Dear Bastiaan,
The National Sales Director for
ProAim, Greg Fudge, was kind enough to send me a pair of the glasses. The glasses are light plastic and work with ambient light, so there are no batteries to mess with and they work indoors or outdoors. The ambient light is filtered to yellow and a yellow pattern of lines is projected onto the lens of the glasses, so that the yellow lines seem as if they are actually on the ground.
The visual pattern is basically two parallel lines running horizontally left to right and a single vertical line where the putter rests behind the ball. The idea is that by setting the putter face to the vertical line, the two horizontal lines indicate where the putter is aimed, which presumably is also where the target is located.
This is the same as my teaching about squaring the "skull line" to the aim of the putter face. The lines help, but really only if you are focused on how a setting of the skull line to the putter face is accomplished and how it feels in the setup. Just wearing the glasses without this focus is not really good enough to help a lot, but using the glasses properly can help due to the lines helping you get the skull line correctly aligned.
There are fiver other points about aiming from beside the ball that bear commenting.
First, the straight gaze. The glasses facilitate directing the gaze of the eyeballs straight out of the face because the eyes are directed between the two horizontal lines. When the golfer looks between the lines, the way the glasses sit on the face, the gaze if necessarily directed straight out. This avoids the VERY common flaw of golfers setting up with the eyes gazing somewhat down the cheeks, which usually makes the target appear / seem to be located to the outside of where it actually is.
Second, head turn down the line. If the skull line is set correctly to the putter as aimed, and the gaze is directed straight out of the face, then looking from the ball down the line to the target in a fashion that KEEPS the line of sight moving on the line from ball to target is best done by rotating the head on a stable axis (no movement or change of the gaze itself, just a head roll). When the skull line is set, the axis of the neck out the top / crown of the head is the same as the line of the putter head from heel to toe, and hence the axis of the head is perpendicular to the line of the putter aim. A head turn that KEEPS the line of sight moving straight on this line REQUIRES that the axis stay put, even though it rotates during the turn. If you wear a cap, the button on the cap turns but does not wander towards the rear shoulder in the turn / "look" down the line. When done properly wearing the ProAim glasses, the head turn and the parallel horizontal lines have a certain look moving over the surface. Specifically, the yellow lines do not SKEW sideways. The front ends of the two lines are straightly followed by the back ends of the two lines. If you imagine a tractor-trailer rig with a red light on the front left and a red light on the back left and a blue light on the front right and a blue light on the back right, driving the truck straight down the lane of the putter face's aim means that the back red light moves over each grass blade that the front red light crosses, and that the back blue light moves over each grass blade that the front blue light crosses. Skewing occurs when the rear lights come off the line and the rig as a whole heads either to the outside or to the inside of the initial alignment of the parallel yellow lines (putter aim). If the top of the head wanders back during the head turn, the ProAim parallel lines skew to the outside. If the top of the head wanders forward during the head turn, the proAim parallel lines skew to the inside. In either case, the skewing head-neck axis alters the orientation of the base of the neck and hence of the shoulder frame alignment. Top of head wanders back -- shoulders skew to outside (open). Top of head wanders forward -- shoulders skew to inside (closed). Even if your eyes change gaze direction during the head turn to get back to "looking" at the target at the end of the head turn, you end up with two different sense of where the target is located. The eyes' sense is not as strong as the body's sense, and the body's sense is wrong because skewed. Therefore, even if the gaze is set straight out and even if the skull line matches the putter face aim at the beginning in the setup, turning the head to the target still has to be performed correctly to avoid misperceiving target location. Using the ProAim glasses to "watch" or "monitor" the parallel lines against the green's surface detail during the head turn teaches this skill or properly turning the head, but only if you know what to look for.
Third, the "aim spot." The aim spot is that one spot in the visual field of the dominant eye at which the straight-out gaze aims the eyeball. The aim spot is usually about 1 inch horizontally inside from the bride of the nose as far as the straight-out pupil of the dominant eye. When looking down the line to assess where the putter face is actually aimed, the golfer simply sets the skull line to the putter face, gazes straight out, rotates the head so the top of the head rolls but does not wander, and waits to see what appears at the end of the head turn in the aim spot of the dominant eye. The aim spot does not seem to be accurately marked by ther short vertical line in the ProAim glasses, and the vertical line appears to be to the outside (ear-side) of the actual aim spot. Using the ProAim glasses to assess putter face aim, then, means that the golfer rolls the head until the vertical line reaches the end of the turn, and whatever spot on the ground the vertical line ends up covering visually is where the putter face is actually aimed. This is okay for the sense of line and aim of the putter face, but it is a little longer line on the ground than really needed, so touch or distance control is implicated. But the difference is so slight, it can safely be ignored.
