Dear Tom,
The main points of technique about the
Hammy putter and putting style are: a) the stance is open so that both eyes face the line and target, b) the split hand grip keeps the right shoulder low and allows knee bend to promote what the designers say is a more child-like and natural right-hand rolling of the ball with a putter head that stays low thru the stroke. Both of these points are plenty seductive, as shown by the repeated return to these ideas by other putter designers thru the years.
Hammy style:
My fundamental reaction is that there are two separate approaches to putting a ball at and to a target: 1) try to roll the ball at and to the target, or 2) try to aim at the target and then putt where you are aimed. The thing that confuses these two is the issue of "to" the target, or the distance to the target.
The first approach includes techniques like sidesaddle putting, and variants of facing the target while making a stroke. This first approach also includes the golf psychology stand-by of "look at the target and get the image of the target and keep the image of the target when you make the stroke while looking at the ball." This sort of "third-eye" consciousness is a bridge between actually facing the target while making the stroke and other conventional setups where the golfer looks at the ball while making the stroke. With this first approach, the "to" issue is sort of finessed by enlisting the visual processes as the main actors in "seeing" the distance. The need for this is the widely held belief that the eyes are the most important sense for managing the body in space, specifically for appreciating and acting upon the distance between the body and an object or location in space. The oft-stated belief is that facing the target allows the use of "both eyes" and therefore "binocular vision" and "depth perception" and that this is "obviously" better for appreciating the target's location. The Hammy putter folks also throw into the mix the idea that, since most right-handed golfers are also right-eye dominant, the open stance clears the body / nose out of the way to bring the dominant eye back into the targeting. So, the first approach takes a very vision-dominanted approach to targeting, and also an approach that treats targeting as something that has to be "on-going" at the time of the stroke (a temporal dimension in the way targeting must relates to the movement).
The second approach looks like a conventional putting style, but is really only the style that appears in the very best practitioners of putting with a conventional style. Other golfers using a conventional style get stuck in between reliance upon the visual, and never trust the relationship between accurate aim and accurate stroke. By far, the vast majority of golfers get stuck in a hellish limbo of putting technique where neither their aim nor their stroke is particularly consistent and accurate, so understandably they are trying to re-invent the wheel on every putt to make the whole system work, and this results in golfers reverting to visual processes to correct problems of aim-stroke (combined and confused together) in an ad hoc fashion. These golfers talk about good and bad days "seeing the line." Top putters don't have good and bad days in the functioning of their technique, although they may have days when they don't perform their technique as well as they know they can and should. If a top putter has trouble seeing the line, he doesn't wish for a better day -- he reverts to the techniques he knows work, and tries to perform these techniques with sharper fidelity to the optimal performance. And for the top putter, two things at least are absolutely true: 1) he has finally learned how to putt so that the ball rolls where his putter is aimed, and 2) he has learned how to aim the putter where he wants it to aim. When these two basics are mastered to the point that the golfer knows how to do them (and does not wonder if there is a better way) and also knows whether he is doing them the way he knows they need to be done, the role of vision DURING the execution of the stroke dissipates immeasurably. That's because once the golfer is happy with the aim of the putter, he is confident that the same-old stroke he uses every single putt is just the ticket to roll the ball straight where the putter is aimed.
This leaves the mystery and the confusion of how the golfer in the second approach gets the distance right -- doesn't he still need "binocular vision" of the target DURING the stroke or at least to keep an image of the target in his third-eye visually WHILE making the stroke? No, he does not.
