New Post: #2 - Technique Tuesday

Hi Friends

I’m sure we’ve all seen the likes of Justin Thomas, Victor Hovland and Adam Scott using the ”Aimpoint” method of green reading. They hold up fingers and walk about on the line of their putts, eyes closed feeling the break on the putting green with their feet.

Well before “Aimpoint” there was a different method of finding the break on the greens, so lets have a little look into the lost art of “Plumb bobbing”

I started using this in a recent round of golf I played, I’m not sure why I started using it to be honest, but did it on the 2nd green and holed a 25 ft putt so stuck with it and had my lowest putts per round and lowest putts per green in regulation this year! (1.8 instead of pretty poor season average of 2.15)

I’ve since been looking into the history of this method and where it came from and how it may help us all hole more putts.

Any self respecting DIY enthusiast (certainly not me by the way) will know Plumb bobbing is a term as described by Wikipedia as,

“A plumb bob, is a weight, usually with a pointed tip on the bottom, suspended from a string and used as a vertical direction as a reference line, or plumb-line.

The instrument has been used since at least the time of ancient Egypt^[1] to ensure that constructions are "plumb", or vertical.

If it was good enough for the Egyptians when building the Pyramids then its good enough for me.

In terms of golf we have seen Patrick Reed win the 2018 Masters using this method and Ricky Fowler is also a fan.

So how do you do it?

There are a few steps and all are important to do properly, get one wrong and your green read will be off.

1. Find a vertical straight edge with your putter shaft

• Find a vertical straight edge you can trust like a pipe or edge of a wall

• Hold putter in one hand at top of the grip and let it hang down

• adjust/turn putter until the shaft matches your straight edge(pipe etc)

2. Determine your dominate eye

• We all have one eye that is more dominant then the other and you need to work this out before you start plumb bobbing

• Hold both hands out in front of you with straight arms and put fingers into a triangle shape

• Focus on an object(say a clock on the wall) through the gap with both eyes open

• close each eye in turn.

• For one eye the object wont move and that is your dominant eye

3. Cover the ball with your putter shaft revealing the break

• Get directly behind the ball and the hole

• Have only the dominant eye open and hold up your straight edge(the putter shaft) directly in line of ball

• The line is then revealed

See this You Tube video from the Golf Barons, They were taught this technique by Stuart Appleby (Australian multiple tour winner)

I will continue to use this method and hope to see more people out on the course using it too.

Happy Golfing,

Next on “A round with Jerry”……….

• Another interview with a 2 x Club Champion coming this Friday