough penalty for missing the green in comparison to a ball striker who hit the green but had a first putt from 15 to 20 feet and hence two-putted for the same number of strokes. His cure for this was to advocate a hole that was 8 inches in diameter, about twice the regulation size. Cochran and Stobbs, in their 1968 book Search for the Perfect Swing, reported all this and stated that the experiment didn’t help the ball strikers at all.

What strikes me about Utley’s technique is the subtlety required to make it work on a regular basis. As I understand it, Jay Haas has put in about two years getting the technique down. The fact that a handful of golfers find the technique congenial to their personal golfing style does not indicate to me that the technique is “easy” or “best.” The timing of the forearm rotation and the handling of the arc shape by the body move is not at all straightforward. The forearm rotation must be coordinated with the size and pace of the backstroke, and then the forearm rotation coming back to impact and thereafter has to be coordinated again with the initial address position to return the face to square. Utley further complicates the stroke by having a very specific flexing of his right elbow, using the unflexing of this elbow as a “power source,” and by hitting down on the ball in a very specific way. He says he aims to hit down and through the ball at a point on the ground just ahead of the front of the ball. He describes the amount of forearm rotation as “subtle” and claims his hitting down through the ball is the same action used in full-swing iron play. He says that the forearm rotation needs to be performed without any wrist action, but obviously moving the forearm activates the same muscles that move the wrist, so the forearm rotation without wrist action has to be a carefully learned and very specific feeling.

Utley’s stroke is VERY similar to David Lee “Putting on the Arc” style. The interesting thing about Lee’s style is its closeness to a hockey slap shot, specifically Lee’s emphasis on “trapping” the ball with the putter face through the impact zone. His specially designed putter has a “trapping” face built in for this purpose. Utley’s hitting down on the ball while also rotating his forearm closed along a closing arc path is essentially the same sort of trapping action. Bobby Locke admittedly used a similar trapping action by delivering the putter from a closed stance and a path back and forward along his closed toe line, coming back into the ball with a face hooded to stay square to the target line but along a slightly in-to-out path through the ball, about 6:15 to 12:15 o’clock across the ball, but with an upward trajectory.

The claim by Utley that his downward blow is “best” in any way is confused. He states that Scotty Cameron’s research has “proved” that the best roll results from impacted the ball at a time the face presents 4.3 degrees of loft because the ball sits in a small cup of the grass at address and the loft is needed to get the ball out of the cup.

First, this is balderdash from Scotty Cameron. With basic muni greens being cut to 1/8th an inch daily, the ball is a little perched in a mild cup, but it’s not at all much of a cup – if you don’t believe this and prefer to believe Scotty’s studio research instead, I challenge you simply to get on your hands and knees on your local green and take a look for yourself at the bottom of the ball on the green. The “cup” you will see is entirely insignificant.

Second, grass is flexible and the bottom of the ball is just like a wedge shape, so moving the ball “out of the cup” can easily be done by wedging the front of the ball over the bendable rim of the grass cup without any problem at all, whether hitting down or up.

And third, to roll any hoop like kids used to do in the 1920s and 1930s with a stick, you MUST hit up across the back of the hoop. If you hit down on the hoop it will bounce. Hitting down on a ball pinches it against the underlying turf, which is usually solid and packed like a table, and this makes the ball bound up and out before it starts rolling. That’s a loss of energy and a source of inconsistency of line and distance control. And fourth, hitting down on a ball is not the best way to start it off on a very unique line as defined by the setup aim. By hitting down, especially with the face being closed at the time by forearm rotation and path arcing closed, there is a very difficult timing issue to make sure the face at impact is aimed where it needs to be, in addition to the issue of whether the blow is too much downward. With an upward blow, in contrast (especially one in which the path is straight down the line into impact), the vertical motion of the putterhead entirely avoids pinching the ball against the turf, and if the “upward” is indeed vertical, this vertical action reduces greatly any effect of existing face twist out of line. When a twisted face strikes a ball moving horizontal to the surface, all of the twist is transferred to the ball’s line of roll, but even a twisted face can be used with a rising blow to get a pretty straight roll, so long as the vertical motion is online. So comparing a twisted-flat stroke versus a twisted-rising stroke, my vote is clearly for the rising stroke. This is even moreso the case comparing a twisted-downward blow and a twisted-rising blow. I note that Bobby Locke, Billy Casper, and Harold Swash are all very clear about the need for an upward strike, not especially for the solidity of the strike as much as for the integrity of the line. And by far most pros hit slightly up on the ball, as indicated by the fact that nearly all pro impact points on the putter face are slightly lower than the midline vertically on the face.

