Dear Eric,
Your question is a very penetrating one, and I'm not sure I can answer it satisfactorily. I'm sure I'm not sure of the answer, and I'm also not sure there is an answer.
Let me explain my personal experience. When I make a putting stroke these days, I like to think my stroke is what I am trying to get smooth and precise in form, and the ball is positioned in my setup so that it gets in the way just right to roll straight out of my setup. I say "these days" because for years I used a "pop" stroke that stopped abruptly after impact with practically no follow-thru -- in fact, other golfers frequently thought I was making a small divot on the green with the putter. Once you get distance control in hand with this technique, it's pretty effective.
Eventually, though, I left this "pop" technique behind in favor of a shoulder stroke. Apparently, the movement of the shoulder frame does not lend itself to a "pop" action against a ball four and one-half feet away on the ground as much as action of the hands and arms, with the hands being only about two feet away from the ball. So-called "hand-eye" coordination does not seem to work the same in a shoulder stroke as it does in a more handsy stroke. The shoulder stroke is much more total-body coordinated rhythm and timing, whereas the hands are more about fitting the putter head thru a certain visual space along a track thru the ball, adaptable to a variety of timing patterns and pathways and various postures.
The "feel" in a handsy stroke that makes one golfer more astute than another with this "hand-eye" coordination has an underappreciated yet critical timing component in it. In human movement, the anticipation of impact with a moving body and a still object (golf putting), or a moving object and a moving body (baseball batting) is the timing process in the brain that serves as the basis for the timing of the muscle-joint action. With great "feel", the putter impacts the ball exactly as anticipated -- when and how. The "when" being well known by accurate anticipation, the golfer becomes adept at managing the "how" -- a square putter face moving squarely thru the ball down the line. That is, his perceptions of how the stroke is proceeding back and then down in toward impact let him know how much time remains to fix any problems in path or putter face orientation.
The "feel" golfers who are great putters with handsy technique have to learn these perceptions in the run-up to impact and to rely upon them as the primary source of knowledge. Most of these perceptions are visual. The body-sense or proprioceptive senses are frankly not as useful as most people seem to think for this technique. I believe this is because the handsy golfer relies so much upon the visual information of when and how the putter is moving into impact over the last 5-6 inches behind the ball, where steady central vision is focused and clear, and because the handsy golfer has a belief (perhaps unstated or unconscious) that variations in the manner the body parts above the hands and wrists are moved (forearms, elbows, upper arms, shoulders, even hips and knees) is not too important given his "skill" with the hands thru the critical impact area. This admission of variable body motions tends to leave the handsy golfer without a clear and stable sense of setup, posture, and feeling in body motion much above the hands and arms. The "when" of impact tends to narrow down to the zone in which hand motion is tightly coordinated with the "spotlight" of clear vision near the ball.
I believe that a "feel" golfer can become a better, more accurate putter to the extent he seeks out a broader base of perceptions about the body, over a broader "when" in the stroke. This leads the golfer away from a near-exclusive reliance upon the hands and hand-eye coordination towards a "dead hands" action powered by moving the shoulder frame as a whole. In this broader sort of action, the sense of vision gets a demotion from dictator to mere courthouse clerk. The feelings of the body as a whole, and specifically the feeling of well-timed coordination of the body motion, takes preeminence. These feelings lead away from the vison of the hands and the feelings of the hands in motion to a sense of the shoulders and the unified "triangle" moving rhythmically along a definite path in relation to setup and posture. The bigger the body-system that is being moved, the more important setup and posture become as reference for starting and keeping the motion on track. Eventually, the visual sense comes to serve as handmaiden to setup and posture in the stroke.
