Geoff,

I just came across your site, and I am overwhelmed by the amount of information on putting.

I have putted poorly for most of my life. The only respite from my bad putting has been the last 5 years or so, when I have not played much. Unfortunately the lay off did not help my short game. I am convinced that I can become a good putter if I work at it and practice. Our carpet in the family room has a speed similar to the greens in this area.

I have two training questions:

1) I noticed your reference to Tour Tempo. What is your opinion on that training method for improving my ball striking? (I know that the question is not related to putting, but I ma curious)

2) I saw a reference today to a training device for putting that helps to develop a pure pendulum stroke at this site: http://www.p3putter.com/ The device is similar to one marketed by Tony Piparo for $100 less. Is it worth buying a training aid before going through the materials on your site?

My main motivation (other than being more competative with my four brothers) is to be able to teach my 9-year-old son how to golf. My Dad taught all of us the fundamentals of how to swing a club, and I hope to do the same for Nicholas.

I will be ordering your CDs within the next few days. I will have a few days of vacation to work exclusively on putting at the end of the month.

Bill

William L. Peper JD
pepesfe@comcast.net
Cell (586) 506-5303
Home (586) 574-9677
Fax 586-620-6046

Dear Bill,

Thanks much for contacting me. To answer your questions directly, no and no. The Tour Tempo training aid is just a guess on the pace by the inventor and is not an informed one at that, so definitely no. The golfer needs to build a tempo up out of natural relaxation motion in gravity by first appreciating how the stroke will move by itself down and thru without the golfer's help and then deciding what to do about that. This base timing is always very specific to the individual and does not fit well with the locksteps of a metronome, whether a good or a bad metronome. As to the P3, it is an interesting aid, but it is more important to learn the motion with the proper postural relationship of the arms and hands.

Much more later.

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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Geoff,

Thanks for the quick and extended response to my questions. I do not mean to hog your time, but I am curious about a few things.

I was a little surprised at your comments on the Tour Tempo training aid. Is your objection to the theory (world-class players swing at a relatively fast tempo -- almost precisely at a 3:1 backswing to downswing ratio) or to the approach of using another's tempo as a target? Is your objection to using the training aid limited to the company's claim about its applicability to the short game and putting (an absurd idea at least to me)? What about as a full swing training aid?

I also am not sure what "The golfer needs to build a tempo up out of natural relaxation motion in gravity by first appreciating how the stroke will move by itself down and thru without the golfer's help and then deciding what to do about that." means. Admittedly, I am less serious about golf than most who visit your site. I play to 25 or so handicap at this point, although it got as low as 17 prior to marriage and parenthood without much practice but playing once a week or so. I am convinced that I can become a 10-12 handicap within 2 years (and become competative with my brothers) if I concentrate on improving all aspects of my game in a systematic fashion.

Given my family and professional responsibilities, I have only a limited time to experiment with golf. I am a hyper analytic geek, and I have designed a plan to accomplish my golf goals. I would love your opinion on my approach. What would be your recommended approach for a busy, formerly-athletic 45-year-old to become a 10 handicap?

I have broken down my task into these catagories in order of importance:

1) Putting -- your website will be my primary resource. Putting historically is the weakest part of my game. I also can practice this relatively easily at home.
2) Chipping -- Dave Pelz' Short Game Bible will be my primary resource. His yardage approach seems logical, and I have not seen too much criticism of it from anyone.
3) Full swing -- Tour Tempo beeps and a training aid (Speed Stik or Momentus to strenthen the muscles involved, increase clubhead speed, and flexibility). Despite not playing much, I still make solid contact most of the time.
4) Mental approach -- Patrick Cohn. I have purchased Going Low and his book on putting based on your recommendation. I skimmed these already, and I love his approach.

Enough for now. Thanks for your kind attention.

Bill

Dear Bill,

The "tempo" really has three distinct aspects:

the rhythm or ratio of the parts,
the motion pattern of each part, and
the overall quickness of the total time.

Rhythm / Ratio: A typical / good putting stroke has a backstroke of two counts (like two quarter notes in a 4:4 measure), a downstroke-to-impact of one count, and an impact-to-followthru of one count (total of four quarter notes to a measure).

