Hi Geoff,
Thank you for the response to my last mail. I especially liked the sniper analogy. Many times, have I thought about shooting myself in the head while putting. I must have been on the right track!
I followed your advice about letting the putter fall from the top. I think I'm getting better at it. I have also worked on the posture. I use your cc-gaze to get the eyes where they should be, and I let the elbows hang under the shoulder sockets, with the fore-arms angled(naturally)towards the ball. I do, however have some concerns:

1. I don't like to practise technique on the putting green. I am taught to practise without a ball and hole, and use the putting green for holing putts only. The only thought or device I have used on the putting green(for years and years)that makes the environment different from playing, is the metronome(adress/impact)
This behaviour is so ingrained, that I don't know if I can or want to change it. Is it possible to work hard on this technique using shafts for allignment, and never using a ball or hole?(I do use a ball on the carpet to feel impact)

2. I have practiced the "putter fall" and working on overall tempo with and without the metronome at home. I think I have gotten used to a much smoother stroke. The backswing felt like an eternity initially, but, it gets more comfortable day by day. When I go on the green however, I don't want to think about technique. I just want to listen to the take away and impact beeps from the metronome. I am not sure that I can change this, Geoff. I use a setting of 52 beeps/min. this gives me 0.8 for backswing and 0.375 for top of bs to impact. Impact to finish takes 0.625. If I learn to let the putter fall correctly every time(at home), do you see any problem with using the metronome in this way?

3. What do you think of Justin Leonard's putting technigue?

I haven't worked on my left shoulder after impact yet. It feels that it moves in a natural way, though.

Take care,
dralban

Dear dralban,

Yes and no.

Yes, you can practise indoors without a ball or hole, just practising the stroke movement for a straight repeating stroke. The use of a shaft as an alignment aid raises an issue or two. What you really want is a setup that is consistent and a stroke with that setup that is consistent, with the result that the stroke always sends the ball rolling out of or away from the setup in exactly the same way. In order to integrate setup and stroke consistently, there is a point directly out from the big toe of your lead foot on a line segment perpendicular to the intended putt line. This segment is something like 8 inches long from toe to putt line, and intersects the putt line several inches in front of the ball. This point of intersection always has to be the same in the setup and the stroke always has to roll the ball over this point for every putt. You can visualize this intersection either as an "L" shape or a "T" shape like a carpenter's square. When you enter your setup positioning your feet and shoulders and the ball position in the setup, the putter face aim establishes the direction of the putt line, so you are essentially "entering into" the "T" shaped relationship with your body that the putter face requires. In other words, you are gauging the putt line when you establish your setup positions, getting the body (feet and shoulders) "square" to the line fixed by the putter face. The result is always a point of intersection on the putt line several inches in front of the ball opposite the big toe of your lead foot. Visually, when looking down at the ball and the area near your feet, your body plan needs to be to "make a straight stroke." That is, one that rolls the ball straight away from the putter face. This stroke will necessarily always roll the ball over this intersection point. because this point is only a few inches in front of the ball, you also want to make sure that the sweetspot of the putter keeps moving straight down the line with a square face at least as far as this intersection point, and not curl to the inside with a face twisted closed as usually happens. Hence, this intersection point helps tremendously in integrating the setup with the stroke and in visually orienting to the scene at your feet for making a straight stroke. The bottom line is that once the putter face is aimed and the distance targeted, all that is left is to stay in the scene at your feet and make a straight stroke with good tempo.

So how does the use of a shaft for alignment work with this approach? Not all that well. The shaft helps you align the body square to the shaft, which is supposed to substitute for the putt line but offset parallel to the putt line. The preferred technique is to focus on accurate face aiming to begin with, and then use the established face aim as the putt line. This requires you to setup to the face of the putter after the face is aimed. In order to setup the body to the putter face, you need first to be aware of the horizontal line across the bones of your face and eyes that connects the temples just above the ears, the outside corners of the eye sockets, the inside corners of the eye sockets, and the brige of the nose. This "bone line" across the eyes is always with you, and to setup square to a putter face you first have to set this "bone line" in the skull so that it matches the putt line set by the putter face. Once the head and eyes are set "square" to the putter face, all the rest of the setup just falls in place naturally. The setting of the "bone line" translates vis the base of the neck to a "square" alignment of the shoulder frame. The squared shoulders translate down the body into square hips. Square hips translate down to square knees and ankles. Squared ankles translate down to the ground with square feet.

