THE PUTTING

Here it is a very interesting article written by my big friend AC. You can read that and follow his blog at http://mygolffile.blogspot.com/.

...

The putting is the easier golf play but as some secrets. Usually amateur golfers don’t follow the required rules and consequently pay an expensive price in their final result, sometimes as much putting strokes as all the other golf strokes together. Why that? First, because most of the times the putting basic lessons are avoided in the initial teaching lessons. Secondly, many golfers start playing and start training with a professional having already tried putting in a putting green for fun without any previous advice. So, when they start putting in a game tour they have already got vices and acquired their “own stile” and have their own putter chosen by aesthetic reasons what for sure is an incorrect one most of the times.

So, what to do if this is the case? Here are some basic ideas.

Type of putter
There are many putter features. However they can be classified in two major categories in terms of the most important quality: the equilibrium. How can you check it? When you suspend the putter shaft in its middle weight point in your finger the putter face stays horizontal or not. If it stays horizontal it is equilibrated. On the contrary, if it point down it is not equilibrated. Now, what to choose? It depends on your own physical characteristics. If you are young and or have no difficulties to put along a line you should choose an equilibrated put. If not, according to you physiology (flexibility on your back and spine) and more or less difficulty to produce a putting stroke along a line, you can choose a putter not equilibrated according how you feel and fit after testing some different unequilibrated putter. After this major characteristic you can find many kinds of putters with strangest shapes, weight, colours and adding’s what changes the feel in the impact introducing more or less acceleration to the ball. If you preferably play in courses with larger greens you should choose a putter with more weight. The other characteristics are more a question of personal felling. Try in a shop several choices without forgetting the principal: the equilibrium!
This advice does not contradict the point that a player with an inadequate putter for his ability cannot be a putter champion. Simply he has to fit his putting swing to a wrong putter adopting compensations to get the required results.

Size of the putter
This is another characteristic in which we can find in the courses a lot of wrong situations. Usually golf amateurs put with a much longer putter than they should have. Why? Because they simply buy it in the shop with a standard length without asking the seller to fit it to the required size proper to their height. This introduces disequilibrium in the putting swing and the player most of the times has to handle the putter on the bottom of the grip or even in the shaft after the gripping zone. So, what ever the putter you need and choose fit it to your height!

Putting lines (direction and distance)
There a lot of theory about direction and distance. What is more important in putting? I would say the importance of the distance increases with the distance when over 2 m or 8 feet from the hole. Why this inferior limit? Because up to this distance you should care preferably with the direction and match one put. Above 2 m it is more important to avoid 3 or even more putts and you should try to place the ball inside a zone up to 3 feet around and after the hole. Remember, short putts more than 99, 9% of the times don’t hole! Anyway if you are curious about other aspects of putting as rules for choosing lines there are magnificent texts on that.

Stance and posture
The stance for putting is also a very important point and also we can find a lot of errors on the greens: feet too open, feet too apart, body too leaned over the green, elbows completely open, etc. The correct stance must be: legs flexible, chest straight and fixed to the arms, head fixed in the ball after choosing the line, shoulders to the back, arms fall down, feet parallel to each other and perpendicular to the putting line and not distanced more than 1.5 – 2 feet (depending on your height). You must feel comfortable in a stable and bent posture with your eyes over the ball. The ball should be at 1 or 2 diameters towards the hole from the middle of the stance. The goal is to impact the ball with the putter already in the upper trajectory, providing some top spin to the ball. If you have the feet open or too wide you introduce difficulties to reproduce the perfect pendulum movement on your “triangle”.

The “triangle”
The triangle composed by your shoulders and arms should be rigid, the chest in a plane, so that you make the rotation absolutely in a plane that provides your hands to move along the putting line. The objective of this triangle is to assure a rotation around your neck in the vertical plane of the centre spot of the putter.
If you are not able to make this kind of rotation and you don’t feel comfortable with it that is one reason to check the size or other type of putter and probably it is preferable to use a putter not equilibrated and reproduce a movement so near as possible to the correct one.

Grip
The grip is another point that usually everybody is not concerned about and this is absolutely wrong too. The grip must be as rigid as possible to assure a solid triangle. The wrists must be rigid as they are the vertex of the triangle that holds the putter. If the wrists rotate or bend, the triangle is destroyed and the straight line changes to an arc and consistency of putting is lost.

The swing and stroke
The putting swing and stroke in normal putts is very simple and if we divide the total travel of the putter head we should consider one third before and two thirds after the ball point. The total travel of the putter head should not exceed two feet in normal putts because in a distance more than that it is impossible for most of the golfers to maintain a perfect line along the normal stroke. So, what is important is to average the distance you intend the ball travel by increasing the speed you need in the moment of the impact. There are simple training exercises you can do in a putting green to calculate the distance in different green conditions. After sellecting the line, find a point in the green one foot after the ball and try to pass over it with the putter. Forget the ball and please take a deep breath before putting.

Shorter putts
Most of golfers use the same kind of stroke in shorter putts (up to 2 m or 8 feet). But there is a detail difference that can provide better average results. Shorter putter just require shorter backswing by obvious reason. But there is another reason for that: the shorter the back swing is the more certain you get an aligned movement. So try to make a back movement shorter than one foot and regulate the acceleration of the putter head and the final speed at the impact according the local circumstances (the grass and the relief of the green).

Other putting movements with longer putters
There are other putters different from the regular ones to be used with a fixed support in the middle of the chest or in the chin. Those putters require different grips and the technique is totally different but we will not develop that in this text.

Putting statistics
To evaluate your putting technique and performance you should adopt a systematic register of your putts in competition. There is a very good tool for that in the website http://mygolfile.com/ (http://www.golfcaddyfile.com/) where you can obtain that kind of statistics among other indicators of your golf performance.

Try to follow these advices and enjoy your game!