I've been working with David Orr in North Carolina. David is an excellent golf instructor and he recently sponsored a putter fitting session with David Edel. According to Edel's approach, the shape of the putter influences aiming, and aiming flaws can be fixed by changing putters. But in your approach, training the golfer to aim accurately is the key. Does this mean that any golfer can be trained so that Edel's approach is not necessary? I would appreciate your comments.
A straight gaze (eyeballs directed perpendicularly straight out of plane of face, no angle down), plus skull line parallel to aim of putter (and line of throat matches top edge of putter face), plus head rotation like an apple on a stick (stick / axis of neck thru top center of head rotates in place without shifting), plus fixed gaze during turn of head -- together these run the line of sight in a straight line along the ground and the same line that the putter face aims down -- and use of the aim spot in field of vision (back eye) to identify location at end of head turn and end of the line along the ground reveals exactly what spot the putter aims at. This is true for any golfer with normal head, neck, eyes, and brain.
The point is that setting the gaze alone is not all there is to aiming. There is plenty of room for bias even if the gaze alone is good, because the golfer doesn't perform the other elements correctly. A coach has to watch each part of the process separately to make sure the golfer is doing it correctly, and the golfer has to learn each part separately.
And also, checking the aim of the putter face from beside the ball is not all there is to aiming either. There is picking a specific target to aim at and then sighting this line from ball to spot from behind the ball and walking up to the ball and placing the putter face behind the ball to aim it down that same line, and THEN setting up beside the ball and checking where in fact the putter face has been aimed. So the coach also has to watch to make sure that everyone agrees on the target spot, and that the golfer performs the aiming of the putter correctly. The coach needs to know where in fact the putter is aimed so he can tell a) whether the student really aimed it at the target or not, and b) whether the student accurately assesses from beside the ball where in fact the putter is aimed. The student can get one or both of these slightly off -- right aim, wrong assessment (bad); wrong aim, right assessment (ok); wrong aim, wrong assessment (bad); right aim, right assessment (ok).
But if the golfer can perform the whole process correctly and accurately, ANY golfer with normal equipment can and should do it.
Biases in a specific golfer only thrive in darkness. That is, it is only when the golfer is NOT aware of how to do it accurately that the bias is allowed to operate. If you have a left aiming bias, we should be able to diagnose the cause and prescribe the effective fix.
Whether David Edel understands the way biases function (in terms of cause and effect) is pretty questionable, because the neuroscience and psychophysics of human perceptions and targeting is fairly rich when it comes to discussing biases in perceptions visually and spatially and I have seen no indication that David is familiar with any of this research or body of knowledge. My conversations with him suggest otherwise.
My understanding is that David takes a "black box" approach to this -- first assess what sort of bias a player has (in his personal "darkness" of not specifically knowing what he should be doing), and then hand him putter after putter with different shapes until one shape helps reduce the bias more than another shape. Over time, David probably gets enough trial-and-error (black box without analysis) to say: left bias needs mallet; right bias needs blade -- or something like that. That approach to the problem is not designed to illuminate with great light the issues of
a) what is the reason for the bias;
b) what is the exact nature and extent of the bias;
c) is the bias really a consistent bias;
d) how would the shape of the putter have anything to do with reducing or even altering the operation of the bias;
e) does the shape of the putter consistently and effectively eliminate the bias or at least reduce it or alter it in the correct way and to a good extent; and
f) does the shape of the putter work to alter the bias in the same way and to the same extent to eliminate or reduce it to a consistent no-bias aiming or reduced-bias aiming that is consistently the same putt after putt.
Actually, David describes his process on his website Edelgolf.com pretty much as I describe it above. He writes:
"My approach to making your putter is simple: You shouldnÕt have to adapt to a putter, because it should already be built around the way you play."
"The Edel Putter Fitting process begins with this basic but crucial truth: everyone sees differently. Each golfer relies on his or her eyes to set up a putt, and most peopleÑeven PGA playersÑhave imperfect visual aim. And all the quirky putter designs in the world donÕt change the fact that every putter stroke starts with an individual set of eyes. So the Edel Putter Fitting process begins with an analysis of your visual aim. Then it uses a unique system of up to 30 million variablesÑhead, hosel, offset, lie angle and moreÑto specify a putter that will give you true aim."
"David will work with players collaboratively with you or on his own, for 30- to 45-minute individual sessions. He will do an extensive analysis of each playerÕs stroke and aim, information that will be helpful to you for future lessons with that player. Then heÕll use the 30 million possible variations available from his fitting kit to specify the perfect putter for each player, trying different combinations of heads, hosels, lie angles and more."
This tells me that David is not concerned about whether a specific golfer has a good setup and stroke. He assumes that fixing the aiming of the putter from beside the ball will result in better putting even if the golfer has a crappy setup and a crappy stroke or even if he is inconsistent with setup and stroke. The above also tells me that David's process for weeding thru the 30 million possible combinations is "black box" trial-and-error without guidance from an understanding of aiming processes or cause-and-effect. The two main premises of the whole Edel approach are that "everyone sees differently" and "You shouldnÕt have to adapt to a putter, because it should already be built around the way you play." Let's examine these assumptions a bit more in depth.
The idea that everyone sees differently is only true if the golfers are not trained in the use of their eyes and body to generate accurate perceptions beside the ball. If they are trained, they are all trained the same way and all see the same true, objective relationships between ball and target that don't vary from golfer to golfer. Golfer A with "seeing" A is not looking at a different objective reality of the relationship between ball and target and aim of putter than is Golfer B with "seeing" B. Nor is it true that Golfer A "sees" the accurate relationship between ball, putter and target objectively and that Golfer B also "sees" this relationship accurately, but they just gets these true and accurate perceptions using their eyes and bodies in different manners. What Edel is describing is Golfer A NOT seeing the objective reality when he uses "seeing" A and Golfer B also NOT seeing the objective reality when he uses "seeing" B, and neither Golfer A nor Golfer B is "seeing" the same relationship, although both are looking at the same objective reality. That's pretty safe betting, since over 90% of golfer do NOT see the objective true relationship when aiming the putter beside the ball.
The idea that the putter should "be built around the way you play" means that whatever stroke the golfer presents with, that is the stroke Edel will fit. This is exactly the problem with all commercial putter fitting systems. The correct way a "teacher" would go about this is first to fix the stroke setup and movement into a good or even optimal pattern, getting rid of flawed positions and motions that CAUSE problems in consistency or accuracy, and second, fit a putter to the corrected setup and motion pattern. You have to know cause and effect to do this as a teacher, and the golfer has to be willing to follow your direction. In commercial fitting operations, the operators have ALL learned NOT to tinker with a golfer's stroke or attempt to change the way he sets up or moves, because doing so a) adds a layer of work, and b) drives off more customers than it pleases, since golfers aren't coming for a lesson, and only want a "fitting" to use with their standard way of putting. It's like dressing up a chimp in a tuxedo -- the tuxedo may look great at the dinner party, but just wait until the dancing starts! David shares this avoidance of fixing golfers before he fits their stroke pattern, and said exactly this to me two years ago, with the reasoning that he had tried that and lost too much business fitting and selling putters so he stopped.
