cherrybarry
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How can you rock your shoulders vertically without rotation? And then he tells you not to move your head, which is impossible if you can do the above?
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Don't understand Pelz
- Thread starter cherrybarry
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The only way I know to really do that is with a lot of spine angle forward ala jack when he used to get over his putts.
Pelz is right about one very important part of the shortgame - 'swing'
Let gravity help control your tempo, and keep your tempo consistent. Then you just have to vary the length and/or setup to get the shot at hand.
I also like the research his has done about how differnt shots/lies/slopes effect the ball.
agree or not with his specific swing techniques, he has added, or at least distributed, a lot of really good info on the short game. Don't dismiss the concepts, even if you disagree with the specifics.
Pelz is right about one very important part of the shortgame - 'swing'
Let gravity help control your tempo, and keep your tempo consistent. Then you just have to vary the length and/or setup to get the shot at hand.
I also like the research his has done about how differnt shots/lies/slopes effect the ball.
agree or not with his specific swing techniques, he has added, or at least distributed, a lot of really good info on the short game. Don't dismiss the concepts, even if you disagree with the specifics.
benhogan54
New
Here is an article from Geoff Mangum on the science of straight back and straight through. I really can't understand it, but some of you might be able to. It's pretty long.
Great question! and very timely, too. Does the natural and best putting stroke follow a “screen-door” style arcing back inside on the backstroke, then square thru impact, and then back inside on the thru-stroke, and is the straight-back and straight-thru pendulum stroke really a myth?
I've been preparing a discussion of this very subject, primarily because of the recent news coverage the so-called “arcing stroke” has been getting. Your question prompts me to jump the gun a bit, and just sort of spit out what I've been thinking about this subject.
Let me be blunt at first for the sake of organizational clarity:
The straight stroke is only "mythical" to those who don't know how to make one. To be charitable, the people who teach the "arcing" stroke don't really understand that there are TWO different sorts of arcing strokes, made in two entirely different ways, one of which is in fact a straight stroke that merely "looks" arcing. This latter stroke, however, is not the one being taught to US Tour players, but it is being taught on the European Tour. I personally teach this sort of straight stroke as well as a third sort that is even a purer straight stroke. This third stroke does not even "look" like it arcs.
I've been familiar with the teaching of Stan Utley, and have read and studied the comments about his teaching by his best-known students Jay Haas, Jeff Sluman, and Pat Bates, as well as asked questions of people who have taken lessons from him lately. I have also tried to contact Utley directly in Missouri (http://www.stanutleygolf.com), but received no response. His teaching is not seriously different from that of Mike Shannon (Country Club of Alabama, Montgomery) or even David Lee (Gravity Golf, Hot Springs, Arkansas) as far as the "arcing" stroke path is concerned. Recently, Todd Sones in Golf Tips Magazine concluded that the "arcing" stroke is the only stroke a golfer should try to make. Davis Love III has made the "putting arc" training aid sort of prominent, and Mike Shannon made presentations with this aid at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando this January. I disagree with all this based on mathematics, biomechanics, top putters like Ben Crenshaw, Bobby Locke, and the shoulder-stroke folks, and my personal experience. So bear with me as I explain why I spin out my reasons for differing with your characterizing the straight stroke as "mythical."
DEFINITIONS. First, some basic definitions. The "arcing" stroke is one in which the putterhead travels back and thru on an arc shaped like a mild rainbow or smile, with the golfer standing in the place of the nose to a smile. The arc is a curve along the ground that is square to the target only at the ball, and if the stroke successfully duplicates this curve, the ball will roll straight where the putterface is aimed at address. This arc involves a pivoting of the shoulderframe horizontally back and thru about the stationary spine, even if the motion is mostly one of the arms moving independently rather than the shoulderframe as a unit moving the "triangle". The arc basically stays close to the ground the whole time, as there is not much rising of the putterhead above its initial position behind the ball, to the extent the shoulderframe is following with the progression of the stroke. If the arms act independently of the shoulderframe, so that the upper torso stays still and the shoulderframe remains squared to the putt line, there will naturally be a little rising of the putter as it goes back and as it goes past impact. Obviously, the arc does not stay on the line of the putt on either the back or front side of the ball. Instead, the arc is hopefully symmetrical on both sides of the ball, and has the same radius on the back and the front of the arc. Assuming that there is no alteration in the orientation of the hands, wrists, and forearms during the progress of the stroke, the putterface starts square to the target thru the ball but opens to the target going back and then retraces this flaring in reverse on the forward stroke as the face closes back to square just at impact and then continues closing past impact as the arc continues back inside. The putterface is only square to the target at the one instant of impact. At all other times in the stroke path, the putterface is either opening or closing in degrees to the target, but is supposed to remain square to the stroke path itself.
On the other hand, a "straight" stroke path is one in which the putterface starts square and stays square not only to the stroke path (like the "arcing" stroke), but also to the target (unlike the "arcing" stroke). When you speak of making a stroke in plane, you are not using the language that describes an "arcing" stroke as described above. A "straight" stroke, however, does have a movement of the "triangle" of shoulderframe, arms and putter that stays "on plane," whether that plane is vertical or tilted, so long as the plane of motion intersects the green in a line that is either the same or parallel to the putt line (the line on either side of the center of the ball that aims perpendicularly out of the putterface at the initial target). A vertical stroke plane is different from any tilted stroke plane in that the rising trajectory of the putterhead on either side of the ball stays vertically above the puttline on the ground at all times (a vertical smile), whereas with a tilted-plane stroke the “smile” of the putterhead’s rising on either side of the ball is leaning towards the golfer and this lean of the smile and the stroke plane means the putterhead does not stay directly above the puttline back and thru but comes inside going back and comes inside going thru. In both cases (vertical- or tilted-plane stroke), however, the putterhead is actually staying moving in one flat plane and this plane intersects the puttline. So apart from the “smile” from the rising of the putterhead, BOTH a tilted-plane and a vertical-plane stroke actually move the putterhead in a straight line (the same as the puttline) and the face of the putter always stays square to BOTH the line of the putt and the path of the stroke.
The confusion arises between an "arcing" path and a tilted-plane "straight" path. The tilted-plane stroke’s path in 3 dimensions includes the “smile” that is also tilted. Seen from the perspective of looking straight down at the putterhead, this tilted “smile” trajectory “looks” like the golfer is deliberately making the putterhead arc inside the puttline back and thru, but he is NOT doing that. The golfer is really moving the putterhead straight in a tilted stroke plane. In an “arcing” stroke, the golfer is really moving the putterhead in an arc.
This confusion leads these current "arcing" path teachers to conclude (erroneously) that a straight stroke path cannot be made naturally, so they all fail to understand the tilted-plane straight stroke's advantages or how to make one, and they don't seem to believe in the existence of the vertical-plane straight stroke and certainly don't believe it can be made naturally. Hence the pejorative term "mythical."
Let me go thru the mathematics, biuomechanics, history, and experience concerning all this, to try to clarify this important point.
MATHEMATICS: This all goes back to the Conic Sections of ancient Greek geometers, particularly Apollonius of Perga in about 200-300 b.c.. A conic section is the part of a cone that is indicated by intersecting the cone with a plane, in various orientations. If the cone rests on its base on a flat surface and the plane that intersects the cone somewhere between the base and the apex is also flat or horizontal to the surface, the "conic section" that results is a circle, and the diameter varies from the diameter of the cone's base diameter to zero at the cone's apex, depending upon how far up the cone's height the plane intersects the cone.
Other orientations of the plane thru the cone result in other "sections.' The axis of the cone passes from the apex to the center of the cone's base. Three other sorts of sections (in addition to the flat plane "circle") result from whether the plane intersects the cone vertically thru the axis, does not intersect the axis at all, or intersects the axis at an angle off vertical (oblique). The section relevant to putting is the section that results when the plane intersects the cone obliquely thru the axis. When this is the case, the "conic section" that results looks elliptical in shape (more curved than a circle, like the butt end of an oval).
Your comment about the tilted angle of the shaft is why this oblique conic section is the relevant model for putting. The axis of the cone is seen as the golfer's spine (or a vertical line from pivot of stroke to surface), and the putter shaft is seen as tilted down to the ground just like the outer surface of the cone from apex to outer circle of the base. The putter's lie angle is the same angle as that between the cone's apex, base perimeter, and center of base.
The difference between an "arcing" path and a tilted-plane stroke path is how the shaft of the putter moves in relations to the curved surface of the cone's side.
