I believe repeatability of the set-up geometry is one of the first keys to a
good stroke. I bent my putter more upright so my hands fell below my
shoulders and I could keep the blade online. I recently discovered that
placing my right hand first on the putter is very important, yet I had
previously always placed my left hand first, and somedays the right hand
felt better on the club than other days for this very reason. When I
practice in the house, I use a PVC coupling with an OD of about 1.75 inches
instead of a ball, and practice hitting this with the goal of making the
cylinder roll straight. I also want my putter face to be perpendicular to
my shoulders, so I stand below an over head light in such a position that
the shadow from my shoulders intersects the PVC coupling. I look to see
that the putterface is parallel to the back edge of the cylinder, and also
that my eyes are over the "ball". This is easy to do with the cylinder
because if you move too far outside or inside the line you can see the open
end of the cylinder. Then, in executing the stroke, I do so with eyes open
and eyes closed. You can start to teak a bad set-up using small muscles.
I'll also close my eyes after setting up to see if the face is still
parallel to the cylinder when I open them. Other times I'll putt using
sweet spot guides, which are 1/4 inch square in cross section by 3/4 inch
long clear acrylic extrusions that cost about 2 cents each, and I stick on
my putterface with double sided grip tape. I'll putt with these with eyes
open and closed. If your geometry is good, all you have to worry about is
rocking those shoulders for a pendulum stroke!!
I once saw a billiards exhibition by Babe Cranfield while I was attending
Cornell University in 1980. I saw the value of a good set up when Babe did
this: He took his stance at the end of the table and put a ball on the
headspot at the opposite end of the table. Next he lined up the shot to
make the ball on the spot in the corner pocket. Here's what blew my
mind...he turned his head to face the back wall, took his cue out of his
bridge hand, waved the cue around, then put in back in his bridge while
still facing the back wall. Then he stroked the shot and made the ball
while facing the wall!! His set up was repeatable and solid.
I also teach using a cylinder. I use a sewing thread spool. These come in various diameters. The smaller, the harder. But also, the longer, the harder. A guy in England sells something similar. he calls them the Putting Perfecter, and each sells for about $20. Too much.
I agree about the geometry of the setup. I would add a few points for you to consider. If the gaze is straight out of the face, you sight thru your dominant eye in one and only one spot, about 1" in from the bridge of your nose. To do this with eyes directly above the ball, you are forced to lower your forehead until it matches the elevation of your chin, so your face is essentially horizontal above the ball. This gets your line of sight not only vertical, but it stays in the vertical plane of the putt when you turn your head toward the target, with the pivot of your head rotating but not otherrwise moving (laterally or otherwise). Your chin stays the same distance form squared shoulderframe as the head turns. One field of vision stays vertically above the other as you turn. And with gaze straight out looking down at the ball, a "horizon line" across both pupils matches the startline of the putt. This "horizon line" matches the vertical plane of the putt and your line of sight stays on this line as your head turns to the target. The shoulders parallel this horizon line, too. The putterface is perpendicular to this line and paralell to the pivot axis from the center of the neck out the top of your head. So you get much richer geometry with a straight-out gaze.
In addition, playing the ball a bit ahead of the bottom of your stroke, the ball sits about in line with the inside of your forward heel. Squaring the toe line of both feet to parallel the puttline helps, and making the left foot point along a line perpendicular to the puttline also helps visually. You always want the ball to exit the visual field of your setup along precisely the same line, crossing the same spot out from your targetside big toe (about 6 to 8 inches out). The path, of course, parallels the shoulderframe and runs directly along the eyes' "horizon line."
I practice all this on a kitchen tile floor, using the intersection and lines for setup practice.
