Hi geoff

I came to one of your clinics in the UK last year.

What are your thoughts on the article in Golf Digest this month (May, page 60) -- "The secret to lagging: switch to your full swing grip for long putts!"

Cheers

John Watson
PGA Avanced Professional

Hi John,

Nice to hear from you! The GD article is below with my comments interspersed in brackets [ ]:

The Secret To Lagging

Switch to your full-swing grip for long putts

By David Leadbetter
Golf Digest Teaching Professional
Golf Digest
May 2007

When you're facing a long lag putt, you need feel to roll it close to the hole. This is not always easy to achieve when using a conventional, one-piece pendulum-like stroke. Because of the way you grip the putter, the club, arms and shoulders move in unison, and the hands and wrists stay passive--more suited for short and medium-length putts. You need some wrist action to create feel to hit long putts close.

[Not at all. You need timing for distance control, and the concept of "feel" here is vacuous in the extreme. Wrist floppiness does not create anything called "feel". It's just that Leadbetter does not want to experience the same sort of "feel" with a shoulder stroke. "Feel" as used in this article is a product of associating handsiness with "control" when in reality the control comes instinctively from targeting plus timing consistency, and there is no need to have any conscious "registration" of a sense of "feel". This sort of "feel" is for frady cats who don't trust their instincts to timing. So long as Quasimodo, in his crippled, hunch-backed, tortued and "feel"-less body adheres to a well-learned tempo, he can have as good or better touch than handsy golfers without any "feel" at all.]

Here's a tip I learned from longtime student and superb putter David Frost. Take your normal putting stance, but switch to your full-swing grip.

[From WHAT grip? Presumably the ever-present "reverse overlap" grip designed and intended to prevent left-wrist breakdown thru impact. To WHAT? Presumably the interlocking grip or the pinky overlapping grip. What do you say if someone uses a ten-finger baseball grip for the full shot, or uses left-hand-low for putting?]

This will automatically give you more wrist action in your stroke [And how is that? It doesn't do anything of the sort. The wrist action in the full swing is a completely different and more complicated sort of reaction to the forcxes of the swing and don't get in full gear until fairly well along in the swing. leadbetter teaches a deliberate wrist cocking at the 9-o'clock position, which I believe is a lot earlier than many other teachers. Even so, the hands are quiet in the full swing until well after the size of nearly all putting strokes, even long one.] and encourage much better feel [Meaning a sense of action in the otherwise quiet and inactive hands]. On a long putt, there needs to be a release of the left wrist (a cupping) just after the putterhead makes contact with the ball [According to who? Why? The sense of "release" here is slightly different from that used by others. Others basically mean some softness in the left wrist that stops a bit short while the putter head keeps going -- a "professional" left-wrist breakdown. Leadbetter amends the usual meaning to merely a "cupping" in a way that sounds like a good Hogan hands action in the full swing, and distances it from the usually poisonous notion of left-wrist breakdown.]

With most shots, wrist action is an essential ingredient for feel, and I believe adopting this grip change will improve your touch. You'll get those long lags close enough for an easy two-putt.

Altogether, "feel" as used in this little tip is nothing more than awareness of hands-in-motion by virtue of some change in wrist position. No magic fluid infuses the hand tissues with distance awareness and control. Even if you deliberately draw awareness of the hands into mind by virtue of changing wrists, the hands have to be USED to express distance control or else we are just pretending to talk about something real. For the hands to become expressive and active in controlling distance, the hands have to contribute positively to the velocity of the handle into and thru impact. That could happen, as in a wrist lever whipping faster into impact. But that's not what is being describe here. What Leadbetter appears to mean, in this very vague passage, has something to do with a more centrally imbedded sense of movement, more of a relationship with the target as a spatial destination. I'm sure Leadbetter wouldn't think in these terms, but there is definitely something in the brain about a sense of "action" and a sense of spatial location as goal for the action. So "activating" the hands may simply be a form of engaging this "action"-based spatial consciousness. The truth seems to be, however, that animal "touch" is a non-conscious process, and whatever is happening at a conscious level is usually only hurtful or detracting and not supportive. There is a small possibility that conscious awareness of hand movement may serve as an intention-focusing agent, and by that means vest the non-conscious processes with a little peace and quiet from the conscious mind.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
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The putting stroke can be thought of a simple pendulum with a single pivot point located approx above the sternum.
The full swing in its simplest form can be thought of as a double pendulum with two pivot points, wrists and sternum.

With two pivot points (full swing), you are trying to coincide or "time" the peak speed of the wrists with the peak speed of the arms/shoulders.
(When your wrists reach peak speed prior to the arms/shoulders/body peak speed, you are "casting" or executing an "early release".

The ratio (as discovered by John Novosel tourtempo.com) of backswing time to downswing to impact time for a full swing is 3:1.
Later, Novosel discovered that for putting, the ratio was 2:1.

The difference in ratios is due to the second pivot. The putting stroke, having a single pivot, is simple and repeatable.

The GD article is promoting the use of wrists in the putting stroke for long putts.

This is not a good idea as Geoff says. Simpler is better. Why introduce a second pivot and then try to "time" the hit with the releasing wrists and arms/shoulders. Since for putting, the backswing/downswing to impact ratio is 2:1 and the full swing is 3:1, a golfer would be changing his/her "core putt" timing to use the wrists in the putting stroke. Bad idea. I believe that Dave Pelz has also suggested using wrists for extremely long putts.

dean

Dear Dean,

That's correct about Pelz. Although on the one hand he shows that "feel" is largely illusory by putting with large mittens on his hands, he also recommends what he calls a "chip-putt" for long lags.

