Dear Andrew,
I have read this before and am familiar with the main study that supports sidesaddle style (by Dr Gideon Ariel). (There are links on my website about all of this, in the science section.)
The claim that "golfers" putt 68% better with face-forward style putting really means that "the golfers we tested, who were not very good putters to begin with, improved a lot from being taught a specific style of putting, whereas before they did not really have a style for good or bad putting, and just having one specific procedure or physical manner for putting by itself causes a huge improvement, and in addition almost NO golfers are properly trained in how to see accurately from beside the ball where exactly their putter is aimed, so avoiding that problem by getting these golfers to face forward when they putt acts as a bandaid that covers over that problem, but does not really decide whether sidesaddle aiming is as accurate as or better than the aiming of a conventional-style golfer who is properly trained how to aim sideways along the ground when standing beside the ball and starting out facing the golf ball."
So, while there are TWO aspects of sidesaddle putting to discuss separately --
1. whether the single arm action swinging forward is better than two arms swinging sideways, and
2. whether face-forward targeting is better than side-on targeting
-- neither of these issues has been effectively decided by science. There is no scientific study that COMPARES a properly-trained conventional putting stroke movement to a properly-trained sidesaddle stroke movement in terms of repeating accuracy. And there is no scientific study that COMPARES a properly-trained conventional side-on aiming with sidesaddle face-forward aiming for repeating accuracy.
For aiming:
The Ariel study indicates: "The study also confirmed the added visual benefit of looking directly down the target line before making the stroke. This is the only head position that lets us use our binocular vision for depth perception during the actual stroke... a prerequisite for accurately seeing the line and calculating pace." This is not a correct and complete view of how the brain targets and uses "binocular vision" in the process along with other body and visual cues. Binocular vision is available to the conventional golfer for aiming from beside the ball sideways when he turns his head and face to look along the ground all the way to the target. Binocular vision is not the sole source of "depth perception" either, but depth perception is not all that important for seeing a direction accurately. Depth perception is about "comparing" the relative distances of several objects in view, and not about sighting accurately at one object. There are many other factors about accurate targeting that comes from other aspects of vision and from the orientation of different parts of the body in relation to the target. While physically "facing" the target with the body is generally a plus for targeting, and this is not at all visual but physical, the whole idea of using a 180-degree wide field of vision to get a good bead on a single straight-ahead direction is pretty iffy from a visual point of view. Most people just aren't that good at "facing" straight ahead and coordinating their physical sense of straight ahead with their visual locking on to a target they believe is also straight ahead. Most people are off a bit to the same side as their dominant hand or eye. In comparison, a well-trained golfer who has learned how to run his line of sight in a straight line sideways along the ground with correct physical procedures (straight-out gaze and apple-on-a-stick head turn) and who can also make that line on the ground be the SAME as the line the putter face points along (by setting the throat line to match the leading edge of the putter face), will use only a single fixed point in his field of vision with only one of the two eyes to follow the line along the ground to the ending spot on the ground, and this single spot is EXACTLY where the putter face aims. This technique is purely thoughtless and mechanical and totally free of human bias from eye or hand dominance.
Another point worth making is that the claimed benefits of sidesaddle putting need to be thought about separately in time. Does the golfer have to face forward AT THE SAME TIME he makes the sidesaddle stroke? The sidesaddle advocates seem to believe that facing forward at the time the stroke is being made is part of the reason the aim STAYS good and the stroke follows the good aim. This is a pretty questionable assumption. Looking at the target WHILE making the stroke requires that the golfer does NOT look at the ball while making the stroke, and this is not the best idea for making solid straight impact. I believe that many golfers who use sidesaddle style try to have their cake and eat it too by getting the eyes BEHIND the ball so they can see both the ball and the target while facing forward and WHILE making the stroke.
A well-trained golfer who knows my technique for side-on aiming ends up in the position where he KNOWS the putter face aims straight at the target, and so he also KNOWS he does NOT have to see the target or face the target or even think about where the target is located when he makes the stroke. he simply putts where the putter face is aimed, since he KNOWS the putter face aims at the target. If he ever wants to know where the target is located, he looks at his putter to find it. This frees that golfer to pay attention to making a stroke movement that rolls the ball exactly where the putter face points, which is a lot simpler than trying to send a ball across many feet of green to make it travel at a distant target. In my approach: aim well, forget it, putt straight, every putt exactly the same. This is a lot less mental load than "aiming at a target" AND trying to roll the ball at the "target you're still looking at." And finally on vision, when facing forward with two eyes open, the golfer is not really using two eyes to sight a line, and is only using the dominant eye to see what is straight to the target. If the line of sight from dominant eyeball to target does not pass thru the ball on the way, that golfer has a "skewed" view of the total situation.
For stroke movement:
The Ariel study indicates: "It reduces the number of body parts necessary to produce a consistent pendulum stroke by 50%. It takes advantage of the hinge at the shoulder joint that naturally allows the arm to swing back and forth in a straight line. From the sidesaddle position we can better utilize our right or left sidedness (or handedness)." The point about the hinging action of one shoulder being better than the sideways action of two arms is questionable. A single shoulder joint has a VERY LARGE number of directions it can swing and the fact that the socket is so well lubricated tends to conceal from the golfer exactly which direction the shoulder is moving. In comparison, the shoulder FRAME in a two-arms shoulder rocking CONSTRAINS the direction of the stroke to match up to the alignment of the two shoulders and the shoulder frame as a whole, if the golfer is properly trained (hardly any are). Ben Crenshaw and Loren Roberts and many great putters all take advantage in one way or another of the shoulder FRAME as a whole helping get the direction of the stroke straight by having the shoulders parallel to the aim line during putter impact thru the ball, to send it down the line. The sidesaddle style puts all the weight on hand-eye coordination to MOVE the putter head along the same line the TWO EYES are looking. I would rather learn how to setup square and forget the hand-eye problem for movement and always putt the same way trusting my physical posture to handle what is straight for movement.
So, all together, sidesaddle will undoubtedly help many poorly-trained golfers do better than their current skill level for targeting, and perhaps also for stroke movement, but that really depends on the individual first physically in terms of their eye and hand dominance and their general ability to face straight ahead and coordinate hand-eye motion to match this, and second in that person's existing skill level with the conventional style of aiming and stroking. But it is probably NOT as good for aiming accuracy as a well-trained aiming technique from beside the ball, and separating the aiming from the stroking is also a better and simpler way to stroke straight, the same action visually and physically ever time regardless of target location.
The rest of the stuff in the document (not the claims about superiority and effectiveness, but the discussion about reading putts and controlling distance and games and drills) is mostly junk, the usual stuff slightly tailored to the recommended putting style. The claim that facing the hole and "looking at the hole" while making the stroke will improve distance control does not get the real reason this helps so-so golfers do better with distance control. The real reason is that the brain reads the body-posture information when the head and neck and face orient themselves to aim out along the ground a certain distance at the target location. The ONE posture that corresponds to pointing the face at the target in comparison to standing normally is read by the brain and used to KNOW physically what the distance is. the same "brain-reads-the-postural-difference" information is available in the conventional side-on targeting when the golfer rolls his head and face with the neck to look sideways from ball along the ground all the way to the target. Once he does this, he is free to look back to the ball for the stroke, and his brain gets a second dose of the same distance in physical terms. So conventional style gets TWICE the benefit of facing the hole without the problem of NOT looking at the ball during the stroke.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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