Dear TIA,
That's a very interesting situation -- a transitional perplexity!
"Stance" means different things. What really matters is the alignment of the shoulders, not so much the alignment of the feet.
An "open stance" can mean either the line of the feet (and hips) is "open" to the target line (instead of parallel or "closed"), regardless of the alignment of the shoulders, or that the feet and hips are "open" and so are the shoulders.
Let me address the latter, as that is most likely the one that most people really mean when they say the "stance is open".
Jack Nicklaus 1972:
When the shoulders are "open" to the target line, this means that the arms must act independently of the torso / shoulders, either in a coordinated way or mainly by moving one arm and the other sort of rides along. When you "move" an arm independently of the shoulder, the armpit evidences the independence by opening / closing during the back / thru action. (If you "move" the hand-on-forearm only, this is accomplished by the elbow joint opening / closing, and the upper arm is motionless. A more complex combination has independent contributions of both the shoulder joints and the elbow joints, and possibly the wrist joints also.)
In the case of Jack Nicklaus, he mostly uses his right hand by moving his right upper arm and elbow to "piston" the right hand down the line away from his torso along a path that is not the same as or parallel to his shoulder alignment. The right elbow also extends a bit during the stroke. The left hand and arm more or less go along for the ride. There is some shoulder rocking that results from pistoning the right arm first back and then out away down the line, but it is incidental and not especially learned for performance accuracy and repetition.
The brain in this situation is focusing on the repetition of the stroke motion and moving the putter head square away down the "line" between the ball and the target. The angle away from the body of this non-parallel target line is always the same, and the angle that the right elbow proceeds out and down this line away from the torso is always the same, and the setup "stance" is always the same.
Jack Nicklaus about 25-30 years later:
The point is that a golfer can get very sharp with the very same setup and stroke motion in order to send the ball straight away wherever the putter face aims at address. The reason I teach a square setup and a straight sideways parallel out of the setup / stance putt path in relation to the torso is to take advantage of certain symmetries of the body-in-space that the brain knows very very deeply. But let's talk more about why some golfers like and use an open stance despite these apparent advantages.
In my experience, the main reasons golfers use an open stance are two: 1. they personally "see the line" more easily than otherwise, and/or 2. they are cross-dominant golfers with eye dominance opposite hand dominance. Either of these circumstances leads the golfer over time to "comfort" using an open stance, and this "comfort" is the brain's being used to the relationship between the stance and the torso / arms posture and the intended line of the putt and the forthcoming / executed stroke motion. As a golfer in a "transition" from the "comfortable" stance to something else, you doubtless are experiencing a bit of "discomfort" or "weirdness" or "disorientation" or "crampedness" or "forced feeling" in a square setup, and this out-of-kilter orientation at address results in a different feeling of what happens in the stroke motion.
The way I explain this is to say that cross-dominance really has a taint of sidedness, where the eye side is more involved in targeting than otherwise. For example, a left-eye golfer who putts right handed "feels a need" to keep the left side of the torso "active" in relating to the target. If he sets up "square", the left side cannot relate to the target. Squared up to the line, he can still use the head and eyes to "see" the target okay, but the feeling of readiness to make a stroke at the target with the upper torso and arms is not the same. When this golfer opens up with his stance and shoulders, he feels more "connected" to the target and the target line and more "comfortably" ready to make the appropriate stroke motion at the target from this different postural orientation.
Personally, I want to retrain these golfers so that they can in fact use the advantageous symmetries of the body-in-space, by showing them a different way to target accurately beside the ball and also a different look and feel for a stroke that is straight away sideways out of the setup. But in the transition, it helps if golfers know why they feel awkward when squared up to the line -- the left side (shoulder and chest to hip) is in a claustrophobic coffin that wants the freedom to open up and relate to the target.
The two "reasons" that lead golfers into this comfort and preference are not really thought-out choices and are not really as good as it can get, and so I encourage these golfers to try a different approach. Are you cross-dominant? Do you feel you see the line better with an open stance? Do you feel a little cramped in a square stance?
Now, when you mix in the belly putter, you make the transition from open to squarte even tougher. The belly putter "naturally promotes" an inside-square-inside stroke for the putter, and this stroke in turn promotes either an independent armsy action or a whole-torso twisting of the shoulders that "moves" the belly putter this path. A golfer who has learned a comfort with an open stance would therefore get a "pull" putt direction unless he deliberately manufactures a "push" to counter this setup mis-match with the belly putter stroke path. Nicklaus' stroke is a "piston push" along a path not parallel to his shoulders or stance but angled away from it.
However, I have to say that I don't really think the "default" stroke path of a belly putter is a good one. I personally teach a stroke path that may or may not come inside in the backstroke, that resqaures coming forward back to the address position, and that then stays straight for a modest distance thru impact and a little beyond. This is also what I recommend to people using long putters and/or belly putters. I call this sort of stroke for belly putters the "shut up" stroke, because the putter coming forward from an inside backstroke has to "shut" back to square like a door shutting back to the address position and then the putter head needs to go "up" and away straight down the line instead of continuing to "shut" past the initial address position. If you used this sort of stroke with your belly putter, you would not have the inside-square-inside path "commanded" by the way everyone thinks about the belly putter and you would also not have the sense that the open stance necessitates a "push" action. Either way, you are putting down the same line, but in my approach the part of the path beyond the immediate first contact with the ball is CONSISTENT with the intended direction of the putt, while the usual belly putter inside-square-inside stroke just after contact with the ball is INCONSISTENT with the intended line of roll. The inconsistency is where the sensation of the "push" comes from.
Jack Nicklaus, I am very sure, does not have a sense of inconsistency of line of stroke and line of putt. It is doubtful that he even retains much of a sense that he is "pushing" his stroke away from his torso, as he has by now just "grown into" this stroke and doesn't regard it as anything other than the usual straight down-the-line stroke.
So, for you, if you have a sensation of a "push" stroke when setup open, that's pretty normal and good. If you have the sensation of "push" when setup "square" however, as you mention "blocking" putts from the square setup, then that is probably because your body knows that the "left side" access area between the open shoulder and the intended line is now gone and not available for your past-impact gating back to the inside. So subconsciously you are avoiding letting the putting stroke go into that old open yard for the finish of the stroke. I would recommend rethinking the belly putter stroke more into a "shut up" path that resquares when the putter returns to the address position coming forward and then the shoulders and arms help the putter head rise straight thru impact down the intended line a bit. The emphasis becomes watching and timing the return of the putter face to square before impact always in the same location and with the same timing. If you setup to a putt and then had a pal scrape a line on the ground at the bottom of your putter face at address, you would focus on returning the putter face exactly flush to this line before starting into and thru the impact zone.
If you work on this approach, your stroke will alter in your body into a more "shut up" comfort and the sense of a "block" action should go away.
Let me know if this helps.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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