Dear Titaniummd,
responding seriatim;
(1)
Utley describes his technique as an arc swing and recommends a toe hang putter over a face balanced putter. However , he gives no details why.
Why would an 'arc' swing favor one type of putter over another?
Stan is parroting stuff he's heard from others, one of which is Scotty Cameron, who talks about so-called "toe flow" in putter design on his website. Cameron's history is that he used to polish and finish Karsten Solheim Ping putters and make them "pretty" and then he got famous as a maker of Scotty Cameron "Ping-style" putters. Karsten Solheim was an engineer who actually knew some things about physics, so everything Scotty Cameron now claims to say about the physics of his so-called "toe flow" is actually his attempt to rephrase Solheim's physics into his own claim to knowledge as a real designer. Unfortunately, Scotty Cameron does not appear to know much about physics. His description of "toe flow" is actually backwards and ignorant of real physics and apparently also ignorant about what Karsten Solheim was attempting to achieve with the physics of the Ping design.
In all fairness, Scotty Cameron is not the only person unknowledgable about the real physics of so-called "toe flow" designs.
At any rate, here's clarification:
Karsten Solheim designed the Ping putter in the late 1950s for use on poor-quality greens upon which generating "power" in the putting stroke was a real need. Heel-shafted putters were a common design at the time, but they were not the only design. Heel-shafted putters are basically an historical default from the fact that "putters" were originally just another golf club, a wooden headed club like a cleek, mashie or spoon -- all of which are heel-shafted -- just the same way there originally wasn't a "green" and was just part of the field with a hole in it called the fairway and the hole consisted of the field of play "through the green". So historically, on fairways and bad greens, a heel-shafted putter was just the way golfers played on bad surfaces nearest the hole in the ground. Karsten Solheim in the late 1950s used this notion to design the toe-end with more mass than the heel-end when the putter head is weighted with respect to the axis of the shaft line thru the putter head.
A toe-hanging putter like the Ping is one with more mass in the toe side of this axis line than in the heel, so the toe hangs down. Some toes hang 45 degrees or thereabouts, like the Pings, and some hang all the way to 90 degrees, and some hang at different angles depending on the mass distribution heel-toe with respect to the shaft axis. Balancing the putter on the finger about 10 inches up the shaft from the putter head, or laying the putter on a table with the head off the edge and without interference from the grip shape, allows the putter head to hang according to its design.
Why did Karsten make the Pings hang toe-down at 45 degrees? To "trick" golfers into making a chip-like stroke action, as this has more power on bad greens than other stroke patterns.
Why do I say "trick" golfers? because Scotty Cameron's description of "toe flow" is completely backwards on the physics and its effect upon the way golfer make strokes. Scotty Cameron speaks of "toe flow" as if his design "makes" or "helps" the putter head open on the backstroke and close thru the forward stroke and impact. This is ignorant.
A toe-hanging putter design has more mass in the toe end than in the heel end with respect to the axis of the shaft. In standard Newtonian physics, more mass means more INERTIA. More INERTIA means more FORCE is required to start or change movement. So when the golfer simply applies force thru the shaft to move the putter head back, moving the hosel or the putter head spot where the shaft line intersects thru the putter head, the physics means the following (INSTEAD OF "TOE FLOW"):
1. At the beginning of moving the static putter head back from its stationary resting position, THE TOE WON'T GO because it has more INERTIA than the heel, resulting in the toe staying behind while the heel starts back, and this CLOSES the putter face.
2. Once the putter head in its closed orientation nears the top of the backstroke, THE TOE WON'T STOP due to its greater INERTIA, and now as the shaft / hosel slows and stops the TOE flares open.
3. Once the downstroke starts, THE TOE WON'T GO and the toe flares MORE open.
4. As the stroke nears the impact zone, the TOE WON'T CLOSE due to the extra mass and INERTIA.
5. As the shaft / hosel slows and stops at the end of the follow-thru, again THE TOE WON'T STOP and tends to whip closed rapidly.
Given the real Newtonian physics in these designs of toe-hanging putters (forcing the golfer to "TOW THE TOE"), what does the golfer do? He either makes a wickedly goofy stroke in which the physics has the putter face flopping closed at the start then widely open at the back and then staying wide open thru impact and then whipping closed at the top of the thru stroke, OR he manipulates the masses of heel and toe to overcome this goofiness. All golfers using these putters are being trained by the tool's physics to TOW THE TOE back and thru. Karsten Solheim intended for golfers to manipulate the putter face with their hands and arms to overcome these INERTIA effects, and thereby MAKE or TRICK golfers into deliberately OPENING the toe at the start, stopping the toe from opening more at the end of the backstroke, preventing the toe from opening more at the start of the downstroke, and then closing it back to square for impact and moreso beyond into the follow-thru. This is a basic chipping-stroke action, and Karsten thought golfers needed this power on bad greens (and they did). But fundamentally, the physics of the putter head design REQUIRES golfers to oppose the physics effects, not to benefit passively from these effects.
