Plumb-Bobbing Putts
by Sandra Palmer
LPGA Teaching Professional and LPGA Tour Player
Ever wonder about the strange ritual you witness on television in which a player dangles a putter in front of her face? It is not a religious rite, it’s called “plumb-bobbing,” patterned after a carpenter’s use of a plumb line to make sure everything she is putting together is level. Plumb-bobbing is also useful in aligning putts when doubt exists as to the direction of the break on the green. Before you can become an apprentice plumb-bobber, you must determine which eye is your master or dominant eye. There are various methods of determining this. A recommended simple method is:
Hold the forefinger of either hand, arm extended, at face level, aligned with a distant object (a post, a tree, or pole). Align your forefinger with both eyes open, finger exactly aligned with the post, pole, or tree. Then close your right eye; your forefinger should jump in its relationship to the aligned object. If your forefinger jumps, your master eye is your right eye, the eye which anchors your plumb-bobbing triangulation. If your forefinger remains on the distant object then your left eye is your master eye.
Imagine your putter shaft is a string and the club head is the “bob,” the weight at the end of the string. Hold the club so that the toe of the club points directly towards the cup, or directly away from the cup. The toe must not be allowed to point to right or to the left of the cup. If it does so, there will be a resultant twisting of the shaft; your “read” will be distorted. Hang your shaft so that it falls through the center of the ball. If you have pre-read the putt so it appears to break to the right, align the putter through the center of the ball and then align the shaft so that as your eyes follow the shaft up, it falls to the left of the cup. If you have not made any pre-read on the putt, simply hang the shaft so it falls through the center of the ball. Follow the shaft with your eyes and adjust it so it falls through the center of the cup. Won’t hang through the center of the cup? Then you are reading “break.” On which side of the cup does the shaft now fall? Left or right? And how much left or right?
Lori West taking a minute to plum-bob her shot.
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Mickey Wright once said that the biggest advantage of plumb-bobbing putts was to eliminate doubts as to the direction of the break, when “naked eye” reading of the green failed to reveal the break. Plumb-bobbing is not foolproof and you’ll undoubtedly alter the recommended procedure with your own modifications as you gain experience with the carpenter’s helper. Augment your read with reading the nuances of the slopes, grass texture and grain. Add or subtract those observations to or from the read you obtained from plumb-bobbing.
Example:
Your “plumb-bobbing” revealed a half inch break to the right, but a sloping green to the left cancelled out that break and turned it into a straight putt. The art of reading greens is a complex one. An entire book could be written on the subject. Plumb-bobbing is merely the first uncomplicated step.
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