ARCING PATH: If the shaft of the putter and the pattern of the golfer's movement keeps the shaft of the putter flush to the cone's curved side as it goes back and thru, then the stroke path of the putterhead is EXACTLY the same shape as the base of the cone, where the cone meets the surface. That is, the putterhead's path is a circle, and the path makes the putter open to the target going back and close to the target going forward. The putterhead does not rise at all off the surface. And the putterface remains square to the arcing circular path at all points, provided there is no manipulation of the putterface apart from pivoting back. This is the extreme end of the spectrum of an "arcing" stroke. In fact, the way this stroke is being taught, there is quite a bit of independent motion of the arms apart from the shoulderframe, and this injects some natural "rising" of the putterhead gpoing back and going thru asa well as some deviation away from a true circle for a path that is less curved. Such an arms or hands stroke, operating independently of the shoulderframe, sends the shaft off the surface of the cone somewhat, and so results in a more elliptical "arc" shape with some minor rising of the putterhead off the surface.
TILTED-PLANE STRAIGHT PATH: If the motion of the shaft remains in a single plane that leans flush against the tilted side of the cone, the plane will intersect the cone only on the line of the shaft from apex to base and the plane will be perpendicular to a line from the axis of the cone flush thru the side of the cone and plane. If the motion of the shaft remains at all times inside this plane, the shaft obviously will depart from the side surface of the cone as soon as motion starts. Even if the motion is totally one of the shoulderframe and "triangle" all as a unit, the putterhead will rise above the surface on either side of the starting point, describing a tilted smiley face shape that touches the surface solely at the bottom of the smile.
Now imagine a laser shining straight out of the bottom of the shaft and the putter's sole at the surface. In the first "arcing" case, the laser paints a section of the perimeter of a circle on the ground, perfectly tracing the curve of the base of the cone, and the sweetspot of the putter stays at the level of the base right on the surface. In the second case of an "arcing" stroke with independent arms-hands action, the laser paints a less curved ellipse that goes away from the base circle as the putterhead rises going back and then rises going past impact. BUT in the second case of a tilted-plane "straight" stroke, the laser paints a perfectly straight line that matches at all times the line of the putt along the ground, although the putterhead is rising going back and rising going past impact more than the second case just described.
The drawing of the robot-puppet on the Taylor Made site you refer to includes a line along the ground that is curved or "arcing." This line is what should be indicated by the laser aimed straight out of the bottom of the shaft ( a straight uncurved line), but the Taylor Made people picked the shape that results from shining the laser straight vertically down from the bottom of the putter rather than straight out of the bottom of the shaft. Either that or they are describing the path of an arcing stroke movement like Stan Utley teaches. I can’t really tell because the trajectory of the shoulders in motion is not clear. At any rate, these drawings are just rough illustrations and are not meant to be all that technically accurate. Incidentally, I spent over three hours at a PGA Tour practice green in conversation with Taylor Made’s technical guru and Tour putting rep Tom Olsavsky, who appears in this website touting the Taylor Made putting studio, and we discussed this specific topic in extensive detail. I can assure you that Tom is much too technically astute and scientifically trained to warrant the simple drawing of a robot on this website as technically accurate in these matters, and he knows the difference between an in-plane stroke and a gating stroke.
The confusion about the first and second sorts of strokes is traceable to a misunderstanding of the tilted-plane straight stroke. If you trace the line of the putter by shining a laser out the bottom of the shaft, you get a straight line on the ground. But this stroke rises in a tilted smiley-face shape, and as it rises, the putterhead “appears” to come inside the puttline, even though the bottom of the shaft stays aimed at the putt line only. If you recorded the position of the sweetspot of the putter as it rises in this tilted smiley shape by shining a laser out of the sweetspot vertically down at the ground, this laser would describe an “arc” – the shadow or projection of the tilted smiley face in the air as the shadow appears straight below. This shadow “arc” shape is merely an illusion and not something to try to make happen in the golfer’s movement of the putterhead.
People who teach the “arcing” stroke believe mistakenly that the shape of the shadow of the putterhead in the second type of stroke (tilted-plane straight stroke) means that the putterhead MUST be moving in an arc and also that the only way to do this is to MOVE the putter along an arc. They also believe mistakenly that the face of the putter in this sort of stroke cannot be staying square to the line of the putt, since it appears to arc. This is an illusion. If the movement of the putterhead is viewed looking down the shaft, the putterhead does NOT arc but stays in this one tilted plane, AND the putterface does not change its relation to this plane of motion and remains square to the path AND the line without the least bit of hand manipulation. But if the movement of this tilted-plane straight stroke is viewed from directly above the putterhead looking down to the ground, the head does in fact arc inside the line as it ‘rises” along the smiley face shape.
VERTICAL-PLANE STRAIGHT PATH. Now compare this to the vertical-plane straight stroke. In this case, the putter shaft angles out but the shoulderframe moves down vertically and back laterally all in a vertical plane connecting the pivot in the neck, the two shoulder sockets and the two balls of the feet. No matter how the two hands and arms and putter shaft are angled straight out from this plane of motion, the putterhead will a) move in a straight line right above the putt line, b) the putterface will stay square to the target at all times, c) the putterface will also stay square to the path of the stroke at all times, and d) the putterhead will rise vertically (only) in a smiley face trajectory above the putt line going back and going past impact. The model of this stroke is the cone with the putter shaft aligned with the edge of the cone and the plane of motion running from the apex to the base of the cone vertically, so the intersection of the plane of motion parallels the putt line.
THE PUTTING ARC TRAINING AID (MIKE SHANNON AND DAVIS LOVE III). The Putting Arc training aid is a long piece of plastic or wood that rests flat on the green aligned at the target and its vertical side away from the golfer is curved so that running the butt or heel of the putter along this vertical curling surface makes the putter move in an arc along the ground. This arc ON THE GROUND is supposed to represent the way the body naturally moves the putter. The Putting Arc is based on the Conic Sections of Apollonious of Perga. The reason the Putting Arc aid is incorrect is because it is based upon the projection or shadow arc of the tilted-plane stroke – not the “smile” shape inside the tilted stroke plane but the curve ON THE GROUND one would see if watching this in-plane motion of the putterhead from directly above the puttline. The projection or shadow of the actual movement of the putterhead looks like a very MILD arc that is curved more than the straight line of the putt and less than the circle at the base of the cone. This is the elliptical curve that gives the Putting Arc aid its shape. The aid, then, is based upon an optical illusion. Instead, the aid should be based upon the intersection of the plane of motion and the surface. If the surface is flat (as it is assumed to be), this intersection will ALWAYS be a straight line. The golfer ought to be practicing a straight, in-plane motion, but the Putting Arc aid wrongly trains an arcing path AND an arcing motion in the shoulderframe!
Incidentally, at the Orlando PGA Merchandise Show, Mike Shannon was demonstrating the Putting Arc training aid. They also had a robot set up to make stroke along the elliptical arc of the aid. However, when I inspected the robot’s stroke path, the heel of the putter clearly diverged from the Putting Arc surface the farther back it went andf the farther forward it went, indicating that the robot was in fact making an in-plane stroke and the putterhead was NOT “naturally” hewing to the curve of the arc. If you wanted to calculate the actual way the robot’s shoulderframe would have to move to get the putterhead to stay on the Putting Arc’s curve, you would have a tough assignment. If you simply moved the shoulderframe of the robot horizontally out and back around a spine as a pivot, the putterhead on a tilted shaft would trace a CIRCLE at the base of a cone. In addition, if you visit the Putting Arc website and read the fine print, you will see that the actual curvature of the “standard” arc sold to the public is based on some assumptions about setup, body size and shape, putter design, and stroke pattern that may or may not match what you “naturally” produce for an arcing path. The makers of the aid suggest that if you REALLY want an aid that trains YOUR personal arcing, then you have to get fitted for a custom-made Putting Arc.
ROGER BROOKS’ TRUE PLANE TRAINER AND THE IN-PLANE MOTION. In Europe on the European Tour, golfers use a training aid designed by Oxford-trained mathematician Roger Brooks. Dr. Brooks presented the mathematics of all this at the MOST RECENT world Scientific Congress on Golf in St Andrews Scotland, and he makes and sells a very popular training aid to pros in Europe that encapsulates the correct mathematics. I’ve studied his technical paper and his training aid, and he and I have corresponded about this. His mathematics is also founded upon the Conic Sections of Apollonious of Perga. The shape of his training aid is a rectangular flat plastic base that supports a leaning plexiglass plane. The intersection of the plexiglass plane and the base forms a straight line. The golfer is to run the heel of the putter along the plexiglass plane. As the putter naturally rises going back and going forward, the heel traces a smile shape on the plexiglass, with the bottom of the smile right at the ball or middle of the stroke. BUT the face of the putterhead never opens, not to the path of the stroke or the plexiglass plane or to the line of the putt.
The angle of tilt of the plexiglass plane is adjustable, also. Unfortunately, the aid does not have a setting so that the plexiglass plane is truly vertical, but you can get the same effect simply using a 4x4 piece of lumber as your personal straight putting plane and run the heel of the putter back and forward along the far side of the wood’s vertical plane.
