Its good for your game

Putt like professionals

By T.J. Tomasi

A few years ago, Dr. Ralph Mann at Grand Cypress Resort in Florida studied a number of the world’s best putters and found some interesting things.

Regardless of the length of the putt (they measured 4-foot, 8-foot, 16-foot and 32-foot putts), the completion times of the strokes were exactly the same.

The downswing time is roughly half of the backswing time, showing that the player is accelerating the blade through impact.

As an example, on a 4-foot putt by Greg Norman, the backswing took 0.62 seconds, the downswing 0.3 seconds, the total completion time 0.92 seconds.

For the 32-foot putt, the backswing took 0.63 seconds, the downswing 0.29 seconds, and the completion 0.92 seconds.

All of the professionals measured consistently produced a follow-through distance almost twice that of the backswing distance, again due to acceleration.

The model setup

Each pro’s setup was noted and measured, and then all were averaged together to come up with these composite ideal positions: The feet are about 12 inches apart at the toes with the front foot drawn back an inch from the target line; the ball is 2 inches inside the front big toe and 10 inches out from the foot. The eyes are positioned about 2 inches inside the ball, contradicting instruction that tells you to have your eyes directly over the ball. The weight is toward the heels and evenly distributed, again contradicting advice that most of the weight should be on the front side.

The model stroke

Likewise, the pros’ putting strokes averaged out to this ideal form: It’s predominantly straight back and straight through, a pendulum-type motion that stays on the line as long as possible.

The recommendation is to putt with the arms and the shoulders (not the wrists), thereby creating the motion of the club by using a tilting of the shoulders. Overusing

the wrists opens and closes the clubface and this leads to slappingat the ball. The lower body does not move much at all.

The key is returning the putter face to its address position at impact with the putter face perpendicular to the arc of the stroke. This makes the stroke as simple as possible with fewer chances for error.

Tomasi writes for Universal UClick.