G'day Geoff,
A pro here in Australia suggested I check out this training aid. What are your thoughts?

www.perfectstroke.org

Cheers


TIGERSIMMO

Dear Tigersimmo,

You should suggest to your pro friend that he check out the PuttingZone! And while you're at it, you might also suggest that the folks at PerfectStroke.org do the same. On second thought, I'll handle the second matter myself.



The PerfectStroke.org trainer is very similar to Chris Chapman's Putting Dragon



in that it incorporates the string line with the stroke plane trainer. As usual (yawn), people designing putting aids don't really understand the stroke, and the people at PerfectStroke.org instruct users that the stroke "has to" arc inside back and thru due to the Rule of Golf requiring that the lie be at least 10 degrees. That's hooey.



The real deal is how your shoulders move. If the shoulders move in a plane, whether vertical or tilted, the putter head will move in a parallel plane regardless of hand position in relation to shoulders. Moving the putter head in a plane is the same as moving it STRAIGHT! If the plane is vertical, the putter face will not open or close any at all, and no hand manipulations are needed. If the shoulders move in a tilted plane, the putter head will still move straight back and straight thru AND the putter face still will not open or close -- but it will "appear" to open and close if you look straight down on the putt path. If you hang a plumb bob off the sweetspot of the putter and make a tilted-plane stroke, the plumb bob will track straight and WILL BLOODY NOT ARC INSIDE GOING BACK OR GOING THRU. Someday, someone out there reading this will actually try this and stop getting confused.



But, fortunately for the mates making the PerfectStroke trainer, this doesn't matter in terms of how the golfer uses the device except for "watching" the face "open" or "close" above the base plate's square marking. The marks on the trainer indicating HOW MUCH the face should open or close are misleading, since the angle of opening or closing is only accurate for one specific TILT ANGLE of the stroke motion in the shoulders. I'm sure the designers are not aware of this, as it is a common misconception. The same is true of the PuttingArc -- the guide marks for (apparent-only) opening or closing of the face are only accurate for one specific tilt angle for the stroke plane of shoulder movement. So both the PuttingArc and the PerfectStroke unfortunately encourage the golfer to try to fit his stroke onto that very one specific angle of tilt in the shoulder action. That's frankly a bad thing.

It would be better to eliminate the marks altogether and to monitor the hands to make sure the hands are not rolling open or closed or that the forearms are not rolling open or closed. If the hands and forearms are kept OUT OF IT, the face does not change, even if it appears to change seen from that unusual perspective of looking straight down from above the putt line.

I note that the photos of the trainer in use have the putter not soled correctly, but toe very much up. So the people making this aid have a little learning to do.

I like the fact that the string line and guide rail can be reversed so that strokes either are or are not made above the base plate. But, as usual (yawn), the designers think positioning the eyeballs directly above the ball is required for accurate perceptions. This is wrong in two ways: 1) it just ain't true, and 2) it obscures the real fact that it is the aiming of the gaze straight out of the face that is the key to accurate perceptions from beside the ball, regardless of whether the eyeballs are vertically above the ball or slightly inside the ball. An adjustable string would be nice, like that on the Putting Dragon, so that if the golfer is most comfortable setting up with eyes slightly inside the ball, the string line can be moved a little closer to the golfer to transect his line of sight as determined by his straight-out gaze and his eyeball location.

The distance control teaching with this device uses marks on the base plate to help the golfer make the backstroke and the thru-stroke the same amplitude or length. That's a nice by-product of an even-tempoed, smooth stroke, but the real lesson is a consistent tempo that accelerates the ball in the same way every stroke and then peaks at the bottom and then decelerates every stroke in the same reverse way symmetrically every stroke. (I've found that the best way to do this is to let the downstroke fall in consonance with gravity and let gravity handle the smooth acceleration without ANY input from me since gravity is both exact and repeating, and then "catch" this pattern from the downfall to give a little push at the bottom to make sure the thru-stroke has just the right umph to get the stroke past the resistance of the shoulder frame from going back up smoothly -- like giving a small child in a swing a gentle push right at the bottom to keep them swinging evenly.) Focusing mostly on the length of the stroke going back and then going thru is an odd way to approach inculcating this sort of stroke MOTION. The thing to practice is stroke motion or timing of the relaxed fall and then lift into the thru-stroke, not size. These guys seem to have a pretty good stroke going, and are designing the aid with their stroke in mind, but they just don't quite know what is going on in the stroke or how best to explain it correctly.

