An Amazing Golf Putter

You CAN PUTT putt like the world's best golfers

All of us golfers who think of 30 and 40 year olds as kids, can remember when the dominant putting technique among tour players was the wrist putt.

Arnold Palmer was probably the most famous wrist putter, although virtually all the pros of that era used it.

Other well known professional golfers who used the wrist style putting were…

Then, Jack Nicklaus began using a different style putting and the wrist putt disappeared practically overnight. Jack began winning more and more tournaments and that encouraged other players on tour to start copying his putting style. Jack's pendulum putting style soon became the norm.

Arnold Palmer was considered to be one of the best wrist putters on tour before switching to the new pendulum style. After adopting conventional style putting, his putting consistency suffered.

Ironically, PGA putting statistics show that in spite of the change in putting style, putting averages have not changed in the past 60 years. This is still true, regardless of all the technical improvements in the quality of putting surfaces, balanced putters and engineered golf balls that actually are better fitted to the individual player and their swing speeds.

So taking all that in consideration, could you say with certainty that wrist putting has been the culprit for the lack of statistical improvements of those putting stats?

I believe that not to be the case. Rather, conventional putting commonly practiced today causes more inconsistency. My belief is based on all the additional body movement that conventional putting requires over the wrist putt.

Conventional putting involves shoulders, arms, upper back muscles and larger muscles – all cause unnecessary motion in the putting stroke. This makes putting the ball down the intended putt line less accurate when using the larger muscle groups, than the more sensitive feel of a wrist movement.

You certainly wouldn't be as successful washing a dinner plate with a sponge attached to your elbows versus using your hand and wrist motion, right? Point being is you feel more sensitive in your wrist than you ever will in your shoulders. This is why surgeons are so good with their hands and wrists.

Some instructors believe using the larger muscles helps to eliminate any jerky movements produced by the smaller muscles of the forearms and wrists under stressful conditions. I have found that the opposite is true. Making a pendulum swing incorporates so many more muscle groups that are trying to fire at the same time. That's difficult under normal conditions, so imagine how tough it is under stressful ones.

Timing thus can be affected. Using a pendulum swing not only involves the use of all three deltoid heads of each shoulder, it also involves the back muscles such as the laterals and trapezoids, as well as the muscles of the forearms and wrists. A lack of consistency is produced. The wrist putt, on the other hand, involves using only the muscles of the forearms and wrists.

It just makes sense that the fewer muscle groups involved, the more consistent the stroke. If a brain surgeon can perform an extremely delicate operation under stressful conditions relying only upon the precision of his hands and wrists, then I believe the same precision can be relied on for a putting stroke. This has been the choice of the best putters in the world since the beginning of golf. Should this not be considered in your own putting technique?

There is a good argument for switching to wrist style putting. The strongest reason would be dramatic improvement of distance control and accuracy over a pendulum swing.

The wrist putt is performed by anchoring the forward wrist against the forward thigh and then making a simple wrist stroke. That requires a putter that's the proper length for you. Virtually all putters are built too long regardless of the putting technique, but especially for the wrist putting.

The typical grip installed on a putter has a flat surface on the front. This is the norm for conventional style putting, but in order to take advantage of the wrist putt technique, the putter should be gripped with a rounded grip like any other iron in your bag. The wrist crease of your forward hand should be even with the butt end of the grip.

I absolutely guarantee you of more putts made and lower scores using the wrist style putt.