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 Article
taken from ‘Play Better Golf’ Magazine
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Stroke of Genius…
Forget
grooving your stroke on the practice green or across your
living room carpet. An increasing number of top players
are visiting sports scientist Dr Paul Hurrion at his laboratory
in the West Midlands for a detailed analysis of their
putting technique. Steve Muncey reports…
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“I’ve got a great assignment
for you” the editor said. “It involves plenty of travel,
you’re taking a photographer with you and you’ll be having
your technique analysed by a top expert in his field.”
“Don’t tell me, it’s a lesson with Leadbetter
at some top-notch golf academy in Florida with loads of
free golf thrown in.”
“Actually…. no.”
“Ok, then, it’s got to be a session with
Butch Harmon on location at his new academy in the Bahamas?”
“Erm… not quite.”
“How about Bob Torrance at Kingsbarns or Muirfield, then?”
“Even better” he said, “You’re not going
to a golf course at all, but to a laboratory.
I’m sending you to Coventry...”
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than one, I mused, as, instead of jetting out of Heathrow
to glamorous West Palm Beach, I crawled past it on the M4,
en-route to the West Midlands. And if that wasn’t enough
to temper my enthusiasm for this particular assignment,
I was to have, of all things, my putting stroke analysed,
critiqued and, quite possibly torn apart by some white-coated
boffin holding a clipboard inside a laboratory bristling
with hard drives.
The ironic thing is, as anyone who has had the dubious
pleasure of playing golf with me will tell you, my putting
is just about the last thing that I need to worry about.
Let’s just say that my long game isn’t exactly Faldoesque
– “more planes than Heathrow airport”, “Jim Furyk in reverse”
and “looks like you’re swinging inside a telephone box”
are just a few of the editor’s more favourable descriptions
of my golf swing.
The fact that I currently manage to play off an eight
handicap is testimony to my prowess on the greens, so
if there’s one part of my game that I’m confident in,
it’s my putting. Neither was I totally convinced that
technology, no matter how advanced, would be able to effectively
analyse and improve such a highly individual part of the
game.
How would a computer be able to second-guess
my feel, touch and ability to read the greens? Then again,
even if a detailed analysis of my putting proved to be
a complete waste of time, at least I’d discovered a little
bit more about the mysterious Quintic Consultancy, a five-year-old
company whose little-known cutting-edge techniques are
helping to boost the putting performance of many European
Tour Players.
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All this was running through
my head as I left the M-42 near Coventry and negotiated
the leafy lanes that meandered through the affluent villages
to the south east of Birmingham. As I turned in through
the gates at the address I’d been given, I was expecting
to be greeted by a high-tech cathedral of white concrete
and privacy glass, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
There it was, the hub of Quintic, a small converted barn
in someone’s back garden. Discretion is the order of the
day, I suppose.
Dr Paul Hurrion, a Doctor in sports science
and biomechanics, was there ready and waiting for me.
Hurrion, who works with several top tour players, including
Darren Clarke, David Howell and Padraig Harrington, high-tech skills has
found a niche within golf as a specialist-putting consultancy.
Many of Quintic’s clients are Tour Professionals, who
are either photographed during tournaments or given a
more in-depth appraisal at the laboratory itself. |
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Hurrion led me inside to
a room with whitewashed walls, a huge mirror and a green-carpeted
floor. I took up position on a small grey pressure pad.
High-speed cameras were dotted around the room and a camcorder
was placed on the floor facing me. The quiet hum of a
powerful computer lurking somewhere in the background
was the only thing that broke the silence.
“Right” said Hurrion. “let’s take a quick
look at your putting action.” His hand placed on his chin
in total concentration, the doctor studied my every move
as I warmed up with a few practice putts along the carpet.
After half-a-dozen or so putts, Hurrion pulled out a very
low-tech device – a thin strip of metal resembling a carpet
runner that narrowed in width from one end to the other.
“We need the rail to really test the quality of your action
and see if you can putt along the line that you are aiming,”
said Hurrion. Until you can do that, you haven’t got a
chance of really improving your performance on the golf
course.
