Putting Process: Let Your Finish Be Your Teacher

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

-Chinese Proverb

When students finish their in-person lesson time with me, I want them to be able to take away self-diagnosis tools so that they can always know what caused a certain result in their game.  A common mantra that I repeat to these students is, “When the teacher is not there, let the finish be your teacher.”

If we know what to look for at the end of the swing, whether it is putting, chipping, pitching or the full swing, we can assess what has just happened in that swing and we can begin to train the most efficient and repeatable movement. 

The major challenge in golf, from my perspective, is that we instinctively want to push or hit towards the target with the arms and hands.  This is almost always an instinct to go in a straight line and “help” the ball into the hole.  Unfortunately, everything about golf is in opposition to these natural instincts to think in straight lines.  The most repeatable and consistent swing in golf involves circular or arc movements.  Tell the conscious mind to create a circle to go in a straight line and watch the mind fight with every ounce of energy to resist such rebellious thinking patterns. 

Because of this innate struggle between the conscious “straight-line” thinking and the truth that the circle produces repeatable squareness at impact, we must train ourselves in a kinesthetic and disciplined way to resist these linear tendencies.  The best and quickest way to do this, in my opinion, is to always pay attention to the finish position of every swing and to use that position to train the correct body movement to produce an arc.  We want to train the body on a cellular level or through muscle memory so that our unconscious or subconscious mind can be in control of the process instead of our conscious, linear-thinking mind.

The Finish Position in Putting

Feet – Weight slightly favoring the front foot.  Balanced and quiet.

Common linear mistakes – Weight slightly back on the back foot.

Hips – Quiet.  Resistant to movement.  Stable.

Common linear mistakes – Hip movement side-to-side.

Shoulders – Relaxed, rotational and level to the ground.  The shoulders should finish open to the target.  This is where all the movement happens in a solid putting stroke.

Common linear mistakes – Movement up and down, pushing underneath in a line towards the target.  

Arms – Low, hanging from the shoulder sockets

Common linear mistakes – High arm finish caused by the shoulders dropping and the arms pushing toward the target.

Wrists – Flat top wrist (forearm to back of the hand)

Common linear mistakes – broken down (angled) wrist, angle between forearm and back of hand.  A flipping motion caused by the stopping of rotation in the body.

Head – Centered, quiet, still.  Relaxed shoulders rotating around a still spine.

Side-to-side movement with the head illustrates an overall tendency to sway with the body.

The Challenge of Learning from the Finish

*What I am about to suggest sounds relatively simple.  However, it has been my experience that it is one of the most challenging things to do for most of my students.  The reason is that we are so conditioned to be results-oriented that noticing anything else besides these results is like changing the fundamental way in which the mind relates to the overall process.  It is a massive fundamental change and one that I find 99% of students to be almost completely unable to do at first.

At the end of any swing, whether it be a two foot putt or a 300 yard drive, I suggest that you want to have the bulk of your attention on the body position and sensations of the body at the end of the swing.  Most people, even after I repeat this request to notice the finish, are unable to do it.  The mind is so conditioned to have all the energy invested in the results of what just happened that the process to get there is lost almost entirely.

I express this reality to give you a sense of the challenge of working in this way.  Even if you can start by just noticing a singular part of the body at the end, this is a major accomplishment and begins to retrain the mind in a more productive manner.

Benefits of Learning from the Finish

The relaxed, rotational and rhythmic motion required for a repeatable, effortless golf swing is compromised by the conscious mind’s innate tendency to “control” the results.  Sadly, these controlling instincts produce tension in the body in the misguided effort to manipulate the result.  When we train ourselves to react to these results and to have our assessment of our game connected almost entirely to these results, we set ourselves up for conscious tension in our swing.  It becomes a feedback loop in which the fundamental orientation of being “results-oriented” skews our perception and causes the very thing that we are attempting to avoid with every ounce of our being…a poor swing.

However, when we focus our attention more on the process that produces results and pay attention to the kind of relaxation and rotation required to get to the ideal finish position, our mind now focuses on body sensations and is forced to trust that this process will produce results.  The idea with this is that a solid process will take care of the results.  The results themselves do not carry as much intensity of thought or emotion because we know that they are just a reflection of the process we are creating and nothing more.

When your routine begins to include reflection about the finish of your swing, you create a “full shot routine”.  Now every shot is an opportunity for learning and growth.  You are able to notice subtle tension points in the body and have a good sense of what adjustments are necessary to move in a more relaxed, rotational and rhythmic direction in your golf swing.  Most people are clueless as to what they just did in their body to produce a result.  I often hear, “I have no idea what I just did there.”  That admission is the key and is the awareness of the real problem for the student.

“Know thyself” is the name of the game here in golf.  The more you are mindful of your process (physically, mentally and emotionally), the more hitting a golf ball becomes a process of self-discovery and coming into a deeper relationship with ourselves.  Trusting in and commitment to a process are the keys to learning and developing as a golfer and as a person.