Dear Bastiaan,
I don't like practice strokes made with the idea that the golfer is somehow "feeling" the distance of the putt that he "sees with his 'mind's eye'", whatever that is. I think Dave Pelz is confused on this subject.
First, what does he advocate? In section 11.2 of his "Bible," Pelz advocates the golfer standing behind the ball about 6 feet facing the target and making practice strokes "to get a first feel and vision of the stroke length required for this putt." He says that with the eyes facing forward, the golfer has "perfect binocular vision of the distance." He wants the golfer to "try to imagine if your swing feels about the correct size to roll the perfect putt on the perfect ball track." He wants the first stroke to be made looking at the hole, the second practice swing looking down at the stroke itself, and a third swing again looking at the hole. Then he advises the golfer to walk the line into the putt but to set up the putter 4 inches offset to the inside, where the golfer again is advised to make a series of practice stroke beside the ball He says: "Make at least three, but not more than six, practice swings until you see and feel the perfect stroke that you imagine would roll an imaginary ball sitting four inches to the left of your real ball along an imaginary ball track over an imaginary hole, to a resting point 17 inches behind and four inches to the left of the real hole." he wants the first stroke made looking at the 17-inch-past spot, the 2nd stroke made looking down at the imaginary ball, and the 3rd stroke made looking at the target and then holding the follow-thru. If this makes you feel you have the pefect stroke size for the distance, Pelz then advises moving the putter to behind the ball and repeating the same stroke as the last practice stroke.
There are five notions Pelz relies on here that I think are confused and confusing, and hence not the best way to putt.
1. BINOCULAR VISION AND DISTANCE PERCEPTION
First, the notion that looking with "perfect binocular vision" is a great way to produce distance control in the stroke is not well-supported by science. Binocular "disparity" is only one component of depth perception, whereby the differences in signals in the two retinas resulting from the fact that the eyes are located about 2 inches apart in the head helps a '"sense" of three-dimensionality of a perceived object "emerge" in the processing of the brain. Depth perception is not a real attribute of objects like size, but is just an interpretation of the dimensionality of objects in space and in relation to other objects. And depth perception emerges from a number of cooperating cues, only one of which is "binocular vision." But depth perception is not the same as distance; depth perception is just a small part of distance perception.
In putting, you don't really care about the three-dimensionality of objects -- you care about distance from ball to target over the green. There are over a dozen different ways the body gains knowledge of this sort of distance, and binocular vision is not at the top of the list for effectiveness. Others include texture-detail gradient, perspective, motion parallax, occlusion, shadowing, angle of regard, and real size versus apparent size. The neck angle that results from the height of the eyes looking down at a certain distance along the surface is one of many ways to gain distance sense that are superior to binocular vision. This is a combination of known eye height in standing with normal posture and neck tilt as sensed by neck nerves that signal the brain about the angle of regard from the eye height down to the spot on the surface. The neck angle is the key there. And looking from ball to target and back, by MOVING the neck and head up and down from ball to target and back, is even better because it gives a stronger signal about the ultimate neck angle looking to the target. (Why Pelz chooses 6 feet behind the ball is not stated, and I don't personally agree that this is the best distance -- the ball is too close to the feet so the neck has to look too deep to see the ball, with the eyebrows then blocking view of the target if it is any real distance out, so farther back is better. But even so, Pelz has the golfer bending over making practice strokes while facing forward -- this helps get the ball and target both in view but it makes the neck crane up to look. Apparently, Pelz does not want to encourage any neck motion looking up from ball to target and instead just wants a steady view. If so, he gets it with an odd and uncomfortable neck posture. What he really ought to advise is "imagining" a perfect putt with each practice stroke, and then "watching" the perfect roll progress towards the hole with the neck moving the head up as the roll progresses -- but he doesn't seem aware of this as a possibility.) Pelz appears to know nothing of these issues of posture, perspective, motion, and perception, although these cues to distance are explained in any undergraduate text book on perception. Even more fundamentally, gaining a sense of distance is for the purpose of action -- making the stroke with the correct size -- and this is not only or even primarily a matter of vision. It is a matter of movement, and the body-knowledge of movement, so this brings to the front proprioceptive senses of body position at address in relation to target. Teaching the body what it needs to know about distance is more about walking, turning the head and neck, and imagining moving or watching movement, than it is about looking straight with "binocular vision."