In the shoulder stroke, setting the skull line parallel to the putt line is the start of squaring the shoulders, and downward with the rest of the body joint pairs. Once the skull line is set, the golfer has a certain setup and posture that always corresponds to the same visual experience of the ball and putter beneath the face. The shoulder golfer then learns the sense of where the repeating stroke movement sends the putter head, back and thru, visually -- as the putter head is moved beneath the squared face thru the same-every-time visual experience. This visual sense of the space where every stroke will move the putter head becomes a permanent feature of the setup, like a transparent overlay. This changes the golfer's approach to timing more in the direction of internal body feelings in the stroke, and away from focus upon the hands mostly in the critical impact zone. The shoulder golfer's concern for tempo and timing runs throughout the stroke motion, from iniation to end of follow-thru, and not just primarily in the impact zone.
The shoulder golfer's "feel" is in the muscles that move the shoulder frame as a whole, and these muscles are in the gut and lower back. Other than establishing a steady, relatively light tonic muscle tone in the grip and arms at the beginning so the "triangle" is stable, the golfer does not actively use the hands and arms in the stroke. The "feel" in the hands is mostly monitoring the inside of the hands on the grip for the constant sense that "nothing is changing" as if the golfer is holding a tube of air. This monitors the timing of the shoulder stroke as it fits in with gravity. If the putter is snatched back too abruptly, the handle waggles inside the hands; if the putter is stopped too abruptly at the top of the backstroke, the handle waggles; if the putter is snatched downward too abruptly, the handle waggles; if the putter is clutched right before impact, the handle waggles; if the putter motion quits or decelerates right before impact, the handle waggles (and the left wrist "breaks down" or flaps); if the follow-thru is shortened, the handle waggles. All of these "feelings" in the hands concern the timing of the shoulder motion from start to finish. There are also feelings more specifically located on the insides of the hands and fingers that monitor whether the putter is twisting open or closed in relation to the hands, wrists, forearms, and shoulders, expressed as sheer friction or handle twisting strain against the skin (especially thumbs and inside of forefingers). The concern throughout with the feelings of the hands is that "nothing changes" during the stroke while the shoulders are moving in a well-timed way.
To more tightly coordinate the sense of vision with the setup and the stroke feelings, I teach squaring the skull line to the aim of the putter face, which makes the horizontal line across the eyes parallel to the line of the putt and stabilizes the visual experience. But once this is done, in the making of the stroke itself, the eyes are the enemy to accurate, repeating movement. I specifically do not want "hand-eye" coordination in control of the stroke. I want internal body-sense perceptions of the setup, posture, and movement of the shoulder frame in this context for a same-every-time motion that is coordinated to timing more than anything else, and the "dead hands" monitoring of the handle for "nothing changes" is a major part of this timing. Given the limited attentional resources of the human brain, I want focus on the feeling of the shoulder stroke, not interrupted or dissipated by the eyes claiming attention in an effort to control the hands. I try to do NOTHING with the hands other than feel them move together with the arms and the putter all together as a unit.
I don't initiate the backstroke with the hands and/or arms, but with the shoulder being tugged down and back to shove the arms and hands and putter back from the ball. Starting with the hands tends to send the putter head out across the line (as hands and wrists and forearms are designed to reach away from the body), whereas starting with the shoulder dropping along a path parallel to the line of the putt insures that the putter head CANNOT go across the line, but will either move straight back and up while staying out directly above the putt line going back, or arc up and back on a slight tilted plane in which the rising putter head comes back inside a little from the putt line. I don't stop the putter at a specific point in the backstroke, but monitor my hands to make sure the putter coasts to a stop at the top. I don't start the putter down with the hands or arms, but simply wait patiently for the putter to drop on its own and start accelerating naturally and smoothly. I don't pull the putter thru impact any faster than it goes by itself. I don't try to "reach" thru impact to a specified follow-thru end, but let the putter coast up and gradually slow to its own stop (getting the lead shoulder up out of the way just ahead of the swinging up of the triangle so as not to stifle the finish with stalling of the shoulder frame just past impact and level).
