That's an easy one! There are two separate ways this happens: 1. poor aiming of the putter face when placing it behind the ball based upon sighting the line from behind the ball, and 2. poor aiming from beside the ball at address. You're probably the first case. I'll discuss these two in reverse order.
AIMING AT ADDRESS
I teach NOT to aim the putter face from the address position, but instead to CHECK whatever aim you have performed in placing the putter behind the ball based on sighting from behind the line.
Almost every golfer on earth has the same problem when aiming from beside the ball -- he gazes down his nose, and this causes the percption processes to believe the target is to the outside of where it really is. The often-repeated, standard golf instruction advice to position "the eyes above the ball" is a faulty statement of what accurate perceptual processes require. The correct statement is "gaze straight out of your face, whether your eyes are directly above the ball or slightly inside the ball." "Gaze" means the direction the eyeballs are aimed in relation to the plane of the face. Let me explain.
What's wrong with gazing down the nose? The problem occurs when you position the head above the ball with the neck line perpendicular to the line of the putt (and the aim of the putter face). If you aimed a laser beam out of your eyeballs at address with this "gaze," the beams would start out at the putter sweetspot. But as you turn your head, the turning of the face towards the target will NOT send the laser beams down the line of the putt. Instead, this geometry of gaze direction and turning plane of face will send the laser beams sweeping hard to the inside of the putt line, like search beams sweeping a prison yard.
Obviously, unless the golfer does something, he will NOT end up at the end of the head turn looking at the target (he'll be looking off to the inside into a prison yard), and his "vision" will never really run along the line of the putt. Golfers never notice that this happens. Instead, they tilt the top of their head back and also shift their gaze in order to redirect their line of sight (the laser beams) back from the prison yard towards the target, and they eventually end up "looking at" the target after this messed up process of head turn, gaze changes, and neck swinging to redirect the top of the head. AND golfers are never aware that this has happened! They end up looking at the target, so they think "no problem."
That's totally wrong. There is a big problem at the end of the head turn, in addition to the fact that the golfer never really ran his eyes along the line of the putt between the ball and the target: The big problem is that the neck line is no longer square to the putt, because the neck was used to redirect the top of the head backwards in redirecting the face and line of sight back onto the target (once the poor geometry had sent the laser beams into the prison yard). The shoulder alignment and the body's physical sense of target location follows the base of the neck. If the base of the neck skews to the outside, the body sense of target location goes with it. This creates two separate body-brain systems for target awareness: the visual system, and the physical (proprioceptive or body-sense) system.
(Incidentally, the often-repeated instructional lore that aiming with the eyes positioned inside the ball results in misperceiving the target to the outside, while aiming with the eyes positioned beyond the ball results in perceiving the target to the inside of where it really is, is pure bunk -- not true at all. In either case of where the eyes are positioned out towards or beyond the ball, if the gaze is straight, a straight line is seen during the head turn and this line is the true line connecting ball and target. It's just not a good idea to put the eyes out past the ball, as this plus a straight-out gaze aimed at the ball to start with makes too deep and acute an inward bending of the neck.)
The visual system claims: "I am King of perception and what I say is unchallengeable -- I'm looking at the target, so I order the body to "putt straight -- there is no problem." The body, on the other hand, seems to accept this subservient role, and even though the base of the neck has cocked to the outside of the true putt line, and this base of the neck has realigned the shoulders to also aim outside the true line, the body is being ordered to "putt straight -- there is no problem." So the body putts straight, and the stroke runs along the same line as the shoulder alignment, which sends the ball to the outside of the target (right, for a right hander).
The truth is that the body is correct about where the putt will roll (and the body is aimed to the outside) but incorrect about whether the target is that way also, but the eyes are lying about whether that stroke is correct for the target's location. The eyes are incorrect about where a straight stroke will go, but they are "looking at" the target so the eyes don't know there is a problem with the body aim. The effect is that the body "believes" the target is to the right (outside) of its true location, and the eyes mistakenly proclaim that this belief is correct, so "putt straight -- no problem." The eyes, basically, aren't accurate or truthful, but they like being in control so much, that the eyes are in denial.
