Dear Jeff,
That's a tough (and great) question!
I am currently inventing training aids that inculcate the brain-based learning I think is vital -- perceptions and movement controls. My approach to aids is to integrate a number of key skills in a single device.
If I had to pick a single aid that is already available, I would have to choose a device that is limited to training a single skill such as stroke motion or setup. Frankly, that "slice and dice" approach to learning is not very sophisticated, but it is unquestionably the approach that almost everyone in golf has taken for years (magazines, tips, drills, aids, etc.)
On the one hand, I believe that a stable tempo is the foundation for accuracy of motion and for reading putts and for instinctive distance control. On the other hand, I believe that gaze control and the appropriate skills of using the visual system correctly are fundamental to aiming and slightly less important to distance control and stroke control. (Visualization for putt reading is a mental skill, and not really a vision skill.) Since there really isn't a cracker-jack training aid for the gaze and the appropriate visual skills on the current market (despite some interesting aids in the general ballpark), I'm left with picking an aid that trains tempo. There really isn't one of those either. Training with a metronome is not the greatest way to learn the pattern of body motion with muscle activation and relaxation, and there are studies that say such training is confining and awkward. I agree with that. The tempo training that I envision is not available.
That shunts me down to stroke movement training aids. As you may have noticed, I prefer a vertical-plane stroke motion, and the existing training aids all have short-comings of one sort or another.
When I get right down to it, I guess I prefer a simple string line -- two wooden shish-kabob skewer stakes and a long piece of orange string. The string line functions as a stroke trainer and a gaze trainer.
For a vertical stroke plane motion, the putter head never wanders out from under the string, and if the backstroke delivers the putter head up to the elevated string, the string fits right onto the sweetspot mark -- all with no hands or arms, just a vertical rocking of the square shoulder frame. Going the other way, delivering the putter head up to the string on the forward stroke fits the sweetspot mark right on the string, and the face stays square. That's a pretty good trainer.
Visually, if the gaze is directed so that the elevated string appears to bisect the ball on the ground, and then the head is rotated to "look" or "scan" along the string towards the target, the fixed gaze will direct the gaze off the string pretty quickly unless the gaze is aimed straight out of the face. That's pretty cool and useful. The end stake (as the target) will end up in the dominate eye's "aim spot" in the field of vision so long as the skull line is parallel to the string, the gaze is straight out of the face, the head turn roll on the axis from neck to top of head without the axis wandering about, and the head turn progresses all the way until the end stake fits into the aim spot (one inch in from the bridge of the nose to the dominate eye's pupil). So I use the simple string line quite a bit in teaching.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
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