As to the 30 million combinations, that is not really true about the shapes of the putters. His system has six putter head shapes and nine hoseling patterns. The rest is loft, lie, length, grip, etc. All the head shapes are the same shape for the front side of the putter -- same heel to toe appearance, same size, same color, same alignment features. The only difference is in the "malletizing" of the back side of the putter head, the shapes progressing from the standard "Ping" look to a semi-mallet to a full mallet backside. Here's a picture:
I can't tell much about the hoseling's nine patterns but since they are all heel-shafted hosels based on the head shapes, it looks like the differences will be in offsetting versus straight-in hoseling. This difference doesn't matter much to aiming a putter unless you are not aware of aiming the face, and instead just "sort of" aim everything at once in your habitually flkawed manner. Then hoseling and eye dominance can bite you in certain ways (see Mike Shannon).
As far as Edel taking a look at whatever stroke the player has, he is using two video cameras and some software to see things like path and face angle at impact (pretty normal), and is using lasers to see how / where the golfer "usually" aims his putter beside the ball in relation to a target.
While it is pretty clear to me that David Edel doesn't really have a cause-and-effect understanding of how putter shape alters non-conscious aiming processes, let's suppose that he is onto something that will help non-conscious aimers using habits and biases with poor strokes. That's somewhat useful and valuable in today's world of golf! What the heck -- let's speculate a bit about these issues and try to get to some cause-and-effect understanding!
Biases are basically developmental, that is, they grow into the person over time due to certain peculiarities of the body or habits of using the body and senses to perceive visually and physically, especially with regard to locations in space. A person who lives at the beach has tanned skin, and a person who has a strong left dominant eye and side probably perceives straight ahead over and over and over with a bit of a left-bias tan in his brain and body processes. That is sensing where is straight ahead when standing erect facing forward (not the same as when setup beside a ball).
This sort of bias would affect sighting a line from ball to "somewhere" over there without clear definition so that the somewhere over there gets biased a bit to one side or the other. But that is not true if you have a specific target spot identified before you try to sight a line from ball to target spot: in that case, you have a true line and you either do or do not look down that line and connect the dots. If you are standing behind the ball looking at a specific target spot, sighting the line along between the ball and target, with both eyes open, and the dominant eye is biasing the perceptions, what perception is this biasing exactly? Eye dominance does not have anything to do with locating the ball or the target spot -- they are already identified. Eye dominance in this setting, however, may and probably does usually operate to bias / influence what the golfer "sees" about the relationship of the ball shape to the line between ball and target. (That's why people like to line up the logo along the aim line -- to eliminate or reduce this biasing.) But if the golfer uses the edge of the putter shaft to "connect the dots" of the ball and the target spot, looking along the edge of the shaft at the "line" on the ground between the ball and target, the golfer is one-eyed and does not have eye dominance anymore and can use either the left or right eye in this manner, and will always see only the REAL AND TRUE line between the ball and target without any bias whatsoever.
But that's simply interesting, when the question is what is the purpose for seeing this line accurately? The purpose is SO THAT the golfer can use this accurate perception of the line to aim the putter face thru the ball in a manner that aims the putter face only straight down this same line. So standing behind the ball seeing this true line is in itself not enough, because once the golfer starts to move in to the back of the ball, the location of his senses changes perspective and the perception of the true line may or may not persist long enough in an accurate form for the golfer to USE it when aiming the putter face. Some golfers are naturally more skilled at this than others and some golfers by practice and experience are better than others at this, but in general ALL golfers could use a little help in not losing the line when approaching the ball and aiming the putter face.
There are three approaches to helping out with this walking in and aiming the putter face: 1) walk the line with eyes fixed on the ball and the line in their unique relationship until the golfer reaches the ball and aims the putter thru the ball down the line; 2) walk up to the ball attempting to retain an accurate sense of the line and "reconstruct" perceptions beside the ball while aiming the putter; and 3) identify a spot on the ground near the ball (in front usually, about 4-6 inches) that is also on the line or some feature of the sphere of the ball itself that is exactly on the line (back dimple on equator, the way the shadow falls across the ball, the orientation of the lettering, etc.) while still standing behind the ball accurately sighting the true line from ball to target and USE one or more of these objective features on or near the ball itself once you are beside the ball aiming the putter thru the ball down the line. The only one that is obviously weak is 2), and between 1) and 3), 3) is obviously superior, but it doesn't hurt to add in 1) at the same time.
Dave Stockton Jr. teaches 1). Only very few people try to teach some form of 2) (I think David Wright has a version, and I've seen some others). I teach 3) mostly but also throw in there 1) as well. The whole point of my sight-the-line-to-aim-the-putter technique is to eliminate subjectivity in the perception process and replace it totally with objective reality perceived by consistent and accurate and true ("veridical") perceptions generated by accurate and consistent perceptual processes. I don't see anything in David Edel's approach that has anything to do with how the golfer's use of a specific shape of a putter will avoid or reduce any bias the golfer may have in the process of perceiving the line and aiming the putter down that line. In fact, he doesn't appear to relate aiming from behind the ball to problems aiming beside the ball, and these are two separate and different uses of the senses for aiming that need to be brought into agreement. David's approach focuses only on aiming beside the ball.
When a golfer uses a specific putter shape, he a) sees it, and b) he gets used to using it. The "seeing" of a putter head is a process of eye motions scanning the shape from back to front, toe to heel, with the eyes more or less randomly scanning the "object" for shape in a different way each time. The more you use the same putter, the less you scan it for shape. Eventually, it's just down there and you don't really look at it much. Here is a typical "scanpath" of eye fixations jumping around on a baby's face:
What is happening is that the eyes are darting about on the surface of the object from "important" feature to "important" feature to build up in a layering process a composite "understanding" of the appearance and meaning of the object. The process is described thus:
"When we look at something standing still, the focus point of our eyes moves from detail to detail in a motion called Saccadic Jumps. At each stop, our eyes take a snap shot called a fixation.
Every fixation is passed to the brain, where they are combined with others to create the stable image of the world that we see.
Although both methods use the same system of eye control, saccades, the difference in response time using micro-saccades makes smooth pursuit much faster vision.
Saccadic vision is our main form of learning about the world around us. We can create a map of the path of our fixations and saccadic jumps, known as a scan path. As this scan path (from Yarbus 1967) shows, we tend to concentrate on details we consider important. For example, the eyes, nose and mouth of someoneÕs face.
Interestingly, in certain rare cases of head injury where emotional attachment to other humans has been damaged, the saccadic map of the patient looking at a face is much more spread out, showing that it is a sub-conscious attachment to recognized and important details that determines the location of each fixation."
The main point is that the eyes in "looking" at a putter head shape will dart from the main features to other main features. These features are edges and contrasts, such as the leading edge of the putter face, the outer edges, the alignment markings, and the hoseling. More fundamentally, using the head and eyes to "see" where a putter aims is not really about "looking at" the putter head, but is more about orienting the head and eyes to the aim of the putter and then moving the head in a certain way so that the line of vision slides away from the putter in a straight line. The eyes are NOT moving when the head is turning.