The plexiglass actually has the smile trajectory painted into it in red. If you stood on the far side of the True Plane trainer and looked straight down through the transparent pelxiglass to see how the tilted smile projects onto the ground, you will see a curve on the ground that is milder than the smile and this curve corresponds to the shape of the far side of the Putting Arc training aid. The difference between the two training aids is in HOW THE GOLFER MOVES.
BIOMECHANICS: The movement of the body performed by the golfer depends mostly upon understanding some biomechanics and understanding how the mind or brain makes the motion happen.
HOW TO MAKE A STRAIGHT STROKE. Jay Haas has commented that the reason he recently switched to Stan Utley’s approach to the stroke is because he has tried for decades to make a straight stroke and has never really gotten the movement down. Jeff Sluman has said that Stan Utley’s description to him this summer of the how the stroke keeps the putterface square to the path of an arc but not to the line of the putt was the first time in his career that he felt he had ever understood how the putter actually needs to move in a good stroke. I certainly respect these very capable golfers very highly, but I have to tell you that making a straight stroke is so simple and easy that it shocks me somewhat to hear that anyone who has played golf at the highest level, with access to all the coaching that money can buy for years and years, cannot describe or make a straight stroke in which the putterface stays square to the path AND the line. I do it every day and people I teach can do it in minutes. All you have to do is set the triangle of your shoulderframe, arms, hands, and putter with the face aimed square at the target and then move the whole triangle IN A PLANE by moving the shoulderframe IN A PLANE that intersects the ground in a line that is either the same as or parallel to the puttline.
Since people who swear the putting path MUST arc because of geometry, these folks ought to be fairly easy to convince by simply showing them a straight stroke with a tilted shaft in which the face stays square to the line and the path. NOT SO! Unfortunately, even when I show people this stroke, they refuse to believe the putterhead moves in a line and that the face of the putter stays square! Go figure … I had a rather lengthy and interesting discussion with Kirk Currie about this with Kirk and his company’s president in Orlando this past January at the PGA Merchandise Show. The president swore that the path MUST arc because the putter shaft is tilted out away from the body, and therefore the face must also open and close in the stroke in relation to the puttline. However, the Kirk Currie company makes and sells a stroke-training aid that is essentially a straight rod elevated about 2 feet high on a stand, and the golfer is supposed to rest the shaft on the far side of the horizontal rod and make strokes back and forth. I pointed out to the president and Kirk that this rod acts just like the plexiglass plane of Roger Brooks’ True Plane trainer, and showed them a tilted-plane stroke. The president agreed that this stroke and his training aid made the putter shaft move in a straight line, but insisted that the putterhead was arcing and that the face of the putter was opening going back and closing going thru because it “had to.” I did the stroke again and asked him to watch the putterhead and the face of the putter – the putterhead runs in a straight line and the face stays square to the rod, to the line of the putt, and to the path at all times. The president then insisted that the only way the face would stay square like that is because I was manipulating the putterface with my hands, rotating the hands counterclockwise going back and clockwise going forward, to compensate and therefore to eliminate the “natural” fanning he expected to see. So I then held the putter with two flat palms and asked that he watch my hands carefully, because I was not rotating the hands counter to the stroke or doing anything at all with the hands. The upshot was that Kirk and I agreed about the straightness of the putterhead motion and about the squareness of the face to the line of the putt and to the path, but his company president remained steadfast in his belief that the face has to open and close in an arc due to the tilt of the putter shaft.
Let me try to be very explicit about this – the position of the hands under, inside of or outside of the shoulders does not matter and the angle of the putter shaft does not matter. If you move the triangle with shoulders rocking in a plane, the putterhead will move straight back and straight thru on a line. It is only the rising of the putterhead up away from that line used with a tilted plane that “looks like” the golfer is moving the putterhead in an arc. Training golfers to move the putterhead in an arc is neither necessary nor especially useful, unless the golfer just can’t learn how to make a straight stroke.
Dave Pelz teaches that the stroke path either a) arcs inside-square-inside, or b) goes straight, or c) arcs outside-square-outside depending upon whether the hands are a) outside the vertical line beneath the shoulder sockets, b) in line with the shoulder sockets, or c) inside the shoulder sockets (see his Putting Bible pp. 75 and following). This is not correct. In either of these cases of hand position in relation to shoulders, the path of the putter will still be straight back and straight thru so long as the shoulderframe moves in a single plane. While Pelz agrees with me that those who teach the “arcing” stroke do not understand how a straight stroke is made,I believe that Pelz’s claim that hand position determines stroke path is simply wrong. Although Pelz is surely aware of the work of Dr Roger Brooks, he apparently hasn’t properly digested its meaning yet.
Part of the mnistaken belief involves mistaken notions of how the spine and shoulderframe interacts or “must” interact. People who teach the arcing action implicitly or explicitly believe that the spine stays stiff and straight like a rod while the shoulderframe “swings” around back and forward about this pivot. Actually, the shoulderframe is not connected to the spine, and the shoulderframe (scapula, sockets, plus clavicle) is connected to the sternum at the clavicle and the connection is somewhat of a flexible and movable joint. This anatomy allows quite a bit of independent action of the shoulderframe as a unit separate and apart from the spine. In addition, the spine is not at all stiff and straight. True, as seen directly on from the back, the spine ought to lie in a straight line vertically, but seen from the right side the spine has an S-shape curvature. And the spine has a range of motion forward and back and to the sides. The flexibility of the normal adult spine is such that an adult is capable of bending the shoulders straight down the left or right side towards the ground and bending the spine sideways a full 90 degrees. Not many people can actually perform this bend fully, due to muscle and ligament restrictions personal to them, but lots of people can, including apparently Tiger Woods who is reportedly able to set a golf ball on the ground beside his ankle and bend to pick it up WITHOUT bending his knees! I don’t know if Tiger really can do this, but there are ballet dancer who can. The point is that the so-called arcing or gating movement is not especially “natural” and a modest sidewise rocking of the shoulders in-plane is not “unnatural” or especially “difficult” to do.
DON’T BELIEVE ME – TRY IT YOURSELF!! Hey, I understand how hard it is to convince people about this, especially people very keen to get it right! Afterall, Pelz has been preaching about the straight-path stroke for decades now but Utley and Haas and others just don’t believe the biomechanics. So despite what I’ve said so far, I would not expect that is sufficient to convince most golfers about the straight stroke. So here’s the way to see it for yourself.
Set the putter up over the edge of a rug or over a line on the floor so that the face is square to the edge or line. Notice that your shoulder sockets are both poised directly, vertically above the balls of your feet for balance. Now move your lead shoulder socket straight down at the balls of your lead foot to start your shoulderframe as a whole rocking down and back in a vertical plane. The lead socket moves down at the foot and then curls back along the line between both feet as the rear shoulder socket moves up in a rocking action. The shoulderframe is moving in a vertical plane. Watch the sweetspot of the putter as it stays dead above the line. Watch the face of the putter as it stays square to the line AND the path. Now stick your hands farther away from your body, outside the line from shoulders to ground, but with the putter still over the line to start. Again, push the lead shoulder socket down at the balls of the lead foot and let it track curling back along the line from the balls of the lead foot to the balls of the rear foot as the shoulderframe rocks in a vertical plane. Again, the sweetspot stays directly above the line and the face stays square.
Another way to see this is to hold a slim paperback or sheet of cardboard angled at a tilt towards a line on the floor. Hold this flat-but-tilted plane between thumb and forefinger at each top corner and then move the left corner straight at the line on the floor while moving the other corner straight away from the line. The top corners are like the shoulder sockets. Teeter-totter the card or book back and forth and watch to convince yourself that both bottom corners stay right on the line and never swing inside the line. If you want to do this with a vertical movement of the two top corners, you will have to draw a triangle from the top corners to the middle of the bottom edge, then make the in-plane movement of the top corners and see that the point of the triangle never leaves the line. The top middle of the card or book is the pivot and has to stay put, so the top left corner literally curls both down and back on an arc centered on the pivot. Perhaps a slightly easier way to see this is to take a business envelope and crease it across the short direction about where the stamp would be, then hold this small creased section level to the floor with the rest of the envelope angling to a line on the floor like a putter shaft. Teeter-totter the flat horizontal section of the envelope so each corner rocks straight up and straight down (actually curls on an arc about the middle of the envelope) and watch the center of the far end of the envelope stay on the line on the floor.
Once you see this, I still doubt you will be convinced, as this is the usual response of golfers who have come to believe in the need for arcing. At this point, you will start searching for some manipulation of the hands that artificially keeps the sweetspot of the putterhead over the line and that keeps the face square.
