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Distance, The Putter & The Ball There are two ways to propel an object further; either apply a greater force or apply the same force for longer. In your putting stroke you can't increase the time the putter remains in contact with the ball because a push is illegal so you need to learn how to control the amount of force used each time you strike the putt. A straight putt may still drop if you over calculate distance by three feet but breaking putts require much greater control. Once your set-up repeats and your straight putt technique is solid you need a greater level of distance control to master breaking putts. 40% of golfers surveyed listed distance control as their nemesis. When I was growing up I kept asking myself how pros could control distance so well? Everyone I asked said the same thing "touch and feel" but I couldn't seem to master either concept playing once a week. Golfers of all levels have always talked about touch and feel as if they were mysterious, magical qualities. The reality is that understanding the dynamics of a rolling sphere put into motion by a flat piece of metal isn't rocket science. With a Boomerang, every putt becomes a straight putt and when that's the case you can systematically examine all the variables that make up the distance control equation; surface speed, putter head speed and ball speed... that's what we've been doing since 1997. Shortly after inventing the Boomerang I began looking for a way to master it. I started with the belief that distance control must be achievable because pros did it consistently well. I also believed that both touch and feel were subjective and ultimately couldn't be taught but my eureka moment came out of sheer frustration. After several hundred thousand putts on the Boomerang I could almost guarantee to hit the target 100 times in a row but occasionally I missed the ramp completely. Unhappy with missing at all after so much practice I decided just to force the putter head to make visual contact with the green surface of the Boomerang down the line. My hope was that if I followed the ball on to the ramp then it should be on the ramp and at least it would come back and not go under the sofa. When I began to follow the ball on to the ramp I noticed a couple things. Firstly when I missed the device it was generally because the putter wasn't lined up with the Boomerang at the end of the stroke. Secondly by lengthening the swing path I could extrapolate and deduce the face angle at impact (something that is masked in a conventional putting stroke). I could see if the face was moving from open to closed, square-to-square and even from closed to open. Soon I noticed certain patterns and from those patterns I concluded that regardless of the length of putt, there are only three possible relationships between the putter and the ball. At that moment it felt like someone had switched the lights on for me.
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