Using a putter when aiming it is more about squaring the putter face up behind the ball in relation to the perceived direction of the target, or at least it should be. Golfers who don't really aim their putters or don't really aim them accurately are not using a well-calculated set of accurate perceptions, but are at the mercy of their habits and biases. Over 90% of all golfers, pros included, do not accurately aim the putter inside the hole on a straight ten foot putt. No one would intentionally do that, so obviously none of these misaiming golfers KNOW they are misaiming. They don't know because they don't know HOW TO CHECK the aim. They do in fact TRY to check the aim, but they don't know how, and don't know whether what they are trying is giving them accurate information. So they just ignore this problem and wing it. And never get any good at checking the aim of the putter. That's why Nick Faldo always had Fanny Sunnesson judge the aim of his putter for him from her vantage behind the ball looking down the line. By far MOST golfers aim off the true line and then make a compensating stroke.
I suspect that what David Edel is experiencing is that the shape of the putter is altering the stroke of golfers, and that what his "black box" trial and error experiences are really teaching him is that a golfer who aims left and misses left with a blade putter will probably make a more arcing stroke with a mallet and miss less to the left less often, or something along those lines. I doubt that the shape is really correcting an aiming bias. The hoseling may alter the aiming a bit, and also alters the stroking. A golfer who is right eye dominant and putts right handed and does not know about the way this influences his targeting / aiming beside the ball, and does not know how he sets up or how he turns his head to look targetward, is likely to aim to the outside of the target (right). Changing this golfer to an offset hosel MAY influence the golfer to aim more to the left. Part of this is the golfer's sense of the business / action of an offset hoseling as the putter moves thru the impact area, with what matters for face direction counting now sooner due to the fact that the hosel gets there sooner than the face. The golfer basically adapts to the hoseling with his stroke. With the sense of stroke changing, the golfer's sense of aiming the stroke also alters left a bit. He comes to expect a certain aim to go a certain way, and this is more left than it used to be. It is also remotely possible that the hoseling stretches out the "shape" of the putter (the visual experience of looking at it below the face) more in the front-to-back direction. In that sense, offset hoseling is a mild form of "malletizing" the total look. Stretching out the shape front-to-back may work with right-eye dominance in a way we don't understand to mitigate the bad influence of non-conscious eye dominance in aiming. Possibly putting part of the putter "back there" closer to where the right eye looks straight down makes a mild difference in aiming. Who knows for sure? Not me, and I don't think David does either.
To disentangle these issues, one would have to carefully assess Golfer A's aiming, and his stroking, before changing the shape of his putter, and then would have to carefully assess whether Golfer A with the new shape is aiming better or the same and whether he is stroking the same or in a different way. That would be interesting to see as raw data, but I'm not sure it would shed much light on why shape might influence aiming or stroke -- more specifically, why a DIFFERENT shape might ALTER aim or stroke as compared to the aim of stroke with another shape.
In terms of the visual processes of aiming with a blade putter versus aiming with a mallet putter, the visual system for spatial orientation of an object at a target off in space is mostly about adjusting lines, edges, and corners. The visual system sees "lines" as contrasts from side A versus side B of the "line", so a line is really an "edge" between light and dark. (A corner is just two lines meeting at an angle.) The brain has different nerve cells that fire ONLY or MORE ROBUSTLY when the line is oriented in a certain manner in space (i.e., straight up to the eyes, straight sideways to the eyes, diagonal to the eyes) and also has specific cells that that fire ONLY or MORE ROBUSTLY when the line "moves" across the visual field in a certain direction or manner. The visual system also has a certain "size" of its focus area (very, very small -- small enough to see a gap between the stalk of a little "i" and the dot on top of the little "i" in a telephone book or newspaper held at arms length, for example). Looking down at a "blade" is mostly looking at the edge that runs from heel to toe. Looking down at a mallet is more about seeing the fat blob between front and back. The aiming lines and the shape and visual appearance of the sides of a mallet matter more than these features do on a blade. The Zebra mallet has very strong, long, black parallel lines square to the edge of the face. The Bobby Grace "big-head MOI" putter has very straight sides and a strong central axis aiming bar. The Guerin Rife putter is a blend of blade and mallet (I guess it's a "ballet" putter) with the two outrigger parallel bars serving as aiming guides (this is more explicit with the Railgun putter and other similar forms of putter heads).
A completely different aspect of putter "shape" is the manner of the hoseling. A golfer "uses" a heel-shafted putter differently both for aiming and stroking (without trained awareness) than he uses a center-shafted mallet or even a center-shafted blade, and a heel-shafted mallet is different from a center-shafted mallet as well. Without trained awareness, the golfer is "sort of" aiming the sweetspot-off-the-hosel in terms of how he will habitually make the stroke. Most golfers implicitly aim their strokes-in-motion more than they aim their putters as static shapes on the ground. That's why golfers mostly aim to the outside and pull their stroke and can get away with it a lot by having the ball end up rolling down a good line (just not as often as they would if they were aware of how to aim straight and stroke straight).
If we focus on "changes" in aiming or stroking after a golfer used to putter shape A switches to putter shape B, we have to be careful to separate out changes in aiming from changing in stroking, and we also have to be careful to distinguish changes due simply to the "newness" or "differentness" of shape B in comparison to what the golfer was previously "used to" (and also just "how used to it" he was). A "honeymoon" change is more likely than a permanent change. Actually, to be really careful, you have to keep the golfer from knowing what it is you are trying to fix, or else he will show a "placebo effect" and try to aim better and stroke better because he knows that would suit your beliefs and objectives in trying out different putters. From David's website, it is clear this "placebo effect" is a possibility, as the golfer is shown that he aims poorly and then is supposed to be getting fixed.
All the above said, it is entirely possible for any normal human (regardless of eye dominance, habits or biases) to be trained to use his perceptions accurately to aim a putter (any putter, any shape) and to know pretty accurately where in fact he has aimed it, and then if the ball doesn't go that same direction, he also knows that his stroke is not a straight stroke. A putter that has some depth front to back is probably better for aligning the skull and neck to the putter square and for starting the head turn straight away from the putter face than is the case with a blade shape. On the other hand, a blade shape is mostly about the front edge of the putter face, and golfers can sort of fill in for the missing shape behind the putter with a sense of the starting line back away from the ball or a spot on the ground behind the sweetspot and the like. And with mallets, the shape of the sides and the alignment markings matter quite a bit, so all mallets are not created equal.
There is plenty to sort out and learn here. Let's do it!
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
This message has been edited by aceputt from IP address 24.172.12.154 on Oct 25, 2006 1:54 PM
Your response is a lot of time, effort, and words to discount something that you have not researched yet. I have fit around 1300 people with this putting method which is not at all a "Black Box" approach. We have had wonderful success with many students using this method. Does it work for everyone (after 1300 students I have some infromation to evaluate with)? No! Can it help? Yes!
