Putting confessions

[legitimatebeef]

For most of my golf playing life I lined up putts using a sharpie line on the ball. I stopped doing it two and half rounds ago and the effect has been astonishing. For all that time, I refused to trust my instinctive sense of alignment while standing over the ball. I thought pre-aiming the ball was the only way to ensure accuracy. Now I suspect that to be wrong. At least for me. At least for right now.

I have also done away with the entire practice of pre-putt practice strokes, also to great effect especially on the long distance putts.

Within this new paradigm, I feel less tense and more optimistic when I stand over the ball now. Short and medium putts are going in at a noticeably higher rate, and they are going in with better pace, and more often near the middle of the hole if that can be believed. I am used to trickling in, lipping in a lot of my shorties.

I consider Inbee Park one of the best putters ever, and thus I am now trying to take a cue from her overall putting style, which is surprisingly plain and simple. I think she does practice strokes but she doesn't align the ball nor does she mess around with any Aimpoint type of voodoo.

Just to be cool and different, I am also copying the KLPGA's Jeong Eun Lee 6 and the way she reads putts. Instead of straddling the line and reading it, she crouches from aside the putting line, and turns her head to the left to look toward the hole, just like you do when you're over the ball. It's the next big thing, I think.

[sjduffers]

I agree.

Same here. I used to putt with the line on the ball, but after remarking to my swing coach at GolfTEC that I was lipping out a lot of putts, he took one look and told me: you are lining up the line wrong, i.e. just outside the hole (for longish putts)! So, I had an aiming bias due to misaligning the line on the ball. I told me: just put up the white part of the ball up (no logo, no line, no mark) and let your body/mind do the alignment. Bingo! Much better results and it's been 2 years or so. I haven't looked back. I now average just under 30 putts per round.

As for practice strokes, I take them, 2 of them to be precise, on every putt, whether 1 foot or 100 feet. But I make them while looking at the hole (or rather, at the target if it's off from the hole), at the precise pace (length of backswing and forward swing) and tempo as the real thing that is about to follow. I then step in a few inches, move the putter head a bit up from me (i.e. from inside the ball to behind in the ball, not from outside the ball down towards me), have another look at the hole/target and trace the putting line that I am visualizing back to the ball with my eyes. When the eyes reach the ball, I pull the trigger, just as an extension of the eye movement. It's all one smooth stroke in my mind, from the target to the backswing and through.

[GBOGEY]

When I was fitted for my putter, there were really only two parameters - putter length and how I aimed. It turned out that I aim much better with a plumber's neck putter than with other types, so that's what I have used ever since.

BTW - one thing I could never do is a putter with an Odyssey two ball - complete disaster for me but obviously works for lots of people. I need a line on my putter, but not on the ball.

[bryan k]

When I was fitted for my putter, there were really only two parameters - putter length and how I aimed. It turned out that I aim much better with a plumber's neck putter than with other types, so that's what I have used ever since.

BTW - one thing I could never do is a putter with an Odyssey two ball - complete disaster for me but obviously works for lots of people. I need a line on my putter, but not on the ball.

I used an Odyssey two-ball putter for several years. The reason I gave it up was because the head was too heavy. I went to a shorter and lighter putter with excellent results.

When I tried to go back to the two-ball putter, I couldn't hit it straight anymore. It kept cheating to the right of the cup. Looking back, I had that same problem when I first started using it as well.

[MattF]

I just can't get past the look of a mallet putter. I like the blade, the same as my Yes! Tracey.

I'm seriously looking at an Evnroll ER1.

[jattruia]

I swore i'd never replace my Yes! Tracy II until i messed around with a Seemore center shafted putter. I haven't looked back since. I never wanted to give a center shafted putter a chance, but it was a total game changer for me.

[legitimatebeef]

I find myself wavering between methods these days. Between using the line on the ball to aim, and a more intuitive approach.

I used to use the line exclusively, but now seem to use it mostly for the long putts, especially with a lot of break, the ones where you can't just read it with your feet, so to speak.

On the shorter range putts, I seem to be making more of them without the line. I never intended for it to happen, just kind of discovered by accident. Nor am I that comfortable with it. I am only sticking with it because the results seem better.