Dear James,
Those three you name, and a few others. Here's a list:
Stroke Path
Handsiness
Top of Body Sway
Missing the Bottom
Rushing the Stroke
Eye Motion during the Impact
Poor Setup
Let me briefly elaborate on how these problems cause off-center impacts.
Stroke Path
The main culprit here is starting the takeaway with the hands rather than shoving back from the dock with the lead shoulder. When the hands act independently of the shoulder-arms-hands triangle, the hands almost invariably send the putter farther from the stance -- that is, out across the putt line. This creates a loopy stroke path and a problem for getting things back on track. The result is often an off-center impact and a twisted face at impact and a trajectory of the putter thru impact that is a cut across the line to the inside.
Handsiness
By handsiness, here I mean mostly moving the putter down with the hands or lifting the putter or guiding the stroke. There is NOTHING that hand action can add to a stroke other than to CHANGE the face orientation and/or the path, with one very, very narrow exception that no one seems to get right except Billy Casper or Bob Heintz on a good day. (That is, the wrists flex or extend ONLY in the same plane as both forearm bones, like a pet door flapping on a hinge across the top.) Everything else about hand motion changes the putter face and/or path and requires a corresponding un-change in order to redeliver the putter back to the address position. Theoretically, a handsy golfer might try setting up the putter OTHER than square at address so he only has to worry about one of these changes, if he can figure out the setup orientation that matches his handsy move (perhaps: setup aimed a little open with the sweetspot beyond the center of the back of the ball then use an outside-in cut stroke path while closing the putter face a little with forearm rotation?) My teaching is to hang the hands naturally, move only the shoulder to power the triangle, and keep the hands on the same across-the-toes line without getting further across this line or falling closer inside this line. This keeps the sweetspot of the putter headed into impact without any special effort. There is a little trick to this on uneven lies, but it's only a little more tension in the triangle.
Top of Body Sway
The pivot of the stroke is in the base of the neck. Many golfers allow this pivot to "follow" the backstroke or "chase" the thru-stroke, in which the pivot curls about in space. The pivot should rotate in place, as the pivot doesn't change location but the shoulder frame rocks beneath the pivot. When the top of the body sways like this, the path of the stroke is challenged and often an off-center impact results.
Missing the Bottom
Putting the bottom means having the stroke bottom out in exactly the point beneath the pivot (or a little forward of this, for some putter designs and setups) prior to moving up slightly into impact. In my experience, being "late for supper" in hitting this mark in the stroke sends the ball off to the outside. (Darned if I understand that fully yet.) I think it's a toeish impact with a slight opening of the toe. This may result from some sort of last-moment reaching at the ball that slightly brings the lead shoulder inside, causing toeish impact.
Rushing the Stroke
A stable tempo promotes accuracy of motion, and a slow tempo promotes this better than a fast tempo. Rushing down from the top tends to tighten muscles in an unpredictable way and draws the putter a bit inward to the body -- causing a toeish impact usually. Relax and leave the putter where it is during the stroke and let it fall without your "help." That takes a bold patience.
Eye Motion During Impact
The impact zone really spans about 2-3 inches behind the ball to about 2-3 inches in front. If the eyes shift gaze during this part of the stroke, it is highly likely the hands will jump into the act in a following way. More often than not, a still-head gaze jump causes a pull stroke, and a moving-head peek shifts the shoulder frame open for a push. Keep the gaze and vision steady and focus on solid impact to avoid problems. Vision is the enemy once the stroke has started. I teach fixing the gaze on a blade of grass directly in front of the sweetspot and keeping it there, just looking with mild interest at the very grass blade. Lots of folk teach some sort of gaze fixation on the exact back of the ball's equator, but I think that promotes too much impact anxiety and a hit stroke.
Poor Setup
Golfers are not really very good at knowing what a square setup looks and feels like. Dr David Wright has tested hundreds of golfers and finds that almost all have some odd orientation of the hips out of square, and I'm sure shoulder alignment ain't all that pure either. Probably 95% or more of all golfers have poor head-neck postures. Grip styles that have evolved thru the years are not well-calculated to avoid setup problems, with shoulder frames tilted in odd ways and hand-wrist-forearm twists that promote mostly a pull action or a cut stroke. If you stuck a razor blade in the end of a stick so that it is aligned on the line of the putt and then made a stroke that kepy the razor edge moving on line, you would immediately find most of these setup aspects a lot more trouble than they are worth. Mike Weir for example, considers himself a total 'feel" putter. His putting goes to pot when he search for "feel" comfort leads him to odd setup postures. Simple biomechanics of the human body in motion requires a simple, unchanging, symmetrical setup -- no funny business and no individual quirks.
These are the main causes of off-center impacts and twisted faces out of square.
By the way, off-center impacts are not that big of a problem if your criterion is getting the ball in the hole. The tendency of the face to twist on off-center impacts is not beyond control with the grip, and is not usually fatal anyway, unless the putt is VERY off-center. Path and face twists are a much bigger problem. Whenever I find a stroke developing into an off-center impact, I don't focus on that -- I turn attention to making sure the face stays square thru impact even if the impact is a little toeish or heelish. I would never deliberately deemphasize solid contact, because solid is by definition straight and 100% intended energy transfer. But on short and midrange putts, it matters a heck of a lot less than face twist out of square. Long lags are another matter, though -- you really rely heavily upon solid but unhurried impact.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
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