Even so, it's a case of "no harm, no foul" -- the instructional text is wrong about the character of the stroke movement in space, about the gaze and eye position, and about training touch for distance control, but the training aid itself is pretty good. It would be better if they either left the "theory" out of their instructional text, or rewrote it. They need to hire me to straighten things out!

The aid could be improved in a number of ways, but as it is, it's as good as any out there.

Cheers!

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

Over 610,000 visits and growing strong ...

518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC 27401
336.230.0612 home
336.402.1602 cell

Hi Geoff,

My name is Mark Officer and I am responsible for the PerfectStroke training aid. I think your website is fantastic and that it is great that you respond so thoroughly to the questions that you are asked.

I must admit that I only found out about you and your site from a friend of mine who asked you to review the putting aid. For you to say that the aid is ' not too bad and as good as anything else out there' I suppose is a fair review.

The reason why I developed this device is because as a teaching professional I couldn't find any training aids that reflected my philosophies. I would search the internet and only find aids that tried to make the putter swing straight back and through and would mostly involve resting the putterhead on a board or such. We may differ in our opinion on straight back and inside and inside but I believe that the perfectstroke shows just how little the stroke does swing inside/inside. The lines on the plate indicating opening and closing are reference lines and not meant to represent what every stroke does. But I thought that it was important to have something to reference.

I think the trueplane device is quite good but it is very easy to apply some downward pressure inadvertently while using it then when you move away and putt freely the stroke goes too far inside/inside. One reason why with the perfectstroke I recommend that you hit putts from both the inside and the outside of the rail.

I look forward to you responding to this e-mail and perhaps we can talk about you re-writing the text on the website.

Kind Regards
Mark Officer

Dear Mark,

It is obvious to me that you teach an excellent stroke. I very much agree with your approach to avoiding reliance upon the surface of a board or plate in resting the heel of the putter there during the stroke, as this tends to confuse the body about the stroke in the absence of such a surface support. The developer of the InPutt training device, a board for sliding a "fork" attached to the hosel aiming aft of the heel that keeps the face square, advises users to make sure that the tips of the fork just barely graze the board surface in a very light way back and thru. Personally, I use a string line about 10 inches above the surface as my "rail" for moving the shaft along -- either over the string or under the string -- as incorrect motion will clearly result in the string getting misshapen out of a line or in the putter shaft separating from the string line.

I would challenge you to try making a shoulder stroke in which the shoulders start out level and square and the lead shoulder is moved in a vertical plane down at the balls of the lead foot and then back along the line of the feet to the top of the backstroke, and then reverse this back to level, and then continue straight up away from the balls of the lead foot to a symmetric height. The whole motion of the shoulder socket seldom exceeds two inches down and two inches up from level, but keeping the whole trajectory of the shoulder socket in the vertical plane is the key. If you can do only one of these strokes, it will become apparent to you that the putter face does not open or close in any degree unless the forearm-hand rotates to open or close it. In other words, if you simply keep the hands "dead" and make a vertical-plane stroke, the putter face absolutely does not open or close at any point in the stroke.

When the face does not open or close but stays in plane, that means that the putter face stays perpendicular to the plane of motion at all times (absent hand rotation). [Actually, the putterhead is moving in a plane that is parallel to the plane of motion of the shoulders.] This is still the case when the stroke plane of the shoulders is tilted. The confusion comes from thinking that the putter shaft represents the stroke plane's tilt -- it does not and really has nothing to do with the shoulder motion or the stroke plane's tilt.

