Experience Using the Long Putter

I have been having trouble with putting this year. Partly, it's because I'm playing on greens that have wildly different speeds. I seem unable to adjust my putting stroke quickly enough during a round to compensate. On fast greens, I start taking too short of a backswing. On slow greens, I keep leaving putts short. I'm sure there are lots of solutions to this problem but the one I have chosen is to switch to the long putter.

I have had a long putter for at least a decade after reading an article by Scott McCarron. It worked well for about a month (all new golf equipment works perfectly for the first 40 days) but then I began "looping" the putter (in a figure eight) and gave it up.

After dusting off the putter again and watching a few instructional videos, I realized that McCarron's approach to the long-putter was probably not the best for me and that other options were available. Three issues turned out to be important: (1) whether to use the shoulders when making the swing (McCarron rocked his shoulders), (2) the right-hand grip (McCarron used a conventional putter grip rather than the claw) and (3) where to anchor the putter on your upper body (McCarron anchored to his sternum but the butt of the club can be anchored anywhere from the chin (!) to the belly button--lots of room for experimentation).

First let's look at two videos of Adam Scott who has turned around his golf game using the long putter. Scott bends over a lot, anchors the club fairly high up on his chest, rocks his shoulders and uses the claw grip.

All these elements can be seen clearly from the face-on video. Scott's use of the claw was particularly interesting given an article on putting by Dave Stockton (here). In Stockton's Step 3 ("Skip the Practice Stroke"), he talks about using the right hand to help visualize the speed for the putt (like throwing a ball underhanded), a movement that is very similar to the claw.

The video above details another approach to the long putter. In this approach, the shoulders remain fixed and the putter is swung with a pendulum motion, again using the claw. Which approach: Tour Player or Golf Instructor?

After some experimentation on the practice green, it turned out that the fixed-shoulder, pendulum approach proved better (dramatically better) for me. Notice also that since I'm a stack and tilt guy, I have a little more weight on my left foot (just slightly). I can use a much longer, more fluid stroke that doesn't seem to change as much between fast and slow greens and I can hold my follow through without recoiling after hitting the ball. All-in-all, a big improvement for me.