Article #4
Featured teacher: Charlie Rucker
(to meet this week's teacher go to www.jitterbugbook.com/teachers_rucker.cfm)
This is such a good tip that I'm hesitant to share it for fear that the other fellas at Munie will find out about it.
To get to it, you gotta do a little experiment with me.
Turn and take a quick glance at any object in your house; say for instance, a picture on the wall or a lamp in the corner of the room. After that quick glance, close your eyes and try to conjure up an image of that object in your mind.
What does it look like? Where is it? What is next to it? How far away is it?
If you're like most folks, you can still sorta imagine it, but not too clearly.
Now, let's do it again. This time, look at it intensely for say, seven or eight seconds. Look at it with both eyes and study the area between where you are and it is. Examine all the fine detail of it. Imagine what it would look like up close, and then far away. Once you've done that, again, close your eyes and try to recapture the image of it in your mind.
More vivid? Clear? Almost feel like you're still looking at it?
It's been my experience that the best putters, when they're really in the putting zone, study the hole just like you did the second time. It's as if they can still see it when they look back at their ball to putt.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that bad putters don't study anything. It's just that instead of studying the hole, bad putters study their bodies. "Is my weight distributed properly? Are my eyes directly over the line? Is my takeaway straight back?" In fact, bad putters study these setup and stroke related things so hard that they lose all sense of where they are in relation to the hole; kinda like you lost it a moment ago after you took that first one-second glance.
Now, I'm not gonna grow hair on this subject and theorize all about why spending a few extra seconds looking at the hole makes people putt better, but I do know it does. It makes a difference the very first time you try it.
So, do yourself a favor. Next time you play make an effort to spend at least half of the time it takes you to set up and putt (say, 10 of the 15 seconds) just looking directly at the hole. Look at it so hard that you can still see it when it's time to stroke the putt.
I promise you, it'll make a huge difference.
Your Main Man,
Charlie