The RithmRite Professional Putting Trainer is a unique solution to several challenges related to perfecting the putting stroke. Many golfers may go their entire careers without ever understanding the basic relationship between timing, backswing length, and distance. Others may even hold flawed concepts that prevent them from applying the correct combination of physics, physiology, and psychology that are encompassed in that short trip between putter contact and the moment the ball rolls to a perfect drop into the cup.
Developed by a lifelong golf enthusiast, mechanical engineer, and avid tinkerer named Fred Stewart, The RithmRite helps you apply discovery and technology in a way that brings theory into reality while you practice, without encumbering you with the complexity that was required to develop the device.
Like any quality professional tool, the RithmRite does its job and does it well, so the end result is simple and easy to use. You can concentrate on enjoying your practice while the correct timing is automatically reinforced, so that thereafter you can better enjoy every single round of golf just a little bit more than before.
As with many innovative new products, the RithmRite was born out of the challenge to solve a real world problem. Through winnowing out the true fundamental factors involved and combining current technologies in a unique way, the world of golf now has a practical contribution to the skills of everyone from the beginner to the professional touring golfer. Here's a bit of how that came about.
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Brad Stewart had moved on from being a high school and collegiate athlete to becoming successful in sales with a large region to travel and enjoy his ongoing love of golf. He relates:
While traveling through Tennessee
on business...close by was the Pickwich Damn State Park Public Golf Course. I
had not hit a golf ball in weeks and was looking forward to playing a
round...it was with a song in my heart and great anticipation that I pulled
into the parking lot of the course. Unfortunately, Mother Nature
intervened and the second I stepped out of my car the clouds opened up
and a torrential downpour commenced.
Not to be totally outdone, I went into the pro shop to have a cold drink
and to at least read about golf in a Golf Digest. Low and behold there
was an article about putting – which happened to be the worst part of my
game at the time. What I read consumed me. The article tore down about
every concept I had about putting and proved the opposite to be true.
It gave me a road map to becoming an exceptional putter. Rhythm was the
secret ingredient.
Soon thereafter, I was visiting and explained to dad (Fred Stewart) that I could
envision a product that would help myself and others incorporate what I had learned
from the article, into their golf games. He agreed, and was also totally
intrigued (by the available research and theories) and decided to pick up the
challenge of designing a product that would help golfers learn to putt
like the pros."
- Brad Stewart, son of inventor Fred Stewart
Being a career
mechanical engineer and lifelong golf enthusiast, Fred Stewart was tireless in his research and persistent in his pursuit of the perfect training device. For over a year he videotaped professional golfers, timed swings to fractions of a second using frame-by-frame analysis, used an electronic chronograph and took copious notes watching professional golfers on various greens, compared swing tempo to green speed and actual under- and over-hit putts.
He once got into a rather enthusiastic discussion about the difference between "rhythm" and "tempo." I had always considered them to be synonyms, but Fred patiently explained his excitement over what he had found. By buying a higher quality VCR (remember those?) with multiple "heads" and time correction circuitry, he recorded putting strokes and found something fairly amazing. Each golfer had a particular measured elapsed time that was his 'normal tempo' - absolute measured period of time. But all golfers, when swinging correctly at their tempo, had the identical rhythm of twice as long on the back swing as the time taken to complete the stroke to impact! Only the distance of the backswing varied for over 9 out of every 10 of the putts made.
His conclusion? A natural rhythm that consistently keeps your putting stroke with 2-to-1 ratio will allow you to then consistently control your putting distance! A golfer could simplify his stroke training to first determining his natural rhythm, then making it consistent for all putts. In fact, this would ignore most of the conventional wisdom Fred had heard all his life centering on attempting to apply "consistent acceleration" by "consistent pressure through the putt." This old school instruction, Fred realized, had seemed to make sense but was flat out wrong!
