Sure!
Chris Chapman's
Putting Dragon is a stroke trainer, so fundamentally you want to use it to learn how the stroke feels and how to make the same stroke over and over. Not only is it true that every putt is straight -- it is more important to know that every stroke is the same except for the size of the strokes. To restate this in order to drive the point home as emphatically as I can, the "stroke" that you want to learn needs to be a sound one, because it will be the same stroke you use for every putt for the rest of your life. First, you have to learn the WHY that makes one stroke movement better than another. Then, you have to learn HOW to make that good stroke in a simple, repeating, consistent, and accurate movement pattern. The Putting Dragon helps on both scores.
The WHY of a good stroke pattern is one that is simple and not in conflict with human biomechanics and one that dovetails nicely with the body positioning and movements involved in targeting. In my view, this is a "planar" shoulder stroke with dead hands that simply directs the shoulder frame in a plane parallel to the putt line with the lead shoulder being moved down and back and then the lead shoulder being moved forward and up in a trajectory that is radiused about a still pivot where the clavicle connects to the sternum. There are two kinds of planes of motion to choose from (vertical or tilted at a variety of angles), and the Putting Dragon allows the golfer to practice either a vertical plane stroke motion or one that is tilted at an angle that pretty much is at the heart of tilt angles used by many golfers. You should experiment with both sides of the Putting Dragon to see which of the two planes for the stroke motion best suit your movement pattern.
The HOW of making a planar shoulder stroke is completely about moving the shoulders in a parallel plane to the putt line, and not at all about the arms or hands unless and until you find yourself unable to make the shoulder motion correctly. If you want to make a vertical stroke motion, use the Putting Dragon (PD) with the vertical side closest to the ball and rest the heel of the putter against the surface so that the face of the putter is square or perpendicular to the surface of the PD. Then the issue is whether you are in a sound setup position in reference to the putter face and whether you know HOW to move your body to generate a vertical rocking of the shoulder frame.
The PD helps in the setup by guiding your eyes and your skull line in setting up square. The PD has a string line vertically above the ball. If you position your eyes directly above the ball and look straight out of your face down at the ball across the string, this will force your head into a "flat" position with the back of your head flat. This is the position of head and eyes that was "sacred" on Tour in the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s, and was mostly lost to the younger players of today since the mid-1980s.
This head-eye positioning is really based on a straight gaze out of the face, without which beside-the-ball targeting is flawed. It is possible to setup with the eyes slightly inside the ball with the gaze still straight out, but this forces the forehead up a bit more than the chin so the head is no longer flat. A flat head plus straight gaze generates a Ferris Wheel look along the line to the target, whereas a tilted head and a straight gaze generates a Tilt-a-Whirl look straight along the ground. The PD does not really train this "Tilt-a-Whirl" head-eye usage unless the guide string is repositioned slightly inside the ball instead of directly above it. What is needed is an appreciation for the exact line of sight at an angle to the ball, so the string can be repositioned to run perpendicularly across this angled line oif sight. I think you could reposition the string line back on its struts so the line is running just inside the front face of the PD and the string appears the split the center of the ball as viewed from your unique tilt of head-eye position and line of sight down to the ball.
By the string running straight thru the ball as viewed from your head-eye position in the setup with a straight-out gaze, you can
a) train setting the eyes in the same position and gaze,
b) train setting the skull line across the eyes on the line of the putt square to the face,
c) use the skull line squaring to square the rest of the body down from the head to the feet, and
d) train a straight look along the ground to the target. These are all fundamental skills for setting up square and for targeting beside the ball that are in addition to any help the Putting Dragon provides for making the stroke motion.
To use the PD to train setting the skull line on the putt line square to the face of the putter, you can set the eyes and gaze to look straight across so the string splits the ball and also make the string match the line of the putt. That sounds straight-forward enough, but this alone does not square the skull line to the face of the putter. To do this, the string and putt line need to match references in the body and the field of vision. The skull of everyone has seven points of reference across the face and eyes in a line, and making this skull line match the string and putt line squares the eyes, face, head, and neck to the putter face. These points are the tops of the ears, the temples, the outside corners of the eyes, the inside corners of the eyes, and the bridge of the nose. Whne the gaze is also straiight out of the face, this adds two more points to the skull line -- the two pupils of the eyes. You can hold a shaft across the bridge of your nose to match these points and then extend the shaft straight out from the face about a foot and then lower the shaft and face as a unit so that the shaft matches the string line on the PD. This effectively makes the string and the skull line match up in orientation square to the putter face.
This squaring of the skull line translates thru the neck to square the shoulders, and this translates to the hips, and then down to the knees and ankles, ending up with "happy feet" and a feeling of square setup and readiness to make a straight stroke that rolls the ball exactly off the face the way the face is aimed.
Once the body is setup square in this way from eyes down to feet, you are in a perfect position for targeting from beside the ball. That is, a rotation of the head about its axis from center of neck out top of head will turn the line of sight in a straight line along the ground, either in a Ferris Wheel manner or in a Tilt-a-Whirl manner. The trick is to keep the skull line and the line of sight running down the string of the PD solely with head turning, and NOT with repositioning of the eye gaze with eye muscles, as the head turn progresses. The way to do this is to keep the gaze steady and straight, turn only the head, and rotate the head so that the axis of rotation doesn't shift, as would be indicated by the top of the head moving about during the turn. The axis rotates like a spindle and does not change its square orientation above the putter face.
