Confessions Of A Bad Putter

Perhaps you read “Confessions Of A Bad Caddie” a few weeks back. If you did then you know that throughout that experience I had a professional caddie keeping me out of trouble and D. A. Weibring cutting me 18 holes of slack throughout the day. However, for this article I was not allowed to use a stunt putter. No trick photography was used either. It was all me: the so-so, the bad and the ugly.

Truthfully, I was never a very good putter, but for some reason I have become a really bad putter of late. I have three putted from six-feet, left thirty-foot putts ten-feet short, and putted twenty-foot putts ten-feet long. I am a lost ball in the high weeds of putting; a miss-hit waiting to happen; and a double-breaker away from putting the ball completely off the green. To say I need help is an understatement of Biblical proportion.

Those were the very words I used to describe my putting to Marius Filtmalter one of the most knowledgeable putting experts in the world. Marius, speaking with a slight German accent, smiled knowingly then went on non-stop for twenty minutes about address, angle, take-away, follow through, loft, speed, and acceleration. He is an encyclopedia of putting, and why wouldn’t he be? Marius has tested more than 40,000 putters including Tiger Woods. Using high-tech laser measuring instrumentation to build his enormous database, he may know more about putting than anyone else in the world. “Our goal was to understand what great putters had in common,” he said. “Once you have completed the test we can overlay your scores to any of the 40,000 putting profiles we have in our database. Wouldn’t you like to see how your putting stroke compares to Tiger Woods?”

“Yes” I answered knowing that this story could use a good punch line.

The test began with my putter disappearing for a few minutes. They checked the length, the loft, the grip and a few more things I didn’t even know a putter had. It seems that my putter had no loft and the grip was not aligned with the putter face. “Not so good, huh?”

“Not so good” Marius repeated, “but not as bad as you might think.” And then he went on to tell me how clever our brains were and how, in many cases, it would compensate for things like the face and the grip being out of line. “Let’s see how that brain of yours is working. Make a few putts for me, okay?”

Oh no I thought, he’s already discovered my real weakness, however with my limited resources I followed along. I watched as he attached a tiny laser to my putter shaft and aligned it to the target hole about ten feet away. Then he asked me to putt five times using my normal set-up and stroke, which I did. Then he asked me to putt five times using my right hand only followed by five times using only my left hand. As I fought bravely to make each putt I continued to do play-by-play descriptions of the problem I was having with each swing of the putter; that was a push, I hit that on the toe, etc. Marius just smiled.

Pointing to a series of charts on the computer screen, Marius said, “Look at this, with both hands on the putter you are one degree open at address and six degrees open at impact. With your right hand only you are one degree open at address and almost ten degrees open at impact. When you switch to your left hand only you were still one degree open at address but at impact you were two degrees closed. Let’s try something,” he said. “Have you ever used a claw, or a left hand low grip?”

Looking a bit like Chris DiMarco’s father, I putted five times using the claw grip. The first putt shot two feet wide of the target but as I learned to lower my right elbow with each successive putt the ball tracked closer and closer to the hole until the fifth putt rolled softly into the cup. One out of five was hardly anything to write home about, but something felt better.

Then with my left hand low I struck five more putts making four of them and suddenly I was feeling a lot better. Could it be this simple?

Back at the computer screen Marius pointed out how my alignment at impact with the left hand low was now almost perfect and how my take-away had smoothed out, however he still had a problem with my acceleration and the length of my follow through. He pointed out how my putter did not achieve top speed until long after the ball had been struck and part of that was caused by the long follow through. He showed me how most great putters accelerated quickly to the proper speed creating virtually a flat acceleration line, however as soon as the ball was struck the speed rapidly declined. Indeed, my acceleration line was a loop with only one small point on the curve actually achieving top speed and by that time the ball was long gone.

Shortening your follow through doesn’t mean that you decelerate he emphasized. Remember, a virtual flat acceleration line is what you are trying to achieve. It feels different, even strange at first, but he assured me that with practice it would start to feel natural.

“Sam, you have the yips… but only in your right hand,” Marius said quietly as if to protect me from the “Y” word. “By putting with your left hand low you’ve greatly reduced the effects of your right hand. Ideally your right hand should just be along for the ride.” Then sitting at the computer screen he over-laid Tiger Woods’ putting charts on top of mine; it was like looking at a Michelangelo painting over laying a first grader’s stick figures. “This is what you’re shooting for,” he said with nary a smile. “You may never get there but at least we know which direction you should be going.”

So, with my left hand low technique still spinning in my head I headed for the practice green. Tiger’s silky smooth lines were still etched on my mind’s eye as I stroked putt after putt. I focused on maintaining my stroke at forty-five percent take away fifty-five percent follow through. Truthfully, it felt awkward and more than once the long follow through tiptoed back into my technique, but I kept trying. After about a half-hour I decided to take a break. As I sat there sipping on a tall cool one I wondered if Tiger practiced his putting as much as I did that day.