Dear Scott,
Nice hearing from you!
I met briefly with Shaun Monday at Wachovia. He regularly goes to my website, and his putting this year is much better. He was ranked as high as 35th recently in putts per GIR. I don't know what happened to him Sunday -- he was third after Saturday and then shot 76, but I wasn't around to see.
SHAFT ANGLE AND STROKE PLANE
The idea that the shaft angle is and must be the same angle of the stroke plane is not exactly a law, but more a default "strategy of movement" for people who haven't experimented much or deeply about other ways to do it. It's certainly the most "common way" to make a stroke, but it's hardly the only way.
In putting, if you make the stroke without a putter in your hands but with your arms hanging naturally with hands barely meeting in a prayerful arrangement, and move the shoulder frame to send the arms and hands straight back and straight thru, what you end up doing is moving the shoulder frame in a single plane of motion that may be vertical or may be angled on a variety of tilts. If the plane is vertical, the shoulders do not "twist" around the spine. If the plane is tilted, the shoulder "rotate" or "rock" in a way that somewhat turns around the spine. If you held both arms straight down on an angle the same as a putter shaft and extended first the left hand further down and then the right hand further down, the shoulder frame would pivot about the base of the neck but the basic orientation of the upper torso (especailly at the base of the neck) would not "twist" back around. In any of these planes, the hands go straight back and straight thru, no big deal. And the hands and arms have NO "opening" or "closing" at all. (Try it while holding a thin book between your hands -- the book doesn't twist any, although it rises and tilts groundward going to the top of the backstroke -- it still stays square to the stroke plane.)
That being said, if the golfer chooses NOT to use a vertical plane of motion for the shoulder frame movement, and is wondering which of a great variety of tilted plane angles to choose for the shoulder motion, one very good one to consider is the angle of the shaft. But it's not compelled.
In fact, in the full swing, each club PW thru Driver has a DIFFERENT shaft angle, so that would indicate that these large swing training circles on driving ranges that are set on only ONE plane are not correct, as the golfer should be using a DIFFERENT swing plane for each club in the bag. Isn't that the case? If so, then there are obviously many possible planes of motion to choose from. This is what Casey Eberting notes: "Most people familiar with the concept of swing plane realize that an individual's plane gets flatter as the club shaft gets longer and more upright as the shaft gets shorter, but not many know that the golfer's actual position at the top of the backswing should remain pretty much the same, regardless of what club is being used." (
CEGolf.com)
Jim Mclean distinguishes the shaft plane from the arm plane and also from the so-called "Hogan plane." (
Golf Digest)
McLean is careful to say that the golfer should never get his arms / elbow / club shaft below the "shaft plane", which he says is the lowest plane allowed in a good swing.
More specifically responding to your question about whether a straight stroke "messes up the stroke plane" (meaning the tilted plane of the shaft), the above answers that, but let me add this: The putter head will do whatever the shoulders do if the shoulders move in a "plane" that does not twist about. That is, simply, if the shoulders really move in a single plane, whether vertical or on ANY tilt angle, and the rest of the setup stays constant (arms and hand stay "dead" in the "triangle" of the setup and only the shoulder rock powers the motion), then the putter head will move in a parallel plane and the face of the putter will stay square to this parallel plane at all times.
What this means is that the so-called "arcing" stroke is really a straight-back, straight-thru stroke with the motion being on a tilted plane, and in this case the plane is the same as the tilt of the putter shaft. You may note that in this month's issue of Golf Digest that Stan Utley says he teaches running his putter shaft straight back along a horizontal bar (another putter shaft held and aimed horizontally parallel to the putt line between the ball and his feet about half way up to his hands). If he also taught a "dead hands" stroke, the putter face would not open and close any at all. But for some reason (I think confusion) he teaches that the golfer should run his putter shaft back on this parallel bar or horizontal guide shaft AND deliberately open and then close the face of the putter. I think what he doesn't quite understand is the relationship between the shoulders and the arms. If the arms act independently of the shoulders, the left armpit closes during the right-hander's backstroke, and this pronates the left forearm going back, opening the face. So Utley is teaching an armsy stroke by getting the golfer to perform a handsy motion. If he wanted to teach and armsy stroke, he would get the same putter face opening "naturally" but he doesn't seem to realize this. Instead, he teaches the golfer to produce with his hands on purpose what his arms would do naturally -- and that's confusing on one level and not necessary at all in any event.
If you REALLY had an arcing stroke and not a plane of motion on a tilt, your torso would move your arms around on the outside edge of a cone (base of cone on ground, apex of cone at base of neck), with the torso twisting on the vertical axis of the cone. The end-point of the shaft would "arc" in a curve around the feet, following the wide base of the cone, and the golfer would be trying to keep the putter face square to the curvature of the side surface of the cone. If that is the motion you envision as an arcing stroke, then YES a straight-back stroke results in a putter head motion that is incompatible to the putter head motion in this sort of arcing stroke.
I think that Utley actually teaches this "twisting torso" stroke without understanding it. He describes it as a "miniature full swing" (just like Percy Boomer and others have done), claims that because the golfer stands to the side of the ball and the putter shaft is tilted that "the shaft angle dictates the plane of your motion", and says "I have very little to talk about other than 'Do you swing the club on plane.'" He also says that a straight-back stroke is not possible unless the golfer deliberately manipulates the putter head by closing it to the path of the stroke. (Golf World, Apr. 2006, pp 97, 100). But he tells his student players to move the putter "around their bodies." This is confused. Utley is not describing a stroke "plane" at all. His motion is really not a "plane" but a motion in which the arms and putter swirl around on the tilted curvature of a cone.
