Dear James,
I personally favor an even weight distribution between the feet left and right, but I also like to lean a bit onto the balls of the feet in order to poise the shoulderframe above the balls of the feet. This ends up with the weight about 60-40 balls-heels instead of a "flatfooted" 50-50 between the balls of the feet and the heels.
I don't see any value to leaning onto the left or lead foot, except possibly it concentrates your contact with the ground a little more than an even stance. In some cases, I imagine this makes a golfer feel a little more stable. Personally, I don't feel a need for this greater pressure contact with the lead foot. But I use a neutral grip form in which both hands are down the handle about the same distance. Most golfers use a grip form with the rear hand furthest down the handle, and this tilts the rear shoulder lower and the lead shoulder higher. A golfer with this shoulder tilt may get the shoulders nearer back to level by placing the weight more on the lead foot. This seems like a problem used to fix a problem.
I like to have a suggestion of leaning forward in my setup -- leaning the torso forward to tip the shoulderframe into place above the balls of the feet. This lean is "caught" and held stable on the balls of the feet, and the slight challenge to balance involved calls up extra tension in the postural muscles of the lower body -- end result, a more stable and hence accurate body motion in the shoulder stroke.
Briny Baird for example, in the last part of 2004 (as in the PGA Championship) leaning out over the lead foot, with the rear foot back, used this "slightly challenged balance" to stabilize his putting stroke for precision. I used to putt this way about 7 or 8 years ago. The 60-40 balancing out onto the balls of the feet is the same basic idea of engaging the lower-body postural muscles. Arnold Palmer's pigeon-toed stance is not too different -- the extra lower body tension stabilizes the upper body action.
In my view, accuracy in putting is almost exclusively a matter of the form of movement of the upper body. This necessitates that the upper-body motion occur over a very stable lower body OR that the compensatory action of the lower body responsive to upper-body action is highly coordinated and well-learned. Ben Crenshaw has a very nice action in his rear knee in the forward stroke, as his shoulder rises with the putter and arms going past impact, sending the bottom of the rib cage downward, resulting in his rear knee yielding to the conflict of ribcage and pelvis. If you stabilize the lower body to dampen out these compensatory actions, the middle of the body gets a bit tighter. It's a tradeoff that depends on what the golfer can learn. Fundamentally, if the pivot at the base of the neck is stable in space (rotating but not wandering left-right or front-back) in the stroke and the shoulderframe moves in the correct parallel plane, the lower body can be either tight or relaxed, as the golfer is able to manage.
With regard to the position of the hands, I let the arms hang naturally once the shoulderframe is set in balance atop the balls of the feet, and I try to bring the hands together on the handle in the middle of my stance. This puts the face of the putter in the middle of my stance with level shoulders and neutral hands. I want the putter face to be behind the back of the ball by 1 to 2 inches, and there is a gap between the putter face and the ball. With some putter designs, in which the hosel at the end of the shaft does not correspond to the face of the putter (e.g., gooseneck hoseling, hosels that enter the rear or middle of a large putter head), I have a little difficulty managing the stroke. So my preferred putter design is pretty simple -- face balanced, usually center shafted, with the hosel near the face.
Because of the slight bend of my elbows from normal development, my hands naturally hang just above my toes -- slightly closer to the ball than the shoulders and elbows above the balls of the feet. I want the shoulder action to control the trajectory of the elbows and hands and putter head, so that means the hands in my vertical-plane stroke stay over a line across my toes that parallels the putt line.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
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