1/14 Webinar Q&A - Part 3

8. Is the putting stroke actually like a pendulum?

The laws of physics influencing the pendulum motion rule the putting stroke, and that does not mean the putter should move on a straight line. What I am trying to say is that the human factor should not disrupt these laws of physics. While the acceleration of the “bob” constantly decreases on the downward motion, in putting it is kept constant until impact. But both motions decelerate (or should decelerate in the case of putting) after reaching the bottom of the arc. In putting, the bottom of the arc should be slightly before the ball (which should be placed slightly forward of middle in the stance), as the goal is to strike the ball while the putter rises through the impact zone. In putting, you also find that the butt-end of the shaft (excluding belly and long putters) moves laterally, unlike in the pendulum. The top of the “pendulum” in the putting stroke is the bellybutton, which means the butt-end of the putter should always point there. Lastly, the pendulum has a 1 to 1 ratio. The time it takes to complete each swing is roughly the same, although friction causes it to slowly lose momentum from one swing to the next. In putting, the ratio of backstroke time to forward stroke time to impact is 2 to 1, but that is only because the putting stroke starts from a static position and time is lost on the backstroke to “catch” up to the proper rhythm. In other words, the “bob” decelerates during the backswing, and the putter actually accelerates approximately half of the backswing before decelerating.

9. Does a forward press have a negative impact when using the Tomi, and what are your thoughts regarding a forward press?

The forward press does not affect the ability of Tomi to capture the stroke, nor does it affect its accuracy. Golfers use the forward press to help start the stroke, to initiate the movement. In other words, the forward press eliminates the feel that the stroke is starting from a static position. It’s a good strategy provided that the putter is not delofting at impact and that there is no change in the alignment of the putter face.

10. What would you recommend for a player who tends to deloft the putter during backstroke?

The putter will naturally deloft on the backstroke, but if I understand the question correctly, you are referring to “hooding.” Let’s discuss one possible common cause: the shoulders are “rocking” instead of rotating around the spine. This means that the shoulders are in control of the putting stroke as opposed to the core muscles. When the shoulders “rock,” the putter tends to swing on a straight line, which in turn restricts rotation of the putter face. Make sure the student keeps the shoulders relaxed during the stroke and that the core muscles generate the energy. An exercise you could try starts with the player taking his normal putting posture. Then ask the player to stand up straight, elbows to the sides of the torso and the putter parallel to the ground. Then ask the player to make putts to an imaginary ball about bellybutton high. Make sure the hips remain quiet and that the elbows don’t drift away from the sides. Repeat the same action with the ball on the ground. Good luck!

1/14 Webinar Q&A - Part 2

4. How do you delete the bad 5 iron on the par 3 that went into the water?

• Don’t hold it against yourself. Bad things happen. In other words, forgive yourself! It might have been a bad shot, but you are still a good person. Too many people curse themselves, call themselves names, etcetera, instead of separating the performance from the person.

• See it in perspective - nobody died, it was not the beginning of the next world war. In other words, don’t have an emotional connection to the outcome.

• Focus on the intended action. Make a practice swing the way you wanted to hit the shot and ponder on that. Rehearse that in your brain.

I know it’s difficult to forget and reprogram the mind, but a little exercise focusing on what you want as opposed to what happened will pay off handsomely. It is a skill that can be learned.

5. What are your thoughts on using a line on the ball to line up your putt?

It is a conscious effort to make sure the alignment is correct, and if that helps you to be more comfortable and confident with the ball, by all means do it. Many top players on the Tour rely on this method. Personally, I imagine a line on the green and let my unconscious mind do the rest. In fact, I don’t see the ball or putter while performing the motion; they disappear. But that works for me. It might not work for everyone.


6. Could you please discuss the relative importance of path versus line? Do people tend to swing the putter on the path where they think the line is?

• First question: Good putters tend to “draw” putts which means the putter (path) approaches the ball from inside the target line. That way the putter head is travelling with an upward motion through the ball, ensuring a true roll.

• Second question: Yes they do. It is quite apparent from our research that when a golfer misses the first putt, they will make adjustments in their path to match the “new” line they see. Interestingly enough, they don’t rely on an altered clubface to correct the “error.”

