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Putting Alignment
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With your new putter setup, alignment is simple but critical to get right.
All right, so now you've got push versus pull, You've got this concept of using your big muscles to control the stroke instead of these flinchy little hands, and now we've got a good setup.
How do we get aligned properly to the hole with this putting stroke?
Well, there are some variables here, but I want to talk about what would be ideal and right down the middle, and that is when you're building a simple machine, you don't want any compensations in there whatsoever.
And the compensation for this stroke would be getting yourself not set up square to the target.
And when we say square, we're talking about feet, knees, hips, shoulders, Everything should be square to your target line, or parallel lines between the aligned form, between the ball and the hole and your feet.
So that's the ideal scenario because the stroke is so simple.
The putter is going to travel straight back and straight through on a slight arc.
Now, that may sound contradictory, because straight back and straight through an arc are obviously two different things.
In your eyes, from your perspective, it's not going to look like the club's doing this a lot.
This would be on a very tight arc, and some instructors really want you to do this, and that's a very handsy movement.
If you're going straight back and straight through, or just rocking your shoulders, it's going to look like the putter is almost essentially moving straight back and straight through.
It is moving on an arc, but it's a very slight arc, and that's going to vary depending on your posture.
So essentially, what you want to do, because the putter is not going way inside and way around, and it's not going to be pushed down the line, you want to set up ideally dead square.
And this takes all the variables and guesswork out of your putting stroke.
Because now that you know that the putter face is going to come back square to the target every time because you're pulling it through, which is keeping it trailing behind this leading arm and aligning yourself with the laws of physics, The putter is going to come back square every time because you're not trying to do something and try and time something with your hands.
Because of that, you can predict where that ball should start on the line.
It should start exactly where you're aiming as long as you're set up square.
And you start adding little variables to this by opening your feet and your shoulders, And now you're going to have to do something to change your putting stroke to force the ball on line.
You can do that.
Some people really like to do that because they're really right eye dominant.
And so they like to set up kind of open and behind the ball a little bit like this.
But as I as it may look like the putter face is traveling down the line here, I'm having to make compensations that you can't see from that angle.
I'm kind of tilting my shoulder back here versus having a really simple right shoulder blade, back left shoulder blade through movement.
So ideally setup wise, try to get yourself comfortable.
And it may be tough at first, your eyes are really hard, you've got to work through the retraining process, The vestibular process to get your eyes comfortable with seeing straight down the line and seeing parallel lines.
A video camera is really helpful for that, so that you can start checking yourself and seeing what it's what you're.
Whether or not you're truly set up square.
And if you are, the ball should start starting online every single time.
So work through this process, it may take you several days of getting used to this, maybe even a couple weeks of getting used to these parallel lines, But it will make your putting stroke so much simpler because you don't have to put any compensations in there.
If you can just get comfortable with setting up square, right shoulder blade back, left shoulder blade through, putting is going to be a much easier part of the game for you.
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