Motion Patterns: The motion patterns are not quite the same. The first count of the backstroke is ballistic, starting from a dead stop and accelerating up to speed quickly. The second count is a decelerating coasting of the stroke to a conclusion under the drag of gravity resisting the upward action of the backstroke after the "blastoff" or "blastback" impetus in count one. The count of the downstroke is totally natural and smooth as it occurs under gravity's perfectly consistent pattern of constant acceleration from zero at the top of the backstroke to peak speed at impact at the bottom of the stroke. The count of the thrustroke from impact forward to the end of the followthru is very much similar to to the downstroke in time reversal. So the odd duck is the backstroke.

Quickness: The actual time that each beat or count or note takes in the pattern (and hence the timing of the parts and of the whole) varies from player to player somewhat, partly due to body shape and other dimensions, and partly due to equipment, and partly due to playing style / temperament, and partly due to circumstances attending each putt specifically, and of course partly due to training and understanding. Ideally, though, the ratio and structure of the parts stay the same even if the quickness varies a bit overall.

The reason I speak about golfers building up from a base level tempo is that the main point of tempo is to relate the body to reality for movement predictability, accuracy, and consistency. All golfers live in the same physics reality of earth's gravity, in which all objects even of different masses undergo IDENTICAL motion patterns when gravity draws the object downward towards the center of the earth. A 20-pound bowling ball and a golf ball both drop side-by-side every centimeter of the journey when released simultaneously from the top balcony of the Tower of Pisa.



This reality has been around for a while, and has trained and guided the evolution of every living thing on planet earth since the beginning of life moving on earth. This basic underlying reality is why all pendulua of the same length swing from side to side with exactly the same timing "period" (technically, at least, so long as they are located on the same piece of the planet, as some pieces have more or less density beneath the surface en route to the center of the earth, so actually gravity's force varies slightly from locale to locale). Each 1-meter long pendulum has a period of swinging from top of one side to top of other side over a range of starting angle out as far as about 35 degrees, and the period on earth happens to be exactly one second for this length pendulum (39.37 inches, or 100 cm). The reason is that a meter was originally defined as "whatever" length stick that takes one second to swing. A putter of conventional length (35 inches) is pretty close in timing to a meter stick, so the putter itself has an inherent or innate timing of about one second down and thru from top of backstroke to top of followthru. When a golfer sets up with a conventional putter, the hands may be as low down the handle as 8 inches or so, but the real "top" of the whole length from sole of putter to golfer's "pivot" near the base of the neck is usually about 4.5 feet or 54 inches or so. In a shoulder-stroke that is most like a pendulum, the golfer performs the backstroke to the top of the backstroke, and then gravity alone performs the stroke from this starting position down thru impact, with the golfer not actively pulling the stroke down or resisting the "free-falling motion of putter-hands-arms as a unit swinging beneath the steady neck".

For a golfer to make intelligent choices about the "tempo" he ought to like and learn and "groove" and use, he really needs some experience and understanding of the base timing pattern in the downstroke, as this particular "count" is the one that really matters, and the other three counts are subsidiary to setting up this part of the stroke so that the putt for energy and roll distance of ball corresponds to reality as accurately perceived and as the motion is planned. Experiencing this has absolutely nothing to do with making a stroke match-up to the abstract pattern of a metronome, as the metronomic beat invariably is "off" from the exact timing of the specific golfer. Training a stroke to a metronome setting is like dressing a monkey in a tuxedo. And this is what a neuroscience study has also found.

So my departure from the Tour Tempo training aid is not the two-counts back, one count to impact ratio. In fact, I TOLD the maker of the Tour Tempo that this was the case for putting, whereas the full swing has a three-counts back, one count to impact ratio. He got that part correct. But the overall speed of the tempo in the Tour Tempo training aid is not founded on reality, and represents the engineer-nongolfer-inventor's "best guess" of what the tempo "pace" should be. I've never met a golfer who knows any of the above about tempo unless I have taught them personally, so it is not surprising that the sample of tempos for the Tour Tempo engineer-nongolfer-inventor to make a guess from are all over the map. He didn't know about the base timing, and his examples are all "bad" tempos because golfers usually are far too quick, so he didn't know to include the "slower" tempo of the underlying reality of the putter and a pendular timing of the body.

In sum, there are three main problems with the Tour Tempo: it doesn't include the base tempo; the tempos it includes are all too fast for a good learning process; and using any metronome is like dressing a monkey in a tuxedo when what you really want is "a butt-naked monkey" because "it is what it is and you need to know what reality is before choosing a modification of the base reality."

