Dear Bob,
My view is that the debate's intensity is fueled mostly by ignorance. By that, I mean that I often hear people say that a straight-back, straight-thru stroke "cannot" be made, or some variant of this, such as this sort of stroke is "unnatural' or "difficult" or something like that. To all of these people I and others reply that the straight-back, straight-thru stroke is really only difficult to those who don't know how to make one -- and that includes a great many golfers. How the shoulders move to make the stroke happen is not generally known in golf, although the motion is incredibly simple to teach, learn, and execute once the golfer hears how.
So the first strain of the debate is about which of the two sorts of strokes are more "natural" or "simple." The idea is that only the simple stroke motion will hold up under pressure. This idea is a little off the mark. The best stroke needs to perform well in general and also under pressure, so there are two separate issues -- general effectiveness and durability. People who criticize the straight stroke never really seem to know just how simple it is. In fact, the straight stroke is much simpler than the arcing or gating stroke. The simplicity resides mostly in the facts that there is only one body part to move (lead shoulder socket), one direction to move it (straight down), the direction is defined clearly by another body part (ball of foot), and there is no role at all for the arms or hands (no change at any time). In contrast, the gating stroke requires repeating coordination of shoulders, arms, and hands moving at once, has an undefined path of motion for the putter head and a path that varies somewhat on the length of the putt, and relies for square online impact upon timing and moving the hands, arms, and shoulders in a coordinated way back to the address position. There is nothing more natural about one style versus the other -- they are both learned motions -- one simple, one complex and subject to faulty performance. The reason a golfer like Billy Casper -- the pre-eminent role model for the handsy, wristy putter -- converted to the shoulder stroke is its reliability, accuracy, and consistency under pressure -- and he should know the full value of a handsy stroke style.
To give the gating stroke it's full due, it does have an "apparent" naturalness in the sense that learning the motion fits more comfortanly into pre-existing motion patterns like shaking hands, opening doors, turning the torso to look to one side, and the like. In comparison, learning to dip the lead shoulder socket down at the ball of the foot seems artificial. to me, both strokes are artificial motions, and it is not a good thing that the gating stroke feels familiar. This very familiarity breeds casual mistakes in execution, and golfers who rely upon this style miss lots of putts to the inside or outside due to casual timing errors -- late or early forearm rotation, incomplete or excessive forearm rotation, unnoticed wanderings of the pivot of the putting system, etc. If you want to feel comfy when putting, then this stroke style beckons like a siren song. But if you want simplicity and repeatability, the shoulder stroke in a straight-back, straight-thru style seems better to me in a general sense and also under pressure.
The technical difference is not insignificant -- a straight stroke moves the putter face square and online over a far longer stretch of the putt from behind the ball to beyond impact -- a stretch as long as 8-10 inches total without special effort. In comparison, the gating stroke has the putter face square, moving straight online only for the briefest moment.
One view of the two strokes is that both are arcing strokes -- the gating stroke has the arcing oriented horizontally around the feet back inside then forward outside to impact and then back inside going thru, whereas the straight stroke has the arcing up to the backstroke top and then back down to the middle of the body and then up into the back of the ball all oriented in the vertical dimension over the line of the putt. clearly, the vertically oriented arc is superior for repeatedly sending the ball away straight. When the stroke arc is horizontal around the feet, there are two problems: the face is square only at one moment, and the loft of the putter makes hitting the ball straight online problematic. Neither of these concerns arises with the arcing vertically oriented. Notwithstanding this, the fact that both strokes are arcs means to me that the claim that the gating stroke is more simple is just not the case -- both are arcs.
But you're quite right that the performance of the two strokes has not really been put to the test. Personally, I've spent over 15 years testing the two stroke styles on a daily basis. My unqualified assessment is that the straight-back, straight-thru shoulder stroke is more accurate, simpler, easier to perform, and holds up better under pressure than the gating stroke.
But golfers are different. Some golfers just cannot learn the style that I believe is best. Jay Haas could never perform the straight-back, straight-thru stroke consistently even though he was at the time one of the best putters on Tour and kept trying to get it right for years. That's unfortunate, because he apparently wasn't taught very well how to make the stroke. Even so, Haas took about two years of steady work to incorporate the gating stroke style he learned from Stan Utley, and he has had a number of serious breakdowns under pressure. Utley also has been trying for 25 years to perfect his style, but he drifts out of technique regularly and relies upon Rob Akins, a Memphis swing coach, to spot his falws and get him back on track.
On the other hand, George Low in the 1960s and 1970s taught the gating stroke to Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Utley's style is just the same as Low's with a couple of ill-advised complications thrown in (forearm rotation and forward press and excessive loft on putter). Nicklaus soon after gave it up as too reliant upon a special motion that wasn't easy to remember or repeat. He said he just couldn't keep the feeling of the stroke. And Palmer's stroke went to pot in 1974 and never came back.
So, some golfers NEED the gating stroke. And I teach those golfers how to perform it as simply as possible, with clear cues for what to move where and how. Some folks end up with a blended stroke that gates going back and coming into impact then transitions to a straight-thru stroke.
The bottom line is that effective putting really only requires square putter face moving online right at impact and during ball contact. Everything else after that is about keeping the stroke simple and accurate, with generous margins of error, so that daily putting is effective and reliable, AND the stroke is durable under pressure.
Once you get a good stroke and want the best stroke, you have to make some choices and commit to one style or the other. Ultimately, any given golfer's "best" stroke is dependent on how well he can perform either the straight stroke or the gating stroke. That's where the teacher's skill comes in.
To test one style against another, the experimental protocol would need to have the same level of effectiveness in training the golfer in each style so that each golfer could execute each style at the same level of proficiency. That's a tough recipe for a scientific experiment.
The more I deal with this debate, the more apparent it seems to me that golfers react or participate in this debate primarily with emotions rather than thoughtfulness. The golfers who "like" one style or who have "vested" their personal golf expertise on one style or the other just don't want to hear that the other style is simpler or more effective, and color whatever they hear along these lines with a prejudiced (emotion-based) view. Golfers who agree with parts of the debate, without necessarily sorting out the issues for themselves, just won't hear the other side with objectivity. These golfers are tough to teach, and teaching them the other style often leads to relapse in short order. For this reason, you can often teach a novice how to putt better than a veteran golfer without a lot of coming and going.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
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