Justin Rose famously changed his putting style to a reverse overlap the week before the 2016 Masters. At the time, Rose was already a major winner and one of the top-10 players in the world, but since the change he’s gone on to even greater success, and is now arguably one of the top 2-3 players in the world.
Just a few months after leaving Augusta – in the spring of 2016, Rose won the Olympic Gold medal in Rio. The next year, in 2017, he finished runner-up at the Masters and captured three worldwide titles, on three different tours, including a WGC.
In 2018, it was much of the same, as the Englishman won at Colonial on the PGA TOUR, and captured the season-long FedExCup, all while making it to world No. 1 (for a couple of weeks).
In this short video clip – filmed at the Sky Sports British Masters, Rose explains how the putting technique allowed him to simplify his “feels,” while freeing him up to focus on other aspects of putting. (transcript below)
“So I had a very traditional, conventional style grip before the reverse overlap. I think for me it’s all about the right hand position – that’s the key,” explained Rose.
“When I went to the claw style grip I feel like it really just puts the plane of my whole right arm and my right hand in plane with the shaft.
“You know I feel like this way, I don’t know, maybe if my right hand got too active, it just did too many weird and wonderful things to the putter. So I feel like this way the right hand is along for the ride. And it’s now just really how I swing that left arm – the lead arm.
“So yeah, I think overall a simplification of my “feels.” The grip might look weird but I sense less which I think is an important thing because I used to nick pick my stroke if I didn’t make one. I’d be like “pushed that, pulled that.” And it would be countless hours on the range, and the putting green, trying to fix it.
“Now I kind of trust my stroke, trust my technique, trust my setup. And now there’s many other aspects to putting that you need to focus on in order to make putts, not just technique.”
Bonus clip: 1, 2… in the hole.