There is a timing and sequencing of targeting information during a putting routine, and line and distance are handled mostly separately and only together in limited ways. A sense of distance builds towards the intended ACTION of the stroke, and action is ALL PHYSICAL, and none visual. Walking up to the green looking at the green loom larger in your vision as steps advance, walking up to mark your ball, walking to the flag stick to remove the flag for the putt, standing behind the hole or behind the ball to read the putt, watching other players putt, etc., are all stages in the build-up of distance sense for purposes of making the stroke. The final polishing-off behaviors in the putting routine are just the tip of the iceberg, or icing on the cake, and most of the techniques taught zealously as absolutely necessary for excellent touch are just bunk (e.g., practice stroke, counting paces to the hole, holding an image of the target in mind while making the stroke). By the time a golfer of reasonable experience has finally stepped into the address posture to make the stroke, he is so loaded to the gills with accurate and redundant distance sense that only a blithering, weak-kneed coward would be anxious and panicky and desparate to try one final "silver bullet" technique to make absolutely certain he didn't botch the putt's distance. The human brain and body in normal people is sufficiently good at this sort of "touch" that almost all putts for distance control are not much different than walking up to a door and reaching for the door knob -- who seriously doubts their ability to successfully find the door knob? While granted the situation in putting is variable and not all that similar to reaching out for a door knob, it is really the psychological questioning of the sufficiency of innate ability and endless searching for some mythical perfectionism in "touch and feel" that is the problem.
This is indeed a GREAT BIG problem in putting instruction, because almost all of the established and accepted lore of putting misunderstands how the human brain and body functions for distance control or "touch." Most teachers either state flatly that "touch" cannot be taught, or erect some gimmicky way to embed touch in unwilling students -- so-called "muscle memory" drills, or "one inch of backstroke equals 1 foot of putt" schemes, or hoakey and unsubstantiated claims about the "science" relating stroke tempo and walking pace and personality. Making matters worse, optometrists bring their limited clinical understanding of the visual system isolated from the way vision works with other senses and brain processes for human targeting and physical action, and teach that poor eye-teaming causes imperfect depth perception and this in turn causes strokes with poor distance control or touch (short or long), almost entirely as a problem of vision. Going the other way, Bob Toski was perhaps closest in relating "touch" to "unconscious competence" in the way people sign their names. That's a start, but the real key is to understand those NON-conscious processes a little more in detail. The tendency is always instead just to label the unknown and unknowable as "unconscious" and leave it at that. Not good enough! Not even close!
Touch only uses vision to inform the body-sense of the relationship between the body and the target for purposes of the action. If the body-sense can get the information without vision, the action is still just as good. That's how blind people use the body to know space around them for action. If you set a beeper down inside a golf hole and bid a blind golfer to putt a ball at and to the beeper, he will stand at address and turn his face to better echo-locate the sound's point of origin, and then make a stroke that is appropriate for his sense of the green speed and that distance. And he can easily have excellent touch rivalling any sighted golfer. Do you think there is something in the tone coming from the hole that signals distance? No, it is the assistance the tone gives to aiming the face with the neck at the hole that counts -- the aiming of the face is the signalling, ad the tone only helps get the face aim correct. At address, the eyes only tell the neck when to stop turning to the target, so that the neck turn signal is correct. (There are other ways that vision per se can assist, but they are minor in comparison to the body knowldge.) In the staging of the sense of distance, once vision has served its purpose as handmaiden to the body, further "worrying" the visual system about distance is hurtful.
When you examine NON-conscious brain processes for how vision integrates with body sense and spatial awareness for the purpose of ACTION in rolling a ball with a putter across a given green a specific distance, you find that vision is the handmaiden of body-knowledge -- a servant, not the King. The eyes may have an important role to play (like handing the King his sword), but the body executes the stroke (the King wades into battle), not the eyes. The staging of perceptions in putting involves a switch-over from vision's dominance to the dominance of body-sense in making the stroke. If you don't know how to shut off visual dominance and switch to body-sense dominance, you get stuck in visual processes when the visual role is over, and further visual processing is not only not helpful, but is also wasteful, and moreover interferes and prevents optimal functioning of the body in the stroke. Ater vision has done it's thing to help out the ACTION planning, vision has little role to play during ACTION execution. And allowing or encouraging vision to KEEP a dominant role during the stroke is really asking for trouble -- it's like hiring an out-of-work HUN to serve as the Walmart greeter -- his skills are pretty unsuited to the task but he has an urgent need to use them. Don't be surprised if reliance upon vision during the making of the stroke results in you making a crooked stroke, as the HUN will likely chop off the extended hand of welcome of the next shopper coming thru the door.
So, to get back to answering your question, SOME golfers who aren't doing so well with conventional style, because stuck on visual reliance during the stroke, may find a benefit from the open-stance, face-the-target style. You may recall that Natalie Gulbis was the leading model for the Pro Aim putting glasses endorsed by her coach Butch Harmon.
