When I putt the whole putter tends to move back and I tend to flip at it to get back to the ball. When I concentrate on trying to keep the butt end of the putter still and pointing at my mid section thru the whole stroke, the flip is gone and the stroke is "lighter."
The problem is that I do not know how to keep the butt pointing consistently at my mid section. When I do it, it feels like the putter has to come up off the ground more and my left hand rolls under. This roll under feels like I am closong the puttter and not sure if correct. It also feels like I have to bend my wrists.
Am I correct in trying to keep the butt pointing at my mid section and, if so, am I going about it correctly? Any other thoughts appreciated.

Dear bgolfing,

Where the butt of the putter points differs depending on how a specific golfer holds a specific putter, so it varies a bit exactly what spot on the body the butt points toward. But if you think of the putter shaft as establishing a plane that slices your body into left and right halves thru your sternum, this plane stays centered in the back and thru motion of the stoke. Often, the golfer will hold the putter so that the line of the forearms matches the angle of the shaft when the putter sole sits flat on the surface. In this case, the butt will point more or less at the bottom of the sternum. (This is why belly putters often get anchored there.)

The way to "feel" this during the stroke is to move the shoulder frame, not the hands. If the shoulders power the stroke with a rocking of the lead shoulder down and under and back beneath a stable neck line (like the top bar of a swing set, the arms plus putter as a unit being the swing that hangs beneath the bar), the hands go only where the shoulders send them. There is no independent moving of the hands farther or faster than where the shoulders send the hands. The arms, the hands, and the putter all get moved solely by the shoulder frame. The muscles that move the shoulder frame are in the midsection and the lower back, where the upper torso is connected to the skeletal frame of the lower body (pelvis and thigh bones). So the arms and hands stay relaxed at a steady-state grip pressure. Actually, the shoulders and top of back and pecs also share in the same "grip" pressure. There is a unified muscle tone that perfuses the whole structure of the shoulders, arms, and hands, and this muscle tone does not really change during the stroke, since these muscles don't move anything.

If the arm pits are opening and closing noticeably in the stroke, then the arms and hands are getting ahead of the shoulders. The same is true of wrist folding -- this means the hands are getting ahead of both the shoulders and forearms. The same can be said of the elbows -- any folding here means the forearms are getting ahead of the upper arms and shoulders. So the standard lore that advises you to "keep the triangle intact" is just a crude way of saying "move everything together by moving the shoulders only."

Another way to get a sense of this is to take a magazine or sheet of cardboard and press both hands flatly together to hold it in your putting posture instead of a putter. Then make a stroke that keeps this "plane" slicing the middle of your body back and thru.

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.

Thanks for the great reply. Alot of new and unique information, particularly the piece on the shoulder movement. I had always thought you moved the shoulders with the shoulders.
I am ultimately trying to get rid of the yips. I have putted with the claw for a few years but really want to get back to conventional grip. I have made up a version of the heavy putter and trying to use more of a shoulder stroke so hopefully all this will help.

Don't sweat "getting past" the claw grip. The useful benefit of this grip is that it tames the hands out of the stroke and keeps the stroke from "pulling" around the feet, and instead has the right hand shoving the left hand and arm vertically out and up, keeping the hands at a constant distance out from the shoulders in a parallel plane of motion with the shoulder motion. This converts what otherwise would be a gating stroke around the feet with off timing into an on-plane shoulder stroke that moves straight (and up) thru the ball on line in a manner in which the timing doesn't much matter.



The claw does this by precluding the pronation / rotation of the right hand and the supination / rotation of the left hand in the thru-stroke -- the action that sends the putting stroke inward around the feet in a pull (counterclockwise to the left and back, looking from the golfer's face down to the putter head for a right-handed golfer).

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist