Dear David,
I think that looking at the hole while putting is interesting but deceptive, not a sound technique in the final analysis.
The trick that makes this interesting is not VISION! That's the problem with vision -- always brashly claiming credit when credit is due to something quiet and unknown. In this case, the body knowledge about DISTANCE or (even better) about LOCATION is coming mostly from the posture, especially that of the head, face, and neck. The VISION is mostly useful solely to help you set the posture correctly oriented to the target in the first place. The body gets what it needs to roll the ball to the target from the postures, mostly.
The vision helps somewhat, but not as much as most people assume (most people assume it is ALL vision). Of course, the vision of the "look" of the hole this way (facing it steadily) invokes memory of this putt and other similar putts. But memory is not visual, and neither does memory get invoked solely by vision. The posture along with your intentionality and "focus" on rolling the ball to the target is also sufficient to invoke the same memories to the same usefulness.
Apart from that, the vision offers a mixture of help and hurt.
First, there is the issue of attention to performance-relevant cues. Attention most often follows vision willy-nilly, unless you have some skill at controlling attention by controlling vision and / or directing attention to visual or non-visual senses about the world that are relevant and important to performance. So looking at the hole also requires ignoring everything but the hole. Otherwise, the fact that your eyes are open to the world is an invitation to loss of focus and wandering attention. In other words, what is really meant by "looking at the hole while putting" is maintaining visual fixation on the hole, to the exclusion of distracting visual stimuli. It also means "holding the head, neck, and eyes still" while looking.
Second, looking at the hole removes normal "hand-eye coordination" during the stroke. Usually, looking at the hole requires an angle of the face and eyes that precludes seeing the ball, the putter, and the putter head moving into impact during the stroke. This takes a little getting used to. This is helpful. Removing the eyes and eliminating normal "hand-eye coordination" from the stroke promotes a better stroke movement by reducing or eliminating the manipulative action of the hands while shifting focus and attention to the body postures and movements during the stroke. A blind person in a china shop does not skip about, but is quiet and attentive to motion. A person "looking" at the hole is in effect "blind" to the putter head motion and ball location from a "hand-eye coordination" "viewpoint" (excuse the stupid language), but that is just the ticket.
So, taking this into consideration, is looking at the hole while putting worse than, as good as, or better than looking at the ball while putting, and why?
This question requires us to examine first what is meant by "looking at the ball while putting." (Trust me, it is not obvious.)
Really, what this phrase means is "holding still with the head and eyes while looking down towards the ball and putter." There is no magic in looking at the ball itself -- again, vision claims more than it is due. The magic comes from establishing a physical relationship between the body (with its posture and then movement) and the ball and putter for purposes of the stroke. The stroke does not depend very much on the eyes, but depends on the awareness of posture, gravity, center of body, timing, and motion of body with timing about the center in gravity. None of this is visual, really. So the golfer is not so much looking at the ball as he is establishing body posture to the center and bottom of the stroke, and then moving in reference to these postural relations with good timing. You can do this EXTREMELY well with eyes closed, because closing the eyes redces or eliminates loss of focus and attention on what really matters.
This being the case, why do golfers putt with eyes open? Fear, mostly. The sense of loss or lack of control terrifies most golfers performing in front of other people. The sense is misplaced if they knew where the real control comes from -- not vision, but the body as a whole (posture, balance, timing, AND vision if desired, but the control is not really from the vision). The control comes from doing the same motion about the same postural relations to the bottom of the stroke, with good balance and timing. (The balance is at the top of the torso, not in the legs, by the way.)
The whole thing about vision is learning how to REDUCE vision in rank so that it subserves the body posture, balance, movement, and timing. That makes "looking at the ball while putting" really mean to stop "watching" things for change or movement and to start "gazing" at things that don't change. If you are "watching" the back of the ball waiting to "watch" the putter head hit and move the ball, this is not a good way of "looking". This sense of "watching" to make sure you "make the putter hit the exact spot" encourages hand manipulation in the stroke and makes you dependent on "hand-eye visual coordination" and results in a different, varying timing, and also promotes a loss of focus on posture, balance, timing, and body-in-motion. A "hit" of the ball is definitely (in my view, and that of many others) a suboptimal way to putt. Don't "watch and wait" -- instead, use the eyes to help get and keep the focus on the body performing exactly the same straight stroke with good timing as always. You should be able to feel and perform this stroke "in your sleep" or "with your eyes closed" -- as the sayings go.
