The Putting Grip, Putt Line and
Proper Wrist Position

Understanding why you miss so many putts

Rolling your golf ball on the intended putt line is the only way to insure more successful putts. Learning the proper set-up is key to making those putts. Another key to success starts with understanding the proper wrist position at address and movement during the putting stroke.

Your hands are capable of moving in six directions. The putting stroke is narrowed to two popular strokes, the "Swinging Gate" and "Straight Back Straight Through" putting strokes. I will list the movements first, with pictures, in order to become familiar with those movements.

You can use these movements of kinesiology in combination with all your golf clubs.

Now that you see what the hand movements look like, you'll be in a better position to choose what putting style is best for you and which provides the best chance for successful putting.

Let's use the lug nuts of a flat tire as an analogy to better understand how the wrist affects your putts good and bad. When you change the flat to the spare, you use the lug nuts to tighten the tire back on the hub. If the lug nuts are loose, the spare tire wobbles.

Your wrist acts like the lug nuts by connecting the hand and forearm as one piece. Since your wrist can flex to six different positions, it can also wobble which proves that your wrist can become out of position during the putting stroke and impact, causing missed putts.

Thinking about this one piece position, along with your wrists arching down (Alter Deviation), will provide the best position and results when using the conventional putting style. Your shoulders are used to rock back and forth to complete the conventional pendulum stroke.

As common as that style is and taught today, I honestly believe it's not as accurate as compared to the wrist putt. Fewer muscles are used with wrist putting and proves to be more consistent than any other style.

I have personally lowered my putting average by six strokes per round and amateurs with high handicaps have shared many success stories. Once you see how the hand motion works during the wrist putt, you'll learn quickly how to repeat the stroke consistently without falter.

These are the two best wrist putting strokes I use and recommend, which have also been used by the world's best putters during the last 100 years.

The "Straight Back Straight Through" putting stroke is perfected by using the two combinations of wrist movement called "Pronation" (hand rolls left) then "Supernation" (hand rolls right) commonly called Pronate and Supernate. These two movements create a "Straight Back, Straight Through" pendulum stroke, without any shoulder movements.

Let's recap on what we've learned. "Understanding why we miss so many putts" is the result of knowing the good and the bad results of your wrist position. A bad wrist position produces missed putts, because it doesn't match any putting style you've chosen to putt.

A good wrist position is the use of two wrist combinations, designed to accommodate the putting stroke most successful for you, while using a "Swing Gate" or "Straight Back, Straight Through" putting style.

We also learned there are six hand positions available to you during the full swing. This source of information will help teach you to use two combinations of wrist positions for consistency in your shot making.

One example of two combinations would be to "Supernate" on your backswing, then "Pronate" on the downswing, while adding proper tempo, timing and swing path, producing successful shots down the fairway.

In closing, I would have to say that if wrist style putting was so popular when used by the best putters in the history of the game; I honestly feel it will be of great benefit to you by using this technique too. It has really improved my putting.