A fourth problem with metronomes is the settings of beeps can be made to match the two-count from the start of the backstroke to the end of the backstroke (in which case the first beep starts the stroke, the second beep comes at the top of the backstroke, and the third beep comes at the end of the followthru), or to match the one-count of the downstroke (in which case the golfer starts the backstroke on one beep, hears a second beep halfway to the top, hears a third at the top, hears a fourth at impact, and hears a fifth at the top of the followthru). A gravity-based setting for the two-count backstroke is about 60 bpm (1 beat per second), but the one-count setting is quicker and is one beep every half a second or 120 bpm (2 beats per second). If you wanted a metronome setting that beeps once to start the stroke and a second beep at the end of the followthru, a gravity-based timing separates these beeps by two seconds so there are 30 bpm. Way too complicated for dressing a monkey in a tuxdeo when all you should do is pay attention to the swinging of your putter and arms in gravity. Your body is a very particular metronome, so use that instead.

As far as your plan, I recommend that you recognize that between 40-50% of all the strokes in your round will be putting strokes, so what you should try to accomplish is

a) get a basic full-swing that gets the ball on line pretty good and does a serviceable job of covering distance without too many gross errors,
b) practice short-game shots for when you fail to reach a green in regulation and need to try to save par with a chip and a putt or a bunker shot and a putt, so that all your short game recovery shots get you safely into that one-putt par-save range, and
c) practice putting four ranges: typical long-range lags so you can always two-putt, first-putt ranges of 20-30 feet so you never three-putt and never do worse than two-putt, par-save range from inside 10 feet, and clean-up range after long-lags, first-putt misses, and par-save misses all inside 3-4 feet.

Then hate bogey more than you love par when you play a round (see my Flatstick Forum post on this topic).

Cheers!

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

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Geoff,

Just a few points on your post to Mr. William Pepers.

You stated: "The Tour Tempo training aid is just a guess on the pace by the inventor and is not an informed one at that..." and, later, in the same post, "But the overall speed of the tempo in the Tour Tempo training aid is not founded on reality, and represents the engineer-nongolfer-inventor's "best guess" of what the tempo "pace" should be."

The Tour Tempo is the result of video analysis by John Novosel on the swings of professional golfers. At first, Tour Tempo only dealt with full swings. In the last year or so, Tour Tempo has added "short game tones" (maybe due to your explanations or John Novosel just moving on to putting analysis). The idea behind Tour Tempo full swing tones is that amateur golfers can realize more distance if they greatly speed up their tempo like tour pros. The goal here is more distance by emulating the tempo of top pros. The crossover to putting tempo may not make quite as much sense. A beginning golfer trying to learn how to putt may not want at first, to putt with Tiger Woods' incredibly fast 113 bpm tempo!

However, since the Tour Tempo short game tone timing is taken from actual professionals putting in tournaments, it IS founded on reality. John Novosel is a golfer, and is an inventor but not an engineer, so he would be a "nonengineer-golfer-inventor".

[I understand what you mean by "engineer-nongolfer-inventor". Technologists applying a new measurement "solution" to measure attributes of a golf swing, or putting stroke without knowing what the problem is or how it could aid in teaching.]

The tempos that John Novosel includes cover the majority of pros on tour and is not a guess but the result of video frame measurements. His short game tones cover 20/10, 18/9, 16/8, and 14/7 backswing/downswing to impact ratio (in frames) which translates to 90 bpm, 100 bpm, 113 bpm, and 128 bpm. Unfortunately, due to the 33msec resolution of NTSC video frames, there are big gaps in the various tempos provided. What if your tempo is actually 95 bpm? The overall set is very fast and for a golfer like William Pepers, trying to build a stroke from the ground up, would be difficult to use.

Metronomes can be useful to a golfer trying to learn a stroke. The various metronome scenarios that you described would be difficult to follow. Trying to take the putter back on the first beep, hearing the 2nd beep at the halfway back point, the third beep at the top, and impact on the fourth beep would be like your "monkey dressed in a tuxedo"!

The case that you didn't describe is one where the first beep is the takeaway and impact is the second beep. This approach gives the golfer two data points to "sync" to. However, setting the Metronome for this approach is not straightforward to most. To achieve a "gravity-based" 60 bpm stroke timing, set the metronome to 40 bpm. For a faster effective tempo, set the metronome to 60 bpm which will provide 1 second from takeaway to impact. This is equivalent to a 90 bpm tempo (like the 20/10 tempo of David Toms).

