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Pelz Putting Tutor
What is it?
The Pelz Putting Tutor is a flat plastic plate you put on the putting green to help you with your stroke, your alignment and your green reading. It has a dimple in it (on the right hand side of the picture) where you balance the ball, having lined the long aimline along what you believe is the starting line required to hole the putt. Pros including Phil Mickelson have used the putting tutor to hone their strokes.
To use this gadget you place two ball bearings in a pair of holes at the other end of the plate (the left in the picture) to form a gate through which you strike your putt. As you can see in the picture, there are three sets of "gate widths" - three pairs of dimples with smaller or greater widths between them.
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on a Pelz Putting Tutor... |
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What's it meant to do?
The Pelz Putting Tutor is supposed to have four specific purposes:1. Putter face alignment feedback:
Using the line of on the device you can get a good feeling of the alignment of your putter. By placing the leading edge against the straight edge on the right hand side of the plate you get an effective visual image thanks to the long target line which emerges from under the ball.
2. Eye position feedback:
Secondly you can tell using the lines on either side of the ball dimple where your eyes are in relation to the ball. If you can see both of these lines, perfectly framing the ball then your eyes are directly over it. See one line or the other and you know your eyes are slightly "inside the ball" (which is the eye position recommended by putting teacher Stan Utley and putter making ace Scotty Cameron) or slightly "outside the ball" - a position which absolutely NOBODY recommends!
3. Feedback to help groove your Stroke:
The third benefit claimed by the manufacturers is that you can groove your stroke by repeatedly putting through the gate between the two ball bearings.
4. Green reading feedback:
This is probably the most instructive benefit you get from the Pelz Putting Tutor. By using it to practise putts which have some break you get to find out whether you are reading them correctly. Suppose you'd decided to play a foot of break from the right, you set the device up aiming at that point and strike a putt between the gates and see if it goes in. After repeating the exercise a number of times you'll get to know whether you habitually under-read or over-read your putts.
Does the Pelz Putting Tutor work?
The feedback you get from the Pelz Putting Tutor concerning putter face alignment and eye position are immediate and effective. I used this device for quite some time and found that I improved my ability to align my putter correctly and that definitely helped me make more putts. Although it's effective, I must say I found that getting my eyes directly over the ball made my putting worse not better. I find the Pelz straight (and square) back and through method extremely difficult to putt well with on a consistent basis.
There's no doubt that hitting a large number of putts with a clear indication of whether you're pulling or pushing them off the blade, will help you to improve your stroke. This is a great aid to help you do this, but you really only benefit from it if you use it on an absolutely flat surface.
Unfortunately the Tutor can't give you any indication of why you may be pushing or pulling your putts, only that you're doing it.
Although it's only a small point, I found the replacing the ball into the dimple every time I hit another putt a bit of a drag.
For me the biggest benefit of using the tutor is the green reading feedback. I really did find out that I was severely under-reading my longer putts, but over-reading my shorter ones. The only way I'd make up for this misalignment was by either holding the face open or closing it through the hitting area.
It was a lesson worth learning and I've found I read putts much better since I started using the Tutor.
The Pelz Putting Tutor good multi-benefit putting trainer. Well worth the investment - just watch out that you don't change your eye position to the detriment of your putting while using this training aid.
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