7. How do you change the stroke tempo ratio?

I see a lot of my students over 2.

If the number is greater than 2, it simply means that the forward stroke is quick in relation to the backstroke. That implies that the golfer is either falling asleep on the backstroke or accelerating too much on the forward stroke. Either way, have the golfer hold the butt-end of the putter between his thumb and index finger. Now swing the putter in a pendulum motion. Pick up the timing and emulate the rhythm and tempo with the actual stroke. It will also help for the golfer to count out loud while putting: tik-tok, the tik being the beginning of the stroke and the tok being impact. Experiment with that while measuring the golfer on the Tomi system.

1/14 Webinar Q&A - Part 1

Thanks to all who participated in my Webinar on the Science of Putting. There were many questions we didn't have time to answer. In the next couple blog posts I will answer those questions.

1. Who is Professor Ernst Poeppel?

He is a neuroscientist and Psychologist at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich, Germany. For further information: http://www.supertee.com/background.html

2. How important are "quiet hands" in the putting stroke?

I suppose you are referring to a putting stroke not plagued by the yips? We know that the performance of “big muscles” tends to be more accurate and consistent than that of smaller muscles. Therefore it stands to reason that golfers should use the bigger muscles to generate energy for the putting motion. In other words, the core muscles should act as the generator of energy by turning the shoulders around the spine. The hands, mostly controlled by muscles in the forearms, should primarily hold the club in the correct position for successful contact. There are exceptions to this “preferable rule.” Ben Crenshaw releases the putter with the hands, and so did Bobby Lock but exceptions should never become the rule. But to answer your question, the hands should be as quiet as possible but not “dead,” as they supply feeling and feedback essential for excellent putting.

3. Your study on the yips showed that the clubface is open at setup and impact. Is this alignment error due to forearm line, shoulder line, eye line, or a visual perception problem?

All of the above directly affect the way the golfer sees the line. Brian Gay, who won on the PGA Tour last year, had a perfectly neutral and square setup at address BUT struggled to make putts. After looking at him stroke a few putts (none of which he made), I could not see anything drastically wrong with his putting motion, and I told him so. He then told me that, when standing over the putt, he actually felt aimed way right of the hole. I then asked him to adjust his posture/stance until he actually saw the line as going straight to the hole. He ended up with a slightly open, upright and narrow stance…not something I would teach, but he started making the putts again. He told me that this “new” posture was actually very similar to the way he putted as a junior. The point is that for some golfers, the “typical” square posture might not be the best if it prevents them from seeing the line. As for the relationship between posture and the yips, I could not say that a particular posture is specific to the yippers; most aim right regardless of their posture. They tend to be open at impact because they resist rotation of the putter head through the impact zone.

Chapter 2: The Science of Putting

The “Accelerational” Yip:

This yip is specific to the inability to control the acceleration of the putter head through the impact zone. We have to accelerate the putter head to get it to the right speed at the time of impact. Imagine we are at a stop in a car and I ask you to pass a mark 500 yards away at exactly 45 miles per hour. What you will most probably do is accelerate to 45 mph within maybe 250 yards and stay there until we pass the mark. What a professional driver might be able to do is press down on the accelerator just enough at the beginning and know that if he/she keeps his/her foot there, we will reach exactly 4 5mph at the 500 yard mark. This is what golfers should learn to do in putting. The best putters in the world know exactly how far back to pull the putter head and how much they should “press on the accelerator” at the beginning of the forward stroke to reach the exact desired speed by the time of impact. Ben Crenshaw himself told me not too long ago that his most important thought while putting was to pull the putter head far enough on the backstroke so that he would be sure to have enough momentum to cruise through the impact zone on the forward stroke. An interesting phenomenon is that all good putters actually reach top speed just prior to the time of impact. By the way, this is also something we have noticed in the full swing of many pros and long drive champions while doing research with Dr. Fabian Pollo at the Baylor Motion & Sports Performance Center in Dallas. The bad putters, on the other hand, all reach top speed after impact. Believe me when I say that 90% of amateurs accelerate too much during their forward stroke. What we found in our research was that 6.88% of the participants as well as a large majority of “Directional Yippers” had two bursts of acceleration during their forward stroke. We had to create the “Accelerational Yip” category for the 6.88% who did not display the characteristic of the “Directional Yip” in their rotation curves. The “Accelerational Yip” is deemed a yip because the second burst of acceleration is unpredictable. From one stroke to the next, it can occur anywhere from 150 milliseconds before impact to 50 milliseconds after impact.