The Hammy style putting represents a complete abandonment of the taming of visual processes inside a conventional style that the Pro Aim glasses promote. This indicates to me that Natalie doesn't know how to use her visual system in a conventional putting style, and the Hammy style has helped her get better in a different way. So I highly suspect that she is not clear about aiming straight or putting where she is aimed, and is reliant to an unhealthy degree on visual processes DURING the stroke for target location (at and to). That's great that this helps her putt better, but I believe she could putt even better still if she tamed her visual processes and used them more approriately and with greater telling effect in consort with better use of body-sense processes.
Another point to note is that when golfers do well with the Hammy style or a related style, there is a point in the routine when they shut off or greatly reduce visual processing anyway. You should be able to see a person facing the hole get still in the body and eyes before the stroke starts. This stilling is an instinctive shifting out of vision into body sense. Perhaps golfers trying to putt while facing the target should try the experiment of facing the target but then closing the eyes to make the stroke, and "see" how that works out. If what I say is correct, then the stilling of vision before executing the stroke undercuts and belies the claims for the need for the Hammy style in the first place (the continuing need for vision in order to make the effective stroke for line and distance).
There is some confusion in the way the Hammy people think about the relationship of the eyes and target awareness and also hand-eye coordination for the stroke. The Hammy folks speak only of target vision, but in actual practice, what happens is that the golfer shifts from looking away to the target to looking down at the putter and ball. You can't have this both ways. If the golfer is going to use vision for hand-eye coordination in the making of the stroke, then what's the point of facing the target? because the Hammy folk don't address this issue, it tells me they don't understand how human targeting and action works.
Finally, I disagree with the Hammy position that the putting stroke is ALL right hand, and that the left hand causes pushes and pulls. The claim is that the split-hand grip style lowers the right shoulder and keeps the right hand and the putter head low going back and thru in the stroke. So? (Actually, just not lifting the putter with the hands and arms during the stroke is all that is required -- does artificially keeping the putter head low by a gimmick help prevent lifting? yes, but it's not needed if you focus on the more essential point of learning not to lift the putter thru the impact area.) There is a secondary claim that the open stance and lowered shoulder combined make it easier to move the putter head straight back and straight thru. How's that? I don't buy either of those propositions. People who advocate a true sidesaddle stroke have the arm action moving straight out from the plane of the body, and claim that this method is easier to send the putter head on line. Both positions implicitly assume that making a straight stroke from a conventional setup posture is a) required for the optimal putting stroke, but b) difficult to perform from this posture. I don't find either of these assumptions to be valid. What is really required for an optimal putting stroke is a square putter moving straight online thru the center of the ball at and during impact, not a specific stroke path -- it's all about 3 inches behind to 3 inches in front of the ball, not the shape of the stroke path from top of backstroke to top of thru-stroke. Amd in any event, performing a straight-back, straight-thru stroke path in a conventional setup posture is simply not that hard or weird -- you just have to know what moves where, and trust me, that simple knowledge is not widespread in golf.
So, my reaction is that the Hammy style and other face-forward styles ill-advisedly promote the role of vision inappropriately and needlessly at the expense of developing the truly fundamental skills and knowledge of accurately aiming the putter and then always putting the ball wherever the putter is aimed, with good touch. The touch system and the aiming system are mostly separate and independent, and putting styles that confuse aiming and touch in an attempt to get more out of the visual system than it is suited for to solve ill-understood problems or aim-stroke (conflated and confused) will doubtless help some people some, but aren't really the best way to go.
For more information, here's a good article about Gulbis and the Hammy style:
A Stroke That's No Joke
as appeared in Natural Golfer Magazine
by Rick Johnson
9/1/2005
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Dont be surprised if a lot more golfers are hamming it up on the greens during future professional tour events or at local municipal courses. No, were not talking about shenanigans like Sandy Lyle doing a little celebratory Scottish jig on the 18th green at Augusta after winning The Masters in 1988, or Tiger Woods doing one of his patented fist pumps. Were talking about the hammY putter, which has quickly caught the eye of Tour players and everyday golfers alike ever since it was unveiled nationally at the PGA Merchandise Show in early 2004.