A good way to practice this setting up to the putter face with the "bone line" is to hold a shaft across your eyes level while gazing straight out of your face and standing upright with good posture. Then extend the shaft about a foot or two straight and level away from your face, moving it straight out along your gaze or lines of sight level away from the face. Then bend the head and upper torso with this shaft fixed in place so that you move your straight gaze down to the ball at your feet. You will be looking directly over the shaft at the ball, so the shaft will appear to divide the ball in half, and the line of the shaft will coincide with the intended line of the putt. The putter face will have to be oriented perpendicularly to this "bone line" as revealed by the shaft held in front of your face.

Try this. Pick a spot on a baseboard about ten feet from a ball. Aim a putter thru a ball at this spot or use some block of wood or other rectangle as if it were a putter face and aim it thru the ball at the spot (a pack of cigarettes works fine, set on its edge). Then use a shaft to make your "bone line" visible and set the shaft perpendicular to the putter face as aimed. The shaft will appear to divide the ball in half along a line that matches the putt line and will intersect the putter face squarely. Keeping your gaze running across the shaft at the same part of the shaft, and keeping your hands in an unchanghing position with reference to your torso, rotate your shoulder frame as if making a forward stroke. This will raise the lead end of the shaft up, but the shaft line will appear to stay matching the putt line. If you return the head to look straight down at the ball again, and then turn the head only to run your gaze along the shaft to the lead end (butt end) of the shaft, your gaze should be running down the putt line a certain distance but not all the way to the target. Then rotate the shoulder frame sending the lead shoulder upward and observe the butt of the shaft visually "touch" the target. All this means that you have accurately aimed the putter face at the target and have used the "bone line" of your skull to setup square to the putter face and then check that the face is aimed accurately with a fized and straight gaze and a head turn. This exercise will integrate your setting up process with the aim of the putter face. As you get used to this, you will be able to know where the "bone line" across your eyes runs all the time, so you will instinctively and naturally setup square without too much falderol.

The use of a shaft laying on the ground as a substitute for the putt line and as something to "square up" to and make straight strokes beside is not all that good because it short-circuits or circumvents this more important process of setting up square to the putter face alone and the more important feedback criterion of whether your stroke is straight in the sense of rolling the ball straight away from the putter face as aimed. It might be better to lay a long piece of strong down and set the putter face on top of the string line aimed square down the line and then square up the body to the putter face and string, but I believe it is preferable to practice setting up only to the putter face as aimed thru the center of a ball. This, of course, is much more consonant with your idea of not practicing with anything that does not occur or appear on the course.

No, I don't see much of a problem continuing to use your metronome as you describe, from beep at address to beep at impact. Your timing is interesting. From address to top of backstroke is 0.8 seconds; from there to impact is 0.375 seconds; from impact to end of stroke is 0.625 seconds. This means your metronome setting relates to 0.8 plus 0.375, or 1.175 seconds. The metronome setting of beats per minute (bpm) that corresponds to 1.175 seconds is 51 bpm. Your choice of 52 bpm is very close to this.

My approach is to time the stroke only from the top of the backstroke to the end of the stroke. The natural gravity-sponsored free-fall of a conventional length putter (35 inches) is very close (coincidentally) to one full second from side to side, or a metronome setting of 60 bpm. Your numbers for this are 0.375 plus 0.625 seconds, which equals 1 second and a metronome setting of 60 bpm.

The only difference between us, then, is that your backstroke is a little quicker than what I recommend. I recommend that the backstroke mimic the free-fall tempo, to act as a reminder of precursor or what should happen in the free-fall stroke down to impact and up to the finish. But actually, the backstroke is not really part of the real free-fall pendulum-like stroke. The part of the stroke that resembles a pendulum's motion is only that part from top of backstroke to top of thru stroke. So the backstroke pacing is somewhat arbitrary. While it is probably nice to have the backstroke always the same, as this promotes thoughtless consistency, it is not near as important as having the down- and thru-stroke always the same.

I also note that your impact timing from the top to impact is about 3/8th of the total stroke from top to top (0.375 is 37.5% of 1 second). This is consistent with my impact on "two" in the phrase for the downstroke "two potato", where impact happens on the first of four syllables or about 25% of the way. I'm sure 37.5% for impact timing more accurately mirrors what should happen than my crude phrase.

So, to answer your two concerns, yes and no.

Cheers!

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

Over half a million visits and growing strong ...

Dear dralban,

Forgot to respond to this.

I have little comment on Justin Leonard's technique because I haven't been able to see enough of it. He looks a little stiff to me. Perhaps the putter head is a little too far away from him, with the lie of the putter he uses too flat. It seems to make his arms have more tension than desirable.

But his technique is consistent and he has had great results this year.

Cheers!

Geoff

Hi Geoff,
Thanks again! You must really like what you are doing.
I will not use the shafts again. I use a line on the ball, and align the putters aim line with it. That should be good, right?

