For several years now, I’ve really struggled with my putting and as I’ve always said, despite certain supposed professionals disagreeing with me, posting solid scores is all about putting. You can hit it poorly, miss 6 or 7 greens in regulation in a round but if you putt well, you can still post a score and stay in the tournament.
Yesterday, I drove up to Formby Hall to the Phil Kenyon Putting Laboratory (supported by Odyssey Golf) to spend a few hours with Phil’s right hand man, Mike Kanski. Both of them are pretty busy with Tour commitments but even the likes of you and me can get an appointment with the best in the business!
Having never really delved deeply into my putting, I was really looking forward to finding out whether my feelings were going to be reflected in the data capture and by heavens was I in for a shock! Let’s begin with where I began, where it’s gone wrong and what I thought I was doing to putt so poorly.
Historically, I was one of the best putters in Europe (way back in the day) and I always had a 34” putter with around 4 degrees of loft and a 70 to 71 degree lie angle. Typically I always used a classic Ping Anser 2 or Scotty Cameron Newport 2 style putter. Even recently, I picked up a new Odyssey #2 putter because it’s pretty much all I’ve ever used.
But since returning to playing professional golf in 2019, I’ve had my putters set to 2.5 degrees of loft because I hate seeing the face of the putter at address. I also had the putters set to 69 degrees of lie angle because it felt more comfortable. Now, as a result of these changes, the initial fault was that the ball went gone forward in my stance and my hands are effectively behind the ball at address. That’s mistake number 1.
Mistake number 2 is that I’ve felt like I was taking the putter way inside on the backstroke (with a closed face) and prodding at the ball through impact. As a result, the inconsistency of my stroke and pace of my putts has been horrific.
Mistake number 3 is that with all keen golfers, everyone thinks they know the answer to your problem and I’ve had many a colleague say numerous things like “you’re standing to far away from the ball” or “you look crowched over the ball” or “you’re looking up too quickly” or something else. So mentally I felt lost!
Now to solve any problem, you have to find the absolute cause of it and that’s where I’ve been lost. Was it posture, was it stroke, was it the putter, was is it all three things at the same time??
Well the results speak for themselves. All the images on the left are before the lesson and the images on the right, after the lesson.
First of all, LIE ANGLE
You can see clearly in this image below (on the left) that my hands were low at address with the shaft of the putter hitting my belt buckle. Here I’m using a 69 degree lie putter. In the photo on the right, I’ve moved to a 70 degree putter and tried to lift hands a tad. Immediately you can see a gap between the back of my left hand and my thighs. This one move not only changed my perception of AIM of the putter, but it gave me more space to swing back and forth freely.
AIMING
Here you can see quite clearly my ability to AIM the putter at address improved dramatically as a result of getting the right LIE for the putter.
DIRECTION OF STROKE
Obviously the new feels will take a little time to work but again here, you can see that FACE at IMPACT along with the DIRECTION of STROKE improved.
IMPACT / STRIKE POINT
This data is nuts because you’d think with a more upright putter in my hands (on the right), the tendency for the putter to be “TOE UP” would increase but the imagery showed the opposite. Initially with the 69 degree putter in my hands, I’d drop my hands to 67 degrees lie angle at impact (which is horrific). Now with the 70 degree putter in my hands, it encouraged me to keep my hands higher through the stroke and although the putter is still 2.2mm, I was still able to bring the toe down by an incredible 2 degrees from earlier and in doing so, I got far closer to the sweet spot of the putter!
FACE ROTATION
In this image, you can see how there was an inconsistency through the strike (circled in red), almost a “yip” if you like and that was the “hit” or the “prod” I was talking about earlier. After we made the changes, the “collection” of the ball at impact was so much smoother.
FACE to PATH
Here you can clearly see that I was much more in to out with my stroke to begin with but with the changes we’d made, it was far more in to square to in which is way better and far more consistent.
SPEED CONSISTENCY
Obviously you can see the improvement of swing speed consistency.
RHYTHM
Rhythm is something I’ve always had in abundance but again, this has improved too.
IN SUMMARY
What the 2 hours with Mike Kanski proved was pretty clear in that how I stood to the putter was key driver in performance (or lack thereof). If my arms and hands were a little higher at address, it was easier for me to a) aim the putter better b) swing the putter squarer (or in to square to in) to the target with improved face rotation c) improve consistency of strike whist removing the “hit” from the stroke.
So to help achieve the improvements, we made the following putter set up changes:
LIE ANGLE changed from 69 to 70.5 degrees
LOFT ANGLE changed from 2.5 to 3.25 degrees
These two putter set up changes then encourage me to:
Stand to the ball in an improved hand / arm position thus allowing me to stay on plane.
See and aim the putter down the line better
Increases face to path accuracy in the swing and frees up my stroke to “collect’ instead of “hit” the ball.
All in all I have to say that Mike’s knowledge and experience along with the information that I shared with him to begin with, enabled us to work really well together to a) source the problem and b) understand the problem c) come up with the solutions which led to immediate improvements. My job now is to take away that which I’ve learned and work hard to make them automatic when heading back out on Tour.
If you are dealing with Putting Woes like I have, I’d highly recommend you go visit Mike (or Phil) at one of their Odyssey Putting Labs. It was an extremely interesting and enjoyable experience and money well spent. When I get my new putter set up right, I’ll share the results with you. Thanks for your interest and support.
For more information check out https://www.philkenyonputting.com