HISTORY. This doubting is pretty natural, given the history of putting technique. Pro golfers in the 1920s well into the 1960s, and even some today, have used a technique in the putting stroke called “hooding.” Hooding is the counterclockwise rotation of the wrists going back to the top of the backstroke, and then a reverse motion coming forward into impact, that is calibrated to keep the face of the putter oriented the same way all the time in the stroke even though the path of the stroke is arcing inside-square-inside. Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, Bobby Locke, and Horton Smith all used this technique in some way, and today’s Dandy Putters are designed to be used with some hooding action. But a close examination of the techniques actually used by these golfers reveals they are not really using an in-plane shoulder action, but are using a gating or “screen door” arcing stroke. The “hooding” is only a corrective for such an arcing stroke, and is not needed in the in-plane shoulder stroke. The face simply doesn’t open and close with an in-plane stroke the way it does with an arcing stroke.
In fact, there are slight but significant differences in the “hooding” employed by these golfers, depending upon their stroke biomechanics. For example, Horton Smith wanted a square setup and a straight-back, straight-thru stroke path, but he MOVED with an arcing movement, so he used the hooding to keep the putterhead square. However, the hooding action alone combined with an arcing path is not enough to keep the putterhead staying above the line of the putt. Smith wanted golfers to make a stroke over a yardstick, with the putterhead staying on the yardstick AND the face staying square to the yardstick. The hooding only relates to the face. In order to keep the putterhead moving above the yardstick, because he used an arcing motion, Smith had to EXTEND his arms going back to counter the natural arcing of the head in side and off the yardstick. This requires starting with the elbows slightly crooked so the arms can be extended out to “reach” and keep the putterhead over the yardstick, despite the arcing path move. Going the other direction involved an opposite retraction of reach coming into impact and thereafter another reaching out to the yardstick. Very complicated … and unnecessary. You can accomplish a movement of the putterhead staying over the yardstick and with the face staying square simply by NOT moving in an arc and instead moving the shoulderframe in a plane parallel to the yardstick.
Bobby Locke did something different than Horton Smith. Locke setup closed to the puttline with his right foot well back, so the line across his toes was something like 30 or so degrees closed to the puttline. He set his putterface squarely aimed to the target thru the ball at address but then drew the putterhead back along his toe line. While doing so, he rotated his wrists counterclockwise to keep the putterface from fanning open. Literally speaking, this hooding action does not keep the face aimed at the target, just not fanning open as it moves back along the path. The face aims parallel left of the target everywhere after it leaves the ball going back. At any rate, once Locke reached the top of his backstroke, he froze the hooding action in its then-existing wrist angle, and held this wrist orientation for the rest of the stroke thru impact and beyond. So how could he putt straight starting from this top-of-backstroke position (well inside the line with face aimed parallel left of the target)? By the way his shoulder sockets MOVE in the stroke.
Locke appears to start at address with his shoulders aimed parallel left of the target, or square to the line. Going back, his right shoulder moved laterally back as he drew the putter along his closed toe line. Going forward, his right shoulder retraces the move laterally back to square, approaching the ball with his hooded putterface from the inside. But before impact, he reaches the neutral square starting position of his shoulders and thereafter transitions to a pendular shoulderframe action sending the putterhead straight down the line with a rising trajectory up thru impact. This can be seen in his left shoulder rising thru impact, sending the putterhead straight away down the line past impact.
Ben Crenshaw appears to have a similar transition in his shoulder action. Going back, he has a stroke path that arcs inside, and his right shoulder moves laterally behind his original square shoulderframe alignment. However, coming forward, he transitions in the middle of his stroke to a down-the-line action evidenced by his left shoulder rising vertically.
George Low taught Nicklaus and Palmer some about putting, and he hailed from the era of the late 1930s and 1940s, when hooding was popular and common. He thought making a straight stroke was simply too difficult to do and would require the complications of hooding. So Low used an arcing stroke generated mostly by hand-wrist action (rather than shoulders), but just didn’t like hooding, so he used essentially the same stroke that Utley and others teach today.
MY EXPERIENCE: What all this teaches me is three things: 1) the folks who believe the natural stroke “gates” or “arcs” and therefore the putterhead “must” come inside and the face “must” fan open and closed in the stroke simply do not understand the biomechanics of a straight stroke or how to make the movement; 2) the claim that the arcing or “screen door” stroke is simpler and therefore less susceptible to breakdown under pressure and also more consistent than the complex straight-back and straight-thru stroke really aren’t in much of a position to compare the real thing; and 3) the forward stroke is much more important than the backstroke. The current popular teachers are comparing an arcing shoulder or hands action plus compensatory hooding manipulation (their understanding of the ”straight” stroke movement) versus just forgetting the manipulations and letting the arcing shoulder action produce a “gating” putterhead and face action “naturally” and relying on the consistency of the stroke to resquare the face at impact (the arcing stroke path with the face fanning open and closed). George Low in his book The Master of Putting is very explicit about the face and the path (pages 41-45), where he describes the path as “crescent” in shape.
ANALOGIES FOR MOVEMENT: An arcing shoulder movement is not an in-plane shoulder movement, but involves some lateral / horizontal twisting of the shoulderframe as a whole like a gate on a hinge or the way a bicycle’s handlebars have to be turned over the pivot of the center of the front wheel. An in-plane shoulder stroke would be more like lifting one handlebar straight up while the opposite handlebar goes straight down, or making the move on a tilted plane. The better analogy is with the motion used by a police officer to swing a heavy battering ram into a door knob. The battering ram is a log-like mass of heavy metal with two suitcase-like handles on top for swinging it sideways so the leading, dome-shaped end of the ram smashes the door knob out of the frame. These handles are also like the pommels on a saw horse in gymnastics. The battering ram is used by moving the ram straight-back and then straight-through. The officer does NOT allow the back end of the ram to swing around behind in an arc going back, as this wastes effort. Instead, he moves the lead shoulder straight down and rocks the whole shoulderframe back, sending the battering ram rocking straight along a line across his feet with the rear end of the “log” rising straight as it moves straight back AND straight up. This pendulum action then comes forward in the same straight way. The officer catches the accelerating momentum of the heavy ram as it drops and lifts his lead shoulder straight up and drives his rear shoulder straight down to propel the front end of the ram straight into the door knob. This is exactly the same simple move of the straight putting stroke, without all the dramatic force.
The biomechanical and physics advantages of a straight stroke path, either by vertical in-plane move or tilted in-plane move, are not simply that the face stays square both to the path AND the line, although this is certainly a large one. When this is the case, there is no concern about ball position forward of the middle of the stroke as there is with the gating stroke. Even minor inconsistencies in ball position at setup with a gating stroke cause pushes and pulls, since the putterface is only square at one poinmt in the arc and putterface squareness at impact is absolutely critical to ball direction. Face squareness is much more important to accuracy than path squareness at impact, and the gating stroke is fairly more dangerous to face squareness than the in-plane stroke.
I believe that I can teach any of these “screen door” golfers and golf teachers how to make a radically simple movement of the shoulderframe that produces a straight-back straight-thru stroke with the face square and the putterhead staying on the line. Actually, I know I can, and have been writing to tell people how to do just this for quite some time now. Don’t believe me, though – do it yourself!
CONCLUSION: I apologize for running on at such length, but this is a vitally important issue and the herd instinct of tour players is too well known. I frankly think it is quite a risk to my professional career as a teacher to stick to my gun so openly on this matter when accomplished Tour players like Stan Utley and Jay Haas and other don’t see things the same way. But that’s why I’ve decided to work as hard as I do to get this business straightened out. I would not be true to my own learning and experience if I just kept quiet in hopes of making some bucks teaching pros. I certainly want to teach pros to putt better, and am pretty confident I can do just that, but only if I teach what is the best way to putt.
However, I am not really doctrinaire or dogmatic about this. In a one-on-one teaching situation, the objective is to get the specific golfer to improve in putting results. The proof is always in the pudding. Some golfers just can’t move in the simple way of a straight in-plane shoulder stroke. There are various reasons. Some may be too fat, some too old, some too bull-headed to try, and some too filled with conflicting notions that they just can’t get the simplicity or just won’t believe it even with their own eyes. For those golfers, it may end up being necessary to teach the “gating” shoulder move.
Even more fundamentally, this whole debate might be viewed as just a question of how tilted the shoulder action is. A vertical in-plane stroke has the shoulderframe moving solely vertically; a tilted in-plane stroke has the shoulderframe moving in a plane that has some tilt out to the ground and intersects the ground in a line parallel or coincident with the putt line; and the “gating” stroke can be viewed as simply an in-plane shoulder stroke with the plane of motion oriented horizontally to the ground. This latter view is not really what Utley and others teach, however, as they teach some independent arm and hand action apart from the shoulderframe motion. As far as my teaching goes, however, I want to understand all of these dynamics and the functional differences, so I can help a golfer as best as he can be helped.
Based on all of this, I have learned over the years by study and experimentation that an in-plane shoulder action is simple and natural, easily repeatable, withstands pressure, free of complex manipulations, accurate, and superior to a gating “screen door” style. I also have learned that even the most experienced pros don’t really understand the simplicity of this action or how to generate it, and that it is easier to teach a beginner how to do this than a wizened pro. But once the pro gets passed old lore and confusion to actually making the in-plane move, he can putt better than he can with a gating stroke with a wonderful consistency from day to day and year to year that only sharpens with age.
