No Brainer - again

Previously, I spoke about split grip putting and said I could not decide on whether it is a good idea or not. My conclusion now is that splitting the hands in a less extreme way (an inch or so) is sufficient to ensure that the dominant hand has control and the less dominant (top) hand acts as support only.

I think now that trying to reduce the dominance of the right hand (for right handers) does not make much sense. We use our dominant right hand (right handers) for all sorts of actions, throwing, writing, cutting, brushing our teeth, etc, etc, - why would we not use it to control our putting stroke.

Anyway, putting grips and techniques are horses for courses, and there are special cases such as golfers who have mental issues - the yips - not to be too cruel. I think it's probably most important that we have rhythm in the stroke and can feel for the pace of the putt, combined with solid contact, to putt well.

Speaking of rhythm, this applies to the full stoke, especially the longer clubs. An absolute killer is the hurried stroke, where anxiety over the strike affects our balance and timing. I'm not in favour of a pause at the top of the backswing, but a slow or unhurried backswing can be a great idea for some golfers.

But my backswing has been a real problem in recent times. Therefore, I'm so happy now to have finally realised that with a decent set up, all I need to do is take the club back as far as I can while staying in balance and forget about my arm or elbow position or the direction the clubhead takes. 

This recent realisation (I'm a slow learner) has freed me up to concentrate on the strike and the follow through. I can't stress too much how important this discovery has been for me. Given that my backswing is shortish, I'm not a long hitter, but I'm not really short either. And I don't miss many fairways.

If anything, my biggest problem at the moment is chipping and pitching. Many of the lies on our course are very tight and it takes confidence (that I don't have) to play these shots well. It's something to work on. After all, the short game is the scoring game; now that's the real no brainer.