Dear Tim,
A good setup begins with the eyes and works in succession back down through the shoulders, the hips, the kness and ankles to the ground in balance. Imagine a quarter laying on the green, walking up to it and placing your left foot nearest it, bending over slightly, and looking straight down out of your face to read the date on it clearly. This procedure balances your upper torso over the balls of your left foot, establishes a straight gaze out of the face, and results in a distance from your pupils back to your left shoulder socket of about one grip length. This deistance is the same as the distance from the pupils to the shoulder sockets when standing upright, as you can see by simply holding the butt end of a club right at the level of your pupils and then noting that the bottom of the grip corresponds with the center of your shoulder sockets. Since you are balanced with the shoulder socket directly above the ball of the foot, a good distance from the left big toe out to the quarter is one grip length.
With this eye position, gaze, and ball-to-foot position set, you then square up the eyes and head to the direction of the putt. There is a line everyone always has thru the eyes horizontally -- from bridge of nose to inside corner of eye socket in skull to pupil of a straight gaze to outside upper corner of skull's eye socket to skull's temple to above skull's ear hole, going in both directions horizontally across the face. By making this line across the face match the line of the putt, your head and then the neck get square to the putt. To do this, hold a shaft across your "skull line" and then move it straight away from the face about a foot and make this shaft line match the putt line. Your neck orientation into your shoulders will make the shoulders get parallel or square to the line also. From the shoulders, work down to the hips to eliminate any sense of torso twist above the hips, and this sets the hips parallel. The knees and ankles follow the hips in orientation, so the final step is to set the right foot square so that both ankles aim parallel left of the putt line.
The setting of the "skull line" starts with a straight-out gaze and involves a bending to look straight at the ball. This bending can be done a little at the waist, a little in the mid-back spine, and a little in the neck. Various combinations of bending are possible. The more you bend in the neck, the less you will need to bend in the back and waist. But in any event the combination needs to result in a straight gaze of the eyes perpendicularly out of the plane of the face when looking straight at the ball.
The problem is that the more your posture is upright, with less bend at the waist and back, the more there is a tendency to fail to bend the neck over enough to keep the gaze straight. If you stand tall but don't bend over at the neck enough and stops with the forehead too high, the gaze gets redirected down the cheeks, and this is a classic setup flaw that produces poor perceptions. The reason golfers with tall posture allow this to happen is the amount of strain in the neck that bending over enough causes.
So if you have a tall posture, don't allow this to adversely affect your gaze direction. Either intentionally covet the added strain of a correct and accurate neck bend with this tall posture, or bend more in the waist and/or back to relieve the neck strain while getting the gaze correct again.
The taller posture reduces the pupil-to-shoulder distance when the neck is bent properly for a straight gaze, so you will have a ball closer to the feet with this stance (perhaps 1-2 inches closer than a full grip length). The more the bend is in the waist, the more the pupil-to-shoulder distance stays the same as it is when standing upright (the length never gets shorter than this). The more the upper torso is bent or canted over by a waist bend, the further out the head is over the feet. Balance can be achieved with a tall posture easily since it is close to just standing up, and the risk to balance all comes from leaning too far out over the feet. So keeping good balance in the balls of the feet effectively prevents you from leaning too far out over the ball. So long as the straight gaze and lean of the torso never results in the gaze aiming beyond the ball, you should be okay.
The other consideration is how a tall posture affects the stroke feelings. The main feeling to pay attention to is how the shoulders rock, preferably in a vertical plane. This rocking really involves the whole upper torso (not simply the shoulders) and is accomplished with the gut and lower back and is felt somewhat along the sides as first one side and then another is stretched by the torso rock. If you are bend too much in the mid-back spine area, you will have significant strain in the torso that makes the stroke a little uncomfortable. If the bend is more at either end of the torso (waist or neck), this strain will be allieviated. The happy combination is a bend in the waist that does not cant the torso too far out over the feet as to upset balance, plus a very mild bend in the mid-back area to avoid cramping the stroke, plus a fairly relaxed dropping of the neck to get the gaze straight without undue neck strain.
The taller the posture, the less the upper arms have clearance to move across the chest, and the more bend there is at the waist, the more clearance the upper arms have for this. However, with a true shoulder stroke, the arms don't move across the chest, and the arm pit configuration remains constant throughout the stroke. So the extent of bend in the setup is really irrelevant as far as "movement" of the arms is concerned.
What does matter is that the elbows hang straight down in a relaxed fashion and the forearms are not intentionally lifted outward in the setup. the wrist-forearm relationship can be altered in the setup to conform the hands to putters with different lies, so it is really not necessary to make the angle of the forearms match the angle of the shaft, although a good fitting and lie angle will make the two match up. The important point is not to introduce tension into the forearms and elbows by lifting the forearms-hands out to a putter handle. In adopting the setup, the putter is aimed with the sole flat to the surface and then the body is brought to the putter without disturbing the putter's aim or lie angle. In this bringing the body to the putter handle, the feet alone move to the putter and the arms do not reach out to the putter but stay hanging the way they should.
I think this means for you that a tall posture is fine so far as the arms hanging is concerned, so long as your are using a shoulder rock. If you are using an armsy stroke with some independent movement of the arms across the chest in the stroke, then you will have to judge whether your posture allows enough clearance for the upper arms to move unimpeded across the chest. The main concern with a talish posture would be whether the gaze is straight out of the face without undue neck strain, the ball is not played too far out from the feet, and the forearms hang naturally in a very relaxed way without lifting and reaching out to the handle.
Let me know how this works out in your case.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
Over 525,000 visits and growing strong ...