If yopu have remaining questions about this or any other issue, just let me know and I'll try to answer.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
PuttingZone.com
http://puttingzone.com
Golf’s most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
Great question! and very timely, too. Does the natural and best putting stroke follow a “screen-door” style arcing back inside on the backstroke, then square thru impact, and then back inside on the thru-stroke, and is the straight-back and straight-thru pendulum stroke really a myth?
I've been preparing a discussion of this very subject, primarily because of the recent news coverage the so-called “arcing stroke” has been getting. Your question prompts me to jump the gun a bit, and just sort of spit out what I've been thinking about this subject.
Let me be blunt at first for the sake of organizational clarity:
The straight stroke is only "mythical" to those who don't know how to make one. To be charitable, the people who teach the "arcing" stroke don't really understand that there are TWO different sorts of arcing strokes, made in two entirely different ways, one of which is in fact a straight stroke that merely "looks" arcing. This latter stroke, however, is not the one being taught to US Tour players, but it is being taught on the European Tour. I personally teach this sort of straight stroke as well as a third sort that is even a purer straight stroke. This third stroke does not even "look" like it arcs.
I've been familiar with the teaching of Stan Utley, and have read and studied the comments about his teaching by his best-known students Jay Haas, Jeff Sluman, and Pat Bates, as well as asked questions of people who have taken lessons from him lately. I have also tried to contact Utley directly in Missouri (http://www.stanutleygolf.com), but received no response. His teaching is not seriously different from that of Mike Shannon (Country Club of Alabama, Montgomery) or even David Lee (Gravity Golf, Hot Springs, Arkansas) as far as the "arcing" stroke path is concerned. Recently, Todd Sones in Golf Tips Magazine concluded that the "arcing" stroke is the only stroke a golfer should try to make. Davis Love III has made the "putting arc" training aid sort of prominent, and Mike Shannon made presentations with this aid at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando this January. I disagree with all this based on mathematics, biomechanics, top putters like Ben Crenshaw, Bobby Locke, and the shoulder-stroke folks, and my personal experience. So bear with me as I explain why I spin out my reasons for differing with your characterizing the straight stroke as "mythical."
DEFINITIONS. First, some basic definitions. The "arcing" stroke is one in which the putterhead travels back and thru on an arc shaped like a mild rainbow or smile, with the golfer standing in the place of the nose to a smile. The arc is a curve along the ground that is square to the target only at the ball, and if the stroke successfully duplicates this curve, the ball will roll straight where the putterface is aimed at address. This arc involves a pivoting of the shoulderframe horizontally back and thru about the stationary spine, even if the motion is mostly one of the arms moving independently rather than the shoulderframe as a unit moving the "triangle". The arc basically stays close to the ground the whole time, as there is not much rising of the putterhead above its initial position behind the ball, to the extent the shoulderframe is following with the progression of the stroke. If the arms act independently of the shoulderframe, so that the upper torso stays still and the shoulderframe remains squared to the putt line, there will naturally be a little rising of the putter as it goes back and as it goes past impact. Obviously, the arc does not stay on the line of the putt on either the back or front side of the ball. Instead, the arc is hopefully symmetrical on both sides of the ball, and has the same radius on the back and the front of the arc. Assuming that there is no alteration in the orientation of the hands, wrists, and forearms during the progress of the stroke, the putterface starts square to the target thru the ball but opens to the target going back and then retraces this flaring in reverse on the forward stroke as the face closes back to square just at impact and then continues closing past impact as the arc continues back inside. The putterface is only square to the target at the one instant of impact. At all other times in the stroke path, the putterface is either opening or closing in degrees to the target, but is supposed to remain square to the stroke path itself.
On the other hand, a "straight" stroke path is one in which the putterface starts square and stays square not only to the stroke path (like the "arcing" stroke), but also to the target (unlike the "arcing" stroke). When you speak of making a stroke in plane, you are not using the language that describes an "arcing" stroke as described above. A "straight" stroke, however, does have a movement of the "triangle" of shoulderframe, arms and putter that stays "on plane," whether that plane is vertical or tilted, so long as the plane of motion intersects the green in a line that is either the same or parallel to the putt line (the line on either side of the center of the ball that aims perpendicularly out of the putterface at the initial target). A vertical stroke plane is different from any tilted stroke plane in that the rising trajectory of the putterhead on either side of the ball stays vertically above the puttline on the ground at all times (a vertical smile), whereas with a tilted-plane stroke the “smile” of the putterhead’s rising on either side of the ball is leaning towards the golfer and this lean of the smile and the stroke plane means the putterhead does not stay directly above the puttline back and thru but comes inside going back and comes inside going thru. In both cases (vertical- or tilted-plane stroke), however, the putterhead is actually staying moving in one flat plane and this plane intersects the puttline. So apart from the “smile” from the rising of the putterhead, BOTH a tilted-plane and a vertical-plane stroke actually move the putterhead in a straight line (the same as the puttline) and the face of the putter always stays square to BOTH the line of the putt and the path of the stroke.
The confusion arises between an "arcing" path and a tilted-plane "straight" path. The tilted-plane stroke’s path in 3 dimensions includes the “smile” that is also tilted. Seen from the perspective of looking straight down at the putterhead, this tilted “smile” trajectory “looks” like the golfer is deliberately making the putterhead arc inside the puttline back and thru, but he is NOT doing that. The golfer is really moving the putterhead straight in a tilted stroke plane. In an “arcing” stroke, the golfer is really moving the putterhead in an arc.
This confusion leads these current "arcing" path teachers to conclude (erroneously) that a straight stroke path cannot be made naturally, so they all fail to understand the tilted-plane straight stroke's advantages or how to make one, and they don't seem to believe in the existence of the vertical-plane straight stroke and certainly don't believe it can be made naturally. Hence the pejorative term "mythical."
Let me go thru the mathematics, biuomechanics, history, and experience concerning all this, to try to clarify this important point.
MATHEMATICS: This all goes back to the Conic Sections of ancient Greek geometers, particularly Apollonius of Perga in about 200-300 b.c.. A conic section is the part of a cone that is indicated by intersecting the cone with a plane, in various orientations. If the cone rests on its base on a flat surface and the plane that intersects the cone somewhere between the base and the apex is also flat or horizontal to the surface, the "conic section" that results is a circle, and the diameter varies from the diameter of the cone's base diameter to zero at the cone's apex, depending upon how far up the cone's height the plane intersects the cone.
Other orientations of the plane thru the cone result in other "sections.' The axis of the cone passes from the apex to the center of the cone's base. Three other sorts of sections (in addition to the flat plane "circle") result from whether the plane intersects the cone vertically thru the axis, does not intersect the axis at all, or intersects the axis at an angle off vertical (oblique). The section relevant to putting is the section that results when the plane intersects the cone obliquely thru the axis. When this is the case, the "conic section" that results looks elliptical in shape (more curved than a circle, like the butt end of an oval).
Your comment about the tilted angle of the shaft is why this oblique conic section is the relevant model for putting. The axis of the cone is seen as the golfer's spine (or a vertical line from pivot of stroke to surface), and the putter shaft is seen as tilted down to the ground just like the outer surface of the cone from apex to outer circle of the base. The putter's lie angle is the same angle as that between the cone's apex, base perimeter, and center of base.
The difference between an "arcing" path and a tilted-plane stroke path is how the shaft of the putter moves in relations to the curved surface of the cone's side.
ARCING PATH: If the shaft of the putter and the pattern of the golfer's movement keeps the shaft of the putter flush to the cone's curved side as it goes back and thru, then the stroke path of the putterhead is EXACTLY the same shape as the base of the cone, where the cone meets the surface. That is, the putterhead's path is a circle, and the path makes the putter open to the target going back and close to the target going forward. The putterhead does not rise at all off the surface. And the putterface remains square to the arcing circular path at all points, provided there is no manipulation of the putterface apart from pivoting back. This is the extreme end of the spectrum of an "arcing" stroke. In fact, the way this stroke is being taught, there is quite a bit of independent motion of the arms apart from the shoulderframe, and this injects some natural "rising" of the putterhead gpoing back and going thru asa well as some deviation away from a true circle for a path that is less curved. Such an arms or hands stroke, operating independently of the shoulderframe, sends the shaft off the surface of the cone somewhat, and so results in a more elliptical "arc" shape with some minor rising of the putterhead off the surface.