Okay, now who gets the blame for missing to the outside? The eyes? Not likely, since the eyes are "King." The eyes actually blame the body and the stroke, claiming that the stroke was poor -- a "push" or something. The eyes then demand that the body stop missing to the outside, and instead of the command "putt straight -- no problem," now the eyes command the body: "pull the putt inside to get at the target -- no problem." This is the main cause for pull strokes.
This plan doesn't work out over trial and error either. As the length of putts change, the question of how MUCH to pull the putt back to the inside (of where the body thinks the target really is located) is MORE for a longer putt and LESS for a shorter putt. This results in the eyes learning a new command: "pull the putt back to the target, but add some feathering of the putter face to adjust for different distances -- no problem." This is how golfers "learn" a cut stroke -- an out-to-in path with an open putter face. Probably 90 percent of all golfers suffer from this long process and end up with some form of cut stroke. I see it every day.
What's the cure? Aim the eyeballs straight out of the face every setup (either directly above the ball or slightly inside is fine) and don't allow the gaze to change when turning the head to the target. (The head then can turn like "an apple on a stick".) This will create the correct geometry of your face plane and gaze direction so that the laser beams of your eyes will be moved by the rotating face and head straight along the line of the putt, without the top of the head or the line of the neck changing out of square. The end result is that the visual system and the body system end up looking all along the imaginary line of the putt (seeing the real grass blades that in fact are on this line), both end up aimed at the target, don't have any inconsistency in the sense of where the target is actually located, and there is no confusion about where a straight stroke should send the ball. Good gaze, no cut stroke. A straight putt is what is needed.
Back to the beginning of this discussion: Don't aim at the target from beside the ball -- only check the aim you have once the putter face is placed behind the ball to determine that the face is accurately aimed. If it is, fine, putt straight. If not, recycle the process, because you probably are not placing the putter behind the ball with accurate aiming.
AIMING THE PUTTER FACE ACCURATELY
In my teaching, I teach students to sight the line (from behind the ball) straight from ball to target (not a curved path), find perceptual cues near or on the ball that will not alter once you start walking and your visual perspective alters, and then walk the line into the back of the ball and use these on-the-ground and on-the-ball cues to square up the putter face straight on the same line perceived thru the center of the ball. I teach the golfer NOT to walk up to the ball and then try to perceive a line between ball and target -- instead, aim the putter face based on the cues near the ball, and then use a very precise and accurate physical process to CHECK whatever aim this results in. That checking process requires the straight gaze as discussed above, but the above discussion is not intended to encourage you to "look" for a line connecting the ball and the target -- only to check whatever aim results from initially placing the putter face behind the ball and squaring it up thru the ball on the line perceived from behind the ball.
Because it is sort of difficult to know what part of the process is going awry, you really have to be a bit more specific about what you mean by "aim." Do you really, really aim the putter face to the right (outside) of the target? That's one possibility. Another possibility is that you aim okay, but your stroke sends the ball to the outside. In the first case, the line of the neck, the shoulders and the putter face match, but in the second case they do not. To clear this up, you need to aim the putter face and then make sure the shoulders are square to WHEREVER the putter face is aimed and also that your STROKE rolls the ball WHEREVER the putter face is aimed. Then you truly have a "straight" stroke and will be able to determine whether you aim is off or whether your stroke is off.
If you have a laser to check your putter face aim and it shows your aim is to the outside, then the problem is in how you square the putter face.
If you aim the putter face based on sighting the line of the putt from behind the ball, and then do NOT re-aim the putter face from the address position, and then "putt straight" wherever the putter face is aimed, you will find out whether you are any good at aiming the putter face based on sighting the line from behind the ball. This tests the ability to accurately aim the putter face in its initial placement behind the ball. Hardly any people are very good at this, and the vast majority end up leaving the putter face aimed a bit to the outside.