Chapter 2: The Science of Putting

#2. What are the yips?

The Directional Yip:
Although the symptoms of the yips are easy to see (have right-handed golfers putt with their right hand only and watch for tremors at the time of impact; opposite for left-handed golfers), their cause is a much harder problem to grasp. In the mid 1990s, after preliminary research with Professor Pöppel and a team of scientists at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, we realized we had to measure the putting motion and relate the measurements to the intended results of the stroke (i.e., ball leaves on target line and falls in the hole) to further understand the yips. It is actually a dentist friend of mine who later gave us the solution. He told me that they used ultrasonic triangulations to capture the movements of the jaws of individuals. This is when the SAM Putting system was born. SAM was developed for research purposes and is not affordable for most golf facilities, which is why I later decided to develop TOMI.

After measuring more than 50,000 strokes, I can safely tell you that there are actually two types of yips. One is related to the control of direction and the other one to the control of distance. Yippers can have either or both. The two are defined as follows:
Directional: The inability to control the rotation of the putter head during the forward stroke, thereby failing to keep the rate of rotation constant through impact.

Accelerational: The inability to control the acceleration of the putter during the forward stroke, thereby failing to keep the rate of acceleration constant through impact. In our research, which was recently published at the World Scientific Congress of Golf in Phoenix, we found 20.44% of participants with at least a directional yip. A vast majority resisted rotation through the impact zone.

Today, I can tell you with confidence that manipulating the putter to try to keep it square to the target line throughout the stroke is not a good thing and could lead you to the yips.
In the following months, I will go into more detail about different drills I have devised to help yippers.

The first week of January I will introduce the accelerational yip.

Chapter 2: The Science of Putting

#1 The 2 Ds of putting:

Putting is a fine motor skill, unlike the full swing, which is a ballistic movement. In the full swing, if you have 160 yards to go, you grab the 8 iron and you give it all you got (I know I do!). The distance is not really a factor anymore; all your attention is or should be on the direction of the shot alone. Well, in putting, you have only one club, and with that one club, you have to control both the direction and the distance the ball will roll. These are what I call the 2 Ds of putting. If you get them right, the ball goes in the hole-that is, obviously, if you read the putt correctly. The goal is to eliminate one factor from the equation in putting.

For makeable putts, the ones you should expect to make most of the time (less than 10 feet), you should eliminate distance so that you may focus solely on controlling the direction of the putt. To achieve this, you should learn to calibrate your distance relative to the length of your backstroke and your rhythm. By calibrate, I mean that you should be on automatic pilot when striking the ball. There should not be any doubt that you have generated enough energy in your stroke to get the ball to the hole. For putts outside of 10 feet, direction becomes less important than distance in the sense that you want to leave yourself a short putt if the ball does not go in.

Next week, we will introduce research findings on the yips directly related to the control of direction.

Chapter 1: Who is Marius Filmalter?

Mr. Filmalter has devoted the last almost 20 years of his life studying and researching influences on the performance of golfers and, in particular, the fine motor skill movements that are utilized to execute the putting motion. Mr. Filmalter has measured and analyzed countless golfers, professional and amateur, to mathematically establish the criteria for a successful putting stroke. Through this research, Mr. Filmalter has also determined the main differences between the top and bottom performers on the various professional golf tours.

Together with Professor Ernst Poeppel of the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich and others, Mr. Filmalter helped develop new and more effective methods to facilitate the proper communication between mind and muscles. As a result of his studies, Mr. Filmalter was a prime contributor to the development of the SAM PuttLab and, more recently, Tomi, which scientifically captures the most important parameters of a putting stroke.

In collaboration with Hank Haney and Oklahoma Sports, Science and Orthopedics, Mr. Filmalter and Pierre Noizet recently conducted the most comprehensive research on Motor Strategy Disturbances, otherwise known as the Yips. The study shed light on the movement disorders that golfers suffer when plagued with this phenomenon. A book and paper, which contradict numerous theories on the Yips, were published with the findings.