Dear Richie3Jack,
I've been messing around a bit with Jim Flick's description of Tiger's so-called "high draw" putting stroke. There's nothing real to it. What it amounts to is an opening-back-inside-then-closing-thru-impact stroke. As I understand a "draw" swing, the clubface aims at the target to the inside and the stance aligns the body to the outside and the swing proceeds as if the clubface and target align with the stance, not the real target. How does that description match what is happening in this stroke that opens and then closes the face, while the stance aims parallel to the target line?
It's "goofy-think" to talk about what happens in the air due to side spin on a ball as if that is the same that happens on the ground, where side spin gets washed out right off the bat by the rolling interaction of ball and ground. If you want harmful metaphors that lead to confused thinking and action rather than clear thinking and sound movements, this is one for sure.
The danger in the thinking is in believing you don't have precise limits about the clubface orientation at impact. The notion of "curling the toe closed thru impact" is completely hurtful, as this leads without question to needless requirements of overly-precise ball position, stroke setup and mechanics, and timing, plus the notion of imprecision being somehow "artistic" or "sensitive". These traits in putting cause the following: inconsistency, lack of touch, misses to the outside by failing to get the toe closed (think "Chad Campbell blew the Masters"), misses to the inside due to over-rotation of the toe before or even during impact, a false belief in the sensitivity of the fingers for supposed hand-eye coordination, an especial difficulty when the ball is significantly above or below the feet due to the conflict of an arcing stroke path and a flat but tilted surface and a setup posture that disregards the tilt, a lack of clarity in the nature and dynamics of the stroke movement in terms of what gets moved how to what extent to repeat the stroke mindfully, and a number of other worthless detriments.
I can state unequivocally that Tiger does NOT putt with a toe closing thru impact when he putts well, even if the toe is closing shortly after impact. Frankly, Tiger has been incorporating some confused techniques into his putting for a few years now trying to get these inconsistencies working. If he is truly attempting to close his putter toe thru impact each time he putts, that is probably one of the main explanations for why he is so far off his potential for putting, blowing the Masters this year (46th of 49 in putting), missing the Open cut, and knocking himself out of the PGA with a Sunday flatstick from Hades that prompted him to mutter headed off the 72nd hole: "I should have won this f...ing thing."
I notice that Jim Flick doesn't exactly endorse this putting notion, and instead merely suggests that readers "try it". That's par for magazine guidance. About on a par with picking at scabs.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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