The truth is that the golfer could just as easily master and oppose and eliminate these physics "flopping about" effects simply with good steady grip pressure and a no-hands shoulder stroke. The torque of sufficiently firm grip pressure will "TOW THE TOE" without further complication of body parts in motion. I do this all the time when I putt with a heel-shafted putter. it's just golfers who don't know what is happening in the physics who make up "wives tales" about how the design "does" something good in the stroke. It doesn't, as no inert mass ever "does" anything. The golfer moves the mass and the physics of the design makes the golfer overcome inertial effects (added grip pressure or hands-arms manipulations) in order to stroke square thru the ball.
There are other balancing schemes in putter head designs, including "face balancing" with the shaft axis transecting the putter head weight distribution heel-to-toe evenly, and "reality" balancing in which the balancing takes into account that the putter is actually suspended at address according to its shaft angle off vertical as required by the design rules for putters ("at least" 10 degrees off vertical).
Utley teaches a swinging arc for the stroke because according to him this is the stroke pattern he was shown "by an old man in Missouri" in the mid-1970s. Other than this, Utley does not appear to know anything about where the "old man in Missouri" learned what he passed along, whether the technique made sense in the 1970s or makes sense now, or why it works or doesn't work the way he supposes it does. Actually, the "old man in Missouri" was just passing along the common pattern of a chip-style putting stroke useful in those days of bad greens, which was the common technique taught by George Low and others.
If anyone compares Utley's description with George Low's description in Low's book (Master the Art of Putting), one would see that the "old man in Missouri" and/or Utley have gotten a few details screwed up, particularly about opening and closing the putter face by deliberate "rolling of the forearms" open and closed in the stroke. This technique is expressly warned against as "bad" and unneeded by George Low in his book. george Low indeed taught an arcing chip-style putting stroke, but one expressly without arms and hands manipulations, and one generated simply by using the shoulder frame to swing the putter back on a tilted plane. The intersection of this plane with the ground is straight-back and straight-thru and so is the tilted plane of the shoulder movement, although the rising upward and inward on this tilted plane results in the shadow projection of the putter head onto the ground "appear" as if the putter face is arcing in a curved "movement" with the face swinging "open" with respect to the target / intersection line and then "closed".
So, Utley is teaching a "bad greens" chip stroke from the 1960s-1970s era before the radical improvement in green surfaces that began in 1980 in a way that George Low used to teach but with undesirable complications that Low warned against. The putter design associated with this is the historical accident of the heel-shafted putter from earliest days as gassed up a bit by Karsten Solheim in the 1950s-1960s with his "tricked up" physics to cause a chip-style stroke for more power on bad greens and as completely misunderstood by Scotty Cameron in his "toe flow" descriptions of the beneficial "effects" of his design copying of Solheim Ping putters and completely misapplied to putting on today's smooth, fast, true surfaces.
Today's golfers who buy into this style, who talk about the "release" in the putting stroke and the "need" for putter head rotation in the stroke and how Scotty Cameron putters "promote" this action by virtue of the design as opposed to the implicit and unaware manipulations of the golfers forced by the goofy inertial properties, are speaking on faith without knowledge of the physics. Technical science guys who measure these strokes and see the putter head rotation do not have a clue as to why the rotation is there, either in terms of physics or biomechanics, but they see this stroke pattern "correlating" with (most of) today's elite pros and so pronounce it as the "best" pattern for other golfers to follow.
In actuality, I am told that people have filmed Stan Utley teaching to check that he does what he teaches, and have told him that he does not really roll his arms open and closed as he describes. This is not surprising to me, since Utley actually putts pretty well, so he MUST NOT be using an arcing pattern right thru impact when it really counts. Consistent straight putting demands some leeway in ball position and resquaring-staying-square timing before, during, and immediately after impact because the human in movement timing and pattern is just not that precise, and the arcing stroke per se does not suit those requirements. Ergo, Utley cannot be using that style, since he putts well. And this is what he has been told by people who have filmed him.
So even though Utley thinks and believes he is accurately describing what the "old guy in Missouri" showed him 30 years or more ago, he in fact has modified this so that his putts more consistently go where he aims them. This means he "relents" on the arcing right thru impact and "ceases" using his so-called arcing pattern while impact is in progress. And lo and behold, after being shown these films, Utley apparently revisited what he actually does and amended his description of his body action to include a vague description of "soft elbows" in the stroke. "Soft elbows" biomechanically means he is NOT rolling the forearms, but he does not seem to know the biomechanical implications of his vague statement about the elbows.
Got all that? Pretty confused lot out there.
To me, the only REAL issue is whether a golfer is more consistently accurate in rolling the ball where the putter face aims with one pattern versus other patterns, and the arcing pattern is just one of a small handful of historic stroke patterns (including among others "straight-back-and-straight-thru", Nicklaus' "push stroke", Casper's "wrist-hinge stroke", the sidesaddle stroke, the one-arm stroke, Crenshaw's "assymetrical stroke straight thru impact", the Locke so-called "hook stroke" delivery from the inside then straight down the line thru impact, and others). My personal answer is that the backstroke and the thru-stroke need not be symmetrical, that the thru-stroke in the impact zone needs to stay moving square and online while contact between putter face and ball persists, that the backstroke form is entirely subsidiary to this forward stroke and either helps or hurts the forward stroke, and that the pattern used by Crenshaw and a few others historically is assymetrical back and thru but with a thru-stroke that moves the putter head square and online thru the impact zone and well beyond before the pattern reverts to arcing inside. What I do is test out daily how to make the key part of the stroke (square online forward stroking thru impact) as consistently accurate as the human body and brain allow.
