THE RESULTS ARE IN
After those seven putts, SAM knew more about my tendencies than I ever had, including, yes, a “barn door”-like stroke.
On the putting cubicle’s huge screen were all seven putts in graphic form, layered atop one another; what struck me immediately was how consistent I was from stroke to stroke — flaws and all.
“I’m cutting across it.”
“Yes, a bit, and hitting it off the toe slightly,” Weizer added. “The backswing is relatively square coming back — just one little loop. It’s really pretty decent. At the start of the forward swing from the backswing you’re 4.1 degrees open, an arcing kind of stroke. That’s relatively strong, quite honestly — it’s a pretty good arc. Which is OK, just a style of putting. And again, SAM is based on a straight-back, straight-through stroke, so some of the information he gives us is subject to a bit of interpretation.”
So far, my own interpretation of the data told me that I didn’t suck after all, hundreds of missed three-footers and careless three-jacks notwithstanding.
For one thing, when face met ball I tended to be damned square to the target.
“You’re point-four degrees closed at impact, which is very good. That’s ideal, we can’t even improve on that. Point-five and below is excellent. I normally see one, one-point-two, one-point-four, which would lead us to discuss trying a putter with a little more offset, a different alignment aid — so you’re doing some really nice things with that.”
That’s what I’m talking about!
“And then it really rotates hard at nine degrees. So from four open to nine closed, that what’s what we consider a strong arcing-type motion.”
Again, Weizer assured me that despite SAM’s love for the mythical straight-back-and-through motion, what I was doing was more than OK, even though …
“Most of the time it looks like you’re gonna hit it off the toe, just a little bit,” he added. “Path wise, the path itself is pretty neutral — you go a little outside and kind of cut across it. Relatively open, then the line gets a little darker, which is that closing motion. I see that quite a bit, that’s pretty normal.”
More data, more comments.
“Your eyes are pretty close to being above [outside] the golf ball; that has a tendency to produce that out-to-in motion a little too much,” Weizer said. “So try to stand a little taller.”
I did with the next post-test stroke, and yes, the ball actually found the cup some 10 feet away.
