THE INNOVATORS

Vision quest

They have vastly different backgrounds, they work in different fields, but these three men come together at the forefront of golf technology

Paul Gagne: When Gagne's eye exercises helped Michael Campbell win the U.S. Open, the golf world had a new star instructor.

Photo: GD Resource Center

By Guy Yocom

Photo By Gregg Segal

April 2007

Paul Gagne is brilliant, he speaks with a French-Canadian accent, and he speaks quickly. The layman who asks him for a sampling of his work as a posturologist and exercise kinesiologist with the David Leadbetter Golf Academy is in for a trial. Gagne [GON-ya] begins by describing the misfortune of golfers cursed with "disharmonic feet," and without pausing segues to the nature of parasympathetic brain function and its bearing on cognitive and limbic brain responses. Scarcely taking a breath, he explains why babies who learn to walk before they reach 14 months might develop strong legs but risk having weak spines. You can't get to the subject of his work with 2005 U.S. Open champion Michael Campbell fast enough.

It's worth the wait. Campbell won that Open at Pinehurst with a dazzling back-nine putting display on Sunday. Five times during the final round he dashed into the various portable toilets that dotted the course, in part to use them for their intended purpose but also to perform a peculiar eye exercise prescribed by Gagne that makes the eyes function better together. After emerging from the Port-O-Lets on the 12th and 17th holes, Campbell drained key putts -- on No. 17, a 25-footer that clinched the victory. He took only 27 putts that day.

"After doing the exercises, I felt focused and relaxed," says Campbell. "I could really focus on the line of the putts, which was critical on the Pinehurst greens. Doing the exercises took me away from the occasion, the stress, the pressure and put me in the present time."

Campbell's potty breaks are the most curious footnote of the championship, and other Leadbetter students (Michelle Wie among them) have joined him in raving about the effect Gagne's eye exercises have had on their putting. Because the exercises can immediately benefit the everyday golfer, there is hope that Gagne's program could lead to a widespread performance breakthrough in putting.

Gagne, who is based in Montreal, explains the need for the vision exercises with great fervor, as though he discovered them yesterday. In fact, vision has been a component of posturology -- Gagne's area of expertise -- for several years. He says a posturologist detects and improves abnormalities in posture.

"We've known for a long time that posture is shaped by what we feel through our feet and what we see with our eyes," says Gagne. "With input from optometrists, we're able to discern the nature of the eye problem that leads to poor posture." The first thing Gagne and his associates tested Campbell for was whether his eyes were converging properly when he got into his putting address position.

Campbell flunked the test. Although he had excellent visual acuity -- the hole looked sharp -- he suffered from poor eye convergence, his eyes not working in concert when he looked down and formed a line to the hole. The phenomenon of poor eye convergence afflicts nine out of 10 people, according to Gagne, and comes into play primarily in putting and chipping because your eyes look straight down at the ball. "When you line up a putt from behind the ball, your eyes level to the horizon, you're fine," he says. "The problem arises when you look down at address and your eyes try to join, in forming a line to the hole. In almost all cases, one eye performs well, but the other eye does not follow the good one."

How does the poor eye convergence lead to poor posture and alignment?

"Naturally, the tendency is to help your weaker eye," says Gagne. "You do that by adjusting your head to bring it more into play. Because Michael's right eye is his weaker eye, his head would turn slightly to the left, and his right hip and shoulder would move out toward the ball, shifting his alignment open." (If your left eye is weaker, you'll tend to set up closed.) As Gagne predicted, Campbell said most of his missed putts went to the left.

The problem is worse late in the day when your eyes begin to tire, and for tour players it's almost always worse on Sunday, after a long week of eye strain. Although Gagne recommends thorough testing by an optometrist to determine the extent of your poor eye convergence, he says there is one test golfers can do at home that will determine if there's a problem.