Dear Neville,
Let me start by responding specifically to your comment about the straightness of the backstroke and then reply to your query about the relation between the backstroke and the thru-stroke. Your comment:
"It would seem to me that while it is ideal to use the vertical stroke plane on short to medium length putts, as the length of the putt (20 foot and beyond) increases, the stroke changes a little to an inside to straight stroke. This is probably why for these lengths of putts, the wrists can also hinge a little, similar to Loren Roberts' technique."
The phrase "the stroke changes" is the usual way golfers almost always speak about the stroke - as if the stroke has a life of its own. The truth of the matter is that only the golfer moves, and the stroke is merely a result of the golfer's movement. If "the stroke changes" a little and goes inside in the backstroke for a specific golfer, then the golfer MOVED THE PUTTER THAT WAY.
The big question is whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, an advisable motion for the golfer to make or not. Not.
CAN the golfer move the putter head straight back? Of course - absolutely! So why doesn't he?
My answer is that the golfer just hasn't learned the correct muscles and the sense of moving straight back, as reflected in the body's sense of position and movement. If the putter head comes inside going back, then the golfer is either using the hands and arms to move the putter instead of the shoulderframe or the pivot of the shoulder frame is wandering about or the golfer is allowing the forearms to fold open on the way back.
The problem in handling the putting stroke seems to be that golfers think about the movement of the putter head when they should be focused exclusively on the body motion.
So let's address that straight up. Putt with a putter without a putter head. That is, get a club with a handle and a shaft but no clubhead. (Or use a stick or a cane or tunr the putter upside down with the handle pointed at the ground.) Point that shaft at the ground behind a ball and then move it straight back so it stays pointing at the line of the putt. better yet, setup over a line on your floor and move the "putter" back so the end of the shaft stays pointed at the floor line all the way back. I think this will show you real quickly and decisively that a straight-back stroke is not at all difficult, and a little focus on what the body does to make it happen pays big dividends. just move the lead shoulder down and back along the line of the balls of the feet and forget your hands. If you move the lead shoulder socket straight down at the start and straight back along the feet parallel to the putt line, there is nothing to it.
So I really don't agree with your comment that "the stroke changes a little" in the backstroke as the stroke gets past a certain length. Instead, the golfer stops moving straight back.
Why do the vast majority of golfers have this problem? Fear, I think, of unfamiliar feelings in the motion.
The biggest problem I find in golf instruction is that the golfers always like what they do and "feel" that what they do is "natural." But what feels good and natural just doesn't work because it's just plain not good, or not good enough. The student has to accept the fact that what feels "natural" is in fact the problem and has to be changed. Only after acceptance and experience with the new or better pattern of motion does it start to feel good and natural again. So the constant hurdle or obstacle facing a golf instructor is to get the student to "let go" of what "feels good" because its hurting performance. Unless the student can "let go" in this fashion, he is not open to the new feeling of the better motion and will never really accept it. Most students, unfortunately, take a lesson while keeping their own counsel privately whether to accept what the instructor says or not. pros are notorious for this, and only begin to accept what a teacher says after a number of trust-building sessions. Putting instruction is not really about lessons; it's about coaching on a longterm basis. But if the golfer inwardly does not fully accept the "badness" of the current "old way," he will take a lesson and delude himself that he is giving the suggestions a fair trial, but in reality the "old way" is still held in the ready and reasserts itself as "what feels right" over the weeks and months after the lesson. Golfers say the "old pattern" will reassert itself under pressure and has to be trained out of existence by brutal, massive repetitions of the new way, and there is something to that for sure, but "letting go" of the old way is "accepting" the new way is really more basic. It doesn't take that long to "learn" or "engrain" the new way; but it takes forever to get rid of the "old way" if there is a persisting belief that it feels "right" or "good" or "natural" in prefernce to the new way.
Your comment about the wrists hinging is also something I don't agree with. When the wrists hinge, the normal biomenchanics of the wrist means that the hinging action stays mirroring the orientation of the forearm bones. In the same way, the hinging of a pet door stays with the orientation of the door frame. This wrist action does not by itself cause the putter to come inside, but only exacerbates the rising of the putter in whatever plane the stroke is already moving as defined by the way the forearm bones are being moved (and are the forearms not being "rolling" closed or open at the time).