I also find that there's more to a pendulum stroke than just wanting to make one. In particular, I have to be very careful to identify the line of the stroke and make it match the startline and the horizon line before I start the stroke. This identification/matching process is mostly a visual trick. I look for the intersection of the startline with the frontmost dimple on the ball's equator. There is only one such dimple and it is the closest part of the ball to the target. Once you have this dimple, you also know where the center of the ball is by looking down at it and at the topmost dimple. Running the line from the front dimple thru the ball's center identifies the opposite back dimple. Thus you have a line thru the ball that perfectly matches the putt's startline and the horizon line of your vision, so this line is parallel to your shoulders and perpendicular to the square putterface. I always check this ball line to make sure my sweetspot is on the back dimple and the face is perpendicular to the line thru the ball. Then I mentally identify the startback line of the stroke as an extension back away from the ball. To get the sweetspot started straight back, I initiate the move by pushing back with the left shoulder, trying to keep the putter axis pointed straight at my sternum or neck pivot area as the shoulderframe turns back. This requires a steady grip and a tempo that does not force the handle to wiggle or waggle in the grip. I use a light grip so I can tell if my tempo is getting too fast. The length of the backstroke is automatic from my tempo and my targeting in light of the green speed. Once the top of the backstroke is reached, I make a mental point NEVER to allow my hands to start down any quicker than the putter itself naturally falls back. Whenever I let my hands get involved, instead of relying utterly on the clubhead to do the work, I twist the face or make a crooked stroke path. My objective is to allow the putterface's sweetspot to freefall back thru the ball along the ball line, out the front of the ball at the foremost dimple, with the face perfectly square throughout.
One trick I've learned about keeping the face square, which is probably a bit more important than sweetspot contact, is to make sure that before I start the stroke I relax my forearms and make sure my hands have sunk back towards me as far as they want to go. This rids my forearms and upper arms of tension from lifting the hands and forearms out and away a bit, which is where they will surely go if you let them. If the hands can sink back any at all, I still have tension that will mess up the stroke or twist the face. Once the hands have sunk back, my push back move follows a pretty straight path back, and then the freefall downstroke comes into the ball with a square face. Just the ticket, so long as you have aimed correctly to begin with!
I've never used any sweetspot guiders. Instead, I've trained myself to watch carefully and know the feeling of a solid impact with the sweetspot. I also think targeting and aiming is more important than a perfect stroke, and that sometimes, so long as the targeting and aimiing is on, you need some minute in-stroke corrections to accomplish your intent. A lot of the time this is occasioned by something off in the upper torso, the right foot, or the stroke takeaway. This usually means a minor sacrifice in sweetspot impact for the larger goal of making the putt. Too much emphasis on sweetspot perfection can hamper these necessary corrective moves.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Greensboro North Carolina USA
"Your personal putting assistant."
http://hometown.aol.com/puttmagic
"The World's most comprehensive putting resource."
Thanks for suggestions. Your analysis includes a lot more detail than I
have considered. Rotating the eyes in the vertical plane of the putt is a
must, and it's something I believe I do well, but on a purely subconscious
level.
Have you ever played a round with impact tape on the face of your putter to
see how well you strike putts "under pressure"? What are your putting stats
like? I found my putts per GIR for about 50 rounds of golf averaged about
1.84. Not great, but OK considering how little I've played in the last 2
years.
I've never used impact tape, but I know how I do under pressure. Once in a while I get excited, and as soon as I notice it, I go to two things to shut it off: breathing and "do your routine job because that's the only thing that works." The breathing is to calm the fight-flight adrenalin response of the nervous system, which on a golf course is entirely self-generated. I know how much this sort of polution in the system adversely affects perceptions and movement control, so it is clearly the enemy, and I dispatch it accordingly. The "do the routine job" mindset is a wonderful tonic for pressure, as it puts you back in the moment and blocks out peripheral conc4rns such as score, win-lose, embarrassment, etc., and puts the mind on attentiveness to the relevant perceptual cues and movement planning and execution. With these two protectives, it is possible to use pressure as a complementary resource for the appropriate sort of mental energy in attention and perception. One other thing, I think, is a bit of "watch this" attitude. If you have this attitude, keep it to yourself, because it doesn't always work out; but using it silently seems to help under pressure.
As far as stats go, I'm not too fond of the GIR numbers the PGA Tour uses. Up until about 1986, the Tour just counted putts for 18 holes, and ranked players using that. The top playerrs used about 28 putts per round. Then the ballstrikers complained that players with low putt numbers were getting too many easy first putts from missing the green and then chipping close. This explains a lot of the PGA Tour records for putting, such as 18 putts, usually at Harbour Town. So the Tour started using Putts per GIR to rank players. The whole point is that this approach is for RANKING players, not for assessing putting. A better way to assess putting is to measure each putt's length and record sinks and the type of misses, such as low and short 2 feet from 30 feet, high and long 3 feet from 45 feet, sink a straight in 10 footer, short 3 inches on a left-to-right 8 footer, etc. This of course involves too much measuring for the Tour, so they don't use it. Another approach is to measure the footage of each putt and simply record sink or miss, so at the end of the day you have numbers like 2-putt from 30 feet with 3-foot second putt, 1-putt from 12 feet, 2-putt from 18 feet with 1-foot second putt, 1-putt from 8 feet, etc. There is an article describing this method. The author devised a scheme to assign numbers to the footage, so at the end of the day you get a score, like 69, for putting, and compare that to your golf round score, say 74, and this tells you how your putting went and whether it helped or hurt your golf score. (I'll send the reference later.)