A curly-cue shaft keeps the face square to the plane of motion, too, but just alters the shape of the sweetspot trajectory inside the plane from a mild "smile" shape radiusing to something more radiused or less radiused. This "smile" shape is the rising on either side of the bottom of the stroke, and its curvature or radiusing in relation to the pivot of the stroke (which is also in the plane of motion with the shoulder sockets). Perhaps this "smile" is really a "boomerang," but the point is that the "boomerang" shape of the putter sweetspot trajectory lies in the plane, whether vertical or tilted at some angle. This planar "boomerang" trajectory is the only "arc" there is in a shoulder stroke like this, and this "arc" leaves the putter face square to the stroke path and the putt line at all points, unless the golfer rolls his hands.

A shaft that extends the putter head farther away from the feet increases the radiusing of the trajectory and shortens the size of the stroke left-to-right, and makes the "smile" shape a more pronounced "smile" or a more curved "boomerang" as well as a smaller one - like changing a large Mona Lisa enigmatic smile into a tiny clownish happy smile. The closer the putterhead is to the feet, the less radiused is the "arc" inside the plane and the larger the stroke left-to-right, and the closer the rising of the putter on either side of the ball approximates a simple circular radiusing about the pivot in the base of the neck.

In fact, if the putter shaft is elevated to the point that it extends horizontally out from the pivot (the "lie angle" would be 90 degrees off vertical), and then the golfer makes a shoulder stroke in any plane (vertical or tilted), the putter head simply rotates in one point in space, and the "arc" is totally radiused into a circle and the left-right size of the stroke becomes zero. In this fashion, the minor movement of the shoulders is translated into sweetspot motion and putter face orientation at the end of the putter shaft, depending on the lie angle and length of the putter. To this extent, hand position in the setup (which should precede putter fitting for appropriate length and lie) influences the shape of the putter head motion, but doesn't really affect whether the putter moves straight back and straight thru or whether the face opens or closes.

All radiusing of conventional putters, then, constructed in accordance with the requirement of at least 10 degrees of lie back from vertical, describe a trajectory of the putter sweetspot in space that is somewhat more sharply curved than a circle. But the sweetspot runs straight back, straight thru, no matter whether the plane of motion is vertical or tilted at ANY angle, and the face stays square all the time unless the hands roll.

From the golfer's perspective looking at the putter face, against the background of the flat surface of the green, it doubtless "appears" that the face of the putter is opening or closing, but this is false. So long as the golfer pays attention to the feeling of the body, and especially the forearms and orientation of the palms and thumbs on the top flat surface of a typical putter grip, he should not experience anything changing in limb or hand position back and thru. The feeling of "dead hands" is one of total relaxation and absence of change. The "correct" perspective to judge whether the face of the putter opens and closes would be with the eyes located at the base of the neck looking straight at the putter head in motion, or slightly out from this pivot in a plane (parallel to the stroke plane) that includes the sweetspot. No matter what the angle of the stroke plane, this perspective shows that the putter face never opens or closes and always stays square to the line and to the stroke "path" (which is the plane).

I very much appreciate your writing, and again I congratulate you on designing a very good stroke trainer. I hope we can work together some time. That would be a blast!

Cheers!

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

Over 610,000 visits and growing strong ...

518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC 27401
336.230.0612 home
336.402.1602 cell

Hi Geoff,
Thanks for responding to my message, I am still trying to digest a good part of it.
I am interested in the idea of the shoulders working on a vertical plane and I am experimenting with doing so using the device and will let you know of my conclusions.
I would like you to do a practical review of this aid so perhaps I could send one to you and you can have a closer look.
Regards
Mark Officer

Dear Mark,

Absolutely! Why do you think I always put my mailing address at the end?

Cheers!

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

Over 610,000 visits and growing strong ...

518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC 27401
336.230.0612 home
336.402.1602 cell

just wondering what the outcome was

did they ever send you a sample to test ?