In terms of monitoring the form of the stroke in progress, if the hands are quiet and the timing is on track with gravity coming down (no pulling down, no tightening in the body), then I have the great luxury of KNOWING when the putter head will transit the exact bottom of the stroke right beneath my gaze. I just count to two ("one potato ... two") at the same speed that gravity always uses to return the putter head down to the bottom of the stroke. Once you learn the timing of gravity for this count, the putter head always reaches the exact bottom of the stroke at the same precise moment every stroke. The only ACTION I need to take at this point in the stroke is to start getting my shoulder frame heading up just ahead of the natural swinging of the triangle to avoid stalling the stroke out by the shoulders slowing out of sync with the arms, hands, and putter. I sense the gathering speed of the putter head falling to the bottom of the stroke and think "stay smooth coming up and let the swing complete itself casually." The transitting of the putter head across the exact bottom of the stroke is the collection of perceptions (visual and body-sense perceptions) that I need to keep the form of the stroke accurate and smooth.
The upshot of all this is that I personally teach putting the bottom of the arc so that the same-every-time stroke action is accurately timed. The ball position has to be so that the center of the ball is on the intended line of the putt (which is the line the putter swings along as defined by the square shoulder setup and shoulder motion along a parallel path) and the center of the ball is a little ahead of the bottom of the stroke arc (about 2 inches is good). I also teach setting up by placing the putter face at the exact bottom of the arc (usually the middle of the body and stance or a little ahead of this), with a gap from there to the back of the ball. This gap avoids crowding the timing of putting the exact bottom, de-emphasizes hitting the ball, and emphasizes the timing of the stroke and the down-the-line form of the stroke thru impact. The "line" from putter sweetspot to ball center is part of the constant visual overlay and helps sort out the squareness of the shoulders and the brain's sense of where and how to move. Since I have this nice gap between the putter face and back of ball, I use it to "kill my vision" right before pulling the trigger by fixing my gaze on the one blade of grass right in front of the putter face's sweetspot, and then keep my vision and visual attention there throughout the stroke while focusing on moving the shoulder frame with good timing along the same-every-time path.
The reason this doesn't answer your question is because I also have an awareness every putt of how and when the putter head will impact the ball IF I time the stroke properly. I sort of have two distinct anticipations of motion timing -- the bottom of the arc and the rising putter contacting the back of the ball.
A "hit" consciousness is not necessarily in conflict or detrimental to a good shoulder stroke. The trick seems to be to NOT let the anticipation of the hit get too much attention that it detracts from the pre-impact timing of putting the exact bottom of the stroke or the post-impact timing of the follow-thru motion. I think this is why I earlier had "NO" follow-thru -- I just eliminated the post-impact timing issue in a blunt way and smushed together the exact bottom of the stroke with the exact point of impact on the ball. If you focus significantly on the hit, you focus on a very narrow time frame, and hence lose the focus on timing of the whole stroke.
This narrow focus has two separate bad effects. First, it limits hand-eye coordination to a very swift segment of time, and this segment is usually too fast to allow for feedback-based corrective signals from the brain to straighten out putter path or face orientation, which degrades line control. Second, the focus sucks up the available attention resources of the brain and thus degrades the focus on smooth timing for the whole stroke, which is the key to distance control. A slower, broader time-frame for the stroke (more casual) with a primary attention to the form and a non-attentive reliance upon gravity and the instincts (via the cerebellum's nonconscious setting of the backstroke length) to handle distance control, allows a greater opportunity for feedback-based monitoring and corrective signals for the stroke form, whether visual feedback or proprioceptive "feel" feedback.
I think the two-anticipations scheme helps keep the shoulder stroke on track both in terms of form and in terms of total timing -- so long as the hit focus does not predominate.
It's quite a challenge teaching veteran golfers not to worry about hitting a putt, as there is a deep-seated belief that only a hit will get the ball far enough. The mythology of "feel" in putting is equally deep-seated and in my experience masks the greater importance of timing. I believe that if a golfer learns how to time every stroke the same way, that "feel" takes care of itself and is always the same on every putt. In contrast, the conventional "feel" golfer is always hunting for the "right" feel on each putt, so every putt requires summoning different "feel." So, to the extent a "hit" stroke grows out of these two notions, I think it is suboptimal.
Thanks again for this great question. Later, I'll add some graphics here to dress this response up a bit.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
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