With its split grip and innovative triple-bend shaft combination, the hammY putter literally offers golfers a new look at their putting stroke.
"When I first saw the hammY, I realized it was the first club I had ever seen in my life that can actually help you with your stroke," says veteran Doug Sanders, a 20-time winner on the PGA Tour. "The hammY keeps the putter head lower and on target so much longer as you go backward and forward. If I had the use of a hammY when I was playing, I could have won twice as many tournaments."
One player who doesnt have to think about what they might have done is up-and coming LPGA star Natalie Gulbis. The 22-year-old began using the hammY putter this season, and her improved putting performance in 2005 has enabled her to nearly equal her money earnings in seven months what she earned in her three previous years on the LPGA Tour.
In 2005, based on statistics through July, Gulbis has earned nearly $764,000 to rank her fifth on the money list. Her best previous season was 2004 when she earned $277,000. Based on the statistics, her improvement on the green has been the biggest reason for her rising status.
Gulbis ranks No. 1 in birdies on the LPGA Tour in 2005, which means she is making a lot of one-putts. In other statistics, her putting for greens hit in regulation has dropped from a tie for 53rd last season to a tie for eighth this year, and her overall putting ranking has dropped from 89th last year to 46th this season.
"And we dont pay her to play the club like other companies do," points out Jim Alvarez, the 28-year-old CEO of hammY Inc. "When she tried it out, she really liked how it felt. Then she showed it to her coach, Butch Harmon, and his reply was, 'I dont care what it looks like; show me how you putt with it.' She showed him, and now its in her bag."
According to Alvarez, many PGA and LPGA Tour players are very interested in playing with the hammY, but current contracts prevent them from using it. Of the dozen or so professionals who are using it, most on the womens tours, five players have enjoyed their best finish of the season using the hammY, and two players have notched the best finish of their careers.
"We believe its a lot like the Natural Golf swing," Alvarez says. "The putter allows you to stand straighter and puts you in a single plane, so you can take the putter straight back and straight at your target line."
The veteran PGA Tour star Sanders agrees.
"Some putters will help you line it up better, but if youre using the same old stroke, youre not gaining anything," he says. "The hammY putter makes a difference, because the moment you set it down [on the green], it actually changes your stroke a little bit."
What makes the hammY work, is its specially designed triple-bend shaft and split grip, says C.J. Orrico, chief operating officer for hammY.
"The combination of the triple-bend shaft and split grip allows you to open up your stance and have a much better view of the putt," he says. "When you stand over the ball in a traditional putting method, you are really using only one eye and most likely your non-dominant eye to view the ball and make your putting stroke."
"With the hammY setup, you are able to use both eyes and maintain your perception as you view the line during the putting stroke," Orrico says. "Its like rolling a ball at a hole. You wouldnt do it turned sideways; you would face the target and just roll the ball."
As Orrico explains it, the hammY putter allows the golfer to "clear the left side out of the putt during the stroke."
"To create a straight-back and straight-forward motion, you want to be putting 100 percent with your right hand [for right-handed putters]," he says. "By taking the left side out of the putting stroke, you greatly reduce the chance to push or pull a putt."
To help keep the left side out of the putting stroke, Orrico encourages users of the hammY to tuck their left arm in close to the body.
Orrico also notes that the triple-bend shaft creates a natural forward-press, putting the hands slightly in front of the ball, much like the Natural Golf swing setup. This not only helps keep the stroke low to the ground, but it also reinforces a stroke that only utilizes the trail hand.
The split grip, which separates the hands much like a "broom putter" does, provides better control of the putter, creating a better feel during the putting stroke. This, in turn, improves speed control on long putts, says Alvarez.
"For high handicappers, the biggest problem in putting is speed control" Alvarez says. "The hammY allows you to take a more natural stroke you are using your natural ability instead of thinking of mechanics and this enables you to lag the ball a lot better to the hole."
"People may say it doesnt feel right when they first set up in the open stance," Orrico adds. "But it only takes a few strokes, and then they start seeing the results. They cant believe how much better they are stroking the ball toward the hole. "
There are
other articles about the Hammy here. Natalie Gulbis'
website is here.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
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