Why do so many people place the putter face aimed a bit to the outside when they walk into the ball and initially set the putter behind the ball? The reason is that people fail to appreciate that squaring the putter face up behind the ball is a two-step process, and most people worry only about the first step. The two steps are: 1. place the sweetspot of the putter exactly "in line" with the exact middle of the equator of the back of the ball, and 2. square the plane of the face of the putter so that the top edge of the putter face is perpendicular to the intended line of the putt. The first step uses two real objects -- the sweetspot and the exact back of the ball. The second step uses and imaginary line of the putt and an imaginary geomertical relationship between the putter face and the imaginary line.
The second step gets messed up because the golfer does not translate the imaginary line of the putt into something specific on the ground or on the ball, and THEN use these cues to align the putter face thru the back of the ball. A simple placement of the putter face behind the ball usually only worries about the sweetspot getting positioned behind the back of the ball (ok, lots and lots of amateurs and pros aren't too good at this either!), and the squaring of the putter face is left to a physical re-aiming-beside-the-ball process that starts out with the gaze down the nose and ends up believing that the target is located to the right of where it really is. So a putter face aimed to the right seems correct.
This is why when you teach a golfer how to aim accurately, he looks down at the correctly aimed putter face and "feels" that it is aimed too much inside. He's used to seeing bad aim to the outside and proclaiming it correct.
CONCLUSION
There are two aspects to aiming that have to be attended to fairly carefully during the early learning stages, so that the golfer understands the cause-and-effect that generates the flawed aim, how to spot it, and how to correct it.
The first is placing the putter face behind the ball. Make sure you see not only the back of the ball, but more importantly a LINE thru the center of the ball. The putter face is squared up either to the imaginary line of the putt (which is a matter of fluctuating perceptions) or to a real line thru the ball. The imaginary line is a matter of evanescent perceptions that tend to change fluidly as the golfer moves about and does things. The real cues that establish a line on the ground or thru the ball do not change. The job of sighting from behind the ball is to find these cues on the ground and on the ball that show the golfer the exact and real line thru the ball that matches the imaginary line of the putt.
A line thru the ball is defined by two opposite points on the equator -- the exact back, and the opposite front. (The exact back of the equator is farther from the target than any other piece of the ball. The exact opposite front of the equator is closer to the target than any other piece of the ball.) The golfer has to be very careful not to miss squaring the putter face thru the exact front of the ball's equator. The tendency is to leave the face aiming thru the exact back of the ball out a spot on the front equator that is a smidgen to the outside of the spot on the front that is truly opposite the back of the ball.
The reason seems to be a bit of casualness about identifying accurately the center or the exact opposite front of the ball when squaring the face. Only the exact back of the ball, the center of the ball, and the opposite front of the ball actually line up above the imaginary line of the putt. That's three points, and any two points are sufficient to define a line. So you could aim the putter face thru the exact back of the ball (spot on the equator as seen from behind the ball sighting the line of the putt) and THEN thru the center of the ball, or you could aim the face thru the exact back of the ball and THEN also thru the opposite front of the ball. In any event, if the face is aimed square to the imaginary line, it WILL be aimed thru the exact back and also thru the center and also thru the exact opposite front of the ball -- otherwise, the aim is not square to the line of the putt.
I suspect that one cause of this mis-aiming of the putter face in placing the putter head behind the ball initially stems from the visual perspective looking down to the ball-putter when squaring takes place. The "top" of the ball is vertically above the center of the ball (at the level of the equator), and golfers tend to mistake the top of the ball for the center of the ball. The top of the ball and the center of the ball are effectively the same ONLY when the golfer's perspective is looking straight down on the top of the ball thru the center, perpendicularly into the plane of the surface. Then it makes no difference if the golfer aims to square the putter face thru the exact back of the ball on the equator and THEN thru the "top" of the ball taken to be the same as the center of the ball (at the level of the equator). However, if the golfer looks down to the ball-putter on an angle to the surface plane, the "top" is higher than the center of the ball. Visually, "higher" in two dimensions translates to "above" -- and a line from the "back" (which translates to the "right") thru the center is NOT the same aim as a line from the "right" thru a point "above" the center. The second line aims to the outside. From this perspective, squaring the face thru the exact back of the ball THEN thru the "top" spot will result in a line thru the ball aimed to the outside of the imaginary line of the intended putt (the true line connecting ball and target). I believe many golfers don't really distinguish between the top of the ball and the center of the ball (inside at equator level) when aiming / squaring the face, and are led astray by this "indifferent technique."
