Of Belly Putters and Backswings

As you probably heard, Webb Simpson had the best round of his life -- an 8-under 62 -- in the first round of the Sony Open. And he did it with a regular-length putter...

Plus a little help from Butch Harmon... but according to Golf Digest, it wasn't the putter that sent him to Butch.

We all heard about Webb's first attempt at switching back to the short stick over in Japan at the Dunlop Phoenix. It didn't go so well, although that seems to have had as much to do with his full swing as with the putter. As Golf Digest put it:

After a disastrous Ryder Cup look, one wherein he embarrassingly popped up his opening power in a 4-ball suit with Bubba Watson and went 0-2 in limited movement for USA, Simpson visited one of the high clergymen of golfing, teacher Butch Harmon. The 1/2-day range consultation in November already is paying dividends. He hit 10 of 14 fairways and thirteen veggies in regulation with simply mild modifications to his backswing, mainly preserving the membership extra in front of him alternatively of getting it trapped behind with the route too far to the inner.

About that lesson with Butch, Webb told PGATOUR.com:

?I had in no way visible him earlier than,? He said. ?What my caddie and I are operating on, we wanted to make certain that we were doing it the right manner, and he turned into first-class sufficient to give us some time. I had an awesome day with him, and the changes are simple. You would not be aware them in step with se, but just seeking to get a bit higher, so that's the goal.?

Combine that improved swing path with a little time on the putting green and you get a back-9 28 that required only 10 putts, which gives you a really nice-looking scorecard. (He had 9 birdies altogether, along with 1 bogey.)

What's the lesson here? We golfers have a tendency to overdo things. We go to belly putters because we get too caught up in mechanics. Some teacher tells us we need to "hit the ball from the inside" and we get WAAAAY too much inside. We exaggerate just about everything we learn in the game and then we wonder why we still have problems.

Take a tip from Webb. Don't cross overboard with swing or placing modifications. Make easy modifications and "just try to get a bit higher."