In Search of the Perfect Putt

Following last month’s putting instruction featuring Dr Paul Hurrion’s work with Rory McIlroy, we focus on how the same coach’s Quintic Ball Roll putting analysis system is now guiding regular golfers – as well as tour stars – to the correct specifications and stroke. Dominic Pedler reports on the ultimate launch monitor for your putting.

“Putting is an art not a science," claims Ben Crenshaw, which is all very well when you’re blessed with the perfect stroke of that particular two-time Masters champion. But for the rest of us – and that includes tour pros such as Padraig Harrington and Rory McIlroy – science is very much transforming our understanding of the mechanics of putting and the way both our stroke and our equipment influence the vital dynamics of the golf ball on its final journey.

 

One session on the latest Quintic v2.4 system will dramatically alter the way you think about the very nature of putting: opening your eyes not only to obvious alignment issues but, more fundamentally, to the nuances of ball speed, spin, launch angle and the nature of true roll.

 

PAUL HURRION’S GUIDE TO THE QUINTIC V2.4 PUTTING DATA

 

1) Ball speed

Obviously the pace of any putt is crucial, but developing a consistency of ball speed for any given length of putt is an often overlooked factor. If you’ve got more than 1 mph variation in pace for the six putts of 20 feet in our typical test, you’re going to be struggling. You might hit most of them at 5 mph – but even a 1 mph variation will makes a difference of some 4 or 5 feet.
 

2) Side spin

Just like any other club in the bag, the ball can come off the putter face with hook-spin or cutspin. Anything below +or- 10 rpm doesn’t have an effect on where the ball ends up. 10-20 rpm is usually OK, but anything above that and you can see how the ball bounces and deviates from the intended path.

3) Initial ball roll

For initial ball roll we want a positive figure to confirm that the ball is rolling forwards, and not starting its journey with backspin which many players generate for various reasons – most notably launch angle, as we discuss below.

4) True roll

 

Ideally your putt should display true forward roll as early as possible after impact, making the ball much less prone to straying from its path as it will be less susceptible to imperfections in the green, spike-marks and debris.

True roll is measured here as the distance it takes for the golf ball to make a full 360-degree rotation after impact. In theory, this could be as a little as just over 5.25 inches – the circumference of a standard 1.68 diameter ball. But, in practice, the ball will inevitably skid off the face for a while, remaining on its axis before starting to roll forward.

 

5) Launch angle

 

Another vital area often overlooked is the angle at which the ball leaves the putter face. Again, this varies according to the length and speed of putt but, for 5 mph of ball speed on a typical 15-foot putt, we’ve found the ideal launch to be around 1 degree. Anywhere between 0.7 and 1.5 degrees is good. But anything more than 2 degrees and the ball literally takes off, making it bounce higher (and more often) and be subject to deflection from its intended path every time it lands.

Using the data for putter fitting – a quick summary

Understanding and quantifying the above parameters helps hugely both in helping a player to improve their technique and in correctly choosing a putter and fitting the specifications to their stroke.

Take loft, for example. Most putters come with 3 or 4 degrees of static loft, so to achieve the desired launch of around 1 degree, the player will need to de-loft the face by some 2 degrees dynamically.
 

[Note: you don’t need to change your putter to change the static loft. On his recent visit to Quintic, Dominic had his putter de-lofted in seconds on the loft & lie machine by Paul Hurrion, yielding an immediate improvement in his launch angle.]

Profile of the perfect putt

 

For many of us it will prove quite a challenge to strike a putt with just the right launch conditions to promote the perfect roll, as measured by the Quintic software.

 

Here’s an example of the results from one European Tour professional from which Hurrion makes the following key observations:-

• Below 10 rpm of sidespin is excellent. +6 rpm is actually negligible and will have no effect on the ball’s path.

• The ball started its forward rotation immediately after impact, wasting no time through skidding.

• Initial ball speed is 5.08 mph which results in the golf ball travelling approximately 19 feet on a flat green with a Stimpmeter reading of 12.

• The point of ‘True Roll’ occurs after 19 inches – which is even better than our guideline of 10% of the travel distance.

• The Launch Angle of 1.29 degrees is excellent and the result was a smooth forward roll for the first 12 inches of the putt.

• The golf ball has rotated 227 degrees after the first 12 inches of its path, with 510 rpm of forward rotation at this point. The increased rpm values is something we are trying to achieve, thus ensuring the ball is rolling out smoothly and using up energy sooner.

Padraig’s Putting Panacea

Paul Hurrion has worked for some seven years with Padraig Harrington as his putting adviser and biomechanics analyst. In fact the three-time major champion is so impressed with the Quintic system that he has his own unit installed in his home.

 

Hurrion on his latest work with the Irishman... “We’ve been working, in particular, on the 15-20ft range. After all, the stats tell us that Padraig led the tour last season in three-putt avoidance, while his holing-out from short range is phenomenal. Of the 1,000, or so, putts within four feet he had in 2010, he only missed one in the whole season!

The most important recent change has been some subtle changes to the specifications of Padraig’s Odyssey 2-Ball putter. His typical straight putt generates about 25 degrees of hook-spin – slightly above the ideal range – which was causing some trouble, particularly on right-to-left breaking putts.

Into the groove

The science behind the modern grooved-face putters

 

From a design as well as a performance point of view, the Quintic camera and software system is ideal for comparing different types of putter faces, including the effect of groove configurations in improving the golf ball’s impact and roll characteristics.  Hurrion himself developed his own interest in putter grooves following a research paper, a few years ago, into the distinctive CGroove faces found on Yes!Golf putters. This confirmed that grooves can make a significant improvement in terms of reducing skidding and generating forward roll sooner than otherwise, and led him to develop his own range of groove-faced putters for Gel Golf.