Use Arms and Shoulders for Consistent Putting (Video) - by Pete Styles
Use Arms and Shoulders for Consistent Putting (Video) - by Pete Styles

When we talk about trying to make a good consistent putting stroke, one word keeps coming up is often a pendulum action. We want to try and make the pendulum work to putt the backwards and the forwards. So, like a big grandfather clock, where the club head just tick-tocks backwards and forwards and the best way to achieve that is to let the shoulders control this. Let the hands, the arms, the wrists, and the forearms stay nice and passive, nice and solid.

So effectively when you take your address position to putt, you create a triangle here; through your shoulders, down your arms, and we just want to maintain that triangle backwards and forwards in a putting stroke. Anything that we can do to keep that triangle is good. Anything we do to lose the triangle is bad.

You might look back in the day when you saw the guys playing, back in the '60s and you saw people like Palmer and Nicklaus kind of using a bit of a wristy action in the putting stroke, just kind of nudging the ball towards the hole. Maybe, the ball skipping and bouncing a little bit towards the hole. That putting stroke was designed for the putting greens that they were playing on; slower greens, willower greens. Not the perfectly flat smooth contoured greens that we play on today.

So, the putting style is developed slightly and now the putting style is a good consistent triangular position, pendulum in the club backwards and forwards, feel like the club stays low to the ground. We don't need to pick it up, just rocking it backwards and forwards. Rolling the ball nice and consistently to the hole and the more of that pendulum action that you can create, without your hips and your head and your knees moving, the more consistent your putting will be. Try and keep that pendulum action going and improve your putting.

 2012-08-07

When we talk about trying to make a good consistent putting stroke, one word keeps coming up is often a pendulum action. We want to try and make the pendulum work to putt the backwards and the forwards. So, like a big grandfather clock, where the club head just tick-tocks backwards and forwards and the best way to achieve that is to let the shoulders control this. Let the hands, the arms, the wrists, and the forearms stay nice and passive, nice and solid.

So effectively when you take your address position to putt, you create a triangle here; through your shoulders, down your arms, and we just want to maintain that triangle backwards and forwards in a putting stroke. Anything that we can do to keep that triangle is good. Anything we do to lose the triangle is bad.

You might look back in the day when you saw the guys playing, back in the '60s and you saw people like Palmer and Nicklaus kind of using a bit of a wristy action in the putting stroke, just kind of nudging the ball towards the hole. Maybe, the ball skipping and bouncing a little bit towards the hole. That putting stroke was designed for the putting greens that they were playing on; slower greens, willower greens. Not the perfectly flat smooth contoured greens that we play on today.

So, the putting style is developed slightly and now the putting style is a good consistent triangular position, pendulum in the club backwards and forwards, feel like the club stays low to the ground. We don't need to pick it up, just rocking it backwards and forwards. Rolling the ball nice and consistently to the hole and the more of that pendulum action that you can create, without your hips and your head and your knees moving, the more consistent your putting will be. Try and keep that pendulum action going and improve your putting.