PUTTING REVELATIONS, LET YOUR PUTTER BE YOUR TEACHER, FIND YOUR PERSONAL STROKE, FEEL. TECHNIQUE, INSPIRATION, I FEEL YOUR PAIN, WWW.GOLFTEACHER.COM

 

what about it?

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED... During a conversation with one of our young members the other day, a truth about putting contrary to popular thinking raced into and across my mind. The kid was talking about his putting stroke when the process I went through with my new Scotty Cameron putter last fall suddenly became crystallized and perfectly clear. I had been a lousy inconsistent putter with occasion flashes of real brilliance for a very long time; but under pressure on strange greens I would putt to put it mildly, terrible. I decided that I was going to learn to putt like I used to putt in the past. I bought a Scotty Cameron putter. It felt good in my hands and the ball felt good coming off the club face. These putters are tools designed to make people better putters. I started out by practicing and playing with my usual stroke hoping the putter would solve my problems. No dice I was still a bad putter. Over the years I developed a “pro” stroke that never really worked very well; but I was bound and determined to make it work with whatever putter I was using. This Cameron putter was different though. It actually taught me how to putt again. Over the course of a few months, I started to make putts again and noticed that my stroke was changing. I quit trying so hard to do everything the way I thought I should be doing it, and let the putter be my guide. My feel changed; my setup and technique changed, I started to stroke the ball again. Instead of trying to manipulate the putter and make it work, I started to “listen” to what the putter was telling me. The design of the putter, the feel of the putter changed my entire framework of putting. The three putts became less and less frequent and I started making 20 and 30 footers again. The ball was going in the hole. I was standing straighter getting behind the ball and stroking with a more upright stroke. My body was tension-less and my grip was lighter. I had an idea I had a way to putt that was to say the least totally opposite of the way that I thought I should be putting. In essence I let the mechanics inherent in the putting instrument change the mechanics of my putting stroke. I adapted to what the putter itself was telling me and stopped my annoying and incessant habit of doing things one way and expecting everything to go along with the way I did things. I let the putter be my teacher. It is a system contrary to popular knowledge and thinking at least in the golf world. We are supposed to have control of everything of every aspect of our game. We are not supposed to relinquish that control to the force of the moment, or the design of the world around us. The putter was telling me how I should be using it, and i was smart enough to see the ball start going into the hole again, and smart enough to understand that it was due to a total transformation in my approach to doing things. I learned from my environment instead of trying to adapt the environment to what it was I wanted it to do. I was in every sense of the word a putting revelation.Entrance_Page.html