A small but distinguished group of golfers and instructors argue that the best way to putt in golf is sidesaddle.

"It will probably take a Tour pro adopting it to make sidesaddle popular, but I have always said that it's absolutely the best way of putting," said Dan Pasquariello, a Golf Magazine Top 100 teacher at the Pebble Beach Golf Academy in California.

Dave Pelz, the research-driven putting guru, agrees. The best putter he has ever measured, including Tour pros, was a 10- to 12- handicap amateur who putted from the side. "He never, ever started a ball off line, and he was very good at distance control, too," Pelz said. The two primary advantages are the simple mechanics of the straight-back, straight-through pendulum stroke, and the use of binocular vision.

Seems convincing to me. Putting from the side has always reminded me of trying to play billiards standing to the side of the ball. It makes it artificially difficult to get the ball started on the right line, though opponents would argue that's precisely the point. Sam Snead putted croquet style at one point, but the USGA outlawed that method as they felt it made it too easy to putt.