Foley's folly.

[playa]

In the Feb, 2013 Golf Digest, Foley has an article on page 32 titled: Set your eyes inside the ball, a piece on putting alignment. He contends that most pros do that and setting eyes over the ball will trick one into thinking the cup is left of its true position.

Right or wrong for "most pros", right or wrong for anybody in particular does not really matter. What matters is the generalization that since "most pros" employ this technique --not sure if that generalization is even verified to be true--that individual readers should follow the instruction.

Foley did not give any references or sources for his information.

For an individual person looking at this issue, the best way is to find out what works for the individual. But how you ask. Easy if you are not lazy or that cheap.

Get one of those laser pointers made specifically for the putter (I think you can get it online for about 30 bucks, check amazon or ebay).

Attach it to your own putter and start the experiment.

Set your eyes over the ball, aim to a target, fire the laser pointer and see. Then repeat it with eyes inside the line to varying distances. Through this process, you will find out things that Foley can never imagine correctly. In fact, the information obtained may help you decide whether you are a good candidate for a custom putter.

So this horrible Foley article is good only if it inspires you to investigate this issue on your own for yourself.

Never blindly follow golf instructions in the print!

For those who want to dig deeper into the issue, check out this guy's work, more credible than the media printouts. www.puttdoctor.com/puttingrx.html

[Richie3Jack]

I bet he got it from David Orr who has researched it thru and thru. To Foley's credit, Golf Digest was not going to allow him to reference where he got it. Not enough space to do so.







3JACK

[jeffy]

David-

That's old news. Sometime in the 1990's, the Fred Griffin/Ralph Mann team did a study of tour pro putting similar to the full swing analysis they did that was eventually published in their book "Swing Like a Pro". The putting study never made it into book form, but the results were published in one of the golf magazines. If I recall correctly, they analyzed about 50 tour players and found a few characteristics that were very common throughout the group. One was ball position: just inside the left big toe, I think. Another very common trait was to have the eyes about two-inches inside the ball/target line.

BTW, why don't you post under "petter7" (it's still active)? "playa" always makes me think of this hilarious Phil Hartman bit:





Jeff

[playa]

HaHa, Jeffy, I am not sure what beef you have had with "David" but even a smart guy like you is not sleuth material. I am going to pour a bucket of cold water on your hard-on for "david" because I swear I am not him. (Tell me more about him anyway for the heck of it if you wish)

Instead of wasting time f-ing around on the internet, you should be working on analyzing the data from the hitting session you guys had in AZ. Regardless of the findings--pro or con Kelvin's theses-- I think you are actually capable of presenting something scientifically in the laughable field of golf research, for a change. So, don't mess it up. Hope you won't pull a project 168 on us also!

Richie, interesting you said that. I saw a 2008 Youtube video on 2-3 footers --bad quality though-where he was teaching and demoed but I felt he was standing over the ball. Did he always advocate standing back?

[jeffy]

Right...