Also, I don't quite know what you mean by the terms "ballistic", "blast-off", "blastback" for the description of the takeaway phase of the putting stroke. These words imply an abrupt or rapid movement away from the ball. The takeaway is no more "ballistic" or abrupt in nature than the start of the downswing of a pendulum. It is just constant uniform acceleration. The takeaway to "halfway back" is a mirror image of "halfway back" to the top of the backswing as shown on the SAM PuttLab graph below:



I would suggest that Mr. Pepers get a metronome, set it to 40 beats per minute to achieve a 60 bpm effective "base tempo" as Geoff suggests to feel the sequence of the putting stroke, and then progress to faster tempos until he finds a comfortable setting. Take the putter back on the "tick" and strike the ball on the "tock".

Dean

Dear dean,

As usual, thanks for your thoughtful and well-supported contribution!

If you want to putt LIKE the pros (or more accuaretly, "putt like a small handful of pros who appear to putt very well consistently using normal technique in comparison to amateurs and most others pros also" if you can tell who they are), then by all means try to make up a pattern of motion that "looks like" what these pros do and use gizmos like the PuttLab to find out what pattern to try to generate. personally, I think this approach will leave you with the same problems the pros face every day on the greens, most of which are attributable to their tempos.

The Tour Tempo range of setting selections is what I call a "guess" in the sense that the aid simply covers the waterfront of pro tempos without a principled way to separate the good from the bad or a way to fit a specific golfer to a specific tempo. You write: "His short game tones cover 20/10, 18/9, 16/8, and 14/7 backswing/downswing to impact ratio (in frames) which translates to 90 bpm, 100 bpm, 113 bpm, and 128 bpm. Unfortunately, due to the 33msec resolution of NTSC video frames, there are big gaps in the various tempos provided." The obvious attempt here is to get into the training aid the widest selection of the available Tour pattern as reasonable, in the belief that somewhere in the fat the user can find happiness. So anything at the far ends of the Tour pattern are simply not included or clipped. It would be helpful to know what percentage of Tour players fit into each of the tempo settings (e.g., whether it is a Bell curve with something like 15% at 20/10 and 14/7 and 35% at 18/9 and 16/8). That would be a small piece of info to help an amateur pursue your approach and make an informed selection of what setting to try to emulate. As it stands, what helps the user pick a tempo setting other than lengthy trial and error without good feedback followed by a settling down on one of the presented selections according to an unknown process of choosing?

When I say the Tour Tempo settings are "not based on reality", I mean that they are not built up and chosen in an intelligent way from the fundamental timing processes of physics in the reality of life on earth. The Tour Tempo settings are just a reflection of the shank of patterns available from today's Tour pros, bless them one and all in the various competencies with the flatstick.

If you wish to use the metronome to train a "perfect pattern", you will have to be able to know somehow what is the difference between one pattern and another and to discern in a principled way what makes one pattern better suited as "the" model than another, whether in general or with respect to a specific student. frankly, Tour patterns are all over the map and the Tour Tempo selection is not at all coupled with any knowledge (either embedded in the device or in the accompanying literature) about how the student should intelligently choose among the offered choices.

First, there is a more general problem, though, which is the difference between a basic timing and a tempo timing. A tempo builds off a basic sense of timing. Expressive movement builds off tempo. Using a metronome to inculcate a "model" is not at all the same as using a metronome to instill basic timing precision. The use of the metronome that you are advocating is putting the cart before the horse in a couple of different ways. First, learn basic timing. Second, learn innate tempo. Third, learn metronomic tempo patterns in general. Fourth, revert back to "natural" timing patterns with metronomic patterns in the background in the expression of the movement for optimal performance parameters. These third and fourth steps are encompassed in the approach for musicologists since at least the days of Liszt. (See Franz Manufacturing Co., Metronome Technique, online book.) My contribution is to start with "reality" to appreciate how "reality" trains all moving brains to the timing processes of gravity on earth before then moving along to deliberate choices about timing patterns for movements in specific contexts (e.g., piano, ballet, putting). The dissociation between learning basic timing coordination and then later fitting movement to precise timing parameters is a long-running theme in neuroscience research. (See, e.g., Hirose et al., Effectiveness of the Usae of a Learning Model and Concentrated Schedule in Observational Learning of a New Bimanual Coordination Pattern, International Journal of Sport and Health Science, (2004), vol. 2, pp 97-104.)

