Continued from page 1
Your problems won't go away just by buying a belly or long putter. As with all aspects of
game, it requires practice. Like anything it takes a lot of work to do extremely well and get to where your mind will totally believe in it.
It is important to get properly fitted for a belly or long putter. You can't just extend
shaft of your standard putter and expect it to work right. The head is too light and
shaft too flexable. The heads of belly and long putters are much heavier and have special shafts to handle
extra length and weight.
A simple to way to measure for a belly putter is to attach a string with a weight to
middle arch of a pair of glasses. Take
proper address position with
ball off
left heel or left instep,
shaft at 90 degrees with the sole of
putter flat on
ground and
butt touching your belly with medium pressure and see where
string hangs. The proper shaft length should put
string one inch on
inside of
ball.
As always
fundamentals still apply, starting with alignment. Alignment must be correct for
backstroke and forward stroke to follow. If alignment is bad,
other two will be bad also.
Now to
big question. Should everyone go out and switch to a belly or long putter? NO! If you are a good putter, don't mess with it. In other words, "don't fix what ain't broken." Most players would have a good or at least better stroke if they just allowed it to happen. We get in
way by trying to manipulate
putter on
right path and steering it to
hole. Just let
putter do
work.

Steve is an avid golfer and the owner of The Golf Fanatic. The Golf Fanatic is a source for golf tips, training aids, golf news, and custom fitted clone golf clubs.