On the other hand, when the shoulder motion defines the plane of motion of the putter, but the forearms are on a slant angle, hinging the wrists DOES take the putter out of the plane of motion defined by the shoulder movement, except in the unique case when the shoulder action matches or parallels the forearm angle. So if your shoulder motion is vertical but the forearms are angled out a little, then wrist hinging adds a second sort of motion to the putter head that brings the putter head "inside" the same way a tilted stroke motion appears to bring the putter head inside. It really just creates a second plane of motion, and as we should understand by now, a plane of motion moves the putter straight with reference to the line of the putt notwithstanding that the putter rises above the bottom of the arc on either side.
What really brings the putter inside in the sense of "out of the plane of motion" is a wandering pivot or a rolling of the forearms or armsiness sweeping the arms across the torso. If the shoulders move in a plane of motion, whether vertical or tilted, that is parallel to or the same as the putt line, the putter moves straight back ALL THE WAY.
Now, back to the fear of unfamiliar feelings. What feelings cause the golfer to stop moving straight back? Tightness and a sense of extension away of the putter head. A vertical stroke motion of the shoulder frame from a conventional setup posture reaches a point of increasing tightness and discomfort for most golfers somewhere around one to two feet back from the ball, and then gets steadily tighter or more uncomfortable the farther back after that. This is not so much a matter of individual differences, because human bodies have pretty common proportions, but is more a matter of how the rib cage and torso tissues interacts with the base of the body at the pelvis.
As the backstroke progresses, the tissues between the bottom of the rib cage and the pelvis get compressed down and in on the opposite side and the same side as the back stroke gets stretched. What "feels good" or "feels natural" is for the golfer to alleviate this tension with the rib cage avoiding the pelvis by twisting the torso off the pelvis, rear side back and front side forward. The golfer "likes" this because it is lazy and easy. But it's not as good as he can be. The golfer should tolerate and even "like" the increasing tension as a sign and an affirmation that his stroke is staying on line. It's not that tough!
So the golfer "naturally" has this mechanism of avoiding tension in the midrift area and this habit causes problems. While it's legitimate to take the attitude that you want a putting stroke that fits your habits well, so the habits won't snake-bite you in moments of inattention on the course (and pressure tends to cause inattention), that's really settling for a suboptimal stroke pattern. Over the course of a year's worth of putting, a suboptimal pattern might avoid a few pressure-goofs, but on balance the use of an optimal stroke pattern will bags many more sinks in all those moments when you are capable of paying good attention to the putt. You can and should pay attention to your putting much much more than you don't, and even under pressure you can and should pay attention and do what you think is the best way to putt. And if I can make an optimal stroke motion that is also pressure-proof, then all's the better!
To sum up this part of my response, emphasize the feelings of the correct body motion, and not what "happens" to the putter head when you move in the habitual "feels good" way.
But to respond to your real question about the relationship between the backstroke and the thru-stroke:
The thru-stroke is 3.74 times more important than the backstroke (it has gained 0.02 since last time) because a poor backstroke can be recovered from whereas a poor thru-stroke cannot.
The purpose of the backstroke is a) to setup as good a thru-stroke as possible, b) to get the rhythm of the stroke established, c) to allow the cerebellum to set the backstroke amplitude or length, and d) to allow for corrective action to right any developing mistakes in the motion. Accomplishing b) and c) is mostly about tempo and instinct, so I'll leave them out of this discussion.
Setting up as good a thru-stroke as possible really means that there is no tendency of the putter to drop back towards the feet once the backstroke is initiated, and the setting of the shoulder frame at the top of the backstroke promotes a pivot-stable dropping of the rear elevated shoulder in a way that moves the hands parallel to the putt line and straight along the shoulder frame's orientation. (This is another reason why the vertical stroke motion on the shoulders is better than a tilted stroke plane -- the tilted stroke plane is not inherently set to drop the rear shoulder on line.) The dropping of the rear shoulder is what gravity does to the body when the golfer relaxes at the top of the backstroke and allows the stroke to start down. I call this "cock and rock" or "cock and drop."
The fundamental fact is that all golf is played on earth. On earth, golfers always stand in a gravitational force field that draws things to the center of the earth once their support is removed or relaxed. Deliberately moving body parts with voluntary muscle action also must take this basic fact into account. Moving with muscles so a limb moves at a slant to gravity makes the limb in motion subject to the constant tugs of gravity straight down on the limb that has to be handled with constant muscle tension. Fluctuations in muscle tension towards relaxing causes the limb to drop and spoils the intended motion. So working WITH gravity makes a whole lot of sense, and simplifies putting motions greatly by reducing the importance of steady muscle tension and voluntary muscle guidance.