Second, there is also a problem of dissociating between a "continuous" movement and a "discontinuous" movement. (See, e.g., LaRue, Initial Learning of Timing in Combined Serial Movements and a No-Movement Situation, Music Perception (Spring 2005), Vol. 22, No. 3, Pages 509-530.) Apparently, the brain uses different timing processes for these different sorts of movements. In putting, some styles feature a "continuous" movement strategy and others feature a "discontinuous" pattern that assembles together a total movement pattern out of distinct segmented parts.

And third, there is a difference between the timing patterns of a mechanical (albeit electro-digital) device such as a "metronome" (there are many different types with different ranges of choices and ranges of variability / precision) and "metronomic timing." Metronomic timing is the more general case, and consists of ANY regular beat in time, from the steady heart rate, to the breathing rate, to the swinging rate of the arm, to the dripping of a leaky faucet, to the patter of rain on a tin roof, to the rumbling of a train down the track, to a golf instructor standing near you clicking two golf balls against one another while you make rhythmic strokes). The electronic metronomes of today, including the Tour Tempo, simply present preset choices of beats. At least the old piano metronomes (e.g., Maelzel's) allowed an infinite range of timing patterns within the allowable extremes by the device of "sliding" the bob up and down the rod or wand, thus ranging thru a continuous spectrum of settings.

And fourth, the use of a metronome does not in itself provide feedback. The SAM PuttLab picture you provide does provide a sort of feedback, but it is of a distinctly technical and abstract sort that comes substantially later than the performance and that requires interpretation and understanding of the sort held by an expert teacher for its beneficial reception by a student. So there are very real difficulties and inherent limitations (if not to say positive missteps) in the design and conceptualization of devices like the PuttLab that render their effective use as a teaching aid so overly problematic that the trouble grossly outweighs the usefulness. Proper feedback of the "knowledge of result" (KR) variety, if not the "augmented" KR or even the more useful "knowledge of performance" (KP) variety, exhibits to the student immediately WHETHER AND TO WHAT EXTENT the student's timing matches the metronomic pattern. That's a whole other kettle of fish that metronomes per se have nothing to do with. (See Shaffer et al., Effect of Interactive Metronome Training on Children with ADHD, Am. J. Occupational Therapy (Mar/Apr 2001), Vol. 55, no. 2, pp 155-161.)

The above and many other studies underlie my approach of building up timing processes in putting from basic and innate patterns, with only supplementary use of metronomic timing, to PRESERVE INSTINCTIVE PATTERNS AND TO ENHANCE THEM. In the approach you use, the metronome is intended to REPLACE innate, instinctive timing patterns with rote motor-learning in the old 1970s model of motor learning to "groove" neural pathways. No thanks.

To be clear, I am not arguig that the an electro-digital metronome has no value in training putting tempo. I believe that the intelligent use of some sort of metronomic timing is very useful in learning innate and instinctive timing patterns in movement.

Lastly, you write: "Also, I don't quite know what you mean by the terms "ballistic", "blast-off", "blastback" for the description of the takeaway phase of the putting stroke. These words imply an abrupt or rapid movement away from the ball. The takeaway is no more "ballistic" or abrupt in nature than the start of the downswing of a pendulum. It is just constant uniform acceleration [as demonstrated by the graphical acceleration patterns of the PuttLab]."

Your view of what happens in the movement is based on the PuttLab display per se, whereas I suggest that you need a deeper understanding of the neuroscience that underlies the movement that generates the display. A reaching-and-grasping movement (also called a "fast" voluntary goal-directed movement) is "triphasic" normally in the pattern of limb muscle actuator innervations: a "ballistic" phase, a controlled "braking" phase, and a final "locking down" or clutched phase. Different parts of the brain and different timing mechanisms handle these phases even if the overall triphasic pattern is a "central pattern" in some sense. (See, e.g., McKinnon and Rothwell, Timevarying changes in corticospinal excitability accompanying the triphasic EMG pattern in humans, Journal of Physiology (2000), 528.3, pp. 633—645;and Latash, M.L., Anson, J.G., What are "normal movements" in atypical populations? Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1996), Vol. 19, no. 1, pp 55-106.) The "ballistic" phase is at least well-known in so-called "sports science" because all kinesthestics is based upon agonist-antagonist muscle pairing about joints. The "agonist" muscle is fired by the motor cortex in a "ballistic" way, and this ballistic "force" is modulated by cerebellar processes and also opposed by the firing of "antagonistic" muscles in a graded way that is also modulated by cerebellar processes, and the sequential staging of parts in a sequence is more or less handled by the basal ganglia. "Dysmetria" is the inability to control the force level of movements ("amplitude"), resulting in overshoots and undershoots, and is typically traceable to lesions or organic deficits in the cerebellum.

