Instruction

How much do mishits matter in putting?

Published

10 years ago

Mar 31, 2014

Whenever you impact a putt, the ball is programmed with all its directional data. It is at that point that a golfer’s consistency is either compromised or enhanced by the actions of impact alignments.

Impact alignments will either make or break a good putter. In this article, I will assume you have perfect alignments (as shown below), which would program the ball’s reactions in a consistent manner from putt to putt and day to day.

Perfect impact alignments provide a neutral club shaft at impact, a flat forward wrist and a bent rear wrist.

In my putting research, I use several high-tech tools to examine the putting strokes of my clients. The two I will use in this article are AMM’s 3D Motion Analysis System, which tracks the biomechanics of the various parts of the body during the stroke, as well as Quintic’s Skid and Roll Putting Launch Monitor, which shows the actions of the ball from zero to 12 inches of movement.

Sample quintic graph showing ball skid versus roll and vertical bounce on a putt.

Ball Roll Angle (BRA): Positive numbers show forward roll, while negative numbers show backspin.
Vertical Bounce (VB): Positive numbers show a ball that is airborne, while a negative number shows a ball on the grass.

There are several things that ball impact programs during the putting stroke, all of which we will correlate here with the data below from Quintic:

Ball Roll: Does the ball have forward-rolling or backward-rolling characteristics? How much at each inch of ball movement (measured in degrees)?
Ball Sidespin: How much sidespin does the ball have and what does this do to the ball’s roll (measured in degrees)?
Ball Speed: How fast does the ball leave the blade (measured in feet per second)?
Vertical Bounce: Does the ball jump into the air or dive into the ground (measured in inches)?

The data below examines three sample putters from leading putter makers. All putters in this study were custom made with the same length, loft and lie to ensure the most accuracy possible in the data below. The three putters also possess and market to their consumers the benefits of their roll-enhancing inserts, which we put to the test for this article.

The takeaway? These putters have inserts with grooves that help impart more forward roll than their smooth-faced counterparts. While no insert can fix issues that you might have with forward roll, they can all enhance the possibility that you will impart more over-spin to your putts than you do currently. However, the combination of proper impact alignments coupled with groove technology will lead to a more consistent roll off the face of the putter for most players.

The Test

Based on the data above we can deduce the following regarding impact points and their effects on the ball’s skid and roll.

1 Inch After Impact

Loft of the Putter

Whenever the static loft of the putter is set up correctly based on a golfer’s personal impact alignments and mechanics, the ball will leave the blade in a manner that allows for minimal skid and the quickest roll possible.

Not enough loft will drive the ball into the ground, and it will bounce up as a result.

Too much loft will make the ball jump into the air.

Impact Centeredness

There is little difference in the ball’s Vertical Bounce when the ball misses the center of the blade. This is more a function of the loft of the putter in general, not the horizontal impact point.

Ball Speed at Separation

Centered Impact imparted between 8.18 to 8.40 feet/second.
Heel Impact imparted between 7.60 to 7.93 feet/second.
Toe Impact imparted between 7.98 to 8.32 feet/per second.
The Toe Impact ball speed was higher due to the amount of sidespin imparted to the golf ball during impact, but this will soon cause other issues.

4 Inches After Impact

Impact Centeredness

When the ball is impacted in the center of the blade, it encourages a more aggressive forward rolling of the ball at this stage. Between 15-to-20 degrees of forward roll is normal.
If you are to miss the center of the blade, the toe of the putter imparts the most forward-rolling characteristics at 4 inches, but also imparts more sidespin to the ball than the heel impact.

Sidespin

The average Heel Impact Sidespin was between 15 and 25 degrees, while the average Toe Impact Sidespin was between 25 to 35 degrees.
Toe Impacted Side Spin causes the ball to “roll” quicker off the start, but it contributed to a lower overall “forward rolling” value at 8 inches.

8 Inches After Impact

Impact Centeredness

The Centered Impact imparts 50 to 80 degrees of forward roll.
The Heel Impact imparts 50 to 60 degrees of forward roll.
The Toe Impact imparts 30 to 40 degrees of forward roll.

Sidespin

Toe Impacts affect the ball between 4 and 8 inches, as they slow its forward roll due the amount of side spin.

After the ball has reached the 8-inch mark, it should have stopped bouncing and skidding and hopefully started to reach true roll. The quicker you can reach “true roll” the first actual 360 degree motion of the golf ball without leaving the ground the better the ball will be rolling. We cannot control the ball when it’s bouncing in the air, nor can we influence it after it hits the ground. However, we can do our part to influence and produce impact alignments and roll characteristics that can help us to reach true roll quicker.

Our job as teachers is to put you in a correctly fit putter and give you the fundamental mechanics necessary to create consistency in the ball’s actions off the blade. If we can do this, you will be on your way to becoming a better putter day in and day out because it makes a big difference.

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Instruction

Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

Published

1 week ago

Apr 24, 2024

Shawn Clement

Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!

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Instruction

The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic

Published

1 month ago

Mar 29, 2024

Terry Koehler

My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.

As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.

The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.

Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:

Mis-aligned hands

By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.

The position of the grip in the upper/left hand

I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.

To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.

Too much lower (right) hand on the club

It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.

Gripping too tightly

Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.

So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

Published

2 months ago

Mar 4, 2024

Shawn Clement

Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?

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