All is not revealed in a website and the information on David's website does not need to talk about getting you into the right posture. It is about the fitting system. It is my RESPONSIBILITY as a teacher to check those things.
Chris Aoki developed this method of fitting with over 20 years of research. You have an enormous amount of research around the things that you believe in and probably many that you do not. Give this method the same type of respect before you discount it! Chris and David the respect they deserve by researching the system. Our academy is always open and available to do that.
I appreciate your website and all your research. We need more like you.
Regards,
Stan Sayers
Director of Instruction
McGetrick Golf Academy
Denver, Colorado
I hope you look again at whether I am "dismissive" -- I'm just determined to learn and understand. I say in the above post that it is probably a helpful way for lots of golfers not otherwise trained in the use of the eyes and body for accurate aiming beside the ball, and I respect David Edel and his work. But ... being relentless about the difference between plausible claims (even if the fittings have been deemed "successful") and reasonable explanations ... As Bertrand Russell has said: "Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise."
A "black box" method is a trial-and-error method not based on principles developed by science. A ""black box" method may be scientific in the sense that it is based on "research" into the experience over time, but it is not scientific in the sense that a theory informed by research is the basis for the technique. One science historian writes: "The term Ôblack boxÕ in both technical and social science parlance is a device or system that, for convenience, is described solely in terms of its inputs and outputs. One need not understand anything about what goes on inside such black boxes." Another says: "In science, a 'black box' is something that you know what goes in and you know what comes out, but you don't know what happens in the middle." American Heritage Dictionary says: "black box" : "1a. A device or theoretical construct with known or specified performance characteristics but unknown or unspecified constituents and means of operation. b. Something that is mysterious, especially as to function." A fitting method that changes the inputs (visual appearance of putter head, etc.) to change the aiming outcomes without understanding how and why the change occurs is a "black box" method.
According to Karl Popper, perhaps the preeminent historian and philosopher of science, "The only essential ingredient of good science is its openness to critique and revision. Moreover, in science observation must be informed by theory as there is no pure, disinterested, theory-free observation. [and] theories are not verified or validated, but Òevaluated in relative terms,Ó such as PopperÕs ideals of testability, openness to critique, and rationality. ÒTestability alone ignores the problem of identifying underlying assumptions,Ó so Òcritique by the entire scientific communityÓ and the force of rationalityÑa critical attitude concerning internal consistency, consistency with data, and consistency with other theoriesÑare necessary. Finally, a Òtestable, critiquable, and rational scientific theory is still uselessÓ without explanatory power, which ensures reliability and justifies the superiority of a particular theory even though it cannot be established as Òtrue." Einstein echoes this: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Hence, the word "science" does not mean "knowledge," but "useful understanding of knowledge." One dictionary says: "The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation [scientific method], and theoretical explanation of phenomena."
The need for explanation of how and why a certain process works is the essence of what a teacher needs to be able to convey, not simply some ad hoc technique he somehow stumbled upon, however debonaire and extensive the stumbling. If the research for this fitting process consists of trying shapes and other variables to get the aiming better over a long period of time with a great many subjects, and this ends up working for a great many golfers presenting a wide variety of different circumstances, but the actual explanation for how the fitting alters the aiming remains "mysterious" and cannot readily be explained, then that process is very much a "black box" process.
If Chris Aoki has 20 years of research into how this putter fitting system functions to affect the perceptions of people, I'd love to hear about it. I've never seen anything like this in any neuroscience or psychology of human aiming, and I've been picking thru the literature now for nearly 20 years almost exclusively to understand how the human visual system and spatial awareness system in the brain works for looking at putters and determining accurately where they aim. I'd love to know more about if and how the fitting system accomplishes what it appears to accomplish, and am perfectly willing to "research" this system to death to get at an accurate understanding of the how and the why. In the meantime, though, what I see does not appear to square with what neuroscience teaches me. Is there some theory or not? If so, will someone please share it? How does this system affect perceptions in a good way?
I would really appreciate someone explaning to me how and why the Edel putter fitting system is supposed to change aiming in a good way, so I can think about whether the explanation is reasonable.
Thanks.
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
This message has been edited by aceputt from IP address 75.177.5.154 on Oct 27, 2006 11:01 AM This message has been edited by aceputt from IP address 75.177.5.154 on Oct 27, 2006 9:56 AM
Great site Geoff....lots of great information and insight...Thank you for your diligent work and research....
As a fellow researcher...I too move cautiously especially when "another new trend is given birth"....
However I also try not to make bold statements until "All the facts are presented...not just a few...
Error..Edel's fittng is not based on 6 head shapes...and a # of hosels combinations...That is the Henry-Griffits system that David edel built for Chris Aoki...
Edel does not think everyone aims a mallet to the right and a blade to the left...he uses the word "tend" which means a tendency or it could..not "ALL" or that it does..
As a matter of fact the statement about the 30 million or whatever variations being not true...needs to be more accurately critiqued...Perhaps not 30 million but a lot!!!
Which you are correct is NOT 30 million...but in actuality according to the statistics department here at Campbell university, Professor Meredith Williams...24576000...
Thank you for your very well educated response to Damon's question...I agree perhaps more research needs to be performed before making such profound discoveries and bold statements....
David's website says: "So the Edel Putter Fitting process begins with an analysis of your visual aim. Then it uses a unique system of up to 30 million variablesÑhead, hosel, offset, lie angle and moreÑto specify a putter that will give you true aim." Surely, he's not counting length and lie and loft in his variables for "aiming" so he really means six head shapes and his hoseling. His specs page for ordering a putter lists nine sorts of hosels. His picture of hosels indicates, straight, bent, and offset in a few variations, but all hosels are heel-shafted. If you treat hoseling as either straight-in or offset, with six head shapes, he basically has twelve possible "looks" of the putter head.
I know David speaks of tendencies. But as they say, there are "tendencies" and then there are "TENDENCIES".
Damon you are keeerecht...Loft and Lie influences aim as well as hosel style "L" or "S"...as well as Length...Length because of how it influences Geoff's expertise of "gaze" ...line configurations and their variations....color which is a new frontier...for instance on my Edel a half line in black aimed witht he laser dead center...then we shifted to a red line it influenced the pattern to the right...Why? dunno...This is not my area of expertise..it is what it is? laser pointed straight everytime all of a sudden not pointing straight...voodoo...black magic...smoke and mirrors...I don't know I just don't know...BUT The results ..."placebo" as they may be..I can aim this EDEL Putter, and A PING MY DAY..that are perfect specs for me....
Geoff...any insight as to why lines placed in different locations or being different colors infleunce our bias?
David Edel thought you very highly of you and listened carefully to what you had to say during your brief conversation almost two years ago....
Aiming perception is really more about contrast. Color combinations have odd contrasts. For example, black contrasts strongly with white. Blue contrasts strongly with orange. Red contrasts strongly with green. These are "complementary" colors on the Color Wheel. Other aspects that affect perception of color are hue and saturation and proportion. (See Color, Contrast & Dimension. Also, take a look at some of these color combinations.
Cool or dark colors appear "in the background", while warm or bright colors appear "in front".
