Dear Mark,
To get a good handle on what is behind the pushing left-to-right putts with right-handed putting, there are basically four considerations:
1. Which eye is dominant for you and how is your targeting from beside the ball compared to your targeting of the break before you setup beside the ball?
2. Do you take into account the fact that the ball sits slightly below your feet so that your setup and stroke is made with reference to a tilted green surface, and if so, how do you take this into account?
3. Is there something in your stroke motion that independently produces the push action, such as taking the putter back to the inside or to the "uphill" direction on the tilted slope, followed by an inside-out direction for the thru-stroke, or something similar in the stroke motion?
4. Is your "touch" out of sync with your targeting, so that you are "babying" the putt just a smidge and letting the putt fall off the imagined / visualized break you had planned to play?
Without being able to watch you putt these left-to-right breakers, it is tough to tell you which of the above considerations may be in play. So allow me to suggest the plain-jane positive approach to making these sorts of putts, in the hope that something I say will click with you.
A six-foot, ball-below-the-feet putt (a left-to-right putt for a right-hander and a right-to-left putt for a left-hander) first of all requires accurately reading the ball's roll backwards out of the cup at the touch speed you plan to play. This can be ball-parked with the "spider" technique of seeing the fall line and axis of tilt thru the cup and sensing a target aim spot above the center of the hole on the fall line that matches the distance below the center of the hole that a imagined straight-at-the-hole putt along the axis of titl with just-get-there speed from the same distance as your real putt would curl below the cup's center as it reaches the fall line. [I know that's a mouthful, so see my tip about
Seeing the Spider.] This technique gives you a spot on the fall line above the hole to setup and aim straight at and to roll the ball straight at with just-get-there touch that should result in the ball curling right into the heart of the hole on the breaking path. To fine-tune this first-trial ball-park read from the spider technique, then read the roll of the ball backwards out of the hole, reversing the speed pattern of the roll just like running a movie backwards but in reversed real time. This process should give you a very clear image of the speed pattern of the putt and faith in setting up straight at an aim spot and putting straight at it with good touch based on this targeting, so that the break takes the ball down off the straight line curling into the center of the cup.
The aim spot you finally decide upon may be above the hole's edge or indeed may remain "inside the hole" (as in "inside right" or "right edge"), since the aim spot is found in relation to the center of the cup. If it is, it is.
When you read the putt backwards out of the hole, this intuitive and integrative sense of the putt results in a curving path and an energy pattern, but not really an aim spot on the fall line. To get that from the backwards read and to compare it to the aim spot envisioned with the spider technique, you have to sense the "apex" of the backwards-seen path and then see how the start line of the putt aims slightly higher than the apex itself, so that the ball will climb up towards the apex and then flatten out thru the apex itself before turning towards the hole. By seeing how the start line sends the putt high and over the hump of the apex, and projecting this start line all the way out until it reaches the fall line, you identify a fine-tuned aim spot on the fall line above the hole. This backwards-read aim spot ought to match the spider-seen aim spot, and will almost never be higher than the spider-seen aim spot, but either the same or slightly closer to the center of the hole.
The general advice not to "give away the hole" on these 6-footers is a little on the blunt side. I don't really advocate taking the break out of putts with your touch unless you first clearly see what the actual usual-speed break is first. Then, only if "keeping the putt inside the hole" takes only a slight adjustment of touch with a very modest increase in speed from the usual tempo should you change the intended putt. What this means in practice is that only putts close to the fall line -- which have modest breaks to begin with at the usual tempo and delivery speed of the ball to the cup -- bring up this sort of adjustment. These putts are generally in the 4:30 and 7:30 (uphill), or 10:30 and 1:30 (downhill) clock positions around the hole when the fall line up thru the hole runs 6 to 12. Putts closer to the fall line are pretty much in the hole to begin with, and putts farther off towards the axis of tilt are not close enough to the edge of the cup for aim spots to allow bringing the putt back "in the hole" for an aim spot without a substantial and therefore risky increasing of the normal putt speed. [These general statements apply mostly to normal green tilts and playing speeds.] Once the length of the breaking putts gets down to about three feet, the admonition not to "give away the hole" starts to apply a lot more often, but 6-footers really often require committing to an aim spot and a straight putt that is aimed outside the hole.