(2)
What material on the putter face is important to you for consistency/accuracy with regard to your own methodology of putting? Or are these just a matter of aesthetics?
Milled face
Metal inserts
Soft inserts
Grooved faces (Rife or Yes!)
The face material subtly affects the timing, as does the shaft flex properties, and the length of the putter in the golfer's setup and stroke pattern. And can also affect distance, but consistently so. So yes, the face material matters to the extent that it requires the golfer to "get used to" his tool, but thereafter the differences in actual performance effects are miniscule to a good putter but slightly more important to the average hack golfer not especially aware of skills or putter effects.
Rife and Yes! are not the progenitors of grooves, by the way. I have an old Top Flite putter whose head looks similar to a Bullseye from the 1950s and 1960s but with a pattern of prominent horizontal grooves across the face, and it works just fine. Some excellent golfers prefer the response of the hard-metal faces (the Muraman putter from the 1980s for example), some prefer a shaft flex that slows the stroke down (e.g., Raymond Floyd), some prefer longer putters and more leisurely strokes (Locke, Lloyd Mangrum), some prefer soft inserts that prolong putter face-ball contact and alter the "impulse" work of the stroke, and some prefer certain frequencies of "ring" from the impact (which is why Brad Faxon cuts a slit in the bottom of his Scotty Cameron putters to make them more like the "Ping" sound of the early Solheim putters that also had a slit in the sole to make the "ping" sound).
Or is it just a matter of putter loft (I have heard 3-4 degrees as ideal from Scotty Cameron's interview/Frank Thomas)?
Neither of these two good folks knows what loft is optimal for today's greens. Scotty Cameron is parroting an old wives tales that dates back into the 1940s about the need for loft to "lift" the ball up and out of a "bowl" depression it sits in on the grass, even though he claims that high-speed filming proves the need for 3-4 degrees of loft.
The image of the ball perched down in a ceramic bowl and needing loft to "spoon" it up and out is just goofy and results from a lack of accurate imagination about the reality. The reality is that the the only grass that matters is the 2-3 blades of very short and very flexible blades of bent grass directly in front of the bottom of the 45-gram golf ball at address (or at most a little domino-string of 20-30 blades directly on line of the ball's starting line of skid-roll) -- not the blades "around" the bottom of the ball. These "online and in the way" blades of grass are no taller than 1/8th of an inch and usually shorter, and they are all very willowy and effectively massless compared to a golf ball of 45 grams being stroked with an initial velocity of 70-100 inches per second off the putter face at and over these blades of grass.
Moreover, it is the interaction of the ball with exactly this opposing force of these very blades of grass that brings about the transitional ending of the skidding at the start and the beginning of the rolling of the ball. The golfer needs the opposing friction (actually "stickiness") of the ball-grass interaction right at the start to reduce skidding and promote rolling. The notion that the golfer needs loft in order to "skip over" this interaction is not a good one. This may well have been the situation with the poor shaggy surfaces of greens in the Bobby Jones era, and that would explain why Calamity jane had 6 degrees or more loft.
On today's greens, the LEAST LOFT REQUIRED is the BEST LOFT DESIRED. That works out to Yes! putters at about 2-2.5 degrees or LESS and some of the newer Robert Bettinardi putters with as little as 1 degree and others. Zero loft and even mildly negative loft are currently legitimate and arguably superior choices based on the physics -- especially if one is trying to have a loft that does not complicate the stroke movement. Too much loft on the putter (3-4 degrees is too much for today) gets blessed by people not knowledgeable about putting strokes -- neither Frank Thomas nor Scotty Cameron are putting instructors, and being a designer of putters does not make them knowledgeable about good and bad strokes or even about the desirability of this or that design feature as promoting good or bad strokes -- because golfers ADAPT to the flawed design with a compensatory feature in the movement technique. Some of these are matters of ball position "rules", setup "rules" ("hands ahead" comes to mind), movement "rules" (hit down, hit up, forward press, stroke thru with hands leading the putter head, release the putter thru impact), etc etc ad nauseum without knowing why these so-called rules are forced by the design oddities (like loft and offset hoseling).
The confusion among these established gatekeepers in putting is truly a lamentable problem for golf, and the state of knowledge current in the game today is not even as sound as it was two or three decades ago among golfers like Bob Charles, despite the pretensions to "technical and scientific" superiority of today.
I probably shouldn't say this sort of thing as it is definitely not in the best interest of my professional career, but I don't want to be an enabler, so there it is.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
Geoff Mangum's
PuttingZone
PuttingZone Clinics
Flatstick Forum
PuttingZone Channel on YouTube
PuttingZone Picasweb Image Gallery
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction -- you're either in the PuttingZone, or not.
Over 2 million visits -- 100,000 monthly from 50+ countries -- and growing strong.