In the case of a "black" mark on a putter on a green, assuming the putter is gray metal, the black contrasts pretty sharply with the gray and the gray is brighter than the green, so the black mark is clearly perceived and is "in the background". That makes the mark pretty definite, and perhaps sensed as "closer" to the ground.
In the case of a "red" mark on a gray putter on a green, the red is 'warm" and does not contrast as sharply with the gray as the black, but is the complement of the background green surface. So perhaps the red mark sort of "floats" in front of the gray and the green shapes and is not as distinct in shape as the black mark. The color red is also one that attracts the attention, as in evolution it is very useful to pay attention to red things, as they are dangerous and/or poisonous.
Speculating wildly, albeit with some modest education in these matters, the sharp black, cool mark is perhaps more easily related to the target, both being on the ground, and no particular threat being posed by the black to detract from its part of a diad with the target. In contrast, perhaps the red is a bit egocentric and detracts from target consciousness, and seems separated and floating above the surface, causing a bit of a forced adjustment to relate the red mark to the distant target that ends up biasing the aim to the outside.
Just a wild guess. Despite modern neuroscience, the ad hoc principles of Gestalt psychology are still viewed as having currency, but this is not really understood too well. Color perception is more akin to gestalt than to "black and white" neuroscience.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
Using length and lie to adjust aiming is more interesting than using the putter head shape. If you are fitting a golfer who is not trained in the use of his head and eyes in how to "look" in a straight line away from the aimed putter face (all that's really required to "see" where the putter face is aimed), then using length and lie in the fitting process to "adjust" where the non-trained golfer "sees" is certainly one way to "adjust" where the golfer ends up aiming. (It's still better to just train the golfer in the use of the head and eyes, though.)
Length and lie are part of one issue: how far away (or where exactly) the putter head sits in relation to the head and eyes -- assuming the golfer sets up with the putter head flatly soled to the surface and adopts a normal grip posture of hands and arms.
Practically ALL golfers (not quite all but pretty close) have a head and eyes position in the setup that has the plane of the face angled up off horizontal (to the surface) so that the forehead is higher above the ground than the chin, and with the direction the eyeballs aim out of the face angled down the nose and cheeks 10-30 degrees instead of straight out of the face perpendicularly. If you now add to this situation positioning the ball closer in to the feet or farther out from the feet than the golfer's "usual", you will change the aiming. Length and lie changes alter how close in the ball and putter head sit in relation to "usual."
The head and eyes positioning described above for non-trained golfers ALWAYS will send the line of sight during a head rotation off the straight aim of the putter face on a curling path to the inside of this aim line. Golfers are not aware of this, but obviously unless they react in some way while the head is still turning targetward, or else at the end of the head turn their eyes will not be "looking" at the intended target. Ending up NOT looking at the target would be valuable information if the golfer understands it as such, and is merely trying to verify where the putter face aims (since he learns there is a problem that needs fixing), but that is NOT what golfers are up to when "aiming" beside the ball. Instead, golfers are attempting to "see" the relationship between the putter face and the target, and are trying to "point" the putter face where they "believe" the target is located. The trouble is, where they "believe" the target is located depends on HOW they look for it (this is where training comes in: to teach the golfer how to look for it so that what he ends up believing about the target location is in fact correct in objective reality). What ends up happening is that a non-trained golfer's line of sight during the head turn starts to run to the inside, he does not especially notice this as a problem, but he re-directs his "look" by either changing the direction of the eyeballs more upward to the left (right-hander) and/or by shifting the top of the head (and whole axis of rotation) back to the right to re-aim the face and eyes back to the "intended target."
These golfers are not trying to determine where the putter face is actually aiming; they are trying to "look" from the putter face to a pre-determined location on the ground regardless of where the putter face is aiming and then to adjust the putter face aim until they believe the putter face points at the target. Since they have a lack of clarity in the intent, and since they don't really notice the changes in gaze angle and the shifting of the top of the head in the head turn, these non-trained golfers are prey to variability in aiming caused by postures and changes that they are not aware of. The variations in gaze shifts and head movements cause distortions in the perception of where the target really is located, so that the golfer ends up believing he has the putter pointed at location A when it is really pointed at location B. No one's "belief" about where the putter is aimed or whether the putter is aimed at the target can be reasonable and accurate unless there is a basis to KNOW how to check the aim accurately.
Golfers want and need to know that the putter is aimed where it needs to be aimed and that if the golfer putts where the putter is aimed, the ball will roll where he is "looking." Otherwise, the aiming process will be hit-or-miss and streaky and subject to influences the golfer cannot keep track of. When you KNOW how to aim and how to check the aim accurately, you also know whether you are doing the aiming and checking correctly and accurately because you know HOW to do the aiming and checking, and this puts you in command of the influences consciously and protected from unconscious or covert influences.
Now back to length and lie. A non-trained golfer with the ball 10 inches out from the feet trying to aim a putter face straight at a target 20 feet away, with his eyes directed 10 degrees down his nose and his forehead also tilted up off horizontal by 10 degrees is in the following position and experiences the following as a result:
1. His eyeballs are directly above the ball and the endpoint of his line of sight is at the meeting of the putter face and the back of the ball -- otherwise there would be a difference between the gaze angle down the face and the up-tilt of the face chin to forehead off horizontal when looking at this spot on the ground.
2. A rotation of the head targetward with gaze set and unchanging that starts out being a "rolling" of the head and face with steady eye gaze about a fixed-but-turning axis of rotation (running from the center of the base of the neck up thru the head and out the crown or pate of the head) will necessarily curl the endpoint of the line of sight off the real aim line of the putter face to the inside.
3. The path that the endpoint of the line of sight follows off the true aim line to the inside is a curve of a very specific shape that depends solely and completely upon the angle downward of the gaze out of the face, such that the steeper down the gaze is angled the more sharply the path of vision on the ground curls off the aim line.
4. For a 10-degree angle of the gaze down the cheeks and nose out of the face, the exact curving path the vision follows along the ground will locate the endpoint of the "look" off the true aim line to the inside, on a curve that drifts farther and farther off the aim line, according to the "conics" of tracing a shadow as shown in this Java Applet for a sundial. This graphic shows a small stick and a sun or star shining across the top of the stick casting a shadow on the ground. The direction of the sunshine and the line of sight of the eyes are treated as the same for our purposes. To see what is "neutral", first set the "latitude of the star" to 0 degrees, the "latitude of the observatory" to 0 degrees, and use the down button until the orange and green lines and dots all agree in register or collimation. The aimline is the straight green line left and right. Then "animation" will show a straight shadow "dotted" line matching the aimline. The observatory for our example means that the eyes are the observatory. If the angle of gaze of the star / eyes is 10 degrees down the face, then the observatory will also be located 10 degrees off neurtal. So then, if you set the "latitude of the star" to 10 degrees and also set the "latitude of the observatory" at 10 degrees, and then activate the "animation", you will see the shadow of where the star shines on the ground trace a "dotted" curve next to the straight line. THIS CURVE IS WHERE THE ENDPOINT OF YOUR GAZE HITS THE GROUND WHILE TURNING YOUR HEAD (I.E., THE GAZE BEING DOWN THE NOSE CAUSES THE LINE OF SIGHT TO CURL INSIDE OFF THE TRUE AIMLINE). If you increase the latitude of the star (and keep the observatory the same as the star), the curvature of this shadow trace will increase. It is possible to calculate exactly how far off the aim line this star would "look" after 8 feet along the aimline or 9 feet along or 10 feet along etc.
