BOM wrote
Had to get some sleep in order to comprehend this (and the rest of the post). But, hopefully progress can be made now that this lightbulb is turned on.
No doubt it was a restful sleep? I’m glad it got there though. The simplest things can often be the hardest to explain, because the words are important.
Like everything, there are options, from my experience this style of putting is the best when you get it down because it requires less arm and hand manipulation- though that’s sort of counterintuitive. IF you’re inclined to putt square to square, and there are very good putters who do that- Lee Westwood would fall into that category for me, but again, he’s naturally steep through impact with his shoulders, so his coordination is trained in that way. He then stays true to form when he putts. But if you are drawn to want to keep the face on the line longer I reckon there are a few things you should do. You’d want to bend over quite a lot and have the ball pretty close to your toes, almost a feeling of having it inside your eye line, or sort of behind you. And equally important, you’d want a shorter, more upright putter that’s face balanced and heavy- some sort of mallet style putter because the weight is spread out over a larger area and not just in the middle, or the heel and toe. You’d want to feel more ‘elbows out’ at address and have them work ‘outward’ during the motion. It’s a very functional way to putt, but like I was saying, it’s helpful if your swing action and the putting action move similarly.
A few more points to ponder have come to mind. I’ll throw them out there for comment/discussion. Hope they are not to rambling. They were also sleep induced.
You see these things recommended for the full shots…how about putting?
1 solid contact…an absolute fundamental of the full shot. Is it also critical in putting, and how is it best achieved? Strength is not a factor.
Should one hit on the downbeat as Al Barkow explains in his fine e-book (The Final Word on Putting)… he has been told this by several putting legends, OR should the ball be struck on the upstroke as Harold Swash advises?
Is this point less important now with smooth greens ( Barkow’s interview with NYC Lagster)? Can one really impart an end over end spinning motion, like a fast spinning tire, by hitting on the downbeat, and thus use the gyroscope effect to resist the tendency for the ball to roll off line?
What about acceleration…is just a slight acceleration ok, or is a firm rap better?
2 eliminate one side of the course/ have only one miss…This can put a gofer on a new level in their long game, why not putting? I think Lag may have touched on this somewhere in what he has written about putting, but I have never seen it mentioned anywhere else. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know you only had one miss? I did go through a brief time where I knew my tendency was to push slightly, and played for it, with good results. Should one purposefully incorporate that? In Lag’s 3rd interview with Sam Randolph, they discussed how Sam liked to set up open, and push his putts, with excellent results …similar to Trevino.
Lag,
regarding your comments on that we should use heavier gear… but that the flatstick is light.
Listen to “boss of the moss”
Great observations/questions Eagle. Should produce some good discussion.
Regarding #1 - Most putts I’ve made seemed to be the result of center-face contact. This may seem obvious, but I’m talking CENTER face contact (not a smidge toward the heel/toe, or high/low on the face). I think being off-center even slightly may affect distance and direction more than we think (much like hitting a persimmon driver). 
You may remember the “teachers clips” that Pelz sold (and probably still does). The “pro level” clips allowed no margin for off-center misses.
I reckon solid contact is vital but I don’t think you get it by trying to get it, you find it by using and moving the sweet spot correctly. This is one of the major reasons why the flowing face method is so much better than square to square. When you rotate correctly, just like the golf swing, the mass in the head of the club is allowed to move naturally(this is another reason why having the mass in the perimeter of the club is disastrous for the swing- the more centered it is the easier it is to recognize and rotate) When you go square to square or up and down and shut, you kill the motion at the heart of the face. The face itself is sort of irrelevant and using it as a guide is dangerous because the directional fear inclination tends to make people keep it pointing at the ball or the target or something down there that we’re afraid to let go of. This point has potential as a conversation in terms of it’s overall relevance to our individual psychology and is related to the letting go of control point I made. But that’s part of all of our journeys through the game, in my opinion.