In simpler terms, setting or cocking the shoulders at the top of the backstroke lets gravity handle the dropping, and the golfer just relaxes the shoulder frame so it drops straight back to level. This is not a relaxing of the steady tonic tension in the arms and hands that keeps the triangle intact -- just the muscles holding the shoulder frame in the cocked position -- and these are in the gut and lower back. This no-hands dropping of the shoulder frame returns the putter perfectly on line with the hands moving in the stroke arc parallel to the putt line and the whole arc of the hands stays at a constant distance off the thighs.
To me, then, setting up the thru-stroke means moving the shoulder vertically to gravity so that the top-of-backstroke position has the shoulder frame tilted in a vertical plane of motion, with the rear shoulder cocked up and ready to fall or be moved by muscle action "as straight as gravity would have it by itself."
Correcting a poor backstroke means two things. Getting the putter face re-squared, and/or getting the hands headed back on the original parallel track. Most poor backstrokes happen by starting the stroke with the hands or arms, which bends the elbows to "lift" the static putter head like a weight down there at the ball back away and up. This elbow action throws the putter head away from the feet across the line and can spoil the stroke if not ably corrected. (The better way is to "tip the triangle" back by moving the lead shoulder straight down at the balls of the lead foot and then back along the line of the feet -- no hands, just a steady triangle shape. This action guarantees that the putter head will not go farther from the feet so long as the shoulder alignment stays square.)
So to get this goofed "handsy" backstroke back to a good position at the top of the backstroke (which is a lot better than trying to correct it later in the downstroke), the golfer needs to let the hands drop back to their original parallel line and distance off from the thighs. This hand readjustment in space is what causes the "loop" in the correcting of the stroke. This repositioning of the hands has to be done without involvement of the shoulders, or else the line of the stroke gets lost. That is, tugging the hands back to their line from outside the putt line of motion for a straight stroke by moving the rear shoulder back off line is NOT a good response - it makes you have to refigure where the target is and where to move the thru-stroke, and usually doesn't work and misses to the outside. The much better adjustment is a relaxing of the upper arms and pectoral muscles just a notch, as it is these muscles that hold the putter out there across the line. The slight relaxing lets the putter head drop back to the correct line, set for the thru-stroke, without altering shoulder alignment. This sort of adjustment leaves the shoulders uninvolved and they remain square to the line, in good position for the downstroke and the thru-stroke.
The other reason the thru-stroke is 3.76 (another 0.02 gain!) times more important than the backstroke is the need to move the lead shoulder correctly in the thru-stroke. Moving the shoulder down is real easy! Moving it up against the influence of gravity and odd influences of body shape and tissues is not nearly as easy to perform correctly. So it demands more care and attention. A very "thoughtless" and robotically repeating straight stroke (one that rolls the ball straight away from the putter face however the putter face is aimed) is accomplished by starting the up-rock of the shoulders right at the bottom of the stroke pattern and moving the lead shoulder straight in plane up and back in space, so that the dead hands "cast" the putter face square down the line on a rising trajectory.
There are three distinct things to focus on here: a) starting right at the bottom, b) moving the socket up and back, and c) the dead-hands casting of the putter face square down the line. The bottom of the stroke is NOT the back of the ball, and golfers who think about "hitting" the ball with the putter ought instead think about making the pure stroke without any ball or as if the ball simply gets in the way on the front rising side of the bottom.
If the golfer does not learn to start the rising of the shoulder right at the bottom, he will have pushes and pulls and nothing will work easliy in producing a straight roll off the face. The bottom should be separately registered at address, and golfers should consider placing the putter head at the bottom and not behind the ball, just for this reason -- to focus on when to start the shoulder frame up. Pick out a spot of grass at the bottom and resolve not to let the down-drop of the putter face pass this point without the shoulders heading up. Another important cue to the bottom is this is when the shoulder reachive "level" feeling in the downstroke -- start up then. The tempo count "one potato ... two" also helps, as the bottom of "two" results from gravity and gravity always will deliver the putter to the bottom of a pendulum stroke of ANY size or length always precisely on the "two" in the well-learned tempo of gravity. So that's a cue to when to start up.