5. If you located a laser beside your right eye aimed slightly (10 degrees) down your cheeks / nose with eyeballs vertically above the ball so that the laser shines on the ball and sweetspot of the putter to begin with, and then turned your head by rotating the axis of the head, the laser spot on the ground would trace a curve identical to the Java Applet -- curving off to the inside of the aimline in exactly the same manner.
6. But if you moved the ball further away from the feet, and increased the length and flattened the lie of the putter to reach out to this new position, while leaving the gaze angle the same 10 degrees down the cheek / nose, the golfer will be forced to tilt his forehead up higher to "look" at the ball and sweetspot of the putter to begin with. Doing this does not affect the shape of the shadow curve. You can see this by altering the "latitude of the observatory" from 0 to 10 degrees and animating, while the "latitiude of the star" stays at 10 degrees. Keep increasing the observatory angle to 20 or 30 degrees etc., and see that the shape of the shadow curve stays the same.
7. However, if the golfer keeps the tilt of his face the same and instead changes the direction of his eyeballs' GAZE by looking less down the cheeks / nose and more in the direction of straight and perpendicularly out of the face in order to "look" at the farther-away sweetspot at address, then the shadow trace of where his vision is actually moving on the ground during the head turn will get closer to a straight line that matches the true aimline. This is the equivalent of reducing the star latitude toward 0. A star latitude of 0 (i.e., no tilt of the gaze off perpendicular straihght out of the face) yields a straight movement of the vision along the ground.
The above is the sort of changes that occur when the NON-TRAINED golfer uses different gazes. Typically, people look down the noses all the time, and when they setup at address, they stay looking down their noses. Increasing the length and lie can easily redirect the gaze angle LESS DOWN THE NOSE and MORE STRAIGHT OUT of the face, and this runs the eyesight straighter along the true aimline.
Maybe some of this is going on in the Edel fitting process. It would be a lot less complicated if the golfer were simply instructed to look straight out of his face at address, and adjust his face tilt so that he ends up looking at the ball and sweetspot only with a gaze that is perpendicular to his face plane.
Even more "black box" stuff is probably going on when changing his length and lie with the non-trained golfer's vision running along the ground when "targeting" beside the ball. Above I said golfers are not consciously aware that their eyesight is curling inside off the line, but they react to get their eyes looking where they had planned on looking before they started turning their heads (i.e., at the target). Since the gaze down the cheeks mis-directs the eyesight curling to the inside, golfers react by changing their gaze more upwards and/or shifting the heads back so the top of the head shifts to the right (right-hander). The reulting "head turn" is NOT a rotation about a fixed axis like rolling an apple on a stick, but is a peculiar trajectory of the eyeballs and their gaze in space. Golfers are NOT EVEN CLOSE to being consistent with these combinations, even if they always setup in the identical postures with the same putter and the same ball position. All non-trained golfers just "wing it" because they don't know how the head and eyes in tandem are working!
The longer the putt, the more CHANGES in head posture and eye gaze are required to "get vision back to the true line". On short putts, where the golfer can see BOTH the ball and the target in the same field of vision while looking at the ball, seeing the target in peripheral vision, some golfers (e.g., Tiger Woods) ONLY DART THEIR GAZE SIDEWAYS to look from ball to target. They do this in an unaware manner because it simpliefies the confusion by eliminating the head movement. Plus, darting the gaze sideways is fairly accurate due to the presence of the corners of the eyes as a guide for where to go and to our being very used to standing up erect on the savannah surveying the horizon left and right. But once the putt lengthens so the target is not available in peripheal vision, the golfer HAS TO turn his face and head. How, exactly, does Golfer A usually "turn": his face towards the target? I can personally guarantee you that very, very few golfers actually are aware of the manner in which their head and face turns. For the vast majority of gollfers, the chin travels in closer to the lead-side shoulder as the head turn progresses. This MAKES THE CURVING OF VISION OFFLINE WORSE than it is due solely to the gaze being down the cheeks. Accordingly, EVEN IF the length and lie is changed in a way that gets the golfer to aim his eyeballs closer to perpendicularly out of his face, the non-trained golfer will STILL suffer from the mis-targeting caused by his peculiar head motion in "looking" targetward. If the golfer makes the same odd head turn with the ball located 10 inches out from his feet, and then repeats the same odd head turn when the ball is changed to a location 12 inches out from his feet, the mis-direction will worsen and the compensatory head and gaze corrections to get the eyesight back onto the aimline will also worsen, and will worsen MORE the longer the head turn continues.
Show me the golfer who can consistently handle these problems as they present themselves in different ways on 12 footers and on 23 footers, when he is not aware of his pattern of head and eye gaze postures and movement patterns and has no training about cause and effect.
One science historian writes: "The term Ôblack boxÕ in both technical and social science parlance is a device or system that, for convenience, is described solely in terms of its inputs and outputs. One need not understand anything about what goes on inside such black boxes." Another says: "In science, a 'black box' is something that you know what goes in and you know what comes out, but you don't know what happens in the middle." A fitting method that changes the inputs to change the aiming outcomes without understanding how and why the change occurs is a "black box" method. According to Karl Popper, perhaps the preeminent historian and philosopher of science, "The only essential ingredient of good science is its openness to critique andrevision. Moreover, in science observation must be informed by theory as there is no pure, disinterested, theory-free observation.Ó
Fitting a non-trained golfer by changing length and lie MAY result accidentally in the golfer getting his gaze straighter out of his face, but he would not know that or appreciate the cause and effect. Being non-trained, the golfer will not know what happens if he gets out of pattern and will not know how to fix himself. All good coaching enables the student to self-coach. Black box fixes may work great in some cases, pretty good in a great many cases, and may falter over time in a lot of cases, but they are never as good as the student getting real "know-how".
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and THEORIST
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
This message has been edited by aceputt from IP address 75.177.5.154 on Oct 28, 2006 4:56 AM This message has been edited by aceputt from IP address 75.177.5.154 on Oct 27, 2006 9:41 AM
Thank you for your expertise...What about different lofts? Line Configurations?...we covered length and lie...
I would agree that perhaps the fitting is bringing the non-trained golfer into a better "gaze and alignments not only with the eyes but also the wrist and forearm alignments necessary for sound stroke mechanics"
"Black Box" as it maybe...it is one hell of a "Tool Box" that David Edel has created that is at least better than "Duct Tape"
That sounds great! I also would like to know more about what appears to work, so I can understand the underlying principles and mechanisms / processes. Then we could improve the "Tool Box" and teach it better and apply the same principles and mechanisms / processes in other contexts.
