Dear bgolfing,
My thoughts are two: how to avoid toe hits by finding and fixing the cause thereof; and what to do mid-stroke once a toe hit looks to be in store.
CAUSE(S)
The most likely cause of toe hits is likely a setup issue about how far back from the ball you are standing, in particular, you stand a bit too far back from the ball. This makes you reach out a bit with your hands and arms at address, which is the same as "placing" the putter head a bit too far away from your stance and body. Then during the stroke, the easing of setup tension allows the arms and hands to drift slightly closer in to the body and the result is a toe hit. The cure is to setup the correct distance back from the ball, which is defined as the "docking" of the handle of a flatly soled putter with your naturally hanging arms and hands (not reaching out of plumb to take hold of the putter). The procedure is to sole the putter flat to the surface as aimed first, and then walk your hanging hands out "gantry-like" to the awaiting handle. The "test" is then after adopting your grip on the poised handle, allow the rear hand to swing free and watch it: if this hand swings ONLY sideways, you are the correct distance back from the ball; if this hand swings out towards your nose, you are too close; if this hand swings inward towards your thighs, you are too far away.
It's possible that you are using a stroke that gates in the forward stroke from the middle / bottom of the stroke to the inside thru impact and beyond, and this will also cause a toe hit. The cure is to fix the stroke path thru impact. The bandaid is to alter ball position more back in the stance left-right. The problem with the bandaid is that your toe-hit may be rolling the ball on line, in which case changing the ball position back will result in rolling the ball to the outside a bit, so the change in ball position does not really fix the problem so much as shift the problem. If your toe hits roll the ball to the inside, then shifting the ball back in the stance will redirect the roll more online, but that is a weird approach to what is basically a stroke problem, and is VERY sensitive to a) ball position, and b) stroke pattern, and c) stroke timing. Don't go there.
It's also possible that a toe hit is resulting from a cut stroke out-to-in. The combination of cut path out-to-in plus "feathered" face open a bit (e.g., 30 degrees out to in plus 5 degrees open face) can roll the ball more or less straight where the putter aims at address, so some folks get away with this stroke some. The cause is starting the putter back from address with the hands and arms independently of the shoulders, as this invokes flexing of the elbows that in turn directs the putter head farther away from the feet. This causes the basic cut stroke path. The toe hit aspect comes in the forward stroke of drawing the stroke too much inward towards the thighs from out to in thru impact and just not making solid, sweetspot contact. At a subconscious level, this "feathering" of the open face and the toe-ish impact go together partly as principal awareness of the toe end of the putter, as avoiding a serious pull with a heel-ish contact, and as deadening the blow to varying degrees to try to manage the degree of open face at impact. The cure of a cut stroke is to start the putter back by shoving the bottom of the putter with the lead shoulder down thru the stable-shape of the arms and hands and shaft. This way, the backstroke will either go straight back or will trend a bit to the inside, but is biomechanically precluded by the shoulder alignment from directing the putter head away across the line.
And it's also possible that you are making a slightly inside backstroke and then not really resquaring back to the bottom of the stroke coming forward. The likely culprit that causes this is a lead-side hip rotation to the inside in the beginning of the forward stroke from the top of the backstroke returning to the middle / bottom of the stroke. If the lead hip is rotating back and thru during the stroke, you are asking for trouble in resqauring the putter. If this hip rotates back, it is likely to "over-rotate" coming forward, which causes a toe-hit and also a pull unless the face is feathered open to compensate. The cure is: don't do that.
The stability of the lead hip during the making of the backstroke that runs a bit inside is the real anchor for finding your way back to square and solid-impact centering in the forward stroke. Set the lead hip at address and keep it there until the putter head in the forward stroke is well clear of the impact zone.
MID-STROKE
Okay so you know how to fix the problem, but still in the event you find yourself halfway thru a stroke that is headed for a toe-ish hit. Now what?
My answer is that face angle is more important not only of PATH but also of SOLID. That is, at this point in the stroke, you can only afford one priority, and the priority I suggest you fixate on is square face at and thru impact, even if the impact point on the face is a bit toe-ish. Of course it is ideal to make a mid-stroke correction that fixes EVERY stroke flaw-in-progress, but there just isn't enough time between recognizing the problem and fixing it before it's too late. It's army combat surgery at Gettysburg: saw the shattered arm off the young soldier just below the shoulder joint, toss the arm onto the pile, and move on to the next gurney while lesser attendants cauterize the stump. A toe-ish impact that is nonetheless square online is preferable to a solid impact achievable at great risk to the squareness of the face. The underlying assumption about hitting putts solidly is that less-than-solid impact robs distance and energy from the roll. This is true enough, but in the vast majority of makeable putts (e.g., within 10-15 feet), the toe-ish reduction of energy won't be enough to make the putt miss. Almost all good strokes have a little extra energy in them to achieve at least a 2-revolutions-at-the-lip delivery speed for the usual "touch", and these toe-ish mishits that are still square and online usually end up just fine for making it to the hole. Outside of your "makeable" range, however, you should focus priority on distance and solid anyway, as is required for all serious lagging putts. Toe hits on very long lags wreak havoc with your stroke, as they prompt changes in tempo to compensate -- a more "jabby" stroke designed to insure that the ball "gets there." This is a dicey way to try to get long-putt distance control. So, on makeable putts, prioritize midstroke to keep the face square and moving online and forget the fact that a toe-ish impact is about to occur. The idea that the toe impact is guaranteed to open the face is contrary to my experience, but this may be because I have learned to either have a minimal grip pressure that resists this face opening or to tighten the grip in advance of impact to resist the face opening. On long lags, the priority is solid even at the expense of a little face misdirection thru impact.
But of course the best advice is to make solid, square impact all the time.
With respect to the pilot putter and the eyes, this is not really new and also is not really completely a fix for aiming. Making the vertically-stepped color disappear means only that the line of sight meets the plane of the putter head perpendicularly. That's not really the aiming problem, although apparently THOUSANDS of golfers seem to think so (and the rest have no thought of the matter). the real aiming problem is at the other end of the line of sight, in the angle of the line of sight out of the plane of the head and face as determined by eyeball orientation in the head. It is perfectly possible and indeed usual in the vast majority of cases for golfers to "look" straight down onto the top of the putter with eyeballs NOT aimed perpendicularly out of the face and head. This does not fix the cause of aiming woes. So, frankly, it's a gimmick that may "reduce" aiming errors a wee bit in some circumstances but not fix them at all.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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