Personally, I don't look at the back of the ball, but look instead at a spot on the ground directly in front of the putter sweetspot, maintaing the visual fixation (and interest) on this spot throughout the stroke. The putter head goes away from this spot and then I keep looking at it and wait patiently with interest in this spot visually until the putter head swings over top of this spot on its way into and thru the ball and on into the follow-thru. It's sort of like looking at a flower and the shadow of a fast bird sweeps momentarily between my face and the flower. I know the shadowy bird form is coming, but I keep looking at the flower before, during, and after it transits.
Sometimes, I don't really look at anything. I gaze vacantly down "towards" the ground at my feet, where the ball and putter are located. But I have no visual focus and attention on any objects or even locations in particular. I'm just holding still, using my eyes to help hold still as I register the beginning postures and orientations and then move in reference to the bottom / center with good timing. When this is taking place, the visual image at my feet tends to lose salience. It's sort of like looking at a picture in an art gallery but thinking about whether you left the gas burner on at home -- nothing in the picture really registers while this more important process is occupying your mind -- a kind of "mindblindness".
Another helpful use of the eyes "looking at the ball while putting" is to sense directionality in and thru the ball. This use of the eyes is a "divided attention" visually at a superficial level, but an integrated sense of spatial relationships more deeply. There is a relationship in space between the direction of a straight putt and the body, especially the pivot at the base of the neck and the feet. If the stroke goes straight thru the critical area immediately to either side of the ball, the putter head motion describes the base of an equilateral triangle, which has its apex at the base of the neck and the corners at its base more or less the same width back and forward of the ball as the feet in the stance. (The stroke may be larger or smaller than this, but the "line" at the base of the stroke is always the same, and the apex is always the same -- it is just a visual convenience to "see" the width of the stance as the base to help keep the stroke straight during the critical impact area. And the so-called "base" is not really flat but a mild arc as at the bottom of a pendulum, rising equally and softly on either side of the bottom of the stroke.) So, visually, the attention gets divided between the "base" of the stroke behind the ball and the "base" of the stroke in front of the ball. The imagination or visualization of the perfect stroke "sees" both sides of the (vertically arcing) base line of the stroke in time (like a movie) but also "holds" awareness of these different spaces while the stroke is being made.
There are several different ways to help this divided attention. Sam Snead taught as long ago as the late 1950s to "putt the front of the ball". This is really advice to have a simultaneous awareness of the back AND the front of the ball at the same time, while the stroke is being made. Doing this is only visual in a very limited and minor way, and mostly it is awareness of space. Awareness of space ALWAYS requires awareness of the location of the body in space, and then an added awareness of external objects or locations in RELATION to the body postures, location, movements. Even beyond that, awareness of space (the body and objects and locations) is not "in general" but is most efficacious when the awareness is FOR A SPECIFIC INTENDED ACTION (i.e., movement of the body in and thru the relevant space, eevn if done with a "tool" to extend the body, like a, putter). The divided attention of the back and the front of the stroke thru the ball is FOR movement, not visual information in the abstract. Another way, visually, to promote this spatial awareness for movement is to think of the ball not as a rounded sphere but as a cube or even a sleeve box "aimed" down the line of the stroke. Amother way is to see the "aim" of the putter face projected out the front of the ball to a spot on the line directly opposite the left (or lead-side) foot's big toe, where a line out from the toe makes a "carpenter's square" with the line of the putt, and to use this "toe point" on the line (L-shaped intersection) as the spot over which to roll the ball, and also as the spot to which the stroke delivers the putter head square and with the sweetspot still out above the line this far at least. With the pivot at the base of the neck remaining motionless, the body will necessarily have to allow the putter head to rise past the center / bottom of the stroke (where the pivot stays) as the putter head extends down the line with a slight rising to this critical spot. This divides visual attention between the bottom f the stroke and this toe point, but in the making of the stroke, there is an integrated awareness of the spatial relationships defined by these points on the base of the stroke.
In any event, the spatial awareness (helped by vision a little and y body awareness a lot) is much more definitive than vision alone in helping the stroke get made with the same movement pattern the same every time -- same starting, same transition, same course or trajectory back and up in space in relation to the feet and neck, same time for the backstroke, same time for the downstroke, same acceleration pattern, same stillness of the pivot, same effortless rising mildly past the bottom of the stroke -- everything except the size of the stroke is the same every single putt.