The socket of the lead shoulder, during the whole stroke, describes a "C" shape in space. Starting from the middle of the "C", the stroke goes first down and back for the backstroke, retraces this path back to middle or level starting position returning to the bottom of the stroke, and then move up and back in the thru-stroke. This "C" resides in a plane and this plane is the plane of motion. It's easiest to keep the plane of motion vertical to gravity. But the immediate point is that golfers don't seem to like the "back" part of the upstroke, which probably explains why they're not as good as they should be. For the lead shoulder to move up and back, the pivot at the base of the neck has to stay in place. If the shoulder moves only up but not back, this slides the pivot at the target or at something close to the target. Armsy golfers, in order to leave the pivot of the stroke so it does not slide out of place in the thru-stroke, need a widening or opening of the lead arm pit in the thru-stroke. Shoulder putters just need to leave the pivot where it is and rock the lead shoulder both up and back along the path of this "C."
This "back" action has two aspects that the majority of golfers don't "like" -- the rear rib cage at its bottom pinches down at the pelvis, and the head rolls with the rolling of the pivot so the lead-side eye goes up and the rear-side eye goes down. The pinching towards the pelvis is a "good thing" and should be embraced. Even moreso, the piching "down" at the pelvis is apparently not as key as pinching "in" against resisting tissue. The "back" action in the "C" of the lead shoulder causes more pinching "in" of the ribcage bottom, so that is the feeling to like.
The dogma that the head needs to stay perfectly still at all times in the stroke is really a crude attempt to state that the pivot needs to stay in the same place during the stroke. (Even this is not exactly as absolute as it seems.) The head is not the pivot of the stroke, and the pivot is at the base of the neck where the clavicle joins the shoulders to the top of the sternum. In terms of biomechanics and the geometry of the stroke motion, it is the pivot and not the head that plays the critical role and needs to stays still in space even while rotating with the shoulder rock.
But in terms of vision and balance and proprioceptive body sense, when the head and eyes move, the visual world shifts and the inner-ear balance system gets challenged. So for these reasons, head motion has negative effects that have nothing to do with keeping the pivot still. That said, however, the timing of the brain processes that produce the thru-stroke are pretty much over and the thru-stroke is sent on its way surely by the reaching of the bottom of the stroke. From this point forward, even head motion doesn't matter so long as it doesn't hamper the moving of the shoulder frame in the upstroke. For this reason, I try to keep the head and eyes still from the start of the stroke to the top of the backstroke and down to the bottom of the stroke, but thereafter a little rolling of the head and eyes with the pivot to allow the correct shoulder motion is just fine if not positively desireable. Afterall, the axis of the head is "rolling" but not moving back or out of square, so it shouldn't affect the shoulder action in the least.
The casting of the putter face square down the line is a matter of the lead shoulder socket working up and back on a stable but rotating pivot, and this socket effectively pulls or lags the whole lead arm, hand, and putter as a unit up and cast the face away from the feet down the line. The only role in this for the hands is to monitor the top of the putter handle to keep the flat surface oriented the same way all the time -- parallel to the line of the putt and the stroke, without twisting shut or closed. The tendency is for the right hand to try to maintain control or for the left elbow to twist in a closing swipe action in the thru-stroke. So long as the triangle remains intact with the shoulders being the only thing moving up and back, the right hand does not get challenged by the grip moving any further away from the right shoulder than it has ever been. But if the right hand is used to power the movement of the putter, the tendency is to thrust the right arm in a manner that rolls the forearms shut in the extension as the elbow straightens out. So keeping the right hand from bothering the face of the putter in the thru-stroke requires NOT using the right hand for power and NOT letting the triangle break down by armsiness. Keeping the left hand from messing with the putter face in the thru-stroke means NOT using the left hand to power the movement of the putter head and NOT allowing the left elbow to shut the forearm bones in a swiping-extending of the arm, which is also a breakdown of the triangle shape. It really boils down to a very simple positive instead of these don't-dos: power the stroke triangle by moving the lead shoulder up and back in the plane of the "C" with the hands simply monitoring the grip to keep "no change" as the only signal.
Remember, my efforts are to raise putting performance past where it now sits in a comfort zone of "what works" and what "feels natural" to golfers. That's not good enough.
So, no the backstroke does not come inside going back in longer stroke unless the golfer moves it there, and yes, the thru-stroke is 3.78 times more important than the backstroke.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
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