When you hold a putter in front of yourself, in the sagittal plane, you must apply a set of hand forces or a hand "couple" to maintain a constant putter lie angle. The top hand pushes down and the bottom hand supports upwards ... a classic Class 1 Lever .. where the lower hand acts as the fulcrum while the upper hand counter-balances the weight of the putter. This hand force couple must be maintained as somewhat of a constant throughout the putter stroking to keep the putter head inline.

Putter shaft lie angles can vary between 70º to 80º ... with the 80º lie angle being the maximum allowed by the USGA and R&A rules. Obviously the 80º lie angle comes closest to a free-swinging vertical pendulum action.

When golfers are urged to apply a pendulum putter action, that stroking action must still accomodate the hand force couple at the putter grip. However the pendulum putter action is somewhat restricted by the hand force couple which is constant throughout the stroke. Of course the lowest hand force couple would occur with a putter lie angle of 80º .. closest to a vertical pendulum. Obviously if the putter shaft were vertical, there would be no hand force couple and only the dead weight of the putter need be supported and a near perfect pendulum too.

The question that arises from this analysis is how much more does the hand force couple increase when going from an 80º to 70º lie angle?

A simple cosine vectoring between 70º and 80º reveals that hand force couple loading will increase by almost double going from a putter with a lie angle of 80º to 70º. This suggests that the subjective feel of golfers with different putter shaft lie angles can vary greatly.

The questions I have of you Geoff is how is your gravity-sponsored putting stroke which depends on the visualization of vertical pendulum action affected by increased constant static hand loading to support the putter in it's normal lie angle, and, do you think that putters with flatter lie angles defeats the pendulum concept of putting given the substantial increases of hand couple forces for a mere 10º change in lie angles ?

Thanks

Dear Herbert,

What you say in your anaylsis of hand couple may be true, but is a little too mechanistic for what is really happening in the body, not simply the hands. Consider this:

A golfer bends over and hangs a putter with zero lie directly beneath his shoulders and with his hands and arms also hanging in the same vertical plane with the shoulders. He then makes a pendulum stroke that forms the lower part of a circle oriented in a vertical plane, with the lowest point of the circle meeting the surface directly beneath the center of his shoulder frame. The hand coupling here is minimal at the beginning, but at the very beginning of the stroke, the forces of handle inside grip are at the greatest to break static friction and overcome inertial forces. As the backstroke proceeds, the uplifting of the putter head at the end of the putter requires more than minimal hand forces to keep the shaft in line with the arms. But the initial propulsion of the putter head and shaft backwards from the address position gives the putter a momentum that reduces the requirement for hand coupling forces. The forces, once set in motion, and not resisted by the body, allow the golfer to some extent to "ride" the handle on its journey to the top of the backstroke. Coming down from the top of the backstroke, the golfer again is afforded the luxury of "riding" the putter handle back down to the bottom of the stroke. Anticipation of impact with the ball and the "recoil" (so to speak) as the putter head mass meets the ball mass and imparts momentum to the ball requires more than the minimum hand forces to keep the putter from staying behind in a floppiness as the hands and arms continue their stroke.

What actually happens in the "good" golfer is that in advance of the stroke his brain calibrates the maximum force required to manage the handle of the putter in the forthcoming stroke in all its particular varyings and then he sets his "grip pressure" at a level sufficient to handle these forces. The grip pressure is set and kept steady throughout the stroke. Even so, a golfer with a quicker, more violent stroke has a higher or tighter level of grip pressure. A golfer who makes a gentle stroke on a short putt can get away with pressure X, but if the same golfer makes a huge stroke for a long lag, his grip pressure will be X++. Over time, the golfer learns to use a one-grip-pressure-fits-MOST putts, and this level depends mostly on the golfer's tempo. In general, good golfers don't want the grip pressure to be more than a comfortable, workable minimum.

This pattern gets an extra complication when the golfer adopts the same setup with the upper body but holds a putter on a lie angle of 70 degrees, or with the handle 20 degrees back off vertical above the putter head. The golfer could still hang his hands and arms as before, directly beneath his shoulders, and form his hand to the axis of the handle by bending his wrists, or he could "reach out" his arms and hands in a straight line to conform the line of the forearm to the shaft and axis of the handle. If he uses the latter setup, he will involve his pecs and upper arm muscles in the reaching and holding out of gravity of the arms and hands. This arm tension will mask the extra hand forces also required by this setup. But even here, with the putter "resting" on its sole flat at address, the bottom rectangle of the putter supports and carries some of the "lean" force of the putter. At address, so long as the putter sole rests flat on level surface, the remaining "overlean" force of the handle is "not much" and the putter handle's tendency to fall back towards the body c an be resisted simply with a very small blocking of the handle with a single finger held stationary against the underside of the handle. because of this, I think your conceptualization of the initial requirements of hand forces for holding a putter of 70 degrees lie is a little exaggerated.