Finally, Stan Utley uses a 6 degree putter because he delofts the face with his hands-ahead technique (another subtle complication) and his forward press, which he also describes a very mild in order to avoid twisting the face out of square (still another subtle complication). He has this unusual putter loft designed into his game because of his idiosyncratic or eccentric technique. He recognizes that different putting styles (ball position in stance, hands-ahead impacts, forward pressing, and the like) will demand different lofts so that the ultimate dynamic loft at impact will approximate what he and Scotty Cameron claim is best (i.e., 4.3 degrees at impact). In effect, he is saying that he can achieve the so-called optimal loft at impact only by virtue of a very peculiar combination of big loft in his putter and by taking the loft out by a very specific form of forward press and a very personal form of hands-ahead at impact.

The “downward” blow has nothing whatever to do with achieving the claimed optimal loft at impact, since this can be done in a wide variety of blows down, level, or up through the ball. The downward blow is just his personal choice, and I believe it has more to do with the need to “trap” the ball through impact with his “slap shot” arcing closed than it has to do with the solidity of the blow. If he didn’t trap the ball in this way, it just wouldn’t go straight. If you make an Utley stroke and mishandle this aspect of the blow, the ball will seriously push or pull off line.

Lordy, lordy! Who can honestly claim that this is a “simple” or “natural” putting technique that best matches what the human body innately wants to do under pressure?

As is usually the case with people who start golf as a kid and then become successful with a personal style, there is a strong tendency to “see what you want to see” about the style and find reasons to believe in the style as the best possible style. One of the keys to being a good scientist is to avoid becoming wedding to pet theories, and always keep testing your notions (whether explicit or implicit) against alternatives.

Compaing the Utley style to a straight shoulder stroke, it seems to me that the key to the Utley stroke is a) retaining a sense of where the ball needs to start off from the address position while the back- and down-stroke is progressing, and b) timing the downward, arcing, forearm rotating action precisely through impact. If you have ever tried to emulate David Lee’s “counter-fall” around-the-left-heel arcing stroke, perhaps you will feel it may be “natural” in some sense but it sure ain’t easy to perform consistently. In contrast, with a straight shoulder stroke, the ball is played well ahead of the bottom of the stroke. This means that from the top of the backstroke, the putter head will “naturally” (i.e., by gravity alone and without any voluntary muscle movement of the body) fall straight and square back down to the bottom of the stroke on line, and will then “naturally” start rising as it moves straight and square into the back of the ball. The putter face effectively runs down a shute for an inch or two before it reaches the back of the ball. This movement past the bottom of the stroke is what gets the face headed square at the target, since nothing in the stroke before the bottom of the stroke coming down really is moving at the target. So bottoming out the putter before impact and moving it down the line at the target a little before impact occurs seems to me much better as a way to get rid of any odd path or face problems that crop up in the back- and down- stroke behind the bottom.

Let me conclude by saying that Utley obviously uses his personal style very well, but I simply don’t believe the claim that his approach is simple or natural or will withstand pressure more than a straight shoulder stroke. It may work best for a handfdul of golfers who have “issues” with the shoulder stroke and can’t get it working for them, but this problem is probably due to inadequate training in how to perform a sound shoulder stroke rather than to some supposed inherent difficulty of the shoulder stroke. So the Utley approach is old news enjoying a current spotlight made brighter by the public comments of its adherents. But in the long run, it’s just one of a gaggle of ways to putt that has a nice feature or two, a successful practitioner or two, and not much else of a fundamental character going for it.

Cheers!

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

Over half a million visits through October 17, 2003, and growing strong …

A guy who had a lesson with Stan said he likes quite long putters. Do you know if this is the case and part of his system ? My putter is 32 1/2" Thanks