“I really am amazed at the number of top
players who can’t hit the ball in a straight line,” he
continued. “They can read greens well, but their action
is flawed. Even Tiger Wood’s putting action isn’t wonderful,
the ball skids away from the middle of his putter. The
better the quality of the greens, the more he gets away
with.”
This gave me little comfort as I tried
in vain to accomplish what I thought would be the simple
task of rolling the ball along the three-foot long flat
piece of metal from the thin end to the wide end. This
is the “easy way round” said Hurrion. I managed to roll
a couple to within an inch or so of the end before they
toppled off the side, but none stayed straight and true
all the way.
By now I was already starting to doubt
what I had previously thought was a cast-iron putting
action. All the while, Hurrion was moving round me, umming,
aahing and nodding like a GP who’d just identified a particularly
nasty, yet interesting, rash. “I think I know what the
problem is, but it will be interesting to see what the
camera shows” he said. |
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“If you can see the problem, why the
need for a camcorder?” I casually enquired.
“This particular camera can take 50 frames per second
and we have others that can take images up-to 4,000 per
second. A trained – and I mean trained – human eye can
only see the equivalent of maybe 15 times per second.
That’s a big difference and the camcorder will always
pick up stuff that a human eye would miss, even with something
like putting.”
After filming a few of my putts, Hurrion
plugged the camera into a powerful computer stationed
by the wall. Suddenly there I was on screen in glorious
Technicolor.
“Mmm…. just as I thought,” said Hurrion.
“Your shoulders are slightly open, I can see your right
arm down the line, and your eyes aren’t over the ball
but inside the line. Your hands are too far behind the
ball because you stroke is dominated by your right hand.
That leads to inconsistent ball striking.”
“But apart from that it’s pretty good, eh?”
Mmm…. there are some good things, yes?”
Hurrion was now looking at images generated
by data from the pressure pad I had been standing on.
The large blue-white blobs on the left and right represented
my feet and a small red blob in the middle of the black
screen represented the movement of my centre of gravity
(body mass). The results indicated that my body mass remained
remarkably still during my putting stroke and weight distribution
was a consistent 51% on the front foot. |
“I can’t really fault that,” said Hurrion, studying
the screen. “It’s certainly better than the first set of results
from Padraig Harrington…. yes, in some ways your technique is
superior to Padraig’s.”
A little smugness returned. If it can be compared
favourably to that of atop Tour Pro then perhaps my putting
stroke IS as good as I thought after all.
Hurrion then brought up a sequence of images taken at a Tour
event earlier this year with a high-speed camera. It was of
Harrington on the practice green. As he slowed the frames right
down, you could clearly see how his body was swaying as he made
his stroke, just as all of the data had previously indicated.
“You can see Harrington coming back and across
his right side during his backswing” says Hurrion. “Then, as
he hits the ball, he sits even further back on his heels.
“We recommended he widen his stance to stop
his body movement. The lower half of the body should be set
in stone when putting. It doesn’t matter about your style –
you can putt one legged if you like – but you must have a fixed
point in your body to gain real consistency on the greens.”
The camcorder was then set up for me again and
I putted a golf ball painted half white and half blue to show
the roll more clearly on camera. The Rail was taken away but
a small board was positioned between my feet and the ball to
provide a visual reference. The camcorder zoomed in on the ball
and the putter head at the point of impact.
The slow-motion footage revealed a truly shocking
flaw. The fault in my set-up, where my hands were behind the
ball at address, led me to chip the ball rather than roll it
off the clubface. “It’s like you’re putting with a 7-iron, “
said Hurrion.
He was right. The camera showed that, despite
hitting a relatively gentle putt, the ball was actually airborne
for the first seven inches of its journey – and the two-toned
ball clearly demonstrated that I had also imparted some backspin!
“Once the ball eventually hits the turf anything
can happen. It might skid or it might bounce and both can take
the ball off line,” said Hurrion. “Your stroke is making putting
a bit of a lottery at the moment, I bet you’re quite a good
putter on very smooth greens, but pretty awful on average ones
when they have a few bumps and spike marks.” Thinking about
it, he was right.
