Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone Podcasts Geoff Mangum

Severiano Ballesteros Sota and "Ritmos" Bobby Jones in the 1930s wrote that "Timing is the most important skill in golf, and yet no one teaches it." Seve Ballesteros was a great putter, one of the best, and he simply used "ritmos" as his "technique", but he wasn't the greatest explainer of how that might be an accurate and consistent way to putt. No one in golf history has ever taught how "touch" works. It's timing. Here's how it works: THE BRAIN, THE WORLD, THE BODY The human brain "times" the body motion to comport with the objective requirements of the world. In order to do that consistently and accurately, the brain uses "tempo" and "rhythm". "Tempo" is the conductor waving his arms in the air to indicate the quickness or slowness with which the orchestra should play the sheet music. A metronome is set to one particular tempo by adjusting the length of the rod and bob. One length, one tempo. "Rhythm" on the other hand is what the drummer does when he plays all quarter notes on the sheet so that all notes of the same sort are "equal duration", whatever the "tempo". Four quarter notes are always played "bang bang bang bang" or "pop pop pop pop", whether the playing is short and quick or slow and leisurely. But the brain does not use just "any old" tempo and rhythm. There is a "wheelhouse" tempo in each body and also a "wheelhouse" rhythm, and neither of these has anything to do with the personality and preference of the golfer. The world uses the golfer's body to INSTALL the tempo and the rhythmic pattern in the brain, and the brain is designed in evolution expressly for the purpose of accepting and recording what the world does TO the body, over what the body does to the world. And these timing aspects are very similar from golfer to golfer, insofar as each adult body is pretty much similar in size and proportionality and mass distribution. Ask any clothing manufacturer what are the most numerous sizes sold for shirts and pants. Certain sizes are FAR more numerous than other "outlier" sizes -- it's just the demographics and anthropometrics of our species. THE WORLD TRAINS THE BRAIN, THE BRAIN LEARNS THE WORLD FOR SAFETY AND SUCCESS The LENGTH or SIZE that swings with only one second tempo is a meter stick, 100 cm or 39.37 inches in length. The adult human arm is not far off this length. Consequently, when the EARTH BALL moves the arms, adults typically experience a tempo that is close to a 1-second tempo in the natural swinging of the arms. The adult human leg is also not far off this meter-stick length. And not surprisingly, adults typically experience a gait tempo of nearly one second per stride when walking in a casual manner. Studies show that the speed of walking depends upon the stride length (which depends generally on stature or height), BUT that given a specific height and stride length and speed, the step FREQUENCY tends to be about the same for adults, regardless of preferred speed or stature. The expression "Speed / Squareroot(Gravity acceleration x Height)" is pretty constant for a wide variety of adult sizes and speeds. (R. Alexander, Stride length and speed for adults, children, and fossil hominids, Am. J. Phys. Anthrop. 63(1) (Jan. 1984): 23-27.) The usual step frequency correlates with the pendular action of the limbs and centers on 2 steps per second, for a gait frequency of 1 Hz. (J. Bertram, Constrained optimization in human walking: cost minimization and gait plasticity, J. Exper. Biol. 208 (2005): 979-991.) The rule for pedestrian crosswalks is that people walk at about 3.5 feet/second and the crosswalk lights are set to a "slow" walker at 3.0 feet/second (e.g., 10 seconds to cross a 30-foot wide crosswalk). (J. LaPlante and T. Kaeser, A history of pedestrian signal walking speed assumptions, 3rd Urban Street Symposium, Seattle WA (June 24-27, 2007).) When height is factored out ("normalized"), the usual walking pace for adults centers on 1 Hz. Male sleeve lengths range (age 40, US population) from