To train this head turn, you can place the PD near a wall and plant your head in the correct skull-line matching but also with the top of the head stuck against the wall. Then turn the head and feel as if the center of the top of the head was stuck on a nail pointing out from the wall as it rotates to the target. Another way to train this is to setup over the PD and hold the shaft straight out in front of your face so the shaft matches the putt line and the string line and the skull line all at once. Then turn to the target with head and shaft moving as a unit and watch to see that the edge of the shaft stays matching the string line. This will require that the head AND shoulders rotate with the head axis not wandering and the shoulder frame moving in the correct plane of motion (whether vertical or at a specific tilt angle). If your stroke motion is vertical, this will require that the lead side of the shaft move vertically upward.
A special use of the PD would be to aim it at a flag vertical in the cup from about 8 to 15 feet away. Use the shaft in front of the face with a vertical planar motion and lift the lead side of the shaft straight up along the flag pole. This will also move the shaft in line with the PD string and is a neat way to train both the shoulder turn and the head turn at once. After doing this a few times, then just practice the head turn so that the line of sight runs down the string and then straight up the flag pole.
The main use of the PD is to train the stroke motion. As I've said, I think the best motion is a planar shoulder motion with dead hands, and of the planes possible, I like the vertical plane best. If you setup to the vertical face of the PD, there are two things to watch to get this motion happening correctly - face squareness and how the shoulder moves the putter along the PD.
The putter face in a VERICAL stroke should stay square to the PD surface at every point in the stroke without hand or arm changes from what they are at address. The face should be perpendicular to the PD surface at the top of ther backstroke, at the top of the thru-stroke and at all points in between. If the face does not naturally stay square, then you are subtly changing your hands or forearms during the stroke or you shoulders are not square to the PD surface.
The second thing to watch is that you move only the lead shoulder vertically down and back in the plane parallel to the PD's vertical surface and aim, and then move it vertically forward and up back to level and then continuing higher to the same extent the shoulder moved down off level. I call this moving the lead shoulder down at the balls of the lead foot and then back to level and up onward to where the ear would be if you were standing erect with good posture. This body movement should drive the heel of the putter straight back along the PD and then lift the heel in the down- and thru-stroke straight forward along the PD surface. Of course, if the move is inccorect, the putter will either wander off away from the PD and farther from your feet, which you can watch and see, or will press more firmly against the PD as it tries to come closer to the feet, which you cannot see and may have difficulty feeling. If the face of the putter is closing in the thru-stroke on the PD, this may mean either that your hands or arms are changing OR that the putter is trying unsuccessfully to wander inside instead of moving straight. Because of this difficulty detecting poor stroke paths, it is helpful if you always try to keep the putter's heel only slightly in touch with the PD surface during the stroke, making it easier to detect strokes that want to come inside. This is especially the problem in the thru-stroke past impact, and is a flaw that hurts well over 90 percent of all golfers, pros included.
Another way to address this training need is to position a rail or rod or shaft or stick or something straight aligned with the PD surface on the far side of the ball. This makes the PD into a putting channel, not just a surface, and this channel is important so you can see that the TOE of the putter stays close to the rail opposite the PD. Inside, you can station the PD aligned with a wall but back one putter head's width and make strokes in this real good channel.
If the stroke is moving straight and the face staying square, then the sweet spot of the putter will stay directly beneath the string on the PD at all times and the face will remain square beneath the string too. This mean that at the top of a backstroke that gets the putter all the way to the string, you can look down and see how you did by seeing whether the sweet spot of the putter is touching the string and whether the face is then square. On the thru-stroke, you can again see how well you moved by checking to see that the sweet spot again touches the string and that the face is square to the string. I think the current version of the PD is too short in length to allow this use and the string line struts block the stroke at the far ends of the PD, but if you remove the PD's string line and replace the line with a separate string line that is longer (just a regular string line on two sticks), you can use the PD as described.
This use of the PD is more important for the thru-stroke than for the back-stroke, but ideally you want both nice and simple and straight and square.
If you have the PD aimed at a flag, the (vertical) stroke would continue with the sweet spot of the putter appearing to move right down the line remaining square, with the line of sight running straight over the sweet spot onto the line on the ground, until the sweet spot appeared to touch the target itself at the base of the flag. Going further, the sweet spot would then travel up the line of the flag pole until it reaches a horizontal position of the shaft and lead arm. At this position, the face of the putter should be "flat" or horizontal and pointed straight up in the sky. I call this the "waiter's tray position." When making a real putt, you don't want to try to get all the way to this position, but you do need to know about it so the putter doesn't come unsquare thru impact and for at least 6 inches past impact -- so head in the thru-stroke AS IF heading to the full waiter's tray end position. If the putter face is twisted toe up to the inside at the end of your real stroke, your hands, wrists, or forearms have changed orientation from what they had at address. So the PD can serve as a starting point for this sort of stroke training.