Hurrion was now ready to go to work on correcting
my flaws. His remedy was to widen my stance to get my eyes over
the ball; move my hands forward so that they were positioned
directly above the ball at address; and readjust my right hand
grip to square my shoulders. This would allow me to concentrate
on pulling the putter through with my left hand rather than
push it with my right in order to roll the ball with topspin
consistently along the intended line. “ Have you ever tried
to manoeuvre one of those wonky shopping trolleys?” Hurrion
asked. “They are far easier to pull in a straight line than
they are to push. The same principle applies to putting.”
Hurrion now produced The
Rail again and this time turned it round so I was putting
from the far end to the thin end. “This will really
test your new technique,” he said.
With every putt, my new wide-stance, left hand-dominated
technique was confirming just how fallible my previous
putting action had been by comparison.
I used to trust my eyes
and hands to guide the ball to the hole – now it felt
like I was lining up and merely pulling the trigger.
The ball was clearly rolling and holding its line better
and another short session in front of the camera showed
that it was leaving the putter, not only with topspin,
but also on the turf rather than in the air!!!!
The acid test was to try
and roll the ball off the thin end of The Rail. Suddenly
I was achieving it regularly, whereas previously I’d
failed every single time from the easy end. I could
now putt exactly where I was aiming and I had to admit
that the appliance of science had demonstrably improved
the quality of my game.
At the end of the two-hour session I felt really excited
and eager to get out on the course to test my new putting
action for real.
“Many thanks, Paul. I’ve
just rolled four consecutive putts off the end of The
Rail – so I presume that I can now report in Play Better
Golf that my putting technique is officially superior
to Padraig Harrington’s?”
“Well, not quire,” said Hurrion. “His personal best
is 23.”
“Oh well, back to the drawing board!!
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Summary of the putting
appraisal
Initial analysis of Steve’s putting stroke
Steve’s hands are a little too
far behind the ball at address, which causes his right hand
to dominate the stroke. Steve’s eyes were a little outside the
line of the putt and his shoulders were aiming left of the target
– the combination of which is clearly made it difficult for
him to get an accurate perspective of the line.
Although in the testing, the position
of Steve’s centre of gravity was very steady, I would still
like to see him widen his stance a little to improve his eye
line. Steve was advised to push his hands forward a touch at
address so that they are directly over the ball. This will encourage
the left hand to control the stroke rather than the right.
STEP 1 – PUTTING ALONG THE RAIL
The initial putting test was to check
the quality of Steve’s aim and alignment to see if he
was actually rolling the ball exactly where he was aiming
it, his task was to roll the ball along a flat piece
of metal – from the thin end to the wide end.
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STEP 2 – MONITORING WEIGHT
DISTRIBUTION AND BODY MOVEMENT
Next, Steve stood on a pressure pad as he made
his stroke. The sensors monitored his weight distribution and
the movement of his centre of gravity (weight) during his stroke.
STEP 3 – TWO-TONE BALL
MONITORS POST IMPACT SPIN AND ROLL
The final test required Steve to hit a two-tone
golf ball while a camcorder closely monitored the strike in
order to see how quickly the ball started rolling after leaving
the putter face and the type of spin imparted by the stroke.
The Conclusion
The analysis of Steve’s putting stroke
highlighted several positive factors. Firstly, Steve’s
weight distribution, which slightly favoured his front
foot, was orthodox and provided a good foundation. Secondly,
Steve’s body weight remained fixed in virtually the
same position throughout the whole of his stroke. This
is important for striking the ball consistently, since
swaying back and forward adds an element of risk to
the strike.
On the downside, Steve’s stance was
a touch too narrow, his eyes were not set directly over
the ball as they should have be and his hands were too
far behind the ball. This last factor is very important
since it leads to a stroke that is dominated by the
right hand, whereas Dr. Hurrion believes that the left
hand should guide the putter face.
If you’d like to have your putting technique
appraised by Qunitic Consultancy Ltd, telephone Dr Paul
Hurrion on +44 (0)1676 530730 or email info@quintic.com
for information on the latest putting clinics.
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