""Dysmetria (Greek: "difficult to measure") is a difficulty in accurately performing intentional movements. It is exhibited by patients after cerebellar injury or injury to proprioceptive nerves (nerves that carry information about the position of joints and extremities). More specifically, the term "hypermetria" can be used to describe the overshoot, and "hypometria" can be used to describe the undershoot." ("Dysmetria", Wikipedia.) [There are parallel "cognitive" and "emotional" sorts of overshoot and undershoot discontrol that accompanies cerebellum damage in the lateral hemisphere of the posterior cerebellum (involved in cognitive processing) or in the vermis (limbic cerebellum), as opposed to damage in the sensorimotor component of the cerebellum relating to movement dysmetria. E.g., Schmamann, Disorders of the Cerebellum: Ataxia, Dysmetria of Thought, and the Cerebellar Cognitive Affective Syndrome, J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci (August 2004), Vol. 16, pp 367-378.)

When I refer to the "ballistic" character of the start of the backstroke, I am using the term "ballistic" to describe the neural controls involved in the first phase of a reaching-grasping motion. Personally, though, I do not teach a "reaching-and-grasping" sort of backstroke, as I don't teach the second and third stages of the "normal" triphasic motion. An instinctive backstroke MAY be a "putting back of the putter to a specific endpoint, where the motion is then stopped deliberately" -- which is the "usual" movement in golf -- but I believe based upon decades of personal experimentation, study of golf history, and observation, that the "optimal" form of an instinctive backstroke is simple a "starting" back of the "swing" like shoving a child in a swing away from a dead stop at the bottom -- more of a "blastoff" that sets the swing in motion, but that allows the opposing and retarding force of gravity to slow the backstroke in a coasting-to-a-stop pattern whereby the exact 'top of backstroke" or the size of the backstroke is NOT deliberately established by the neuromuscular ctivity of the golfer. A putting backstroke starts from a dead stop, and actually is a motion that "catches up with and conforms to" the free-flowing swinging of a putter in reverse, from the top of the follow-thru swinging back to the top of the backstroke. If you have two putters, one held poised by the left hand at the top of a follow-thru and the other held in the right hand set behind a ball at address in a static position, and someone said "ready, set, go" and dropped a handkerchief as a signal to start, and the golfer allowed the left-hand putter to freely swing back and down thru the bottom of the stroke on its way up and back to the top of the backstroke, and TIMED the ballistic "blastoff" of the right-hand backstroke to "catch up and match" the left-hand putter, so that both coasted to the same "top of backstroke" position simultaneously under the influence ONLY of gravity as the defining force, then you would see what I mean when I say that a backstroke is only the "ballistic" starting back of the swing. The instinctive processes handle the "size" of the backstroke.

In sum, I am teaching a non-conscious-based "instinctive" approach to touch (the jargon) as opposed to a conscious-based "voluntary goal-directed motion" approach to touch. I believe that the experience of golfers worldwide and throughout history unequivocally proves that "touch" is not best mastered by learning rules of movement or trying to engrain specific patterns based upon so-called expert models. The tempo is not something to engrain through rote motor-learning in and of itself, even if you had a principled basis for selecting a setting on an electro-digital device to engrain. Rather, "tempo" is only useful FOR touch and stroke form accuracy and in a broad sense is getting in touch with the very specific innate timing processes already engrained in each brain by millions of adaptive responses to the force of gravity conditioning both "voluntary goal-directed movements" and also "non-voluntary movements resulting from relaxation" as in arm swinging and footfalls in walking / controlled falling that accompany every waking moment of every living thing on earth and have been since the beginning of animal life on earth. once you do that, then you can build upward to an intelligently chosen tempo based upon other considerations to promote accuracy and consistency in an optimal way.

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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