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The Pop Putt, The Panic Putt & The Pro Putt It's a fact that you can swing the putter at an infinite number of speeds so how do you relate your desired ball speed to putter speed? You might think there's a missing variable but when the lights went on I realised that even though there're an infinite number of putter head speeds there's only one speed where the ball and putter travel the same distance or stay in motion for the same time. So how do you achieve this miracle speed? Simple, by controlling your length of backswing. It's never been done before; no one has ever tried to unify a ball and putter like in our animation. Try it yourself on any given putt, the backswing required to do the job is too long, too short or just right. With a short backswing and solid wrists you don't have enough momentum in the putter to get the ball to the hole. When you take a short a backswing it appears as if the putter overtakes the ball before the ball reaches the target. We call this the panic putt because it looks like you're trying to force the ball to the hole. With a long backswing it's necessary to decelerate into the hit to avoid belting the ball off the green and this causes the putter to finish with an abbreviated follow through soon after impact. In relation to the putter, the ball appears to pop off the face so we call this a pop putt. Once you're aware of the existence of a pop putt and a panic putt you can start looking for the pro putt. The pro putt is a powerful tool - but most golfers have never even seen it because they've never looked for it. A pro putt exists in between a stroke with a long backswing and stroke with a short backswing. A backswing that's just right for the putt reveals a synchronized stroke. We call this the pro putt because when we tested pros on the European Tour we found that they had ball and putter speeds that were almost identical however none knew why. In a pro putt we use the ball as a pacesetter and that's the key to synchronization. From the golfer's perspective, when you can control your backswing, you can match the putter speed to the ball speed as they accelerate and decelerate together - the effect is that of making the putter follow the ball to the target. It's stating the obvious, but if you can follow the ball to the target - by definition the ball has to be at or near the target.
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