In any part of the game you need to be willing to 'let go of the face. It needs to move because it holds the thing that moves the ball. If we don’t let it move, the heel and toe travel the same distance through the motion. At that point, it’s no longer a purely rotational system all the way out, making the sweet spot arrive at the ball too soon, and the only option is to try to open the face through impact or hold on. This goes for everything. In putting this produces heel strikes, as it does in the golf swing too, because what you’re actually doing through impact is accelerating the heel up and out instead of around and inward(cutting it left). You’re not free to rotate through or truly accelerate, because you can’t, there’s nothing behind to accelerate(sort of minute detail, but it has massive implications on how you move). And you’re inner radar knows this better than you.
I don’t like those Pelz clips because they just cause me stress, but that’s me, they may be beneficial to others. In fact, I’m not a huge fan of Pelz at all, but that’s neither here nor there.
Cool questions, Eagle, I’ll try to get to the eliminating sides part later, but I’m not a huge fan of the concept. Again, these points are from my experience and understanding, so take them for what they are.
Great stuff BOM. I’m right there with the concept of trying harder won’t get you there… in fact you probably have to try “less”. Sort of like to make it you have to not care if you make it 
I’m no fan of those clips either although I think they have noble intentions. Like many things in golf my opinion of certain teachers and their philosophies have come more into question as I’ve gotten older and become more “enlightened”. Pelz and his teachings are certainly one of them. I liked his attempt to apply some science and statistics to putting when no one else seemed to be doing that, but I strongly disagree with a lot of his “stuff”.
I think professionals who putt well, even those with putting stroke “compensations”, do a much better job of attaining really solid/centered contact from stroke to stroke. Just as good ball-strikers will have a small wear spot on their irons I believe good putters have the same relative wear pattern visible on their putters. I’ve seen it with what I consider to be good putters I play with who have stayed with a particular putter over time and you can even pick up on it during a televised event with the “work cam” sometimes. (Back to Pelz… in one of his books he has impact tape images showing the dispersion of varying skill levels which was quite telling).
Moving the sweetspot vs the face is something I hadn’t “consciously” considered. I need to mull that over some but it sounds like a pretty poweful concept.
What would the best putter head shape/style/etc. for the non-SBST flowing stroke? A smaller, more golf-club-like putter head would seem to be the implement of choice then (no wacky, spyder-looking face balanced things, obviously). But of the choices out ther, what shape would be optimal or more preferable performance-wise? Ping anser shape? Bullseye? Old-school thin blade? – There’s a video on the Sevam site with Jackie Burke talking about how instructive they are. 8802? Smaller mallet?
I picked up an old Arnold Palmer Personal 8802-like putter on ebay for $15 or so recently but I haven’t had a chance to put it into play. It has this great round tacky leather grip, although it feels a little light - but this thread has me leaning towards it…
Cheese,
I think you’ll find the 8802 type an excellent choice for the non-sbst motion. Pure heel shafting I think makes a difference when compared to the bulls-eyes even though they both have toe flow during the stroke.
That’s a pretty good deal on that AP btw.
Gosh I hate to even get into a putting thread but insanity is one thing and OCD is another!
What do you guys think of a putter marketed by Master Grip Golf. Don’t recall the style/name of it…but they deaden the sweet spot so that essentially the entire face is equally reactive regardless of where one strikes the ball upon the face.
Their marketing strategy says under normal circumstances “true distance” is only gained from spot on contact…and as we know anything outside that parameter is going short of what we need. Their thinking is that if the center was deadened…than all one would have to learn, or feel, is how much harder to stroke a putt…because regardless of where on the face the ball is struck, the ball wil go the same distance. Makes some sense I guess.
Check it out for details at Master Grip Golf and see what 'ya think and chime in if you can. RR
Cheese, I reckon that style is right on, but whatever hangs like a golf club will work well. Not sure what you’re using now, but baby steps in the 8802 style direction will help. I use an old Ping Anser that I’ve had since I was 16. I’ve got lead tape etc. on it so it’s not as light as they are normally. I also putt left hand low purely because I like it- I found that when I was drinking beers and messing around on the putting green for $, I was inclined to go left hand low. You drink enough beers, time goes by, you wake up with extra cash in your pocket, and all of a sudden it feels like you’ve been doing it your whole life. I also found out that I was a pretty good left handed putter that way, though that may be a goggled view.