TILTED-PLANE STRAIGHT PATH: If the motion of the shaft remains in a single plane that leans flush against the tilted side of the cone, the plane will intersect the cone only on the line of the shaft from apex to base and the plane will be perpendicular to a line from the axis of the cone flush thru the side of the cone and plane. If the motion of the shaft remains at all times inside this plane, the shaft obviously will depart from the side surface of the cone as soon as motion starts. Even if the motion is totally one of the shoulderframe and "triangle" all as a unit, the putterhead will rise above the surface on either side of the starting point, describing a tilted smiley face shape that touches the surface solely at the bottom of the smile.
Now imagine a laser shining straight out of the bottom of the shaft and the putter's sole at the surface. In the first "arcing" case, the laser paints a section of the perimeter of a circle on the ground, perfectly tracing the curve of the base of the cone, and the sweetspot of the putter stays at the level of the base right on the surface. In the second case of an "arcing" stroke with independent arms-hands action, the laser paints a less curved ellipse that goes away from the base circle as the putterhead rises going back and then rises going past impact. BUT in the second case of a tilted-plane "straight" stroke, the laser paints a perfectly straight line that matches at all times the line of the putt along the ground, although the putterhead is rising going back and rising going past impact more than the second case just described.
The drawing of the robot-puppet on the Taylor Made site you refer to includes a line along the ground that is curved or "arcing." This line is what should be indicated by the laser aimed straight out of the bottom of the shaft ( a straight uncurved line), but the Taylor Made people picked the shape that results from shining the laser straight vertically down from the bottom of the putter rather than straight out of the bottom of the shaft. Either that or they are describing the path of an arcing stroke movement like Stan Utley teaches. I can’t really tell because the trajectory of the shoulders in motion is not clear. At any rate, these drawings are just rough illustrations and are not meant to be all that technically accurate. Incidentally, I spent over three hours at a PGA Tour practice green in conversation with Taylor Made’s technical guru and Tour putting rep Tom Olsavsky, who appears in this website touting the Taylor Made putting studio, and we discussed this specific topic in extensive detail. I can assure you that Tom is much too technically astute and scientifically trained to warrant the simple drawing of a robot on this website as technically accurate in these matters, and he knows the difference between an in-plane stroke and a gating stroke.
The confusion about the first and second sorts of strokes is traceable to a misunderstanding of the tilted-plane straight stroke. If you trace the line of the putter by shining a laser out the bottom of the shaft, you get a straight line on the ground. But this stroke rises in a tilted smiley-face shape, and as it rises, the putterhead “appears” to come inside the puttline, even though the bottom of the shaft stays aimed at the putt line only. If you recorded the position of the sweetspot of the putter as it rises in this tilted smiley shape by shining a laser out of the sweetspot vertically down at the ground, this laser would describe an “arc” – the shadow or projection of the tilted smiley face in the air as the shadow appears straight below. This shadow “arc” shape is merely an illusion and not something to try to make happen in the golfer’s movement of the putterhead.
People who teach the “arcing” stroke believe mistakenly that the shape of the shadow of the putterhead in the second type of stroke (tilted-plane straight stroke) means that the putterhead MUST be moving in an arc and also that the only way to do this is to MOVE the putter along an arc. They also believe mistakenly that the face of the putter in this sort of stroke cannot be staying square to the line of the putt, since it appears to arc. This is an illusion. If the movement of the putterhead is viewed looking down the shaft, the putterhead does NOT arc but stays in this one tilted plane, AND the putterface does not change its relation to this plane of motion and remains square to the path AND the line without the least bit of hand manipulation. But if the movement of this tilted-plane straight stroke is viewed from directly above the putterhead looking down to the ground, the head does in fact arc inside the line as it ‘rises” along the smiley face shape.
VERTICAL-PLANE STRAIGHT PATH. Now compare this to the vertical-plane straight stroke. In this case, the putter shaft angles out but the shoulderframe moves down vertically and back laterally all in a vertical plane connecting the pivot in the neck, the two shoulder sockets and the two balls of the feet. No matter how the two hands and arms and putter shaft are angled straight out from this plane of motion, the putterhead will a) move in a straight line right above the putt line, b) the putterface will stay square to the target at all times, c) the putterface will also stay square to the path of the stroke at all times, and d) the putterhead will rise vertically (only) in a smiley face trajectory above the putt line going back and going past impact. The model of this stroke is the cone with the putter shaft aligned with the edge of the cone and the plane of motion running from the apex to the base of the cone vertically, so the intersection of the plane of motion parallels the putt line.
THE PUTTING ARC TRAINING AID (MIKE SHANNON AND DAVIS LOVE III). The Putting Arc training aid is a long piece of plastic or wood that rests flat on the green aligned at the target and its vertical side away from the golfer is curved so that running the butt or heel of the putter along this vertical curling surface makes the putter move in an arc along the ground. This arc ON THE GROUND is supposed to represent the way the body naturally moves the putter. The Putting Arc is based on the Conic Sections of Apollonious of Perga. The reason the Putting Arc aid is incorrect is because it is based upon the projection or shadow arc of the tilted-plane stroke – not the “smile” shape inside the tilted stroke plane but the curve ON THE GROUND one would see if watching this in-plane motion of the putterhead from directly above the puttline. The projection or shadow of the actual movement of the putterhead looks like a very MILD arc that is curved more than the straight line of the putt and less than the circle at the base of the cone. This is the elliptical curve that gives the Putting Arc aid its shape. The aid, then, is based upon an optical illusion. Instead, the aid should be based upon the intersection of the plane of motion and the surface. If the surface is flat (as it is assumed to be), this intersection will ALWAYS be a straight line. The golfer ought to be practicing a straight, in-plane motion, but the Putting Arc aid wrongly trains an arcing path AND an arcing motion in the shoulderframe!
Incidentally, at the Orlando PGA Merchandise Show, Mike Shannon was demonstrating the Putting Arc training aid. They also had a robot set up to make stroke along the elliptical arc of the aid. However, when I inspected the robot’s stroke path, the heel of the putter clearly diverged from the Putting Arc surface the farther back it went andf the farther forward it went, indicating that the robot was in fact making an in-plane stroke and the putterhead was NOT “naturally” hewing to the curve of the arc. If you wanted to calculate the actual way the robot’s shoulderframe would have to move to get the putterhead to stay on the Putting Arc’s curve, you would have a tough assignment. If you simply moved the shoulderframe of the robot horizontally out and back around a spine as a pivot, the putterhead on a tilted shaft would trace a CIRCLE at the base of a cone. In addition, if you visit the Putting Arc website and read the fine print, you will see that the actual curvature of the “standard” arc sold to the public is based on some assumptions about setup, body size and shape, putter design, and stroke pattern that may or may not match what you “naturally” produce for an arcing path. The makers of the aid suggest that if you REALLY want an aid that trains YOUR personal arcing, then you have to get fitted for a custom-made Putting Arc.
ROGER BROOKS’ TRUE PLANE TRAINER AND THE IN-PLANE MOTION. In Europe on the European Tour, golfers use a training aid designed by Oxford-trained mathematician Roger Brooks. Dr. Brooks presented the mathematics of all this at the MOST RECENT world Scientific Congress on Golf in St Andrews Scotland, and he makes and sells a very popular training aid to pros in Europe that encapsulates the correct mathematics. I’ve studied his technical paper and his training aid, and he and I have corresponded about this. His mathematics is also founded upon the Conic Sections of Apollonious of Perga. The shape of his training aid is a rectangular flat plastic base that supports a leaning plexiglass plane. The intersection of the plexiglass plane and the base forms a straight line. The golfer is to run the heel of the putter along the plexiglass plane. As the putter naturally rises going back and going forward, the heel traces a smile shape on the plexiglass, with the bottom of the smile right at the ball or middle of the stroke. BUT the face of the putterhead never opens, not to the path of the stroke or the plexiglass plane or to the line of the putt.
The angle of tilt of the plexiglass plane is adjustable, also. Unfortunately, the aid does not have a setting so that the plexiglass plane is truly vertical, but you can get the same effect simply using a 4x4 piece of lumber as your personal straight putting plane and run the heel of the putter back and forward along the far side of the wood’s vertical plane.
The plexiglass actually has the smile trajectory painted into it in red. If you stood on the far side of the True Plane trainer and looked straight down through the transparent pelxiglass to see how the tilted smile projects onto the ground, you will see a curve on the ground that is milder than the smile and this curve corresponds to the shape of the far side of the Putting Arc training aid. The difference between the two training aids is in HOW THE GOLFER MOVES.
BIOMECHANICS: The movement of the body performed by the golfer depends mostly upon understanding some biomechanics and understanding how the mind or brain makes the motion happen.
