I have been and will always remain an Apple fanatic for as long as Apple is making electronics.  I love that Ping has jumped on the app bandwagon, and its a pretty darn good app.  I know what you are thinking, this is old news Chicago Golf Guy.  We the golfing public have already heard about this, and either tried it and loved it or hated it.  My thoughts are the same, I have had the Ping putter app and I love it.  I don’t use it very often, but I do love it when I use it, and it gives us some great information.  What do we do with that information however?

That is where my post is going, what to do with the information that the ping putting app spits out.  How can we improve by knowing what our tempo is and how the club face is reacting? Well let me tell you… Face angle and your swing tempo are the two most important aspects of putting.  Players get so caught up with the stroke, and grip pressure, and the break and the wind, and what my pants look like, and what you did on the last hole, and I had too many drinks last night and my hands are shaking… none of those things matter if you can have a consistent swing tempo and can come back to the ball with a consistent face angle.  A great tempo, will make judging distance on your putts much more consistent.  And a constant face angle (albeit sometimes closed or open from where you started) will give you a consistent line.  What more do you need than the correct line and distance to make more putts????

The Ping app will allow you to measure your tempo, and the face angle.  Do not be distracted about the putter face being 2 degrees closed or 1 degree open at impact from where you started.  A consistent face angle allows you to make a repeatable stroke.  Meaning that if you are consistently coming into the ball with a face that is consistently 2* closed you can accommodate for that.  This is what the PGA Tour players are doing.  Making a consistent stroke, that can be repeated over and over again especially under pressure.  Everyone has a tendency to speed up their putting stroke when they are nervous.  Tempo is the key to putting a good roll on the ball, and that will produce better distance with your putts.  Better distance means that you have less three or four footers coming back after a long birdie putt, which converts into more pars, better scores and less wear and tear on your golfing nerves.

The Chicago Golf Guy gives the Ping Putting Application for iPhone an EAGLE.  This is a great application that is not pushing for everyone to have the same swing straight back and straight through.  Ping is promoting players to understand their putting stroke and giving us a means to measure its consistency.  Consistent putting equals more putts made.  And we all want to make more putts.