I am attaching a "game" I created to help with short putts (2 to 11 feet). It has a scoring system (up to 100 points) that indicates how well you are doing. It is possible to gain competence in this game fairly rapidly but it is darn hard to do well consistently (80+ points). Try it!
More later.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Greensboro North Carolina USA
"Your personal putting assistant."
http://hometown.aol.com/puttmagic
"The World's most comprehensive putting resource."
Thanks for the putting games. I'll try one of them next time I get to the
course. I really appreciate all this information you've given me.
Those putting games at the upper two levels sound brutal. The "must make"
feeling one would encounter for the last putt sure would make you
concentrate to overcome the tendency to think only of the results, and not
the execution.
Let's say you picked the worse putter on Tour. How do you think he'd rank
compared to the typical 5 handicapper like myself? Have you had any of the
Tour players play the Tour level (or higher) of your putting game? If so,
how did they do?
I read that Walter Travis was so good at putting that he would practice
hitting 8 to 10-foot putts into the middle, right and left edges of the
hole.
I once played a round of golf in a team match with my former high school
coach as my partner, where I made 5 putts of 30 to 65 feet in length.
(Doesn't say much for my ball striking...) The weird thing about it was
that once I made the first one on the 5th hole, I felt like I would make
everything. I almost didn't care how close I hit it anymore. The two guys
we played against told me after the round they got scared every time I had a
putt over 20 feet long. After the I'd made the 3rd one, my coach never
talked to me when I was approaching the putts in fear of breaking the
"spell". My body actually felt like it tingled when I was ready to putt and
I just knew the ball was going to go in. I could see the line and watch the
ball go in before I hit it. Sometimes I putt and I "know". Maybe it was just
a statistical aberration, but it has happened to me a couple of other times,
although the putts were considerably shorter in length on average. I'd like
to learn how to call this up more often. The metaphysical side. Most of the
other times I putt and I hope.
I think this level of trying is real. I believe that for a putt of any
given length, I'd have the highest success rate if putting for an eagle,
followed by par and birdie, because I like to get eagles, and saving a par
feels good. I have no stats to back this up. Shivas Irons move over...
The interesting thing about the game is that each "station" has a maximum number of points, so in one sense getting your 10 points by sinking five in a row from 11 feet is no more pressure than sinking five in a row from 4 feet -- it's just that each separate putt is a bit harder, so the concentration stays on the fundamentals of technique instead of "mounting pressure." The end result is an intimate familiarity with the range 2-11 feet, and all putts in this range start to look a lot alike, so this defuses the pressure and supplants it with attention to technique with a record of success and familiarity. I think the "drill" of sinking, say, 25 2-footers, 25 3-footers, etc., out to 6 or 8 feet, and starting all over upon any miss, creates the wrong sort of "pressure" -- one consisting principally of frustration and fear of drudgery. I know "unpleasant" and "pressure" are often equated, but I don't think it really amounts to the same sort of pressure you feel in a tight golf situation. And I also don't think you should accept great pressure as an inevitable, as something that cannot be dispensed with successfully. Great pressure to me is a nuisance that I either allow or dissipate. I like to dissipate it.
Now competitiveness is another sort of "pressure" that I like. This is what Tiger so enjoys and what Jack Nicklaus thrives upon. When you hear PGA Tour golfers say they WANT a 15-foot putt on the 72nd hole to win the US Open, this is what they are talking about -- they've worked hard to get in this position and want to take their best shot AND WIN! That's a very positive sort of self-generated pressure. Forget the other kind.