I do think there are some physical benefits to left hand low, and if anyone hasn’t tried it, it’s worth trying to get a feel for imo. Though that’s very much a personal preference thing…
Good stuff, Robbo… yeah, Pelz has brought some interesting stat info to the table, but I’m not a fan of his method thinking, though it may have changed since I listened to anything he says because that’s a long time ago. Along the lines of what Chamblee was saying in that interview about art vs science, he’s the poster child for that. Do you remember an open letter to Sergio that he(Pelz) wrote after the US Open at Bethpage? It may have been ‘disappeared’ because I can’t find it anywhere online…
Cheers…
Bom, putted with an anser 3 for a while but then got rid of it – before I could remove my head from my ass, I went out and bought a heavier (250G I think) job sight unseen with what I thought would be a similar lookingshape from one of the golf buy/sell sites. Turned out the back bumper was way thicker than I’d imagined and it just looks flat out strange to me. And it has an extra thick grip with an extra wide flat spot down the front. Which is what led me to Arnie…think I may have to load it up a bit with some lead tape and give it a go…
Yeah, the AP sounds nice, give it a go for sure…
So what does a donkey’s head look like when it’s up an ass? Sounds like some kind of panto skit gone wrong…
Not pretty from the ass’ perspective.
It’s “Putting Boot Camp” to teach putting with eyes closed tight.
… and there’s really no better way to block your view than to stick your head up a mules ass. It’s hands down the best to do it… forget this eyes closed business, I want commitment! 
Lately I have been rolling it about as good as I can remember. I shot some video the other day out at Mare putting 6 balls scattered in a circle around the hole ranging from 8 to 25 feet. Two different holes #11 and #12. Both tricky greens. So a total of 12 putts, and I made 7 of them… which for me is beyond typical. Usually I might make 1 or 2 tops.
The point here is that I am amazed how well I read greens when the ball is coming off the face straight and steady. I think it is a feedback issue. Only when I am putting good do I get really reliable feedback on the green reading. If I am rolling it poorly, I don’t think I ever really feel I know if I am reading putts correctly. It’s also amazing how many putts you can make on poor greens if you are really rolling it well. I think you have to roll it better on bad greens to make putts. I suspect on perfect surfaces, you can get away with less than perfect putting strokes, maybe I should say glancing blows or other side spin issues, or even off center hits. I suspect consistency is the key to putting well on good greens, but I wonder if a superior stroke that really rolls the ball would actually do better on bumpy or less than perfect greens.
I have the same green reading experience as you, lag. When I struggle to read the line it’s because I struggle with the stroke. And the better I strike the ball the better I read lines. At its best it gets to a point where I even see that puts may drop even if I miss the line slightly.
I experience something similar from just outside the green. THe more solid I hit those greenside shots the easier it is to judge distance.
I have a fair share of experience on mediocre and poor greens. We never have good greens in Norway early spring and late autumn. I get a lot better results on those when I strike the ball solid. I also get good results from outside the green when I manage to put even more forward press and lag pressure at impact. But the bumpyness tends to randomize the result somehow so that a few well struck putts jump out while a few misses jumps in. So direction becomes slightly less of a differentiating factor outside 6 feet, IMO.
No doubt about it. I can relate to that in terms of my overall shot pattern- a draw. I’ve just always seen it and always hit and I’m comfortable in it. But what I noticed was that my green reading had a sort of draw bias to it. It was very difficult to remove that picture from the visualization of any shot. One of the things that helped me, and really improved things, was spending some time on the putting green actually trying to ‘shape’ the ball on a straight putt. Try to draw them and fade them in there, and what I realized was that it’s next to impossible, if not impossible to do. This, in an indirect sort of way, gave me confidence to know that no matter what I do, good or bad, the ball itself wont actually be curving. It felt good to know that after that, everything was pretty much down to path and getting it started in the right direction, because the ball basically stays on the line it starts. My clarity in green reading increased because it seemed simpler after that.