The best putters have a relaxed and comfortable posture, Faxon says.
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It’s quite amazing that the simple art of rolling a golf ball, slowly and often for a distance of just a few feet, can yield such a diverse array of different actions. No two putting techniques look the same — and among the very best putters, they hardly look similar at all.
But there is one thing they all have in common, says one of the best putters of all time, Brad Faxon.
“Every great putter always says they were comfortable at address,” he says. “Jack Nicklaus was bent way down to the ground; Ray Floyd stood really tall and upright; I’m somewhere in between that.”
The best posture is relaxed and comfortable
Faxon was talking about putting posture on his Instagram underlining the point of his message: That a proper posture is one where you’re most relaxed.
“I like to feel like my arms are soft and heavy, he says. “That’s good posture. Being relaxed.”
It doesn’t matter what it looks like, Faxon says. It’s up to the individual golfer to decide. But he does caution against one approach:
“What I don’t like is a rigid back, everything engaged, arms tight, bent over,” he says. “That doesn’t look like you can practice for very long.”
Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.
An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.