Putting Line

[ajlacombe]

Does geometry force certain things to happen

I have been reading a pretty cool book on putting by Fred Shoemaker. One of the things he has you do is video tape your putting stroke and see what it looks like versus what you think it looks like. Well, I thought I had a straight back and straight through stroke, and I might, but I wanted some opinions on the geometry ivolved.

I am not sure that a human can hae a sbst putting stroke for more than 18" of total travel without contorting things with some type of compensation move. What my stroke looks like is a straight back and straight through the ball, but after about 6-10 inches past the ball, the putter appears to start cutting back inside. It may just be the swinging door arc of an arc putter, but it did not really look slike that since it was not symmetric with the backswing at all.

I had been playing the ball fairly far forward. If I move the ball position back a bit in my stance, then I can lessen the follow through cut to the left by quite a bit (at least it appears to do that).

So the questions are:

• Can a human have a straight back and straight through stroke?
• If they can, do they have to be doing some type of compensation move to achieve that?
• Does a sbst stroke cut back inside within 10" of the impact point?
  

It was interesting to watch my putting stroke and see what it looked like. The book is a bit of a challenge to what you believe, but I think worth the $14.95 - no this is not an advertisement :drinks:

[drewspin]

Very interesting questions - good topic.

 

My personal thinking is that:

 

1) Even what most perceive to be a SBST stroke has slight arc to it because of rotation of the arms and shoulders. The longer the stroke, the more this is true.

 

I think your best ball position for a SBST stroke is just slightly forward of your center-point of the slight arc that you do have.

[ajlacombe]

Very interesting questions - good topic.

 

My personal thinking is that:

 

1) Even what most perceive to be a SBST stroke has slight arc to it because of rotation of the arms and shoulders. The longer the stroke, the more this is true.

 

I think your best ball position for a SBST stroke is just slightly forward of your center-point of the slight arc that you do have.

 

I think I came to your second point over the last two days. I am not sure I would have gotten there without seeing it on the tape. I had always heard people say that a SBST stroke was not actual SB & ST, now I know for me, that is true.

 

Now if the damned snow ever leaves SW Ohio, I could actually try this out on a real green rather than my Dave Pelz Truth Board :drinks:

 

So, I wonder how most people determine their ball position and stroke method.