When using the tilted surface of the PD, the thing to watch is the symmetry of the rising of the heel of the putter on either side of the bottom of the stroke. If the stroke "crescent" shape does not rise symmetrically, you will find all sorts of problems in where the ball goes. This is not so much of a problem in the vertical stroke, but it is critical in a tilted stroke motion. For the most part, this symmetry comes about by 1) leaving the hands as low and extended as they start at address, without sticking them out any more to keep at a certain height above the ground, and certainly without lifting at any time in the stroke, but instead letting them rise only in response to the rising of the shoulders going back or going forward, and 2) keeping the pivot of the stroke (base of neck) from wandering off the center of the stroke pattern. This is where "dead hands" come in. Just hang the hands in a "dead" relaxation before adopting your grip. Then move your hanging hands out to the grip by bringing your body to the putter-as-aimed resting on the ground, doing this not by lifting the arms out to the putter but by moving your stance out to the putter until your eyes lock into the correct position. Avoid getting into a setup with a "lifting" crook stuck in your elbows, as this will come back to haunt you in the stroke either by the unnoticed lengthening of the arms as the elbows uncrook or by too much tension in the arms to keep the elbows from altering shape. David Leadbetter teaches turning the elbows inward at address to help stabilize the "triangle," and that's fine if you like it, but ALSO hang the hands and arms so that there is next to no crook remaining in the elbows. The feeling of the stroke is that there is absolutely nothing changing in the arms and hands during the motion except the hands are rising smoothly as the backstroke goes along, dropping back on the same path to the bottom of the stroke, and then rising symmetrically going to the top of the thru-stroke. Don't try to hit the ball, but just let the ball get in the way a little forward of the bottom of the stroke, as the stroke passes the bottom and heads straight and square at the target.
A way to use the PD to train the shoulder move in a tilted stroke is to "aim" the motion of the lead shoulder straight down and out at the angle of the front tilted surface of the PD. That surface defines the tilt of your shoulder motion. So the shoulders move in a plane with the lead shoulder moving straight at the line where the PD surface meets the ground (or the putt line), and the rear shoulder moving straight away from this line -- reversing for the forward stroke. let the PD surface guide WHERE and HOW to move the shoulders in a plane that rotates around a still pivot.
Another training use of the PD is what I call "putting the bottom." An essential component of a straight stroke is that the putter is returned accurately and consistently to the exact same spot of the ground that is the bottom and center of the stroke. This exact center is also the lowest point in the stroke. If you play the ball forward in your stance and also position the putter face directly behind the back of the ball, the putter face will not likely be starting at the bottom or center of thge stroke but ahead of it, so don't make the mistake of trying to return the putter to this forward position as if it were the bottom. The putter should first reach the bottom square in the center of the stroke and then start rising naturally into the back of the ball (my view of what's best). The REAL exact bottom of your stroke ought to be fairly close to the center of your body (below the nose and sternum) if you setup square with level shoulders and a neutral grip and don't forward press of impact the ball with hands ahead or something similar that would change the exact bottom. Generally, if you use the sort of stroke plane that I describe, the exact bottom will be fairly close to the exact symmetric middle of the body and stance, or perhaps a smidgen forward. You will have to find your bottom and practice returning the putter here before impact. The PD can help learnm this if you mark one place near the center of the PD on its top surface or even with a vertical line down the PD surface in the center. Then position the ball ahead of this mark, place the putter face even with the mark, and then make the stroke so that the downstroke reaches the exact bottom at this mark and with the face square before the putter rises into the back of the ball.
On the putting green, it doesn't really matter whether you aim the PD so the putts end up in a cup. What matters is that all putts roll excatly the same straight direction square out of the PD and your setup. For this, all you need to watch is whether the balls all end up bumping each other like train cars somewhere on the green, so that wherever the first ball ends up, all the other putts end up bumping it (assuming the first putt was straight). used this way, the PD trains the most fundamental aspect of putting skill, which is making a repeating straight stroke movement that consistently rolls the ball straight away down the line the putter face is aimed at address. Any other sort of stroke is unacceptable.
So, to summarize, use the Putting Dragon to help square up the body for a straight stroke; to learn how the skull and eyes need to be positioned (may need a second string line for a tilted gaze); to learn how to target accurately from beside the ball with a good head turn and straight gaze; how to generate the straight stroke in a vertical plane or a tilted plane with a simple movement of the shoulders and with relaxed, inactive, dead hands; how to putt the bottom; and how to finish the stroke by delivering the putter face square and rising into the back of the ball and continuing square down the line.
Incidentally, the Putting Dragon is the ONLY stroke trainer currently available that I am aware of that allows the golfer to work on a vertical stroke plane (the True Plane trainer and the PuttingArc only allow training a tilted stroke motion) or a tilted plane, and it is also the only trainer that combines the stroke plane with a guide string for the gaze. good job, Chris! And this from a guy who designed it to help the Jefferson Dragons golf team! That's the real spirit of golf innovation.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
Over 580,000 visits and growing strong ...
518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC 27401
336.230.0612 home
336.402.1602 cell