HOW TO MAKE A STRAIGHT STROKE. Jay Haas has commented that the reason he recently switched to Stan Utley’s approach to the stroke is because he has tried for decades to make a straight stroke and has never really gotten the movement down. Jeff Sluman has said that Stan Utley’s description to him this summer of the how the stroke keeps the putterface square to the path of an arc but not to the line of the putt was the first time in his career that he felt he had ever understood how the putter actually needs to move in a good stroke. I certainly respect these very capable golfers very highly, but I have to tell you that making a straight stroke is so simple and easy that it shocks me somewhat to hear that anyone who has played golf at the highest level, with access to all the coaching that money can buy for years and years, cannot describe or make a straight stroke in which the putterface stays square to the path AND the line. I do it every day and people I teach can do it in minutes. All you have to do is set the triangle of your shoulderframe, arms, hands, and putter with the face aimed square at the target and then move the whole triangle IN A PLANE by moving the shoulderframe IN A PLANE that intersects the ground in a line that is either the same as or parallel to the puttline.
Since people who swear the putting path MUST arc because of geometry, these folks ought to be fairly easy to convince by simply showing them a straight stroke with a tilted shaft in which the face stays square to the line and the path. NOT SO! Unfortunately, even when I show people this stroke, they refuse to believe the putterhead moves in a line and that the face of the putter stays square! Go figure … I had a rather lengthy and interesting discussion with Kirk Currie about this with Kirk and his company’s president in Orlando this past January at the PGA Merchandise Show. The president swore that the path MUST arc because the putter shaft is tilted out away from the body, and therefore the face must also open and close in the stroke in relation to the puttline. However, the Kirk Currie company makes and sells a stroke-training aid that is essentially a straight rod elevated about 2 feet high on a stand, and the golfer is supposed to rest the shaft on the far side of the horizontal rod and make strokes back and forth. I pointed out to the president and Kirk that this rod acts just like the plexiglass plane of Roger Brooks’ True Plane trainer, and showed them a tilted-plane stroke. The president agreed that this stroke and his training aid made the putter shaft move in a straight line, but insisted that the putterhead was arcing and that the face of the putter was opening going back and closing going thru because it “had to.” I did the stroke again and asked him to watch the putterhead and the face of the putter – the putterhead runs in a straight line and the face stays square to the rod, to the line of the putt, and to the path at all times. The president then insisted that the only way the face would stay square like that is because I was manipulating the putterface with my hands, rotating the hands counterclockwise going back and clockwise going forward, to compensate and therefore to eliminate the “natural” fanning he expected to see. So I then held the putter with two flat palms and asked that he watch my hands carefully, because I was not rotating the hands counter to the stroke or doing anything at all with the hands. The upshot was that Kirk and I agreed about the straightness of the putterhead motion and about the squareness of the face to the line of the putt and to the path, but his company president remained steadfast in his belief that the face has to open and close in an arc due to the tilt of the putter shaft.
Let me try to be very explicit about this – the position of the hands under, inside of or outside of the shoulders does not matter and the angle of the putter shaft does not matter. If you move the triangle with shoulders rocking in a plane, the putterhead will move straight back and straight thru on a line. It is only the rising of the putterhead up away from that line used with a tilted plane that “looks like” the golfer is moving the putterhead in an arc. Training golfers to move the putterhead in an arc is neither necessary nor especially useful, unless the golfer just can’t learn how to make a straight stroke.
Dave Pelz teaches that the stroke path either a) arcs inside-square-inside, or b) goes straight, or c) arcs outside-square-outside depending upon whether the hands are a) outside the vertical line beneath the shoulder sockets, b) in line with the shoulder sockets, or c) inside the shoulder sockets (see his Putting Bible pp. 75 and following). This is not correct. In either of these cases of hand position in relation to shoulders, the path of the putter will still be straight back and straight thru so long as the shoulderframe moves in a single plane. While Pelz agrees with me that those who teach the “arcing” stroke do not understand how a straight stroke is made,I believe that Pelz’s claim that hand position determines stroke path is simply wrong. Although Pelz is surely aware of the work of Dr Roger Brooks, he apparently hasn’t properly digested its meaning yet.
Part of the mnistaken belief involves mistaken notions of how the spine and shoulderframe interacts or “must” interact. People who teach the arcing action implicitly or explicitly believe that the spine stays stiff and straight like a rod while the shoulderframe “swings” around back and forward about this pivot. Actually, the shoulderframe is not connected to the spine, and the shoulderframe (scapula, sockets, plus clavicle) is connected to the sternum at the clavicle and the connection is somewhat of a flexible and movable joint. This anatomy allows quite a bit of independent action of the shoulderframe as a unit separate and apart from the spine. In addition, the spine is not at all stiff and straight. True, as seen directly on from the back, the spine ought to lie in a straight line vertically, but seen from the right side the spine has an S-shape curvature. And the spine has a range of motion forward and back and to the sides. The flexibility of the normal adult spine is such that an adult is capable of bending the shoulders straight down the left or right side towards the ground and bending the spine sideways a full 90 degrees. Not many people can actually perform this bend fully, due to muscle and ligament restrictions personal to them, but lots of people can, including apparently Tiger Woods who is reportedly able to set a golf ball on the ground beside his ankle and bend to pick it up WITHOUT bending his knees! I don’t know if Tiger really can do this, but there are ballet dancer who can. The point is that the so-called arcing or gating movement is not especially “natural” and a modest sidewise rocking of the shoulders in-plane is not “unnatural” or especially “difficult” to do.
DON’T BELIEVE ME – TRY IT YOURSELF!! Hey, I understand how hard it is to convince people about this, especially people very keen to get it right! Afterall, Pelz has been preaching about the straight-path stroke for decades now but Utley and Haas and others just don’t believe the biomechanics. So despite what I’ve said so far, I would not expect that is sufficient to convince most golfers about the straight stroke. So here’s the way to see it for yourself.
Set the putter up over the edge of a rug or over a line on the floor so that the face is square to the edge or line. Notice that your shoulder sockets are both poised directly, vertically above the balls of your feet for balance. Now move your lead shoulder socket straight down at the balls of your lead foot to start your shoulderframe as a whole rocking down and back in a vertical plane. The lead socket moves down at the foot and then curls back along the line between both feet as the rear shoulder socket moves up in a rocking action. The shoulderframe is moving in a vertical plane. Watch the sweetspot of the putter as it stays dead above the line. Watch the face of the putter as it stays square to the line AND the path. Now stick your hands farther away from your body, outside the line from shoulders to ground, but with the putter still over the line to start. Again, push the lead shoulder socket down at the balls of the lead foot and let it track curling back along the line from the balls of the lead foot to the balls of the rear foot as the shoulderframe rocks in a vertical plane. Again, the sweetspot stays directly above the line and the face stays square.
Another way to see this is to hold a slim paperback or sheet of cardboard angled at a tilt towards a line on the floor. Hold this flat-but-tilted plane between thumb and forefinger at each top corner and then move the left corner straight at the line on the floor while moving the other corner straight away from the line. The top corners are like the shoulder sockets. Teeter-totter the card or book back and forth and watch to convince yourself that both bottom corners stay right on the line and never swing inside the line. If you want to do this with a vertical movement of the two top corners, you will have to draw a triangle from the top corners to the middle of the bottom edge, then make the in-plane movement of the top corners and see that the point of the triangle never leaves the line. The top middle of the card or book is the pivot and has to stay put, so the top left corner literally curls both down and back on an arc centered on the pivot. Perhaps a slightly easier way to see this is to take a business envelope and crease it across the short direction about where the stamp would be, then hold this small creased section level to the floor with the rest of the envelope angling to a line on the floor like a putter shaft. Teeter-totter the flat horizontal section of the envelope so each corner rocks straight up and straight down (actually curls on an arc about the middle of the envelope) and watch the center of the far end of the envelope stay on the line on the floor.
Once you see this, I still doubt you will be convinced, as this is the usual response of golfers who have come to believe in the need for arcing. At this point, you will start searching for some manipulation of the hands that artificially keeps the sweetspot of the putterhead over the line and that keeps the face square.
HISTORY. This doubting is pretty natural, given the history of putting technique. Pro golfers in the 1920s well into the 1960s, and even some today, have used a technique in the putting stroke called “hooding.” Hooding is the counterclockwise rotation of the wrists going back to the top of the backstroke, and then a reverse motion coming forward into impact, that is calibrated to keep the face of the putter oriented the same way all the time in the stroke even though the path of the stroke is arcing inside-square-inside. Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, Bobby Locke, and Horton Smith all used this technique in some way, and today’s Dandy Putters are designed to be used with some hooding action. But a close examination of the techniques actually used by these golfers reveals they are not really using an in-plane shoulder action, but are using a gating or “screen door” arcing stroke. The “hooding” is only a corrective for such an arcing stroke, and is not needed in the in-plane shoulder stroke. The face simply doesn’t open and close with an in-plane stroke the way it does with an arcing stroke.