Moreover, the "release" in putting is not really limited to long strokes, but is something very many players try to learn and use for all putts.

You correctly observe: "With two pivot points (full swing), you are trying to coincide or "time" the peak speed of the wrists with the peak speed of the arms/shoulders. (When your wrists reach peak speed prior to the arms/shoulders/body peak speed, you are "casting" or executing an "early release".

What usually happens is that the arms and hands slow while the momentum of the clubhead continues apace, resulting in the left-wrist breakdown that is the same as the "casting" you mention in regard to the full swing. (Note also that it is NOT POSSIBLE to have a "release" without deceleration of the hands and arms below the velocity of the clubhead.) For amateurs, "decelerating" the putting downstroke goes "hand in hand" with flipping the left wrist thru impact.

So why in the heck do pro players want a "release" that complicates the timing and accuracy of their putting strokes?

I think it is a sop to psychological fear, and not at all about "feel" because these players aren't using "feel" to slow their arms and hands at or near impact in a way that gives them true control over distance via the velocity of impact of the putter head against the ball. That's just pure bull. What really happens is that this "whipping" lever action thru the impact area clouds the velocity of impact and often as not results in TOO MUCH "hit" velocity.

If you tested a "release" putter versus a "dead hands" putter for the precision of touch over a wide range of putt lengths, I would bet the "dead hands" putter would have a tighter pattern on the hole for distance, with a smaller standard deviation.

I was experimenting yesterday with the sort of release David Leadbetter describes, to try to discern what possible benefit the brain and body might be gaining from this "whipping" action. The only thing I could imagine it might help with is avoiding a pull path, in order to roll the ball "more out and away" from the center of the stance than otherwise, which is exactly what many poorly trained putters can use as a bandaid for their stroke paths. In other words, the "release" actually serves as a corrective to OVERCOME what otherwise happens if the golfer is trying to putt on an arc that gates back to the inside immediately after the one shining moment of squareness. the release then would prolong the clubhead moving square and straight downline despite the golfer's intentions otherwise.

As I've said before, the "release" is a gimmicky way to leave the putter head to its own momentum-sponsored trajectory, constrained by the pivot and the shoulder frame alignment. You don't need or want this gimmick if you really have insight into the fundamental.

Cheers!

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

Visit the new PuttingZone Blog for podcasts of putting tips:
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I wanted to amplify the above post in three main ways.

First, a "release" also speeds up the action thru the impact zone, so a possible use or benefit is to "get the impact over while the getting is good." That means the golfer senses that he has returned the putter head to square just before contact with the ball and wants to hurry up the impact phase while the putter is still square. In my experience, this only works out well so long as the "release" happens when the sole of the putter is traveling flat to the surface, and this flatness in the putter head trajectory serves to cue the brian when to release and how to release. Again, a well-timed stroke gets the golfer locked in to the predictability and sameness of this timing.

Second, a "controlled" stroke in which the golfer does not trust the ability to move casually more in tune with fundamental timing processes can be understood on different levels as expressive of fear, ignorance, and laziness. A "controlling" golfer is one who needs muscle tension and feel changes and conscious trying to problem-solve distance and stroke issues every putt, as opposed to a golfer who trusts his instincts and technique, takes a look at the putt, and then gets on with the business of sinking the putt by pulling the trigger with the same-every-time stroke. There just isn't any felt need of a great putter to worry or fret about distance control or technique, and golfers who take practice strokes beside the ball and worry about whether their "release" has the proper dynamics are almost always expressing their lack of casualness about the putt. That's a fear-based approach to putting, as opposed to a proud, winner's approach. At the next level, "controlling" the putt with hands and arms is ignorant of a better way, which is to commit control to management of the forces of the swinging putter, arms and hands to the pivot stability and the biomechanical advantages of parallel-left shoulder frame alignment in an otherwise propitious setup (mostly a balanced stance at the right distance back from the ball). And the laziness level is that the golfer simply accepts and tolerates this approach to putting as a matter of habit, without serious effort to improve.

Third, my statement above ("Note also that it is NOT POSSIBLE to have a "release" without deceleration of the hands and arms below the velocity of the clubhead.") could be misunderstood and also prompts some further observations. While it IS possible to voluntarily move the hands via wrist-joint activation in the putting stroke thru impact, a motion I would describe as a "swiping" action that speeds the hands ahead of the momentum-sponsored velocity of the putter head, I don't believe this is what golf teachers intend to mean by the term "release." The term "release" implies a passivity in the human body in relation to the moving tool (club or putter).

So there is a point of discrimination here that may prove valuable, even to golfer who WANT to learn a "release" as taught by others. The golfer should notice the difference among:

1. slowing the arms in the impact zone and allowing the putter head's momentum to carry on by leaving the muscle tone in the wrists at a level of tension that allows the wrist change called a "release";

2. slowing the arms as above but also managing the wrist tension in a fashion that only partially allows the putter head momentum to carry on, but instead somewhat restrains and limits the momentum in a "cupping" that prevents further "release" (Leadbetter); and

3. deliberately speeding the hands thru impact with wrist changes to "swipe" the putter head faster thru impact than it otherwise would go based on its own momentum.

Tiger's drill where he plants his left hand against his right upper arm just above the elbow and makes strokes thusly to feel the "release" that happens when his forward-swinging right arm meets the stopping point of his left hand against the right upper arm, generates a "release" that COMBINES a little wrist action with some "elbow" release as well. Is that what he wants and is that what he does when he makes real strokes? Perhaps.

By making these discriminations that focus upon different patterns of body motion, we can teach and learn and make choices on a better and more permanent basis.

Cheers!

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

Visit the new PuttingZone Blog for podcasts of putting tips:
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