Dear Bastiaan,
Your teacher is confused. Making a straight stroke is not really the goal, although it is clearly possible, if the teacher knows how to teach one.
All of Harold Swash's students make a straight stroke, and these are all of the top putters on the European Tour. His students include: Padraig Harrington, Ian Poulter, Niclas Fasth, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam, Darren Clarke, Justin Rose, Phillip Price, Thomas Bjorn, and many others.
On the US PGA Tour, everyone who practices with the Putting Arc training aid or the True Plane stroke trainer is attempting to make a straight stroke -- even if the plane of the stroke is tilted off vertical. There are over 200 US pros using these training aids, including Davis Love, Shigeki Muruyama, and many many more.
The tilting of the stroke is just a suboptimal habit that has crept in to today's crowd of Tour golfers, not by choice, but by casual indifference to the best way to make a straight roll. The trouble with the tilt is that the angle of the tilt needs to be exactly the same every putt and every day, since ball position is critical with this pattern, and even slight variations in the tilt angle of the stroke motion makes the ball roll other than straight.
What probably confuses your pro is the failure to differentiate between whether the sweetspot of the putter moves in a straight line versus whether the putter face orientation as projected down onto the ground stays "square" to the "line of the putt as drawn on the ground." That's normal, as all but only a select handful of people in golf history have ever analyzed this correctly. In a "straight" stroke, as viewed from behind the golfer looking down the "line of the putt" as drawn on the ground, a vertical stroke keeps the sweetspot directly above the line on the ground, and the putter face stays square to this line without hand manipulation, although the sweetspot rises in an arc on either side of the bottom of the stroke (it just rises in the vertical plane that includes the line on the ground). A tilted straight stroke -- if photographed in a series of stop-action photos with the sweetspot only lighted in a dark room with the camera behind the golfer aimed down the line of the putt -- has the sweetspot start at the bottom of the stroke and then moving initially up and inside coming towards the camera in what appears to be a short straight line, then moves away back down this line to the bottom again and then moves up and away along the same line going towards the target. The same camera would see the vertical stroke make the same sort of line vertically up and down from the bottom of the stroke. In both cases, the putter face does not change orientation to this short line of motion. That is, the putter face always stays "square" to the stroke motion, AND in both the tilted and vertical strokes, the stroke motion stays straight in the sense that the plane of the stroke intersects the ground in exactly the line of the putt.
To make a tilted stroke, the best way to do that is to NOT manipulate the putter in any way, in which case the putter face stays square. This stroke is straight back and straight thru, although it's appearance seen from the perspective of looking vertically down on the line of the putt suggests that the golfer is "bringing" the putter inside going back and inside going forward. This is nonesense and is BAD teaching.
All you have to do to see how easy it is is to make one for yourself. If this doesn't prove to you that a straight stroke is not only possible, but easy as well, then I can't help you. Likewise, if you believe that the best stroke requires you to bring the putter inside coming back and then "bring" the putter inside going forward, I would love to hear your explanation as to why that is better than straight back.
As I said at the start, the goal is not to make a straight stroke, but to make a straight putt. The closer you focus your attention to what the putter is doing near the back of the ball going forward in the thru-stroke to a short distance after impact, the more ALL strokes that produce a straight putt look exactly the same. The segment of the stroke path where the putter is moving and oriented so that the ball will roll straight off the putter face as initially aimed is a section we can call the "correctness stretch." The vertical stroke simply has a greater margin for error so that its "correctness stretch" from behind impact to past impact is a LOT LONGER than the "correctness stretch" of either the tilted-plane stroke or any other sort of "gating" inside-square-inside stroke. In fact, this sort of stroke has a segment from the exact bottom of the stroke to the back of the ball during which the putter is in the "correctness stretch", and this stretch is about two to three inches in length, whereas in the gating stroke in contrast, the "correctness stretch" is less than one-half an inch long at best. Add to this the fact that the ball is actually in contact with the putter face for an inch or two after impact begins, and you ought to quickly realize that the first two to three inches AFTER impact are critical to whether the ball will roll straight. If your putter is arcing shut at this time, you have a problem that is not shared by those making a straight thru-stroke. Including this past-impact region, the straight stroke has a "correctness stretch" that is four to six inches long, and it absolutely needs about 1-2 of these core inches, but the rest are margin of error when the timing of the movement pattern is a little off. The gating stroke does not even have this core 1-2 inches, and has no margin of error. What actually is happening, even with those who believe they are "bringing" the putter inside coming back and then into impact from the inside and then arcing closed thru impact and then inside in the follow-thru is that, in actuality, they are keeping the putter face square for a short distance starting at impact and a little beyond. Just ask Dave Stockton jr, or read his book, if you have the time and inclination.
The more the stroke requires that the putter face be square and moving straight on line only at the instant of impact, the more it demands that the golfer be perfect every stroke. This is exactly why Ben Crenshaw advices golfers NOT to try to copy his stroke pattern -- too complicated and too dependent upon being gifted in timing and having put in decades getting the movement pattern perfected. Even Crenshaw, however, has the putter face staying square and moving straight for a critical section of the stroke through and past impact.
And in any event, since the main objective is the straightness of the roll, what I REALLY teach as optimal is not a straight stroke but a straight "correctness stretch" in the stroke. This does not really require a straight backstroke, so long as the golfer can get back to the starting position and orientation of the putter (as aimed at address) and THEN go straight thru the ball moving the putter squarely down the line of the putt thru impact and for a little distance beyond. The point of the straight backstroke is just to help make this critical stuff happen more reliably and consistently.
If you judge the putt, judge whether the ball heads straight away from the starting point along the same line the putter face was initially aimed. If you judge the stroke, judge whether the putter face was moving on the line of the putt with the sweespot on the line and the face square to the same line the putter face was initially aimed at address and then the putter face stays moving square thru impact and just a few inches past impact. Take a look at Phil Mickelson's finish: his putter face at the top of the thru-stroke stays SQUARE to the line of the putt, and does not aim inside the way lesser golfers finish their putting strokes.
It's a little frustrating to have to plow the same ground all the time correcting half-baked notions of what is happening in a good stroke that rolls the ball straight. I would suggest that your pro friend ought to read what Dr Roger Brooks of the University of Lancaster wrote for the World Scientific Congress of Golf about the geometry of the stroke, or read what Joey Hamilton (co-inventor of the Putting Arc training aid) has written about the geometry of the stroke. This and a great deal more is freely available on the PuttingZone website and has been for a couple of years. Or he can purchase Harold Swash's CD on putting, and take a look at a dozen top European players making straight strokes. Or he can take a look at Harold Swash's "Rack" and watch the stroke patterns above a grid on the floor. Or he can get Kirk Currie's stroke training stand. Or he can try any of the six or more stroke training aids, after reading the instructions. Or, he can simply ask me himself, instead of telling you I'm wrong. If your pro friend thinks he knows what is happening in a good stroke and how to make one, perhaps he will share it on the website. My guess is that he hasn't really thought it through very deeply or studied the stroke in much detail.
Whatever it takes to get your friend up to speed, if he wants to know.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
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