The term "discovery" is a bit overly dramatic. I haven't seen the article you refer to (and would love to), but the 1/3 to 2/3 ratio is really 2-to-1.
I have been telling people about this for quite some time. The backstroke is twice the time of the downstroke to impact. It's a bit complicated, but the tempo of a putting stroke in gravity is about 1 second from top of backstroke to top of thru-stroke. The problem is that the backstroke from start to top of backstroke is NOT part of a pendulum action, and has an artificial timing. In my teaching, I use a timing from address to top of backstroke that is the same as the total timing from top to top (1 second or 60 beats per minute on a metronome). The downstroke in gravity from top of backstroke to impact is one-half the total top-to-top timing and so is 0.5 seconds or thereabouts (varies a bit with the golfer and the putter).
The "rhythm" of the stroke is the proportions of the parts. In the case of the backstroke-downstroke "rhythm" (not the same as "tempo"), the 2-to-1 ratio or proportion holds -- one second from address to top of backstroke, one-half second from top of backstroke to impact in a gravity tempo. This "rhythm" is pretty much the same even with different tempos.
This putting "rhythm" differs from the full-swing "tempo" (actually, the "rhythm" of the parts) in ther book Tour Tempo. In that book, a person filming tour swings "discovered" that the backstroke takes 3 times longer than the downstroke. (I'm a little unclear without the book in front of me whether the proportion is backstroke to downstroke thru to finish or downstroke to impact.) So a "quick" tempo has 21 frames going to the top of the backstroke and one-third that many coming down (7 frames). A "slower" tempo has 24 frames going back and 8 coming down. A still-slower tempo has 27 frames goiung back and 9 coming down. A really slow tempo has 30 frames going back and 10 coming down.
For the putting stroke, a similar film frame rate might see 40 frames going back and 20 coming down or something like that -- one-half coming down.
The interesting part is that the brain relies upon the backstroke tempo to set the size of the backstroke, knowing in advance that the downstroke to impact will always take the same amount of time (regardless of your tempo). By making the backstroke timing a "fake" of the total stroke tempo from top to top, the backstroke timing coordinates with the gravity tempo or whatever tempo the golfer uses. This linkage of the tempo of the fake backstroke and the real downstroke allows the brain to set the backstroke size instinctively with greater precision. That's the basic secret of touch.
The SAM folks just noticed that the backstroke and the downstroke for almost all top golfers have a standard "rhythm" or proportion. But that's something already known. The useful stuff is in knowing how to get a good tempo in the first place and then use that to define the "rhythm" of the backstroke, and why that helps precision for touch.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
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