Werner and Grieg in their book, How Golf Clubs Really Work and How to Optimize Their Designs (Jackson, WY: Origins, 2000), as reviewed in the PuttingZone, tested the effectiveness of a myriad of putter design features to see whether and by how much the features influences the golfer having fewer strokes. They found that practically no design features in putters matter much, with the exception of aiming aids. They did not separately examine the variety of available aiming aids.
Over the past two decades, I have been watching aiming marks pretty carefully, while also watching the effect of putter head shapes on aiming and stroking. These days, with the so-called two-ball putter and the latest configuration from Scotty cameron with an inside-curving alignment marking on the back of the putter head, things are straying a little into the land of the weird. Whenever these experiments crop up, the big manufacturers' marketing department start making claims for "scientific legitimacy" to back up the design experiments. Pelz claimed to invent his three-ball putter based on "visual science," but no one has ever read what science this is supposed to be, and a two-ball putter was pictured in the back of Golf Digest in the early 1970s about 10 years before Pelz "invented" his design. A one-ball putter was made and sold at the beginning of the 1900s. The Callaway / Odyssey two-ball putter of current vintage also has no real visual science behind it. Neither does Scotty Cameron's new design.
If we examine what is happening in the visual and physical experience of making a good stroke in a good way, and then ask what marks or shapes or colors on the putter would help promote what ought to happen and promote the doing of what ought to happen, then we would be engaging on worthwhile science to learn about good versus bad putter designs and to understand what makes the differences.
Just right off the top of my head, here are some of the features of the visual experience in making a good stroke a good way:
The putter face sits squarely behind the ball
The intended direction of the putt is straight the same way the putter face aims
There is an imaginary line from the sweetspot of the putter face perpendicularly away from the face that passes thru one dimple on the back equator of the ball, thru the center of the ball, and out the opposite front dimple on the equator
The putter head at the front looks like a slab behind a sphere
The white ball contrasts pretty sharply with the metal color of the putter head
The top leading edge of the putter face is at or close to the back of the ball
The top edge of the putter face is substantially higher than the back equator of the ball
The perspective looking down at the putter at address with the usual loft usually allows the golfer to see the top edge of the putter face and the bottom edge of the putter face as two parallel edges, with the bottom very slightly in front of the top (closer to the target)
The heel-toe size of the putter head is substantially larger in width than the width of the ball
With the sole flat to the surface, the flat top surfaces of the putter are in the same plane as the surface
The eyes are not moving
The gaze is steady
The attention is not visual
The eyes do not follow the putter head back from the ball
The peripheral vision sees the putter head moving back
The peripheral vision sees the putter head entering the impact zone on the downstroke
The peripheral vision sees the putter head moving past impact
The path of the putter back from the ball is either straight back or slightly inside and not across the line farther from the feet
The speed of the takeaway is slow enough for visual processes to track the object in space fairly easily albeit with peripheral vision
The putter face coming into impact usually retraces the path of the backstroke
The putter face is square again no later than just before contact with the ball
The putter face remains square briefly during impact with the ball
The rising of the putter face in the backstroke and in the thru-stroke tilts the top surface of the putter to the ground
The velocity of the putter head coming into impact is usually pretty fast and so noticing the position and movement of the putter head coming into impact is not very clear and accurate
If the eyes are able to see a need to correct the putter head's path or face orientation coming into impact, the amount of time to do anything about it is usually not sufficient for feedback-based corrective action (although faster feed-forward corrections that do not depend on feedback can be made)
When the putter returns to the address position and the lowest point in the verticality of the stroke arc, the putter head's top and sole are again flat to the surface of the green
When the putter head bottoms out in the stroke, the eyes are in the same position they were in at address
When the putter head bottoms out in the stroke, the shaft is usually vertical and obscures and transects the image of the putter head left-right equally (as in the SeeMore design)
In an offset hoseling design, the hosel arrives at the bottom of the stroke before the face of the putter head
In a putter where the hosel attaches back from the putter face, the putter face's leading edge arrive at the bottom before the hosel
In a cavity-backed Ping-style blade, the width of the cavity is usually larger than the width of the ball
At the bottom of the stroke for a square, online face orientation, the leading edge of the putter face is perpendicular to the line of the putt and the imaginary line thru the ball established at address
As the putter head rises past the bottom with a face orientation remaining square thru the back of the ball and persisting as long as impact persists, the perspective of the relationship between ball and putter face is changing by the rising and lateral motion of the putter head in relation to the still position of the eyes
Coming into impact and thru impact, the sweetspot of the putter hews to the line of the putt but does not cross it
The ball exits the visual appearance of the setup always the same way sideways square out of the visual appearance of the feet and the original appearance of the putter as aimed
.... much more like this.
There is a common stock of experiences out there based on what others have been trying in the past, but sorting out how these past efforts really work and whether they are helpful and how so is a tangled process. Instead, applying the neuroscience of vision, human targeting spatial awareness, and movement science to these features (and many others) to predict what would be helpful, based on the science understanding of why and how these things function, and then testing these theoretical predicitions with sound protocols, is what needs to be done. Anyone got some funding I can borrow? Or know a business honcho who wants to get some science done?
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
Would you agree that sometimes these new putters are creating a lot of "static" with all the funky shapes, lines, and colors?....How can one have "pure" aim with all the stuff going on like a busy street?
Absolutely! Visual clutter and odd shapes detract from aiming and stroke performance much more than help. The human visual system in the brain for motion and action and spatial awareness is essentially monochromatic and dumbed-down to stick figures -- just the basics. A Viking would not want to be reading magical runes engraved on his battleaxe while hacking his way thru the local peasantry.
There are different neural systems in the visual brain depending on the sort of use the visual system is being used for. The "information" pathway in the brain is also called the parvocellular or "what" system and the neural pathway runs along the "ventral" or lower side of the brain from the occipital lobe at the back where vision begins to forward sections of the brain for further use and analysis. This is the visual pathway that tells you the "dark oval" over there on the surface of the ground is a "cup" on the green. (Nobody really needs this info in putting -- duh!) The other neural pathway is the "action" pathway, also called the "what" visual system or the magnocellular pathway, and it runs from the occipital lobe at the back over the top of the brain (the "dorsal" pathway) to carry the visual signals to forward parts of the brain to be used for body action in response to the object or location. One of the lead neuroscientists for all this is Melvyn Goodale. He describes these differing visual systems this way:
"Two Visual Systems
In a series of theoretical articles, my colleague, David Milner, and I have proposed that separate, but interacting visual systems have evolved for the perception of objects on the one hand and the control of actions directed at those objects on the other. This 'duplex' account of high-level vision suggests that 'reconstructive' approaches and 'purposive-animate-behaviorist' approaches need not be seen as mutually exclusive, but as complementary in their emphases on different aspects of visual function. Evidence from both humans and monkeys has shown that this distinction between vision for perception and vision for action is reflected in the organization of the visual pathways in primate cerebral cortex. Two broad "streams" of projections from primary visual cortex have been identified: a ventral stream projecting to the inferotemporal cortex and a dorsal stream projecting to the posterior parietal cortex. Both streams process information about the structure of objects and about their spatial locations -- and both are subject to the modulatory influences of attention. Each stream, however, uses this visual information in different ways. The ventral stream transforms the visual information into perceptual representations that embody the enduring characteristics of objects and their relations. Such representations enable us to identify objects, to attach meaning and significance to them, and to establish their causal relations -- operations that are essential for accumulating knowledge about the world. In contrast, the transformations carried out by the dorsal stream deal with moment-to-moment information about the location and disposition of objects with respect to the effector being used and thereby mediate the visual control of skilled actions directed at those objects. Both streams work together in the production of adaptive behavior. The selection of appropriate goal objects and the action to be performed depends on the perceptual machinery of the ventral stream[i.e., it's a ball and a hole in the ground; roll the ball into the hole], but the execution of a goal-directed action is carried out by dedicated on-line control systems in the dorsal stream. [i.e., make a good putt]"
(Research in the Goodale Lab.) The complexity of some modern putter shapes and markings is a little like feeding liquor to a starving child -- it mostly goes straight thru while mixing up of the brain, but seems to have "calories" enough so that the starving child's hunger is masked while his malnourishment worsens. Remember, the inital response to the Scotty Cameron "Futura" putter was to call it a "potato masher."
