Dear Neville,
As we used to say in college, "Boy, howdy, is that a toughie!"
There CAN be a way to grip the putter that emphasizes the sensitivity of "feel" with the idea that this will increase control for "touch" or DISTANCE, but it is not what you want for consistency and accuracy because distance control does not come from "feel" in the hands. A little bit of FORM control comes from sensitivity of the hands, but that is not what people ever talk about, and is a different sort of "feel" anyway.
The sensitivity that people think about in the hands is some sort of "puffiness" or "readiness" in the skin and tissues of the hand -- an awareness of the feeling of the hand as a distinct body part during the "hand toss" motion / action, for example. This is where the old notion of the great putter as a "safecraker" got started -- the crook with exquisite sensitivity in his fingertips who can "feel" the tumblers inside the vault fall into place. In the 40s and 50s, some pros used to soak their hands in warm water before a round, to increase their "sensitivity." Pros also recognized that this delicate sensitivity was harmed by a lot of practice on the range with the driver or other full shots, as the constant shocks to the hands dulled the sensitivity. And the whole business of taking the golf glove off to putt, or using some sort of special handle to increase "feel" is also all bound up with this wad of tangled thinking.
Once you make the choice to use a shoulder stroke in favor of an armsy or handsy stroke, you are also electing "dead hands." Dead hands are an inert, inactive part of the total body action in the putting motion. The so-called "triangle" of shoulders, arms, hands, and putter (more of a "Y" than a triangle, really) is in actuality the whole body, in which the top half of the body is being moved over the lower half mostly by the muscles in the gut and lower back that connect the top to the bottom. The shoulders and pecs themselves are relaxed and inert, the arms are relaxed and inert, and the hands are relaxed and inert. Of course, these body areas or segments or parts all have a steady-state muscle tone that preserves the basic setup FORM during the stroke motion, and this means that NO JOINTS are changing angles during the stroke. There is no such thing as left-wrist breakdown in a shoulder stroke powered by the middle of the body. The only time the arms and wrists and hands act independently of this total motion are when the shoulders quit leading the motion of the steady-state form at the far margins of the motion. The shoulder frame starts the putter back and the shoulders continue to move in coordination with the putter head and everything in between (hands, wrists, forearms, elbows, upper arms, shoulder sockets) moving as a unit in time and space. It is only when the shoulder frame slows or stops before the end of the motion is reached that the arms flail along ahead and the wrists and hands start flapping, in a multi-lever system of independent segments. In this "pure" sort of shoulder stroke, you definitely do not want to encourage any action in the hands to control the timing of the motion.
Moreover, in the way that timing for distance control is a non-conscious brain process of setting the backstroke length based upon a well-learned tempo combined with an appreciation of green speed (and target distance awareness in the body), so-called "feel" is really essentially the "feel" of the body moving with the established tempo. The hands don't have anything to do with this timing in a shoulder stroke.
Loren Roberts allows his right wrist to hinge a little at the top of his backstroke, and he mentions he thinks this gives him a little sense of swinging feel in his stroke. But he then fixes the angle of his wrists and makes the rest of the stroke without wrist change. This is also not a use of "feel" in the hands for any sort of distance control, despite Roberts' use of the term "feel" or "feeling" in discussing this feature of his stroke. What is really happening is that his shouler rock in the backstroke is not completely finishing or is a little faster than minimally necessary, and the hands get cast a little farther along than otherwise. Part of this is simply a soft grip pressure.
In the old-style putting on shaggier greens, the wristy style tended to promote a greater somatic awareness of the hands as independent body parts during the stroke. It was more important to keep track of the relationship of the hands "moving" independently, which means changing relationship to the forearms via wrist action. With this multi-lever system of motion, the pace of the change of the wrists for the size of the wrist motion was important for timing and "send", and thus the distance control. But even then, it was not especially the sensitivity of the hand itself that was getting the timing right for the distance. Billy Casper putted with his golf glove still on. The "feel" that mattered in this old style for distance control was the changes in the wrists, in the context of the changes of the elbows and shoulder sockets to a less pronounced degree. (Casper's wristy (only) stroke became a wrists-and-arms stroke the bigger the strokes got for greater distances.)