The worst putter on Tour is not much above 1.8 putts per GIR. The best today is 1.712. Jim Furyk in 1996 set the standard at 1.708. The top GIR guys are around 70%, or maybe 65% for the full year (around 14 greens per round). The pro average is closer to 60% (about 11 greens each round). The trick seems to be that the top putters according to putts per GIR are also very accurate with their approach shots. They don't just hit the green somewhere -- they stick it close. It's a lot easier to get to the top of the putting stats when you stick it close. Just ask Tiger. He's not really as great at putting as his stats suggest because his total putting footage per GIR each round is a lot shorter than other players. So, on this basis, the "worst" of the Tour putters may be pretty good at putting, and perhaps even better than the top golfer over a smaller range, but just doesn't get within the smaller range nearly as often. But to answer your question:
I think the big difference in Tour putting and single-digit amateur putting is distance control over the full range of putts, a more careful routine, and a greater consistency in technique. There is also a greater familiarity with green situations (breaks, grass types, playing conditions, etc.), from playing many different courses. Tour player almost never misjudge the distance of putts, at least not nearly as much as single-digit amateurs. A pro has typical leaves or comeback putts of two feet, and rarely over 4 feet. He also has a greater comfort zone for comebacks. If you charted the leaves of pros and single-digit amateurs, this would become obvious fairly rapidly. As a consequence, pros seldom three-putt (about once every two or three rounds, on average). While the pros make a lot inside 6 feet, outside this range, a top-putting amateur can hang with them pretty well if he has good distance control. So, top-putting amateurs miss more inside 6 feet from inconsistent routine and technique (and perhaps a little less experience), and miss more outside this range due to poorer distance control and green- or putt-reading experience / knowledge. As a result, whereas a so-so putting pro might average 31 putts per round, a sigle-digit amateur will probably have a three-putt about once every round and miss one or two 6-footers that the pro would make, so that tallies out to about 2-3 more putts per round (say, 34 versus 31).
In order to hang with the top putters on the Tour, a single-digit amateur has to have superb distance control and a keen sense for reading putts. He also needs a rock-steady routine and a technique that he not only trusts, but that actually works accurately and consistently. By way of encouragement, I don't for a minute stand in awe of the top Tour putters, They have a lot of room for improvement.
I know a god amateur can have a hot hand and take 25 or even fewer putts, but that is exceptional and not an average performance. I am comparing the pro's average and the single-digit amateur's average performance.
As to the "zone," I would recommend your read Michael Murphy's book on the subject, with Rhea White. If you like Shivas irons, you will enjoy Murphy's more technical work on the zone. You should be able to find it at amazon.com with an author search.
What I teach is very similar to invoking the zone for each putt. When I teach people my targeting techniques, they feel the dreaminess immediately. To me, the zone is all about staying in the moment effortlessly, keyed solely on the relevant cues that make the performance work. The sense of "knowing" the putt will go in, and foreseeing it before the stroke, is something Ben Crenshaw consciously sought all the time. Tom Lehman has said that sometimes he is so deeply "into a putt" that it is an utter shock if he misses. Tiger Woods speaks of willing the ball into the hole. And so on. from the point of view of neurophysiology, the "feeling" of knowing the putt will go in is something like a resonance of various perceptive and movement systems (vision, proprioception or body-position-sense, motor plan, etc.) with the timing of the body movements, and with the emotional system. The limbic or emotional system in the brain is probably what is generating this "sense" of focused certitude. To me, it's nice to get that feeling, but the fundamental reality is the proper integration of the necessary perceptive and movement capacities. The routine does this for you. If you want to have the feeling, too, you can, but the use of a good routine makes you feel a bit more like an experienced airline pilot than a Baryshnikov. Some people have a greater capacity for working on the conscious and the subconscious levels simutaneously, without conflict, than others; some need to stay on one or the other level. Most people who speak of the "zone" are speaking from the subconscious experiences. You really can have your cake and eat it too.
I certainly love Walter Travis! The feat of putting to the left, middle or right on 8 to 10 footers, though, is no big deal. I target a blade of grass on the rim for 30-footers, and can vary the entry point with great accuracy.
As for the games, I just created them two weeks ago. I've scored 100 on the Prep School level, and made it into the 80s on the other levels. For the Ryder Cup, I can get to about 60 or 70 points. I hope to get much better. perhaps we can play together sometime!
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Greensboro North Carolina USA
"Your personal putting assistant."
http://hometown.aol.com/puttmagic
"The World's most comprehensive putting resource."