Open Putting Stance To Help on Long Putts Senior Tip (Video) - by Dean Butler
Open Putting Stance To Help on Long Putts Senior Tip (Video) - by Dean Butler

Okay how does an open stance help with long putts? I’m not talking about sort of 24 putts I’m talking about maybe 40 putt or even longer. But one of the world’s best putters in my eyes was John Nicholas and he uses method very, very well indeed. If you can imagine if you set up, as you would normally do to a putt with your feet parallel and you had a long putt. As you go through you swing the putter back and forward. From here you can see the swing is actually, it’s resisting, it’s almost come to a stop and that’s because this body is blocking me out, it’s restricting my movements. So as I go back and go through you can see, I’m keeping my body still because that’s what I should be doing on the putt, I shouldn’t be moving all over the place.

And from that position there this hip is almost kind of -- is kind of locking me into where I want to go or where I don’t want to go; but if you set yourself up and you put yourself in the same position but you open your setup, which means my left foot is now going to come back. You can see opening myself up so my body which was parallel is now coming to the left hand side, what we call an open set up. And by doing that the natural movement now because this hip is out of the way, will allow my swing naturally to go like this, back look how much further it’s gone through because this hip is out of the way. Remember when the hip was in the way; look how low that putter is to the ground. Look how short that is; so by doing something which was successful for arguably the best golfer of all times; John Nicholas did to perfection, you can actually implement this on those very, very long putts when you think I don’t get that ball really close enough. Well the feel kind of goes because everything is cutting off the actual natural thing which will be to stand out open and then look how much further my putting shot can go through. So for long puts it makes sense to stand open, with that hip being out of the way you’ve got room to let that putter go through a little bit more which needs a little bit more tempo, a little bit more swing speed and of course that means that ball is going to travel further. So long putts, open setup and if it’s good for John Nicholas it’s got to be good for you. 2014-04-03

Okay how does an open stance help with long putts? I’m not talking about sort of 24 putts I’m talking about maybe 40 putt or even longer. But one of the world’s best putters in my eyes was John Nicholas and he uses method very, very well indeed. If you can imagine if you set up, as you would normally do to a putt with your feet parallel and you had a long putt. As you go through you swing the putter back and forward. From here you can see the swing is actually, it’s resisting, it’s almost come to a stop and that’s because this body is blocking me out, it’s restricting my movements. So as I go back and go through you can see, I’m keeping my body still because that’s what I should be doing on the putt, I shouldn’t be moving all over the place.

And from that position there this hip is almost kind of — is kind of locking me into where I want to go or where I don’t want to go; but if you set yourself up and you put yourself in the same position but you open your setup, which means my left foot is now going to come back. You can see opening myself up so my body which was parallel is now coming to the left hand side, what we call an open set up. And by doing that the natural movement now because this hip is out of the way, will allow my swing naturally to go like this, back look how much further it’s gone through because this hip is out of the way. Remember when the hip was in the way; look how low that putter is to the ground.

Look how short that is; so by doing something which was successful for arguably the best golfer of all times; John Nicholas did to perfection, you can actually implement this on those very, very long putts when you think I don’t get that ball really close enough. Well the feel kind of goes because everything is cutting off the actual natural thing which will be to stand out open and then look how much further my putting shot can go through. So for long puts it makes sense to stand open, with that hip being out of the way you’ve got room to let that putter go through a little bit more which needs a little bit more tempo, a little bit more swing speed and of course that means that ball is going to travel further. So long putts, open setup and if it’s good for John Nicholas it’s got to be good for you.