A sense of sensitivity in the hands MAY be used to monitor and assist the FORM of the motion. Awareness of the hands and the feeling of the handle inside the hands and of the path or trajectory of the hands in space near the body are all registered by the brain, and may be attended to at some level of consciousness during the stroke. This leads some few golfers to believe that they can "sense" or "feel" the target in their hands when they setup to a putt. That's nice and it helps these golfers make the right stroke online at the target, but it's not at all a matter of sensitivity for distance control. And this sort of feel of the target is not a fingers feel either, but a total hand sense of connectedness with the target. What I believe this corresponds to inside the brain is a washing over of neural activity in the parietal lobe's association areas where spatial awareness and body-sense are combined in a helpful fusion of senses (body part and sense of external location in nearby space).
A similar "feel" in the hand that helps FORM in the stroke motion is a sense of gesturing at the target in the motion. Eben Dennis tried to erect a complete theory of golf on the notion he once had of "pointing" at the target in the forward stroke. I spent two days with him in Atlanta a few years ago trying to get some more specifics from him about what he meant -- such as point what where when and how -- but all he could say was "just point." I believe what he was trying to convey was a sense of one of the fingers of the dominant hand (probably index finger) "getting pointed" by the stroke motion along the ground towards the target in the down-and-thru stroke, but he was not able to say what he meant. I don't think he meant to convey any sort of real movement of the index finger or even a movement of the hand by wrist action in the stroke. I think it was simply an awareness of the index finger's spatial location in the stroke motion heading at the target. Again, this in the brain is a combination of the awareness of the body part with an external spatial location or spatial route. That is an associational fusion occurring in the parietal lobe, similar in some respects to synaesthesia or the melding of modes of perception (hearing shapes, tasting colors) in a less contrasting or dramatic way.
For the shoulder stroke, the main thing is steady-state muscle tone. The grip pressure is set at address and then does not change during the stroke. This establishes a calm, quiet base of inert hands against which the handle may waggle or twist to send nerve signals to the brain about what is happening in the relationship of body action to putter / tool action. Ideally, "nothing changes" because the tempo of the stroke is such that the putter in the downstroke is weightless in free-fall, AND the putter is not twisting or failing to twist. The putter would twist inside the hands if the path of the stroke or soemthing in the putter weighting made the putter fan open or closed (while the hands did not) during the stroke or because the hands fanned open or closed and the putter followed but only with a little lagging inside the hands that feels like a slight twist. This subtle "twisting" feel is detected mostly by the thumbtips on the flat surface of the grip handle, as this flat plane presses unequally more on one side of the thumbtip than the other (rear edge if the handle is twisting; leading edge if the hand is twisting). There is also a little feel in the index fingers. None of this is very easy to detect, especially in a stroke that is calm and easy-going. It's a lot better to train a motion in which the shoulder action is without hand and arm changes at all, and to go for this instead of going for an after-the-fact alarm system in sensitive hands to detect a developing problem and then try to fix it in mid-stroke.
The grip you mention used by Padraig Harrington dates to early 2004 and is shown here:
This grip form shows the left (lead) hand turned under the handle in a pronounced 'weak" grip. This form harkens back to Paul Runyan's insight that turning the forearms (not really just the hands) tends to reduce or eliminate forearm rotation in the thru-stroke in the direction of a pull. Thus Padraig's grip with the weakened lead hand and forearm is an anti-pull setup. The handle just results in placement in the fingers, not as a matter of increasing sensitivity or a better sense of control for distance, but to avoid a FORM problem in the path of the stroke.
In any event, this is not the grip Padraig uses these days, and this grip is shown here:
The index fingers are extended down the sides of the handle,both thumbs are on top, and the handle fits into the lifeline of both hands, not the fingers. Apparently, he does not feel a need to avoid a pull action in his stroke these days, or has found a better way of handling that problem. The index fingers down the sides of the handle strike me as useful more for "pointing" along and down the line during the stroke, which is a matter of FORM accuracy and consistency, and not a matter of "ball toss" distance sensitivity or "touch" and "feel." The grip designed by my friend in Toronto Janis Zichmanis for the
Pure Pendulum putter is well-suited for Padraig's current grip, as the wideness of the top of the handle allows for placing both thumbs more or less side by side, and this evens out or levels the shoulder frame in the setup for a neutral, more symmetric and therefore more consistent stroke action. The front-to-back thickness of this grip, incidentally, is such that the handle is really held in BOTH the lifeline and in the fingers at the same time, and my experience is that the grip certainly causes no decrement in "touch" or distance control.