I have to get this straight, before I go nuts. In a pendulum, the putter takes one second to go from one side to the other. Isn't half a pendulum relative to this time frame as well? When the pendulum reaches it's lowest point, should it be at 0.5 sec? You want the ball position to be just a little left of that. Does this mean that impact happens at, or just after 0.5 seconds? Does impact slow the pendulum down? Where do the 3/8 and 5/8 come in to play? If impact happens at 0.5 seconds, and I have a 0.8 backstroke, the total is 1.3. This corresponds to a setting of 46, the way I use the metronome. I feel like I can have lunch before I get to impact.

Thanks again,
dralban

Dear dralban,

You should probably go ahead and go nuts now, rather than waiting!

Yes, impact slows the putterhead down.

Here is a Java Metronome, http://smurman.best.vwh.net/Metronome/

Or you can download a Metronome for your Windows PC, http://www.programming.de/index.php?download.php

It would probably help if you explain to me how exactly you are timing the motion of the putter head. How do you know, or what tells you, that impact occurs at 0.375 seconds and that the stroke stops after another 0.625 seconds? Do you have some device for this?

An "ideal" pendulum has no mass or extension or shape, but is an idealized point mass at the end of a "rod" that is just a line. Only the length of the pendulum rod determines the tempo. A meter stick pendulum takes right at 1 second from side to side. However, when a golfer holds a conventional putter, the length of the pendulum "rod" is much longer than a meter (39 inches), because the pivot point of the whole system (or triangle) is near the base of the neck. The length from base of neck to bottom of putter head is often 4.5 feet or 54 inches (the 3 feet of the putter plus another 1.5 feet for the length of the arms from pivot out to top of putter handle). This longer rod makes the pendulum tempo slower than 1 second from side to side. On the other hand, because the golfer swinging a putter (or allowing a putter to free fall beneath his pivot) is not an "ideal" pendulum but a "real" one with mass and shape, the real pendulum actually takes into account the mass of the body parts and putter. The result is that this speeds up the system in comparison to an "ideal" pendulum of 4.5 feet length.

These two opposite effects just about cancel out, but it depends somewhat on your body and your putter. It may be that your pivot-putterhead length is less than 4.5 feet because of the way you setup at address. It may also be the case that you have some mild muscle activity that adds a little acceleration to the gravity free-fall, and so speeds up the stroke from top of backstroke down to impact.

In the case of golfers who add to the acceleration coming down to impact, the time from top of backstroke to impact is shorter than the time from impact to top of thru-stroke, mostly because the impact slows the putter head down a bit but also because the golfer is quitting on the motion past impact and his body resists the putter's continuing to move upward. The result is usually something like the 3/8th -- 5/8th division of timing on either side of the impact.

So, to sort it out, try strokes without the ball and see if the timing is quicker. You may have an impact-less tempo closer to 0.375 x 2 = 0.750 second from top to top (metronome setting of 80 bpm), and this tempo is slowed on the side past impact.

When you work with an impact-less stroke, you might do so over a yardstick to make sure your thru-stroke is not too different or longer than your backstroke. Often golfers who accelerate the putter have a shorter backstroke than the thru-stroke, and this obviously affects the relative timing of the two.

On my end, I will study this issue further and try to be more definitive on this important issue. Thanks for the challenge!

Cheers!

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

Over half a million visits and growing strong ....

Dear Geoff,
Thanks for the reply.
You asked me how I time the 3/8 and 5/8. I don't. I am using your knowledge as a model to try to figure out what to set the metronome at. I guess I could time it if I had two synchronized metronomes or one, more expensive. Since reading your articles has made me wonder if I have spent years practicing to the wrong beat(Pelz), I want to give "your" tempo a go.
I have practiced with beeps at adress and impact for so long, that I am unable to change. However, I feel that in order to make this work, I need a constant(one side of the stroke that allways repeats tempowise). Otherwise (just like you pointed out) it's impossible to know whether the back- or through- swing is off beat. Since you say that the through swing should take one second, that struck me as being the best constant. BUT, it's impact that counts to this setting. I guess that I could also practise making various length back swings, and ingraining this motion to allways take 0.8 sec's. Looking at it this way, will not the through swing, with the help of gravity, be the first choice? I don't see any other way that an adress-impact setting would work. Do you? If I am going to do this, I am anxious to get the numbers right. My understanding is that backswing tempo can vary a lot,(you say 0.8-0.9 is ok) but there has to be an optimal impact number. What is it?
Also, I thought about something else. If a pendulum-swinging putter hits the ball, shouldn't the swing past impact, be shorter than the downswing? If so, why isn't it? Muscles again?
Geoff, you are invaluable, I don't know anyone who I can bug like this, and you just turn the other cheek. It is nice to see someone who loves what he does for a living.
Have a nice day, and, Happy New Year!
dralban