It is a strange fact of golf that the two men most generally claimed to have been the greatest putters day in, day out in history, Bobby Locke and Billy Casper, actually used totally dissimilar stroking techniques (although they shared phenomenal ability to “read” greens). Even stranger is the fact that both techniques would have to be regarded as “unorthodox” in a number of mechanical respects. If this proves anything at all, which it probably doesn’t, it is the truth of the belief that putting is 99.9 percent inspiration and .1 percent method.
In preparing to stroke the ball, Casper is unexceptional. He uses the most popular of putting grips, the reverse-overlap (forefinger of left hand wrapped across fingers of right hand), with the palms turned slightly upward and the thumbs down the top of the shaft. He aligns parallel to the starting line of the putt with his feet and body, with the feet about a foot apart (a widish stance for better balance) and the knees “pressed” in toward each other slightly as a means of anchoring himself. He leans comfortably over from the hips with only a slight flex at the knees, his eyes directly over the ball and a “relaxed” (tension-free) feeling in his neck, At this point his one departure from the norm (assuming there is a putting norm) is to rest the back of his left hand against the inside of his left thigh, which, of course, necessitates his standing very close indeed to the ball. Unlike Locke, who was pronouncedly a “stroke” putter, Casper is categorically a “hit” or “tap” putter. He believes that the function of the left hand is primarily to keep the club in position while the right hand very positively taps or raps the ball. Solid striking of the ball on the “sweet spot” of the putter face is critical to him, and to facilitate this, he looks very deliberately at the top of the ball throughout the stroke and continues to peer down at the spot the ball occupied for a few seconds after it has departed. Freedom from tension in the neck, he believes, is a great safeguard against moving the head or taking one’s eyes off the ball.
Casper’s actual stroke derives from his desire to move himself and the putter as little as possible to roll the ball the desired distance. He achieves that goal by virtually eliminating the arms from the stroke, except on longish putts, His stroke on short - and middle - distance putts is actually made simply by breaking the wrists, away from the target going back and toward the target going through, with, in the middle, a distinct and conscious “rapping” of the ball by the right hand, felt, he says, predominantly in its firm— gripping thumb and forefinger.
So “compact” a putting action is in itself unusual, most golfers (especially the more nervy Ones) requiring a more flowing motion in order both to create and gauge the momentum of the strike. Even more unusual, however, is the actual swing path and clubface alignment of Casper’s stroke. Almost from time immemorial, it sometimes seems, golfers have been admonished that they could expect to putt well only if they: (1) kept the putterhead low to the ground throughout the stroke; (2) swung it through the ball traveling along the target line by delivering it from inside that line; and (3) kept the clubface square to this swing path throughout the stroke.
Casper does only one of these things. The only way anatomically one can get a putter back purely by hinging the wrists, without any arm swing, is to lift it off the ground pendulum fashion, which is exactly what Casper does. In doing that he also does not swing the club inside the target line, but rather directly along a backward extension of the target line, which visually gives the impression that the clubhead is actually moving outside the line. Finally, however, he does keep the putter face square to its line of swing during the stroke by hooding the face with a slight “turning under” of the left wrist as it breaks backward, then reverses that motion on the forward stroke so that the putter face is actually opening to the target line after the ball has been struck. Different? It certainly is. Worth trying? Well, as the great British golf teacher John Jacobs is fond of saying, ‘If you can get the ball in the hole regularly by standing on your head, then keep right on—and don’t ever listen to advice from anyone.” But if your putting is less than you’d like it to be, maybe Casper’s method would hit the spot. Of one thing you can definitely be sure. Somewhere between his system and Bobby Locke’s inside-to-outside stroke there’s got to be a way for everyone!
I think Casper's method was pretty typical of the 1960s and earlier when players really had to "pop" the ball to get it rolling over the rougher slower greens of that era.
It's a method I still see amogst the old timers in my club
Bobby Locke is often said to be the best putter ever-- he appeared to hook his putts, and moved his body quite a bit.
George Lowe is another fellow that is legendary with the putter.
Some of the more recent good putters-- Loren Roberts, Ben Crenshaw, Morris Hatalsky, Nancy Lopez, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods. What do these players have in common other than they putt fewer times than most people?
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