The coaches and pro's like Pelz and Rhodes, explaining that they had better success teaching a consistent tempo. They were right, and Fred was convinced he could apply this fundamentally better approach to the unique training device he was busy developing. In fact, one of his plans for the future came through the discovery that the same analysis he used for determining the putting stroke ratio (remember that 2:1 ratio above?), well it also applied to the full swing if you extended the tempo to a 3:1 ratio. In fact, after family members came back from seeing Tiger Woods dominate the 2002 Master's at Augusta, Fred was waving his notes telling everyone that his VCR proved that Tiger had the most amazingly consistent rhythm he had ever seen - a straight-up 3:1 ratio from takeaway-backswing to downswing-impact on every full swing shot Fred measured. Not only that, but Tiger displayed a perfect 2:1 rhythm on every chip and putt. Fred wasn't even a big fan of Tiger in particular, this was just a report of technical consistency. Through wet, unevenly cut greens, Tiger altered the length of his backswing as needed to put additional force on the ball, but kept his rhythm consistent regardless of whatever was going on around him, or how much mud was stuck to the side of his ball for a few chip shots. That kind of focus and mental toughness is impossible for a player trying to adapt his 'feel' for every shot and using acceleration control rather than tempo to solidify his swing. Strangely enough, Tiger himself described his own putting completely void of any apparent recognition that his 'hot' streaks all appeared to consist of times that he maintained a consistent rhythm, but instead apparently thought at that time that it was his 'feel' that was well developed. That was then - this is now - but the fundamentals do not change, and what Tiger did naturally without apparently knowing it, you can learn to do intentionally, and apply to your own game. Rhythm can be learned, practiced, and ingrained into your stroke, to give you the kind of confidence and focus you need to hole more putts.
So, if you want to have a round of golf that stays 'in the zone' throughout every part of your game, it became obvious to Fred that one key element was to make your rhythm solid, dependable, and consistent, for both swing and stroke. That's right - there are only two 'swings' to learn - not one for every club in your bag. The driver is not a completely different swing from fairway woods or even full iron shots! There is the swing, and there is the stroke. Swings right at 1 second (Fred would report number of video frames...) consisted of fractions of a second that always resulted in, for instance, 0.75 of a second for the takeaway, with 0.25 of a second for the swing down to impact. And putting strokes made in just under 1 second consisted of, for instance, 0.6 of a second for the backswing, and 0.3 of a second to impact. Every hole, every distance, every time.
Fred plotted frame-by-frame analysis of professionals, but he also worked out the math. There is a reason that everyone has a unique overall 'natural' rhythm, related to the distance from their center of rotation to the head of the putter. Every structure, including the human body, has a natural frequency that achieves some kind of 'resonance' that results in amplified reactions. You feel and hear the difference in every hit, whether a driver or iron or even your putter when the correct location on the club face contacts the ball. This 'sweetspot' has the biggest and most effective reaction to that contact by transferring the maximum energy from the club to the ball. Once that tempo is paired with a consistent rhythm at the proper ratio of 2:1, the only variable isolated and needing to be managed by the golfer is backswing length! ONE variable. YOU can putt better once this becomes a part of your understanding of the physics and physiology of golf, and lock in your own personal rhythm.
Back to Fred working over a decade ago; he worked out several designs and created prototypes by modifying existing metronomes and adding various sensors, reconfigured them to a compact and durable design that incorporated related training for swing path and square clubface references, then patented his results and contracted for the first commercial run. The end result integrated all Fred had learned into one easy to use device that would open up the world of rhythm training to every golfer, which he named the "RithmRite."
One of the very first prototype units delivered was taken to PGA professional Brad Redding, whom Fred had found to be a fount of accurate advice and insight for better putting through concentrating on tempo, at a professional level. Brad quickly agreed not only that this new RithmRite incorporated the best concepts required for rhythm training, but agreed to personally represent the product in instructional videos that could be included with the device. You will find excerpts from this instruction in our Resources section.
Unfortunately, Fred's death preceded any successful
marketing and licensing of the product to major golf retail suppliers, but his creation lives on to help all golfers who
are serious about their game and who realize that successful putting represents one
half of the perfect golf score.
If you are interested, it is highly suggested that you obtain one for yourself quickly, as there is not yet any current contract to produce additional units after this initial run is out of stock.
If on the other hand you are a representative of a substantial manufacturer or retail supplier interested in licensing this technology so that it can be made available to more golfers worldwide, please contact us at your earliest convenience so that discussions with the family can be coordinated.