2. AIMING THE PUTTER FACE
Second, making practice strokes beside the ball and then moving the putter behind the ball for final aiming strikes me as a bit nutty, given the critical importance of properly aiming the putter face based on the sighting of the line from behind the ball. For all the attention Pelz devotes to explaining how critical face aim and face squareness at impact is for the outcome of a putt (much more critical than putter path thru impact, for example), he does a pretty poor job of explaining how to aim the putter face. There is nothing in his routine about aiming the putter face -- nothing at all. And the main source of perception for accurately aiming the putter face -- sighting from behind the ball -- he doesn't relate to aiming the putter face in any manner. (Incidentally, sighting from behind the ball for aim is not really a matter of "binocular vision, but is more about one-eyed dominant eye sighting.) Pelz says the perception of the line lasts about 8 seconds. But his routine of walking in along the "line" of the putt as seen from behind the ball and then stepping off the line to setup 4 inches inside, and then standing there making 3-6 practice strokes (which probably takes about 20-40 seconds), and THEN changing the putter position from there to behind the ball (without explaining how to make sure the aim is then correct and without bothering to note that any perceptions of the line built behind the ball are long since gone and useless), strikes me frankly as goofy. There is NOTHING here about how to use the behind-the-ball aiming to advantage in aiming the putter face. There is NOTHING here about what happens to the aiming perceptions obtained by the behind-the-ball targeting. There is NOTHING here about how to "move" the putter from beside the ball to behind the ball and aim the putter face then. There is NOTHING here about checking to determine whether the putter face is actually aimed as intended.
3. VAGUE NOTIONS OF "FEEL" AND MENTAL IMAGERY
Third, the notions of "feel" and the "mind's eye" are hopelessly vague and do not correctly describe what is happening or should be happening in terms of preparing the body for executing the stroke with proper distance control as a result of this behavior.
While it is true that "mental practice" and visualization of the stroke and roll of the perfect putt are vital aspects of putting well, how this actually works in the brain or how and when to use it is not well described by vague jargon like "feel" and "mind's eye." And the idea that working to match the practice motions with the imagination of the perfect stroke motion is the best way to obtain the accurate stroke size is simply false. The human brain generates the stroke size by instinctive, non-conscious processes in the cerebellum where vision, balance, and body-sense are combined with tempo and a sense of green speed and an innate sense of physics -- the stroke size that results is instinctive. The thing about the cerebellum is that you cannot communicate with it. It is just like a cauliflower stapled on the back of the brain, and it functions as an organ as "consciously" as does your liver. Trying to "sense the feel" of the stroke size with practice strokes is just this ill-advised effort to communicate with the cerebellum, or worse, to supplant the functioning of the cerebellum with the crazed efforts of the conscious mind -- in any case, trying to use the conscious mind for a non-conscious process. In my teaching, I always explain that doing this for touch or distance control is like a drunk riding home from the local bar in a Taxi Cab and lunging for the steering wheel in the delusional belief that there is no one driving the cab!
The thing that Pelz sort of gets right here is the looking at the hole while making a practice stroke beside the ball, but he doesn't know in what sense this is helpful. The important thing about looking a the hole is not the visual information thru the eyes (everyone knows what a hole looks like and no one cares) -- instead, it's the angle that the neck is turned to face the hole. The angle of turning the neck from ball to target acts just like a dimmer switch on a chandelier or a reostat -- every slight turn of the knob corresponds to a definite distance, and only that distance. Your brain uses this system every waking moment, and it's a lot better than you think. This is body-sense knowledge that is sensed by the nerves in the neck as it turns and then fed straight into the cerebellum. You can get exactly the same body-knowledge (if not better) simply by closing your eyes and then turning the neck to face where you recall the target being located.
