Putting looking at the hole not the ball

guys, lately I've been having a tendancy to almost "whiffing" the ball while looking at the hole. The putter barely nicks the the bal and the ball travels well well short and left of the hole. Does it have to do with ball position and/or stance? Pretty frustrating as I could've broken 80 without 4 or 5 of those bad whiffs.

hi
go in the sand and put a tee peg few inches futher away from where you would put your ball, take a few swings with the putter looking at hole and see where the club head first touches the sand, is that where the tee peg is lined up. that should show you.
hope it helps.
bill

Bill, tried it.

The club hits the sand a couple of inches BEHIND my usual ball spot. This is going to be something I"ll have to get used to before the next round I play. But if it fixes my mishaps - I'lll take it.

Thanks for the drill, did anyone else have this problem? I was at the point of switching back to not looking at the hole - but alas, it's the source of my 1-2 putts per hole lately.

I was reading over this thread last week, and decided to give it a try. I was amazed at how much better I putted. I only had 30 putts in my round on Sunday. That was down from 36-40 putts on a normal round.

To all of those who had switched to this putting style. Are you still doing it, and how's it going?

hi
i have been putting this way for almost 16 months now and i feel i am a good putter now but using a broom-handled putter also helps.
i feel i get a better judgment of pace on greens looking at the hole and not the ball, i find i very rarely putt the ball more than a foot or two past the hole even on hard putts. i also find my first look at breaks is more often right and i never second guess my putts now.
cheers
bill

What really shocked me was how well I was striking my putts. Heck in a normal round I would hit at least 3-4 noticeably off the heel. I know it's just one round, but if I can stay around 32 putts a round. I will be very happy.

hi Cams
i could not believe when i used impact tape and how much closer i was to the sweet spot looking at the hole, i was sure it would be looking at the ball that would give the best results but there was a a big difference and about 30% better looking at the hole.

cheers
bill

I think the world's best putters can do a similar thing to this, but they can look back at the ball and hold the image in their mind's eye so strongly that they are still effectively looking at the hole as they make their stroke.
I think good players do it for full shots as well and so are able to focus on the target and let the ball go there instead of being obsessed with mechanics like most of us are.

I still do it on longer putts but get better results looking at the ball with putts of 5 ft and less.

It makes perfect sense, if you wanted to roll a ball to the hole you would not look at your hand when releasing it.

hi
if you took a golf ball in your hand and were to roll it as close to the hole as you could you would never look at your hand you would look at the target and let your brain work out how hard to roll the ball. i think it like that when you look at the hole putting. you trust your brain to work out how hard to hit it and you just use both eyes to give the visual information to your brain. the hard part is trusting to you brain but after you have putted for a while like this you soon start trusting it.
i find it harder to putt this way from about 6 feet as the hole and the ball can just bee seen in the eye line and you really have to turn your head more to the hole so you cant see the ball or look more at the ball. i think looking at ball on the shorts putts tends to be more reassuring.
cheers
bill

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This is a fantastic putting exercise for all sorts of reasons.

Where people can come undone is when they look back to the ball and pause before rolling. Some of the best putters in the world have a rhythmic routine that is detailed by Bob Rotella. Look at the ball, look at the hole, look at the ball, roll it. No time in-between. Many good putters actually start the blade back before their eyes get back to the ball.

As Mariner points out, it allows the minds eye to be the dominant eye. The body reacts to whats "out there", not to what's up in a whirring brain-box.

Same thing works for the full swing.

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Luke: I don't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.

It should be the normal method and not a radical one when you think about it, it uses the same onboard computer we all employ when we do something simple like lob a tennis ball to a mate standing 20 feet away, and we certainly don't think about the way we are standing/where our left arm is/weight transfer when we do that and we never mess up!

You have to know where the ball is in relation to your racket, club, bat or whatever else you have in your hand to hit a ball consistently well. You cannot just look at the target the entire time and hope to consistently make good contact on the ball with the swinging implement. This is especially true the bigger the swing gets. You may get away with looking at the hole only with a short stroke and a very short putt but as the length of the putt increases the chances that you will make very good contact with the ball greatly diminishes. When we hold a ball in our hand, of course we don't have to look at our hand. There is nothing between us and the ball. I stare down the hole until I have a mental picture of the hole and the entire path to the hole burned in my mind. I then look down and putt to the hole with that image in mind.

I for one believe this method is what works best for me. I've shaved at least 3-5 putts per round. A bad day for me now is 34 putts. Where as before if I broke 36 I was doing cartwheels. This might not work for everyone, but I'm thankful I read this thread.

For further information about how the "neck turn" is used by the brain to establish a sense of distance for the stroke, visit the PuttingZone and check out the "touch" tips, including the touch video clips on the PuttingZone YouTube Channel. It's not really about the eyes so much as it is about the body, its location in reference to the hole, and the impending action of the stroke.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist

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