(
Stan Utley, The Stroke is a Curve, Golf Digest). This photo shows a curving of the putter head around the body, not a putter rising up and back in a tilted plane. Utley's so-called swing "plane" is not even the same motion taught by the PuttingArc training aid, which is a tilted stroke "plane" in which the shadow projection of the putter head in 3D motion onto the ground shows a mild arc. Utley's action is not this sort of "plane".
In contrast to a "plane", Utley's stroke path is like sweeping along the outer surface of a cone, and there is a HUGE difference between this and a "plane": the cone surface depicted here is RED while the plane is GREY:
The axis of rotation of the shoulders and spine that sweeps a putter shaft around the surface of a cone is nearly vertical. In contrast, the axis of rotation for the PuttingArc is horizontal or nearly so:
If you compare the Utley's path to the PuttingArc tilted-plane path, the Utley path is more severely curved. That is because the base of the cone on the ground is more curved than the "shadow" of the putter head in 3D below the tilted plane (as in the PuttingArc). Utley's axis of rotation is much more upright than that of the PuttingArc and the normal "shoulder stroke", and is a lot closer to the shoulder-turn plane of the full swing.
According to standard golf instruction, a "swing plane" really is a "plane" for movement of the arms and club.
According to Ralph Mann in "Swing Like a Pro," there is no swing plane, and the actual "path" never matches either the shaft plane or the "Hogan-plane" (line from ball to right shoulder). In the initial swing, the pro golfer takes the club back with the arms moved as a unit to the position where the shaft parallels the ground. At this position, the clubface is a little CLOSED. The pro keeps the "triangle" of arms and shoulders coordinated during the first third of the move to this point but then "separates his arms" from his body slightly going back to the shaft being parallel to the ground. (pp 17,80, 84-85) There is not much real "shoulder turn" until AFTER this initial takeaway is complete.
And moreover, the "plane" of turn of the shoulders in the full swing is not even close to the plane of swing of the club or the shaft angle -- the shoulders turn on a very flat plane, hardly tilted at all. I think in Utley's case, he is using a shoulder turn in a very flat plane that rolls his arms around on the side of a cone. He simply doesn't like using the shoulders to move the whole triangle, mostly because he doesn't understand how the shoulder stroke actually works vertically or on a tilt.
If you look at the INTERSECTION of the swing "plane" with the plane of the ground, the intersection is a LINE and not a CURVE. This means that in the full swing the clubhead moves up and back alright, but in a "plane" that is at all points and heights above the ground parallel to the line of aim. If this pattern were used in Utley's teaching, the putter would rise up and back alright, but the putter face would not fan open going back. What all this "swing plane" instruction tells me is that if Utley teaches a putting strokes that mirrors a full swing over the first third of the way to where the shaft parallels the ground (and putters almost never get outside this first third), then he is not accurately describing the full swing. The full swing over this region is a movement in a plane in which the club face does NOT fan open, but stays square to slightly closed. And the arms also do not separate from the body. In Utley's teaching, the arms separate, the left shoulder frame twists around, the arms rotate the hands and putter face open, and the putter head does not stay in a plane but moves around on a cone. So there is a great deal of confusion in this teaching. Basically, Utley's "miniature full swing" for the putting stroke skips the takeaway part of the orthodox full swing and jumps straight to the arms separating and to the shoulder turn.
DISCLAIMER: Whenever I have to go into detail about the differences of these stroke patterns, I feel the need to reiterate that I am not in one "camp" of the other (the Pelz straight-back camp or the Utley arcing-around camp). I teach how to putt straight. I don't really think Utley's method is the best way to putt straight, but I don't necessarily think every golfer should make a straight back stroke. I do think the stroke coming forward thru impact should be straight for 4-6 inches past the bottom of the stroke, and Utley does not teach this. His putter immediately curves to the inside at impact (see above photo). In this respect, whereas my putter face at least for a while after impact stays square down the line, I am in agreement with Ben Crenshaw, Phil Mickelson, and a small handful of others. The putter face of these guys stays very square immediately after impact and then some.
PUTTER LOFT
With respect to loft, most putters these days come with 3 degrees of loft. Scotty Cameron claims that his tests prove 3 degrees is required. I think this is poor science and poor thinking. Norman Lindsay in England (
website) offers proof that the best loft is the least loft required by the green surface, and I think he finds that generally to be around 1-2 degrees for today's good greens.
He designs putter faces with minimal positive loft on the top half and then negative loft below that, advising the golfer to impact the ball on the top half, but providing negative loft in case the golfer's swing rises too high. His center of gravity is LOW in the putter head, so he prefers high face impact with low COG and minimal positive loft for quicker forward roll and less backspin. But in the case of a too-high stroke, he has a backup of low face impact, low COG, and negative loft for quicker positive roll and less backspin. In the first (preferred) case, the high impact point plus low COG work to produce a vertical "gear effect" that rolls the putter face top-forward over the back of the ball. This effectively takes out the 1-2 degrees of positive loft, so the putter design sends the ball off with an effective zero loft or thereabouts. In the second (backup) case of a too-high stroke, the negative loft is relied upon. In neither case is there really much or any positive effective loft at impact.
In addition, I was asked a few days ago by Robert Bettinardi this same question and explained the above as my view. He agreed and told me he had recently been fitting players with 1-2 degrees only of loft and even in some cases with negative loft and had seen tremendous improvement in the quality of roll. So I imagine that at the Wachovia some players are just getting the message or figuring it out by themselves -- today's superfine greens on Tour just don't require 3 degrees of loft.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced putting instruction -- you're either in the PuttingZone, or not.