Incidentally, George Low, the putting teacher who most emphasized the sensitivity of the hands, also taught DIGGING the thumb NAILS into the top of the putter handle to help control the putter face during the stroke. That's hardly sensitive, or something a safecracker would do. Dave Pelz makes a point about hand sensitivity not being useful feedback by putting while wearing thick oven mittens on both hands. (I don't go this far, as I say sensitivity in the hands is useful to monitor the timing and form of the stroke in progress.)
Nick Dougherty's point about holding the putter like holding a small bird is a cute but misleading repetition of something Sam Snead once said 40 or 50 years ago. I believe Snead was referring to the way he held the driver. Holding the driver in the fingers is not about "sensitivity" or "feel" but about allowing the hands to hinge properly. I don't think Nick was being sufficiently discriminating in his use of the terms "fingers," but if he was, then that's bad advice.
Applying this notion of "hingeability" from grip-in-the-fingers to putting doesn't really make sense for a shoulder stroke -- you don't want any wrist hinging to begin with, and more importantly, there ISN'T any wrist action to worry about unless your motion lacks coordination between the shoulders and the putter head and everything in between.
Consequently, the idea that gripping the putter lightly in the fingers in order to increase "sensitivity" in the fingers and therefore to better control 'touch" or distance control is completely incompatible with the basic idea of a shoulder stroke. If you want a handsy / armsy stroke in which the sense of timing of the independent hinging of the hands on the wrists is your approach to distance control, by all means get some sandpaper and buff up your fingertips for some safecracking work on the greens.
So let's ask the question whether handsiness is better than a shoulder stroke for consistency and accuracy. My answer is, "Perhaps occasionally for some otherwise highly talented golfers, and only then in streaks, and these golfers would putt better longer without this handsiness, and all other golfers with less innate talent certainly would." In my view, any pro advising handsiness is misguided and is seriously misleading amateur golfers down a slippery path over a cliff into the manic sea of frothy wavetops of success decorating endless doldrums of inconsistency.
Placing the putter handle in the lifeline serves to match the putter shaft to the forearm, and also serves to match the plane of the palms to the plane of the putter face. This gives the sense of moving the back of the left / lead hand straight or flush towards the target, without twisting to the inside. This is a Dave Stockton hallmark, despite what he says about the sensitivity of the fingers or the form of the grip. But really a grip of the handle in the fingers, or like Paul Runyan teaches, does not HURT the form of the stroke, and is in effect an anti-pull technique. The key to the Runyan-style grip is not really that it is in the fingers, but that the elbow has rotated the forearm (supinated the lead arm palm upward) to pre-rotate the forearm and thus reduce or eliminate the tendency of the forearm to rotate that direction in the stroke. That's how the hand gets turned so the back of the wrist turns to the inside in the thru-stroke -- not from the fingers grip. So-called "touch" depends upon timing in the shoulder motion and "form" of the stroke depends upon coordination of body parts throughout the stroke so that joints don't change. The form can be handled with either a palms or a fingers grip, and the type of grip really doesn't matter much to the distance control "touch" and "feel."
Personally, I prefer a grip that matches the lifeline to the top edge of the putter in the lead hand, has the lead-hand thumb straight down the flat surface of the handle, and that also is used with an slight inward rolling of the lead elbow. This elbow in-turn sets up a dish-rag wringing effect, where the "supination" of the forearm by elbow in-turn is countered by the "pronation" of matching the hand to the side of the handle. Keeping the elbow relatonship to upper arm and forearm unchanging in the stroke is a vital element of good stroke form. For touch, I just look over the line to the target and back and then count to two in the same way gravity moves my putter, and the brain's non-conscious processes give me the right backstroke for the distance. Touch is really timing.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
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