The MAIN requirement for hand coupling comes from the starting of the putter back from address, to "bring along" the inertial mass of the putter from motionless into conformity with the structure of the body in motion. If the putter head rests on the ground at address, there is also the overcoming of static forces. After this, though, the next "crisis" for the handson the handle is when the putter meets the ball.

But if you focus solely on the gravitational forces on the putter and body as the backstroke proceeds, there is a difference between setup A (hands and arms hanging vertically) and setup B (hands and arms reaching out to match shaft angle to make one line from shoulders to putter head) with a 70-degree lie. In the setup B action, holding the arms and hands out at an angle from gravity takes a lot more effort and tension to keep the shoulder joint angle the same and to prevent the arms and hands drooping back in towards the body than is the case with setup A. The mass of the arms and hands is FAR FAR more than that of the whole putter, by about a factor of five to ten times or more. So if you really want the least total tension in the arms and hands using a 70-degree putter lie, you will STILL hang the hands and arms naturally in gravity beneath the shoulders.

If a golfer makes strokes with a putter and starts with the putter hanging vertically beneth the shoulders and then progressively reaches the putter more and more out of vertical by extending the arms and hands away and more towards a horizontal "mummy walk" posture, what sort of forces are involved in keeping things out there? At the beginning, the putter swings in a vertical circle with the shoulders moving vertically, and this circle has atotal diameter of about 9 feet. As the arms extend outward, the shoulders continue to move vertically but now the action of the putter compared to the pivot at the base of the neck looks more like the circle that is the base of a cone with the apex at the neck, and the diameter of the circle shrinks as the arms rise higher. As the arms rise higher towards horizontal, the cone's apex angle becomes more acute and the circular base smaller in diameter. Eventually, when the arms extend straight out horizontally, the putter head is being held directly in front of the pivot at the base of the neck and at the same height as the shoulders. Making a vertical shoulder action now results the putter head following the base of a cone whose apex angle is totally collapsed to zero. That is, the putter head simply spins in palce about the line of its shaft in a vertical plane. Throughout thiis progression, the coupling forces of arms out from shoulders is increasing very dramatically while the hand forces needed to manage the putter's smaller and smaller stroke circles is decreasing. Again, it's a lot tougher to hold the arms out of gravity than it is to keep the putter held straight out of the hands in these different attitudes. Way tougher.

A Justin Leonard setup and stroke action requires a lot more tension in the pecs and upper arms than a Loren Roberts setup and stroke action.

In summary, a golfer making a vertical-plane shoulder action with hands and arms hanging naturally in gravity needs a minimal grip pressure to keep the putter extended away on an angle as the backstroke progesses, to prevent the putter drooping back towards the body, but I suspect that the bulk of this resistance is in the arm muscles maintaining the shoulder joint and the hands are more or less allowed to "maintain their posts" without a lot of extra work. "Riding" the putter-in-motion back and thru, once it is set in motion, is a great alleviator of the need for management hand forces. And with respect to the "hit" forces at impact, it is best to meet the ball with more grip pressure than the occasion needs to prevent "recoil" or floppiness of the putter head thru imapct, but the real secret is to make no flinching in the hands in anticipation of impact or a change in grip pressure to "manage" the hit. Less than the force required to avoid floppiness at impact is PREFERABLE to flinching, because "no change" in putter head dynamics at this point in time is what a straight putt wants more than anything, whereas there are 1,000 "bad" flinches that change the putter head dynamics for every one "acceptable" flinching action.

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Coach
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.

Hello Geoff .... Perhaps you could review this topic in the context of somatotyping, or 'body typing' .... because it seems to relate to how the arms are held in relation to the torso for different lie angle putters.

Would you agree that ectomorphs require a more upright lie putter .. whereas endomophs tend towards flatter lie putters??

Of course, there are ectomorph and endomorph golfers who prefer the opposite putter makeup... !!!


Thanks ...