There is a second problem here in Pelz's routine -- making practice strokes beside the ball "while looking at the hole." This affects the "form" of the correct stroke. Everyone knows that peeking during the stroke is bad. But perhaps they don't also know why. Peeking is bad because turning the neck to "peek" towards the hole ("face" the hole) requires altering the neck posture during the stroke. Untrained golfers don't do this peeking in an unhurtful way, but peek by altering the orientation of the neck out of square. (The neck goes rearward as the face tilts up and sideways to look for the hole in a peek.) This neck motion shifts the shoulder frame "open" out of square while the stroke is still in its critical impact phase. Depending on just when this happens, the putt is misdirected either to the outside or the inside of the line and the putt is spoiled. Pelz advises that the first and last practice stroke should be made "while looking at the hole," but he is insensible to this danger of adversely affecting the "form" of a correct stroke. If you're going to make a practice stroke while looking at the hole, you better know how not to mess up your shoulder frame alignment when "looking" from ball to hole, or else you're practicing and promoting an out-of-square stroke form. Hardly any golfers today know how to make a good, square practice stroke while looking at the hole. The upshot is that this procedure advocated by Pelz hurts setup, targeting, and stroke for practically every golfer, and there is an alternative way to get the same or better distance sense without doing this.
Part of my targeting routine is looking from ball to target to check putter face aim. This neck turn has to be done correctly or the perceptions generated are faulty. A correct neck turn leaves the base of the neck unaltered in its orientation to the shoulder frame, and so the shoulder frame does not get changed by the look. But, this aim checking head turn ALSO serves the purpose of generating distance body-knowledge via the neck turn signaling the cerebellum with angle of turn that matches a given distance. The dovetailing in my routine kills two birds with one stone -- checking the putter face aim, and getting the distance. Basically, you don't need to make a practice stroke to get accurate and useful perceptions of distance that will work very effectively in generating the appropriate backstroke size for the putt. So, why mess up putter face aiming and setup and stroke by making practice strokes beside the ball, as Pelz advocates?
4. STRAIGHT PATH OR CURVED PATH FOR DISTANCE
Fourth, Pelz is really advising the golfer to sense the distance of the total "path" of the putt from ball to hole, meaning the curve along the green. This seems correct, but is not. When the body "looks" along a curved path on the ground from the feet to a distant hole, the neck and head and eyes are constantly changing relative positions. This is a poor recipe for distance information. The sort of clear, strong distance information the golfer needs is straight, as-the-crow-flies distance. This sort of distance gets sensed by minimalist and orthogonal body motions. What is needed is a target near the hole for purposes of aiming the putter face at, putting the ball straight at, and rolling the ball only to -- and then letting gravity make the ball curve into the hole.
I have found such spots always lie on the fall line above the hole for single-break putts, or at worst along a line perpendicular thru the hole to a line straight from ball to hole. Targeting distance by concerning yourself with the total curving distance into the hole is not nearly as clear and also promotes a stroke that sends the ball downhill, guided towards the hole, rather than a straight stroke committed to a beside-the-hole target for both line and distance.
While it is true that scanning" along the total curve while imagining the real-time rolling motion of a perfectly putted ball is a vital part of putting well, it is not especially well-suited to getting an accurate sense of distance. It helps, but it really is best for focusing the consciousness on the last 2-3 feet of the putt where the outcome is determined, so that the final shape of the curve into the hole is more sharply envisioned. The shape of the curve here is mostly important not for distance but for line -- so that the starting line of the putt is calculated to keep the ball on the high side of this final curve or "hump" of the break. This means envisioning the startline across the back of this entry "hump" that keeps the ball on the curve and avoids losing the ball to the underside of the curve. Once this start line is seen in relation t the final curve into the hole, you're back to distance, or how far along the start line should you roll the ball.
