Putting stroke

  • Arc

    Votes: 12 30.0%
  • Straight back and straight through

    Votes: 28 70.0%

  • Total voters
    40
I read the arc is good for lagging but takes lots of practice to master.

The arc is good, period. There's really nothing to master about it, it's the natural movement of the putter. Remember, you're standing inside the line along which you're putting. You have to make a concerted effort to bring the putter back straight along that line and then straight through to the hole. Even if you look at it with no putter, if you just stand, bend forward from the waist as you would in a putting stroke, put your hands together and rock your shoulders slowly back and forth, if you do nothing to manipulate your hands, they will move on an arc around your body.
 
I think this is the very reason I have switched to the SeeMore putter. It gets the ball in the ball in the hole. The red dot may be gimmicky, but it seems to work better for me than anything else. And I am not alone, the putter shoot out, they won performance. The putter sampling that we posted here in the forum had a tester pick that one too.

But in the end, it is finding a putter that matches your stroke and works for you.

That's pretty cool, the SeeMore. I've heard of it but I never checked it out. The only thing that would concern me about that is that in actual use, you might be tempted to look at the little red thingy, i.e. watch the putter head going back and forth instead of watching the ball. Have you noticed any of that? But as a pure practice tool that seems like it would be phenomenal.
 
Since switching to SeeMore Putter I have been using the arc method unless the putt is 4 ft or less and then it is pretty much SBST.

Well really if you think about it, because the length of the stroke for such a short putt, you wouldn't necessarily see an "arc" even if there were one. The further back or forth in the stroke the putter head goes, the more it arcs.
 
Check out our reviews of the Seemore as well as how they fared in our Huge Putter Shoot out with the likes of just about everybrand of putter made.
 
It seems the arc would require massive practice to be square at impact consistently. anyway...I'm on a mission to learn how to get it down! Ha!

If you want the best piece of advice I can give you, buy a book called "The Art of Putting," by Stan Utley (and don't let the fact that he's worked with Sergio on his putting deter you :D). It's $15 on Amazon, and it's the best $15 you'll ever spend, particularly if you're having difficulty putting. I was always a decent putter, but I didn't have a very good grip. Really, you'd be surprised how few people know what a good putting grip is. Once this book helped me square that away, my putting has been phenomenal.
 
Why does it have to be either/or?

I use both an arc and a SBST style depending on the putt.

If it's a long putt (like over 40 feet or so), an arc style is better for hitting the ball with a solid "pop". But when I'm in close (under 20 feet or so) I use a SBST approach.

I also vary my swing based on breaks and slopes.

If I'm trying to putt to a specific point and then have the ball "die" towards the hole, then a SBST approach works well. But if I'm going to use the slope for the entire break of a right-to-left putt, I mostly go with an arc style. But on a left-to-right putt, a SBST approach tends to work better (I'm right-handed).

I don't consciously think of any of this by the way, I just sort of do it automatically. The only reason I know that I vary my style at all is because I read an article on this once a while back and I guess I sort of started to pay attention to what I did and I discovered that I did both.

Once I realized that, I started watching the pros more closely to see what they do and many of them do the same thing - especially Tiger. He definitely arcs his swing on long putts but is almost perfectly SBST on putts inside 15 or 20 feet.

I use a heel-shafted putter and I have done so pretty much my whole life.
I like them because it's easier to "toe" a ball with one than it is with a mallet or center-shafted putter and I like to do that from time to time when the situation calls for it. And also, for me, a heel-shafted putter just feels more like a regular golf club, which I prefer rather than having a putter feel like some super-special weird thing.


-JP
 
SBST for me, you see, it's all about me when I hit it to the green from the tee....yippeee!
 
While my stroke FEELS like a straight back, it really isn't except on short putts. Anything where I have to draw the putter back very far is impossible to actually keep a straight line stroke. The human body simply isn't designed to work that way. I voted straight just because that is the feel I'm going for, but the reality is that it is actually a shallow arc.
 
I use the arc, my first putter I played tourney's with and used extensively was an old Adams milled mallet but I never could lag well and something always seemed off. Couple of months before shipping out to boot, I played with my dad's Cameron Santa Fe and fell in love with it and also noticed that I just felt better throughout the stroke, missed less and started scoring more. Spent my first paycheck after boot on a used Santa Fe and never looked back. Since then I have used 1/2 hosel offset heel/toe blades only.

Though on an interesting side note I go more SBST on really short, uphill putts.
 
I try to do SBST...
 
What works best for me is when I don't pay attention to what's happening on the back stoke ie: strait back or arc; but pay attention to the follow through ie: strait
 
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