Another likely cause (that probably happens to any one golfer with equal frequency as the first) is failure to be sufficiently specific in identifying the exact opposite spot on the front of the equator that corresponds to the exact back. (This weakness is aided and abetted by causually using the "top" as if it were the center, so the two are definitely related if not coincident in every occasion.) Seeing the exact back is easier while sighting from behind the ball and while walking in to place the putter face square to the imaginary line, obviously, because of the perspective. Identifying the opposite front of the ball is really only possible once the golfer has arrived at the ball and starts to place the putter face. So there needs to be an intermediate checking before squaring the putter face: where exactly is the front of the ball's equator that is opposite the exact back and that is closest to the target and that is in line with the exact back and the true center of the ball (not the "top")? Golfers uniformaly skip this step, unaware of its importance. For this reason, it usually helps to sight from behind the ball and pick out a spot of grass slightly in front of the ball that is on the imaginary line, so that when the golfer arrives at the back of the ball he can find this same spot and aim the putter face thru the back of the ball and also at this spot on the grass -- this will help makes sure the face aims thru the exact opposite front.
Using the process of lining up the logo or a line on the ball and then retreating to a vantage behind the ball to "sight the line" might help also, but only if you do not allow the initial trial aiming of the line on the ball to prejudice the astuteness of your perceptual judgments behind the ball, and also only if you do not look at the line on the ball when placing the putter in such a way that your perspective does not look straight down thru the line on the ball into the center of the ball. If the line on the ball is oriented vertically to the surface, and you look at the line on the ball from on a tilt from eyes positioned back from the ball inside this vertical plane, the "line" of the ball will appear curved like a draped rainbow with the line from backmost "end of the rainbow" thru the peak of the rainbow ("top" of ball) being a line oriented to the outside of the true aimline (the imaginary line). So if you use a line on the ball, you either have to orient the line vertically to the surface and then look straight down on the ball when aligning the putter face, or look at the ball on a tilted perspective and orient the line on the ball at the same tilt so that there is no rainbow distortion of the back and the "top".
The same thing applies to using a line on the ball when teeing up for a driver shot -- tilt the top of the line in to match the perspective or tilted line of sight. Otherwise, the "line" on the ball looks like a rainbow.
Fundamentally, there is a line on the ground from ball to target that is best sighted from behind the ball. This line is a matter of the accuracy of your perceptual processes and your perspective / position. Face the line and use your dominant eye and use your putter shaft as a visual ruler to eliminate the variables, and "seeing" this line with great precision and accuracy is a piece of cake. (See my articles and tips about aiming.) But what you are "seeing" is an imaginary line. It will not stay put in the mind too well wen you start walking, and the changes of perspective / poisition in walking up to beside the ball will likely ruin it unless you first find the anchor cues on the ground or on the ball before starting to walk. Don't leave the position for sighting the line behind the ball without these cues, because they are the ONLY reason you're back there to begin with.
Once you have this line anchored, your concern is the second line -- the line straught thru the ball that matches the imaginary line. The cues on the ground and on the ball show you this second line, but using them is a bit tricky.
If you identify the line thru the ball so that it matches the imaginary line on the ground, then you can easily concern yourself with the third line -- the aim line of the putter face. Aiming the putter face squarely thru the center of the ball on the intended line makes all three lines match up, but the aligning of the face is a two-step process. The front of the ball is the key.
Once the imaginary line of the putt between ball and target, the line thru the ball, and the aim of the putter face are all matched up, your final concern is the fourth line -- the line of your stroke that rolls the ball straight the same way the putter face is aimed, straight thru the center of the ball along the line of the ball, and down the imaginary line of the intended putt to the target (with good touch).
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
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