In my approach, a target spot on the high side of the fall line thru the cup serves as BOTH an end-point defining the line from ball to target spot AND a distance reference for how far to roll the ball. Breaking putts always end up being dependent upon touch as the final consideration before pulling the trigger. The target spot is the point "to it, not thru it" where the ball STOPS. The visualization is AS IF the green is not tilted or sloped, but is flat and level, and the golfer uses the target spot as the place where he plans for the straight and level putt to slow down and come to a full and complete STOP (although his sense of green speed is intuitively altered by the reality that the ball must be sent a bit uphill or downhill as the case may be.) This targeting generates the correct backstroke length instinctively, assuming you stick with your tempo.
5. PELZ'S BOGUS 17-INCH "RULE"
And fifth, the idea of targeting a spot 17 inches past the hole is bad science and bogus advice, according to Pelz's original explanations of his research (which he later changed completely without additional research). Pelz published his research on this in 1977 in the July issue of Golf Digest, pages 52-55, and anyone who reads this article will see that he did NOT discover or prove his so-called 17-inch rule, and he personally says exactly this quite clearly. He therein states unequivocally that his research "proves" 1) that there is NOT any one optimal go-by speed for all greens, 2) that the best go-by distance on greens in the mid-1970s depends on grass type (Bent or Bermuda) and condition (shaggy or Tournament quality), and 3) varies for Bent greens from 5 to 10 inches (good condition) to 10 to 15 inches (bad condition), and 4) varies for Bermuda greens from 20 to 30 inches (good condition) to 30 to 40 inches (bad condition). There is nothing new here, as pro golfers and instructors had said the same thing for decades prior to 1977.
Six years after completing his research, however, and without any additional or new data or research, Pelz began claiming that his 1977 research actually "proved" scientifically that 17 inches is the optimal go-by speed to maximize sinks for putts of ANY length on any GRASS TYPE in any CONDITION. He repeated this claim in his 1986 book Putt Like the Pros (also without additional research), and even drew a chart of fictitious data with a peak showing 17 inches as the distance past the hole resulting in the highest number of sinks.
Pelz has been asked directly about this discrepancy between his actual research and his claims since 1983, but he has not responded except to add a footnote to his subsequent repetitions of the claim that he has "scientifically proved" his "17-inch Rule" (e.g., in his 2000 "Bible", p 190 -- the optimal distance past the hole is 17 inches and does not change with grass type or condition) that his 17 inches is really only an "average" (p 191 sidebar). That doesn't cut it, and he is trying to keep his "discovery" claim while also defusing the questioning of his data. He still claims 17 inches is "the best speed" and prints fictitious charts showing data peaking at 17 as if there was one green he tested and as if the line drawn represents actual results from experiments (p 189). [Compare this drawing with the 1986 drawing, and you'll see that Pelz has sharpened up the peak at 17, too, for the 2000 version.] There is no "average" Bent-muda green for which 17 inches makes any sense. On the bent greens, 17 inches is not the average for ANY putt on any condition, and is too long for EVERY putt. On Bermuda greens, 17 inches is not the average for ANY putt and is too short for EVERY putt.
He has not done any other research on modern greens (at least none he reveals or even describes), and the changes in greens agronomy, design, and maintenance since 1980 have rendered his 1977 data useless. Basically, he suppressed his 1977 data (he never refers to the Golf Digest article or suggests anyone should read it) and appears to have made up the 17-inch rule six years later to have something to claim he discovered and proved, when there is nothing original he can claim and he never exhibits any real data supporting a change of heart from what he said in 1977.
Even more fundamentally, the physics is wrong. Using the go-by distance as easy for amateur golfers to see may be easy, but it's not smart. The golfers need to pay attention to the rolling speed of the ball at the lip, regardless of grass type or condition. Pelz writes that "golfers don't relate to speeds" (p 190), but anyone who watches a ball slow down and stop knows that is false. Whether a ball sinks is much more about ball-hole physics, and much less about ball-green physics, as several physicists have already written about extensively (e.g., Holmes, Penner). Basically, 9 revolutions at the lip is too fast for the ball to be captured by falling while traveling across the opening of the hole, and even at 8 revolutions per second at the lip the hole for capture is only effectively one dimple wide and the path must be center cut for the ball to fall and stay inside the cup. The slower the speed at the lip, the wider the effective target becomes.