If you are trying to keep the left-to-right putt "inside the hole" by increasing your putt speed a little, but still are missing low to the right, then you may in fact not be adjusting your speed upward when you make the stroke. I would suggest not changing the speed of your normal putting tempo at all, as I view trying to take the break out a source of error except on putts three feet and in (maybe 4 on occasion) or when the putt is pretty much uphill and only slightly sidehill.
Once the aim spot is visualized and the final foot or so of the putt's actual entry roll is clearly seen on the grass, then you have to target the aim spot from behind the ball and setup to aim the putter face at the aim spot and setup the body to this putter face for a straight stroke with good touch. The trick here is to make sure the putter head is flatly soled on the tilted surface, and that you setup your body to the handle only after the putter sole is flushed to the tilted surface. [See my tip about
Sidehill Setups.] The result is that this alters your body setup to gravity so that your setup is to the tilted surface AS IF it were a level surface.
To a person standing erect in gravity looking at you from behind the ball in a setup to a ball below the feet with the sole flush, you look setup tilted forward downhill over the ball, but all the relationships of a level setup are really still there, just relating now to a tilted surface. In the case of a setup to a ball above the feet with sole flush, you would appear to be leaning more downhill away from the ball, but really the relations are the same as if setting up on level ground.
The whole purpose of this setup tilt is to conform your setup to whatever tilt there is on the surface so that you will be in a position to make the normal, everyday straight stroke AS IF standing on a level green surface. IF you setup to gravity instead, on a ball-below-the-feet putt, you will be back off the ball and the toe of the putter will be a little up off the surface and the heel a little digging into the hill. Making a straight stroke in this gravity setup will mean the heel heads into the turf, so your natural unconscious solution is to make a stroke that starts the heel downhill or outside and then sweeps in an arc thru impact and finishes downhill also. So the tilt plus setup to gravity could encourage a push and a miss to tghe right.
One trick about conforming your setup to the tilt and then putting straight AS IF on level green is that your inner ear and eyes will be telling you that this is not quite right. That's true, but ignore it and pretend you are on level green anyway. If you don't commit to a straight stroke AS IF on a level surface, the tendency is to allow your sense of starting the ball off to the downhill hole (instead of to the higher aim spot) to creep into action. This accords with the ever-so-slight downhill arcing of the putterhead and feels "right" but is dead wrong. You have to commit to putting straight at the aim spot above the hole, and don't let any subconscious guiding the ball towards the hole to creep in.
Once you're setup and planning on putting straight at an aim spot, and allowing the tilt of the green to make the ball break correctly as envisioned, it's all down to touch. If you plan the putt with touch speed "A" (normal) in mind, but then putt with something less than this speed, you're in trouble because you haven't targeted the path of the break with "B" in mind and are just guessing. So you have to have the same putt speed or tempo in mind for the targeting and the stroke. This means you want to roll the ball at and to the aim spot with just the right speed to get the ball all the way to the aim spot without much if anything left over past this location. So plan on "stopping" the ball at or just barely past the aim spot. This is the only speed that will allow the green's tilt to help you correctly, so the ball will "take the break" and not "run thru the break." Since your misses are to the right or low side of the cup on these putts, it may be that your tempo or touch is protectively too slow for what you are targeting, so don't "baby the putt" but instead putt so the ball rolls ALL THE WAY to the aim spot above the hole, and don't putt just to get the ball downhill to the hole itself.