Fourth, the view from behind the ball. The short vertical line in the visual display can be used from behind the ball to get a sense of straight ahead, as well as a sense of the true vertical, but it's a little problematic. When the head is held erect with good posture, the inner ear signals whether the head is level in gravity. This signal combines with vision of the horizon and the feel of the body erect in gravity (equal pressure on the sole of each foot, balanced feeling in body segments, centering of center of gravity between feet, etc.). This posture matches the skull line to the far horizon, and thus sets the small vertical line aimed to the zenith as a "true vertical" reference. With good posture, then, the combination of horizontals and the vertical lines allows the golfer to assess the green's overall slope fairly accurately, so long as the perspective is "grand" enough to take in background terrain and the sky-earth meeting on the horizon (even if the earth is not flat and level there). The problem is that the sense of straight-ahead requires the vertical line to be positioned in line with a straight-out gaze of the dominant eye (i.e., vertical line and "aim spot" the same location on the lens). In my experience, as a right-eye dominant person, the ProAim display is in the right lens only, which is fine, but the vertical line is not quite on line with a straight-out gaze but is to the right (ear-ward) of the true aim spot location (for me, and probably 90+% of all golfers). And of course, if the golfer is left-eye dominant, there is not now a pair of ProAim glasses made for that golfer, so the existing pair requires the golfer to aim with his non-dominant eye from behind the ball. This problem could easily be fixed in a new edition of the glasses if the ProAim company wants my help.
Fifth, the parallel lines as "stroke guide." One possible use of the ProAim glasses is as a visual guide to what the straight-back, straight-thru stroke should look like -- that is, the putter head should move straight inside the parallel lines and also remain "square" inside the lines. This visual experience will only occur if the glasses are used with a vertical in-plane shoulder stroke or with some sort of "hooding" of the putter face back and thru. Any armsiness in the stroke, or any tilt in a shoulder-stroke plane of motion, and the putter will a) come outside of the parallel lines, and b) the putter face will visually appear to open and close in an arc. So it sounds like I should praise this aspect of the ProAim glasses without qualification ... And I would except the very visual experience described is NOT a good use of the eyes during the stroke. The parallel lines may help get a sense of how the stroke should go once started, but the parallel lines are actually hurtful to what should be the proper use of the eyes during the stroke. The eys are the ENEMY to good movement. Although vision helps plan the stroke motion, actually making the stroke is not well-served by vision. The parallel lines of the ProAim glasses invite the golfer to watch the stroke while it progresses back and then forward. Instead, the golfer should just fix his gaze on a single point directly beneath his face, such as a blade of grass in front of the sweetspot, and KEEP the gaze fixed during the making of the stroke. This stills the head and controls the inner ear sense of balance, keeps the pivot in the base of the neck stable, prevents altering the alignment of the shoulders, and stiflers second-guessing about how the stroke needs to continue once started. But, so long as you are aware of this danger and guard against it, using the ProAim parallel lines as a visual stroke guide can be fun and interesting, especially for short putts where the lines actually reach the hole.
The bottom line is that none of the above is explicitly taught by the ProAim glasses. Using the glasses for the implicit relationships created (skull line, straight gaze, proper head turn, aim spot) is a "maybe" proposition -- the golfer may get some benefit, and then again he may not, and also any benefit may not persist or transfer to the course. How would the golfer know and monitor whether he is using the correct perceptual relationships in play without the ProAim glasses if the golfer has not explicitly learned what those relationships are and how they should be used in performance? But ... if you have a good teacher who understands the human body and the visual and physical processes in aiming, you can learn these matters without the ProAim glasses. Even so, the glasses can help when used with the right teaching. Whether the gee-whiz aspect of the ProAim glasses masks learning the essential body relationships for good targeting or promotes this learning pretty much depends on whether you know how to use them effectively.
In my teaching, I use the ProAim glasses occasionally as an illustration of the body relationships, but I never just ask a golfer to put them on and start aiming, and I personally can't keep the glasses on for too long -- the presence of the lines as I look around randomly is a little bothersome. All in all, it comes down to how the price strikes you.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
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