The trade-off is between a wider hole versus taking care of problems in the ball-green physics (surface irregularities, spike marks, foot prints, etc.) by keeping the speed and momentum of the rolling ball high enough to overpower obstacles. In my experience, on modern greens better suited to handle foot prints and with fewer spike marks and better grass and better maintenance and hole rotation practices, 2 revolutions at the lip is plenty of momentum for the usual obstacles and makes the hole plenty wide for capture and margins of error. However far past the hole 2 at the lip sends the ball if it misses depends entirely on grass type and condition and surface contour, as everyone before and since Pelz has always known.
Ironically, Pelz shows two pictures of go-by leave patterns in his "Bible," one showing bad amateur leaves and the other good pro leaves. Because a hole is 4.25 inches wide, the hole in the good-pro photo serves as a "ruler" to measure the leave patterns. The bad amateur leaves are all around the hole short, wide, or long. In contrast, the pro leaves are an average of 8-10 inches past the hole. This is ironic because Pelz is showing in this picture the data that disproves his 17 inch Rule and he apparently isn't aware of this. He also prints a chart of distance variability comparing pros and amateurs, showing pros having leaves on 20 footers of about 1 foot, not 17 inches (p 121). That's pretty consistent with where a ball arriving at the hole with 2-at-the-lip speed will end up on decent Bent greens in the present decade if the ball misses the hole.
And finally, using any spot "past" the target is not a good way to get the distance to the target correctly and beneficially into the instinctive system for touch. The cerebellum calculates and produces a stroke that sends the ball over the giver grass type and condition and uphill or downhill to the target, and can do so by just getting the ball there with 0 speed at the lip or with 2 revolutions per second at the lip, depending on what you train to learn. (Training a golfer to stop the ball right on the lip is a very useful touch drill, used by Greg norman teaching his son, and by me in general, and especially with kids, who mostly have terrible distance control.) Using a target other than the real target is just not the best way of going about it.
CONCLUSION
It's clear that Pelz is "trying" to improve how average golfers get a better "feel" for distance, and there is something to his previewing the proper stroke '"size" in the manner he advises. But his lack of understanding of how distance control actually works, and how to use those brain-body processes in a sequencing of behaviors that does not waste time and effort or interfere with critical tasks like aiming the putter face correctly, results in a patched-together routine that a) is not the best way to generate an appreciation for distance control, b) wastes time and effort while targeting perceptions from behind the ball dissipate, c) uses a poor target for distance control, and d) reduces the effectiveness of orienting to the line of the putt from behind the ball for purposes of aiming the putter face and harms face aiming. Pelz may understand some things about how a robot putts if you aim it and set the backstroke size, but he doesn't seem to know much about how the human brain and body work in aiming, perceiving distance, and making the motion based on these processes that rolls a ball on the desired line with good distance control. His robotics approach to putting only carries you so far. Basically, though, what Pelz advises will probably help a bad putter putt less badly, but would not help a good putter putt better.
If you feel the need to make practice strokes, do it behind the ball and NOT beside the ball. You're probably better off not working on distance with your practice strokes, as you don't really need that, since the whole routine of reading the putt, aiming from behind the ball, walking in and setting the putter aim, and setting up beside the ball and checking the putter aim gives you WAY MORE doses of distance appreciation than any human needs so long as he stays moving forward in the focus of the routine. What a practice stroke is good for is clearing the "form" of the motion's "cobwebs" out of the body and revivifying a sense of how the stroke motion needs to go back and forth with good tempo. If you have to make one, make it BEFORE walking in to the ball and aiming the putter face at the target, and then leave the putter alone until the real stroke. There are other ways to get a sense of distance beside the ball than moving the putter all over the place and re-aiming in some odd un-calculated manner.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
Over 830,000 visits and growing strong ...
518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC 27401
336.230.0612 home