The "usual" way of using the visual system for action is not the best way, and it requires some training in how to get the most out of the visual system (and when not to try to use it at all) to improve performance. The "usual" way is quick and dirty and ignores a lot of potential for better performance. The brain is so commonly used for immediate, short-lived, trivial tasks in everyday life (relentlessly, one after another, after another, ad naseum) [where's the pencil? -- there! where's the tip of the pencil? - to the right! let me pick it up - okay! done! now where's the paper? - there it is! where's the top line? - over there you clotheaded jerk! etc. etc.] that it "learns" not to bother with details if it can, and it also "learns" that most details aren't worth paying attention to. Here is how a neuroscientist who specializes in this one subject describes the human visual system:
"Department of Neuroscience - Research
Perception and the visual control of action - Eli Brenner
My group's research is concentrated on examining how visual information is used to guide our everyday actions. Beside this we study various basic aspects of vision (3D localisation, 3D shape perception, motion perception, colour vision), with a special emphasis on interactions between retinal and extra-retinal information. Our most recent psychophysical studies support the notion that different perceptual attributes are processed separately, and show that potentially useful combinations of sources of information are not made. The explanation for these missed opportunities is that the brain is more interested in getting a reliable estimate quickly, than in getting the best possible estimate. For perceptual judgements under laboratory conditions this may seem strange, but when we consider the conditions in which we have to make perceptual judgements in everyday life it is less strange. For our dynamic interactions with objects it is clearly not only important to make reliable judgements, but also to do so quickly. We found that subjects ignore potentially useful information if it takes too long to acquire. They also avoid combining different kinds of information whenever possible. Consequently they seem to plan different aspects of a movement, such as the speed and direction of a hitting movement, completely independently. This can result in quite complicated use of visual information to control actions, because errors in one aspect of motor control may compensate for unrelated errors in another. This research is integrated with that of Jeroen Smeets on Manual control."
Psychophysical studies of human shape perception have demonstrated a stick-figure minimalism in organizing parts into a whole when the visual system is action-oriented: Kovacs, Ilona and Bela Julesz, Medial-point description of shape: A representation for action coding and its psychophysical correlates. Vision Research, 38:2323-2333 (1998). Later follow-on research has studied the relationship between visual perception of borders-edges of a "figure" object and visual processing of the interior features of this object: Li Zhaoping, V1 mechanisms and some figureÐground and border effects, Journal of Physiology - Paris 97 (2003) 503Ð515.
The upshot of this is that complex putter head designs are visually a) at best wasted or b) at worst hurtful and distracting from the action of aiming and stroking in putting.
This is an example of a putter design (The Frank Thomas Froggy putter) that is "busy" not in a good way:
The number of boundary edges and the directions the edges run and the open interior spaces and the two eyeball shapes at the back are all very distracting and not helpful, according to the neuroscience of processing vision for action.
The complexity of this Futura design suffers from the same sort of unhelpful; busy-ness:
Note the hosel defining a point of visual focus back from the face and not centered drawing attention off the square face, the "aircraft frame" style dark holes front to back along the silver medial axis breaking up the interior and trapping vision in the holes, the overall sideways H shape front to back but with a D shape at the back in a concave semicircle that might scoop up the ball on the way thru, and the like.
As to the positive side of things -- designing a "pure" putter head design that enhances and promotes careful, accurate, instinctive, consistent aiming and stroking, it's a mixture of vision and movement brain processes. The message of neuroscience is that action vision and movement are part of an integrated process, so looking at the putter head while aiming it is also a mixture, and the aiming is partly visual and partly physical (in the sense of previewing how the movement of the stroke will progress in local space), and the aiming is not divorced from the actual stroking movements either but instead form and guide the movements.
At the "purest" extreme, there are putter designs without much complication, like this old George Low blade design:
No marks at all, just the idea of centering the putter head behind the ball for solid contact. But then there is the heel-shafted hoseling that complicates the visual appearance and the use of thetool away from this square-contact visuo-action. So simple nude is not necessarily good or good enough, even if less distracting than some of the "big-head" designs of today.
This very basic mallet design, with center-shafted hoseling, is interesting:
The sweetspot for solid impact coincides visually and physically with the hosel end of a straight shaft, and the hoseling is not displaced front-to-back from the business of the impact point; the top edge of the putter face is clean and clear; the front-to-back width of the top edge of the putter head has a nice rectilinear narrowness that keeps focus on squareness behind the ball; the "airstream" design of the outer boundaries on the sides and back of the mallet shape are simple and elegant and compact; there is good proportionality in the step-like progression of shapes on the back flange that serve double duty as alignment and stroke direction guides; there is a simple straight black line on the center of the flange that is framed on either side by a step-off shape that has contrasts, and this whole center of the back is about two-thirds the width of a golf ball so as to promote hitting a bigger object with the shape of a smaller but not-too-small object.
This is the general direction that I believe neuroscience points us for effective putter head designs.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction
This message has been edited by aceputt from IP address 75.177.5.154 on Oct 27, 2006 5:43 PM
Kudos to you Geoff ... excellent analysis and assessment of putter designs. I am particularily impressed with the Li Zhaoping paper on figure-ground and border effect on visual perception. Thanks again for that reference.
However wouldn't you agree that the current spate of new putter designs are just a marketing ploy to justify outrageous prices for what is essentially a 'poking' device that only performs over very short distances with very limited functionality?
As a purist when it comes to my golf tools, I see these new disparate designs as marketing-inspired Freudian design imagery with an animistic effect on the gullible golfer. "My toy is better'n yer toy!!"
As you and I know, the ball only feels the face of the putter and the vectoring of forces through the Centers of Mass. If you're more than 1/2 inch off the "sweet spot" yer a klutz..!! And as for aiming the putter, well that's got to be a +/- 5º best-guess effort on a 54" swing radius, and regardless of the putter shape or indicia .. and that's if you're good at it ... !!!
