Stan Utley Putting technique

[hacker23]

I was browsing through the forum, looking for ways to improve my horrible putting and stumbled across Stan Utley's approach to putting.

Although i'm practicing on the living room carpet, the putt feels good and hitting its target. Most importantly, i feel i have control of the putter going back and thru the ball.

i'm anxious to put this into practice on my round this Saturday.

Has anyone had GREAT success implementing Utley's technique?

[mfgorilla]

I just picked up the art of putting today, but I haven't had a chance to crack it open yet.

[saevel25]

I adhere by my personal method of putting. Its whats comfortable.. Thats the best thing i can say. If Utley's method works for you, then all power. But do whats comfortable, if its strange but you get the ball in the hole, then keep at it. I would advise if you do go with Utley's and is a divergence from what you previously did, keep at it for a while, don't keep switching, you'll never gain feel or confidence that way.

[boogielicious]

I use it. The best part is being relaxed when you take your stance. I found that bending over too much made me more tense. It is also very repeatable. Green reading is still my weakness, but I strike the ball well and it goes where I am aiming.

[Clambake]

I adopted Utley's method almost a year-and-a-half ago, and have found it improved my putting. I felt that I had lost a lot of feel in putting and was attributing this to getting older (I'm 52 now), but I thought back to when I was a much better putter and tried to analyze why I was better and it came down to distance control and general feel. Utley's methods have helped a bit with the feel, I still have one issue with it.

On the positive side, I like his thoughts about making the stance and setup as neutral as possible so that you're body is consistent each time and you're not fighting yourself in with any corrections in the stroke. I already did this mostly already, but his method had me make a few subtle adjustments and I'm even more neutral (and hence comfortable) while addressing the putt. The area that has helped me most was moving from a SBST method to an arcing stroke; by not having to do the subtle corrections throughout the stroke to keep the putter on the target line, my stroke is more consistent and not as subject to being hurt by pressure situations which can mentally disturb the stroke. This has helped me stroke my putts on line much more consistently, and has helped partially with distance control

The issue I am having with Utley is his method of executing the stroke where he imparts more power into the putt with a shorter swing. Utley claims that this makes it easier to execute the stroke because you don't have to do as large a swing for a certain distance as you would with other putting stoke styles, which is true, but I find that it exagerates my distance control problems. I feel if one thinks about this the reasons are obvious - if one has a longer putting stroke, it means there is a greater difference in backstrokes to hit a 8 footer compared to a 25 footer, but if the stroke is much shorter and compact as it is with Utley then there is a much smaller difference in stroke for those putts, and hence it would be harder to get the stroke length accurate. He doesn't address this in his book at all and holds to his thought that the compact stroke is much better, but I haven't found that to be the case.

So after over a year of practice with Utley's methods, I'm evolving my style to be "pseudo-Utley" where I use his stance, set up, and arcing stroke, but take the wrists out of even more to use a longer backswing. So far so good.

[boogielicious]

Clambake,

I've done what you did as well. I do a longer, slower back swing and keep the through swing compact. I noticed in his video that his back swing is a bit longer than he described in his book. Best advice is to the OP is to use what feels most comfortable from the method. The is the most important part of his technique for me. Relaxed and comfortable.

[hacker23]

THANK YOU STAN UTLEY!!! put all this talk & practice to work today.

Played my best round early today and shot a 77 (it was a par 70 course)! I attribute most of the success to adopting Utley's putting technique. I only had one 3 putt and that was b/c i didn't read the downhill slope. Can't wait till next weeks round.