Now, back to the question whether "looking at the hole while putting" is worse, as good as, or better than "looking at the ball while putting." If you know what is important in "looking at the ball" as discussed above, then the answer is that "looking at the hole while putting" is not as effective as "looking at the ball while putting." You don't get the very helpful sense of spatial awareness for the stroke itself that the maidservant of vision can help provide when looking down at your feet. But if you don't use vision that way when "looking at the ball," then vision may well be hurtful to you when looking down, and "looking at the hole while putting" may indeed get rid of some of the trouble that vision causes -- a hit stroke with handsiness and poor timing and a lack of focus on the body-in-motion. At least until you get the real lesson provided by practicing while "looking at the hole" -- it's the body, as helped by the eyes to learn stillness and motion based on this starting stillness, and not the "eyes as king and queen of movement" as usually thought of.
A remaining issue that lurks in the backs of everyone's minds is: But doesn't looking at the hole give you better information about WHERE to send the ball? No, it does not.
There are two entirely different ways to putt "at and to" a target. One is to keep hunting for the target the whole time the movement is started and going on in the belief that unless you do this you will lose a sense of where the target is located and / or in the belief that you are constantly refining and improving your sense of where the target is as the motion progresses closer to the critical moment of impact and "send." The other is to aim the putter face at the target and then to putt wherever the putter is aimed. I believe that the first way is BY FAR the way almost all golfers putt, and that this way is a standing invitation to doubt, indecision, mid-course corrections without a clue where the new direction needs to be, and habitually-embedded flaws and compensations in the stroke so that no strokes are really straight except by happenstance. The second way is so vastly superior and conducive to good aiming and straight stroking that it is somewhat shocking that golf instruction has not gotten a good handle on explaining it over the centuries.
If you aim the putter accurately at the target (squarely) and then stroke the ball wherever the putter is aimed (squarely), then there is a clear point in the putting routine or process when aiming and target location becomes engraved in stone for all time and IT IS NOT USEFUL THEREAFTER TO CONCERN YOURSELF WITH WHERE THE TARGET IS LOCATED. If the target is not KNOWN without question to be where the putter is aimed, then you don't know how to aim or haven't finished aiming yet. But once you know how to aim the putter "at" a target, and get to the point that there is nothing more you can do to improve or further refine the accuracy of the aim of the putter, then you stop aiming altogether. It does no good whatsoever to stop aiming and then keep a little doubt in your mind about whether the putter is aiming at the target -- this is putting a small snake into your pocket that might bite you at an inopportune time during the stroke. So, even if there remains a tiny doubt (because you just can't get a little better aim happening but you have to stop aiming sometime), then go ahead and delude yourself and declare the aim "perfect" so there will not be any tendency whatsoever to make a stroke other than one that rolls the ball the way the putter aim ends up. This way, the aiming STOPS, the putter face is KNOWN to point "at" the target, there is no further wondering about WHERE the target may be located in terms of line, and there is NO question what stroke is called for or allowed (a straight stroke, same as always).
The only possible issue about WHERE the target is located is the distance "to" the target. Where is both "at" and "to", and aiming only sorts out the "at." But the "to" is instinctive distance control, not aiming, and the sense of where the target is located in terms of "to" depends on other physical processes of instinctive body knowledge of distance for rolling the ball across this green. So long as your instincts for distance are on automatic pilot (as they should be), then stopping wondering WHERE the target is after the putter face is aimed is complete. There is nothing to be done, and nothing to happen mentally or emotionally, other than just "shut up and putt." This way, a straight putt is a straight putt, every time, and distance control happens automatically, and there is NO mental baggage.
So even this lingering possible issue about "looking at the hole while putting" does not favor "looking at the hole" over "looking down". In terms of "at" and "to", "looking at the hole while putting" may be a little helpful for "to" but is not so good about "at." "At" is the body posture and relationship to the center of the stroke as aimed during the stroke. "Looking at the hole" may be helpful to some people (who aren't so good at putting good while "looking down"), can be a useful learning experience about the various contributions and importance of the eyes and the body for anyone practicing with awareness, but in the final analysis is not as good as "looking down" while making the same-every-time straight stroke that rolls the ball exactly where the putter face has been aimed.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
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