This covers all but the eye-dominance issue. Sometimes, a left-eye dominant but right-handed golfer naturally has a "push" action in the stroke as a result of wanting to setup with the left eye back behind the ball a little, like Jack Nicklaus. Usually, the cross-dominant golfer benefits from opening the shoulders just a smidge to the putt line and "pushing" the stroke straight along the putt line from this open-shoulder orientation. (I'm only talking about the lead shoulder be back off parallel by an inch or two -- not much at all, so it is only a very mild push action.) So perhaps, if you happen to be cross-dominant, this action has worked its way into your putting over time without you noticing it much, and you are aiming with your shoulders aligned parallel at the aim spot but still using a push stroke that sends the ball out of your setup AS IF your shoulder alignment is open to the putt line. So, check your eye dominance and check to make sure whether your shoulders are square or slightly open and whether there is any push action so the ball leaves your setup on a line slightly off the shoulder line. If you have this feature in your putting, you can either keep it or get rid of it, but just don't forget it and get double-crossed by failing to orient the shoulder a little more uphill than the putt line.
The other problem is if you are right-eye dominant and putting right-handed but don't use a gaze straight out of the face for targeting beside the ball. The normal mistake is to aim the gaze slightly down the nose or cheeks out of the face, and this generates a head turn in which the top of the head travels backwards a bit looking from ball to target (aim spot) and this turns the base of the neck to the outside across the line. Putt strokes follow the body setup more than the eyes, so changing the base of the neck right before you putt sends your putts a little to the outside, and in this left-to-right putt, that is to the right or downhill side of the cup. The cure is to watch that the gaze is straight out and that the base of the neck doesn't alter during beside the ball targeting, but stays sqaure as first setup.
If you are familiar with my two tips about
Seeing the Spider and the
Piece of Pie, you probably agree that uphill breaking putts and downhill breaking putts aren't quite the same for touch. Putts that start from a ball position below the axis of tilt are "uphill" putts and somewhat sidehill; putts from directly out the axis of tilt are "pure sidehill" putts and are the biggest breaks in putting and the toughest to sink; putts from ball positions above the axis of tilt are "downhill" putts and also somewhat sidehill; only putts directly along the fall line are "straight" uphill or downhill putts.
The touch trick for downhill putts is that unless the touch is just as targeted, the ball will curl onto the wrong fall line under the pull of gravity. Too little touch speed, and the ball curls downhill on a fall line short of the hole's fall line; too much speed and the ball runs thru the break and curls downhill on a fall line on the far side of the hole. So for downhill putts you really have to make the stroke with the speed in mind that JUST GETS TO THE AIM SPOT and stops there or just past it -- as this is the only speed for delivering the ball on the putt line that allows the green's tilt to make it curl on the CORRECT fall line and hence into the cup. Coming downhill, almost all golfers miss the vast majority of breaking putts on the low side by babying the putt with too little speed. You have to carefully imagine the ball rolling downhill, nearing the aim spot, slowing down, and then STOPPING at or just past the aim spot on the correct fall line. Babying comes about from lack of clarity about the energy that accomplishes this touch roll downhill. I'm not saying you should putt agressively down hill -- just be clear about the touch needed and then execute. Touch is everything for downhill putts, once you're aimed.
The sort of putt visualization I am describing is AS IF you were putting straight at an aim spot on level green with the understanding that the downhill putt is going to get a little help from gravity so is a little quicker than a real level putt on this green. You basically factor in the fact that the putt is downhill in assessing green speed and in imagining the STOPPING of the ball at the aim spot -- this is intuitive, and all you have to think to get it right is "roll the ball all the way to the aim spot so it stops there and does not run past."
To bring all this together for 6-foot breaking putts, I would suggest the Spiral Drill described in my
"Drills" section and also using the Piece of Pie drill described there too. These two drills ought to help teach you about picking an aim spot for a ball-below-the-feet putt, aiming and setting up correctly AS IF on level green, and putting straight with good touch AS IF on a level surface but intuitively adjusting your sense of green speed for uphill-downhill effects.
Let me know what you find out.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
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