In fact, there are slight but significant differences in the “hooding” employed by these golfers, depending upon their stroke biomechanics. For example, Horton Smith wanted a square setup and a straight-back, straight-thru stroke path, but he MOVED with an arcing movement, so he used the hooding to keep the putterhead square. However, the hooding action alone combined with an arcing path is not enough to keep the putterhead staying above the line of the putt. Smith wanted golfers to make a stroke over a yardstick, with the putterhead staying on the yardstick AND the face staying square to the yardstick. The hooding only relates to the face. In order to keep the putterhead moving above the yardstick, because he used an arcing motion, Smith had to EXTEND his arms going back to counter the natural arcing of the head in side and off the yardstick. This requires starting with the elbows slightly crooked so the arms can be extended out to “reach” and keep the putterhead over the yardstick, despite the arcing path move. Going the other direction involved an opposite retraction of reach coming into impact and thereafter another reaching out to the yardstick. Very complicated … and unnecessary. You can accomplish a movement of the putterhead staying over the yardstick and with the face staying square simply by NOT moving in an arc and instead moving the shoulderframe in a plane parallel to the yardstick.
Bobby Locke did something different than Horton Smith. Locke setup closed to the puttline with his right foot well back, so the line across his toes was something like 30 or so degrees closed to the puttline. He set his putterface squarely aimed to the target thru the ball at address but then drew the putterhead back along his toe line. While doing so, he rotated his wrists counterclockwise to keep the putterface from fanning open. Literally speaking, this hooding action does not keep the face aimed at the target, just not fanning open as it moves back along the path. The face aims parallel left of the target everywhere after it leaves the ball going back. At any rate, once Locke reached the top of his backstroke, he froze the hooding action in its then-existing wrist angle, and held this wrist orientation for the rest of the stroke thru impact and beyond. So how could he putt straight starting from this top-of-backstroke position (well inside the line with face aimed parallel left of the target)? By the way his shoulder sockets MOVE in the stroke.
Locke appears to start at address with his shoulders aimed parallel left of the target, or square to the line. Going back, his right shoulder moved laterally back as he drew the putter along his closed toe line. Going forward, his right shoulder retraces the move laterally back to square, approaching the ball with his hooded putterface from the inside. But before impact, he reaches the neutral square starting position of his shoulders and thereafter transitions to a pendular shoulderframe action sending the putterhead straight down the line with a rising trajectory up thru impact. This can be seen in his left shoulder rising thru impact, sending the putterhead straight away down the line past impact.
Ben Crenshaw appears to have a similar transition in his shoulder action. Going back, he has a stroke path that arcs inside, and his right shoulder moves laterally behind his original square shoulderframe alignment. However, coming forward, he transitions in the middle of his stroke to a down-the-line action evidenced by his left shoulder rising vertically.
George Low taught Nicklaus and Palmer some about putting, and he hailed from the era of the late 1930s and 1940s, when hooding was popular and common. He thought making a straight stroke was simply too difficult to do and would require the complications of hooding. So Low used an arcing stroke generated mostly by hand-wrist action (rather than shoulders), but just didn’t like hooding, so he used essentially the same stroke that Utley and others teach today.
MY EXPERIENCE: What all this teaches me is three things: 1) the folks who believe the natural stroke “gates” or “arcs” and therefore the putterhead “must” come inside and the face “must” fan open and closed in the stroke simply do not understand the biomechanics of a straight stroke or how to make the movement; 2) the claim that the arcing or “screen door” stroke is simpler and therefore less susceptible to breakdown under pressure and also more consistent than the complex straight-back and straight-thru stroke really aren’t in much of a position to compare the real thing; and 3) the forward stroke is much more important than the backstroke. The current popular teachers are comparing an arcing shoulder or hands action plus compensatory hooding manipulation (their understanding of the ”straight” stroke movement) versus just forgetting the manipulations and letting the arcing shoulder action produce a “gating” putterhead and face action “naturally” and relying on the consistency of the stroke to resquare the face at impact (the arcing stroke path with the face fanning open and closed). George Low in his book The Master of Putting is very explicit about the face and the path (pages 41-45), where he describes the path as “crescent” in shape.
ANALOGIES FOR MOVEMENT: An arcing shoulder movement is not an in-plane shoulder movement, but involves some lateral / horizontal twisting of the shoulderframe as a whole like a gate on a hinge or the way a bicycle’s handlebars have to be turned over the pivot of the center of the front wheel. An in-plane shoulder stroke would be more like lifting one handlebar straight up while the opposite handlebar goes straight down, or making the move on a tilted plane. The better analogy is with the motion used by a police officer to swing a heavy battering ram into a door knob. The battering ram is a log-like mass of heavy metal with two suitcase-like handles on top for swinging it sideways so the leading, dome-shaped end of the ram smashes the door knob out of the frame. These handles are also like the pommels on a saw horse in gymnastics. The battering ram is used by moving the ram straight-back and then straight-through. The officer does NOT allow the back end of the ram to swing around behind in an arc going back, as this wastes effort. Instead, he moves the lead shoulder straight down and rocks the whole shoulderframe back, sending the battering ram rocking straight along a line across his feet with the rear end of the “log” rising straight as it moves straight back AND straight up. This pendulum action then comes forward in the same straight way. The officer catches the accelerating momentum of the heavy ram as it drops and lifts his lead shoulder straight up and drives his rear shoulder straight down to propel the front end of the ram straight into the door knob. This is exactly the same simple move of the straight putting stroke, without all the dramatic force.
The biomechanical and physics advantages of a straight stroke path, either by vertical in-plane move or tilted in-plane move, are not simply that the face stays square both to the path AND the line, although this is certainly a large one. When this is the case, there is no concern about ball position forward of the middle of the stroke as there is with the gating stroke. Even minor inconsistencies in ball position at setup with a gating stroke cause pushes and pulls, since the putterface is only square at one poinmt in the arc and putterface squareness at impact is absolutely critical to ball direction. Face squareness is much more important to accuracy than path squareness at impact, and the gating stroke is fairly more dangerous to face squareness than the in-plane stroke.
I believe that I can teach any of these “screen door” golfers and golf teachers how to make a radically simple movement of the shoulderframe that produces a straight-back straight-thru stroke with the face square and the putterhead staying on the line. Actually, I know I can, and have been writing to tell people how to do just this for quite some time now. Don’t believe me, though – do it yourself!
CONCLUSION: I apologize for running on at such length, but this is a vitally important issue and the herd instinct of tour players is too well known. I frankly think it is quite a risk to my professional career as a teacher to stick to my gun so openly on this matter when accomplished Tour players like Stan Utley and Jay Haas and other don’t see things the same way. But that’s why I’ve decided to work as hard as I do to get this business straightened out. I would not be true to my own learning and experience if I just kept quiet in hopes of making some bucks teaching pros. I certainly want to teach pros to putt better, and am pretty confident I can do just that, but only if I teach what is the best way to putt.
However, I am not really doctrinaire or dogmatic about this. In a one-on-one teaching situation, the objective is to get the specific golfer to improve in putting results. The proof is always in the pudding. Some golfers just can’t move in the simple way of a straight in-plane shoulder stroke. There are various reasons. Some may be too fat, some too old, some too bull-headed to try, and some too filled with conflicting notions that they just can’t get the simplicity or just won’t believe it even with their own eyes. For those golfers, it may end up being necessary to teach the “gating” shoulder move.
Even more fundamentally, this whole debate might be viewed as just a question of how tilted the shoulder action is. A vertical in-plane stroke has the shoulderframe moving solely vertically; a tilted in-plane stroke has the shoulderframe moving in a plane that has some tilt out to the ground and intersects the ground in a line parallel or coincident with the putt line; and the “gating” stroke can be viewed as simply an in-plane shoulder stroke with the plane of motion oriented horizontally to the ground. This latter view is not really what Utley and others teach, however, as they teach some independent arm and hand action apart from the shoulderframe motion. As far as my teaching goes, however, I want to understand all of these dynamics and the functional differences, so I can help a golfer as best as he can be helped.
Based on all of this, I have learned over the years by study and experimentation that an in-plane shoulder action is simple and natural, easily repeatable, withstands pressure, free of complex manipulations, accurate, and superior to a gating “screen door” style. I also have learned that even the most experienced pros don’t really understand the simplicity of this action or how to generate it, and that it is easier to teach a beginner how to do this than a wizened pro. But once the pro gets passed old lore and confusion to actually making the in-plane move, he can putt better than he can with a gating stroke with a wonderful consistency from day to day and year to year that only sharpens with age.
If yopu have remaining questions about this or any other issue, just let me know and I'll try to answer.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
PuttingZone.com
http://puttingzone.com
Golf’s most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
quote:Originally posted by cherrybarry
How can you rock your shoulders vertically without rotation? And then he tells you not to move your head, which is impossible if you can do the above?
Have you confirmed that the top of the shoulders/base of the neck is parallel to the ground at address and throughout the swing. This makes it easy to rock the shoulders vertically.
cherrybarry
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Until I see somebody do it in person, rocking shoulders vertically, without moving head, and making a few putts, I won't believe it's possible.
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