Many players have difficulties trying to make a spinless shot: they tend to have some spin in their every shot, even though they try to play without spin. This unconscious spin is called “natural spin”. It is caused by the club-head not being exactly in 90 degrees angle against the movement of the swing. (The club-head may point to the correct direction, but the swing goes a bit sideways compared to the line of the shot.)

Natural spin does not bother players so much on eternite, beton or open system, where shots are mostly played so slow that the spin wears off before the ball hits a wall or obstacle. But on felt courses a strong natural spin can be a real disaster, causing the ball to behave irregularly in uphills, and making it difficult to score hole-in-ones on straight gate lanes.

You should try to learn a totally spinless basic shot. If you already have an established playing technique, but you tend to have some spin in all your shots, the following corrections may help to adjust the amount of spin in your shots: Moving your entire body to the left of the ball is likely to reduce left-hand spin, and moving your entire body to the right is likely to reduce right-hand spin. (It makes no difference if you play with a left-hand or right-hand putter.) Also rotating your playing stance anti-clockwise is likely to reduce right-hand spin, and rotating your stance clockwise is likely to reduce left-hand spin.

Remember to avoid making your swing asymmetric: your putter should always point to the same direction where the ball will go when you play the shot (except when you are intentionally using spin in the shot). If you are having trouble with natural spin or an asymmetric swing, consult an experienced top-class player who has a clean and spinless swing.

SPIN SHOTS

When you have a well-functioning spinless basic shot, it is time to get acquainted with the use of spin. Using spin is seldom absolutely necessary, though: the only lane that cannot be succesfully played without spin is the wheel on eternite. It is possible to win tournaments on beton, felt and open course without any knowledge of spin techniques! But in some cases, especially on eternite and felt, spin shots are very useful, helping you to save many important points when pursuing the victory of a tournament.

In spin shots the club-head points nearly (but not exactly) at the target that you are aiming at, but the swing goes a bit sideways. We speak of “slice” and “hook” (inward spin and outward spin), according to the direction of the swing. For a player using a right-hand club (the direction of the strokes being to the left of the player), right-hand spin is “hook” and left-hand spin is “slice”. For a player using a left-hand club these concepts are vice versa: right-hand spin is “slice” and left-hand spin is “hook”. Many players find it much easier to play hook than slice spin, so it might be a good idea to start with hook spin, when you begin learning spin shots.

Start a hook shot (outward spin) by pulling the club-head towards yourself during the backswing, and pushing the club-head away from yourself during forward swing. In a slice shot (inward spin) vice versa: push the club-head away from yourself during backswing, and pull the club-head towards yourself during forward swing. (If you draw the putter directly backwards during backswing, exactly along the line of the shot, you cannot get spin to the shot.)

Aiming a spin shot is a bit tricky and difficult, because the outward or inward swing throws the ball into a slightly different direction than where the club-head points to. If you are holding the putter parrallel with the line behind the ball (in the start area of eternite or felt), a spinless shot would go straight ahead, to the center of hole or gate. But in spin shots the ball would not go straight ahead (even if the putter is pointing straight ahead): the sideways movement of the swing would throw the ball slightly off the line where the club-head is pointing at.

In hook spin of right-hand players (or slice spin of left-hand players) the ball is thrown more to the right than where the club-head is pointing at. In slice spin of right-hand players (or hook spin of left-hand players) the ball is thrown more to the left than where the club-head is pointing at.

Exactly how much is the ball thrown off the line where the putter is pointing at? It depends on how hard you hit, how much spin you are putting to the ball, and also on the qualities of the ball such as bounce height, hardness, and surface treatment (lacquered / unlacquered). All these details affect the direction where the ball will go in a spin shot! The direction of spin shots is much more difficult to control than the direction of spinless shots. A spinless shot is always the safest option in competition, especially if the lane has quite narrow obstacles.

The spin qualities of balls vary greatly. On felt courses one normally uses lacquered balls only, because they do not take much spin into themselves, and are therefore easy to control. Unlacquered balls have the best traction for spins, which makes them very helpful on some eternite and beton lanes, but quite tricky and risky on felt lanes.

Let us analyze the moment when a ball has just hit a wall dead straight. Into which direction will the ball bounce from the wall? The bouncing direction of the ball will be a compromise of two forces: the bounce straight backwards from the wall, and the spin that pulls the ball sideways along the wall. The greater the spin is compared to the bounce from the wall (in other words, the greater the surface traction and the sideways rotation of the ball are, compared to the speed of the shot and the bounce height of the ball), the more sideways will be the new direction of the ball.

Correct temperature of the ball is extremely important in spin shots, especially when using a very slow ball. When a slow ball becomes a bit warmer or cooler, its bounce height may become twice smaller or greater. This means that also its spin effects will become twice smaller or greater, and the ball will go into a slightly different direction, even if you are aiming at the same target and playing exactly similar shots!

To add even more trouble here, the course travelled by the ball is often not exactly linear in spin shots. Right-hand spin bends the ball a bit to the right in uphill, and to the left in downhill. On lanes without uphills or downhills the ball should theoretically travel straight, but surprise, surprise: on felt and open system the surface material is in fact a series of very small “uphills” and “downhills”. Strong spin may sometimes make the ball bend into surprising directions, depending on what kind of miniature uphills and downhills the ball finds on the surface of the lane.

It may be useful to know that also the forward or backward slant of your putter may affect the way how the ball travels in strong spin shots. If you lean your body strongly forward, so that the club-head points diagonally towards the ground (rather than straight ahead), the ball will get some topspin when you play the shot. If you use side spin and topspin at the same time, the ball will behave on straight lane in the same way as in uphill, bending on the lane even if there are no uphills or downhills present.

(It is possible to play the straight shot at Flash on eternite by putting a well-warmed soft dead ball on the right corner spot, from where the backside is not quite visible, and then playing the straight spin shot with additional topspin, leaning one’s body and putter strongly forward. The ball will behave as if the lane was in uphill, bending round the corner and hitting the backside, which was not visible from the corner spot!)

You probably never need to use topspin, but it is useful to know that topspin exists in minigolf too, just as it does in billiards. It is essential to check that the club-head of your putter is exactly vertical when you are standing in your standard playing stance. If the club-head is not vertical, and it points slightly towards the ground, you will get some topspin in your shots, and it may cause unexpected trouble when you are playing strong spin shots.

When you have gathered some experience of spin shots, you will notice that in different situations you need different amounts of spin. Sometimes you need only a delicate touch of spin, and sometimes you need a very strong spin. It might not be a good idea to try to play every shot with exactly the “correct” amount of spin required in each situation. If you need to think about the amount of spin while you are concentrating for the shot, then your technique might not function as unconsciously and automatically as it could, and something may go badly wrong, especially under the mental pressure of a tournament.

It might be a good idea to learn two “spin gears” on both sides: a mild hook and a strong hook, a mild slice and a strong slice. When the need arises to use spin on a lane, you can choose one of these well-oiled “spin gears” that you have, and select the ball or playing line according to the amount of spin that you happen to have ready in storage. Thus you will not need to think too much about minor details of the shot while concentrating, and your performance will probably be more reliable in tournaments. (Never take it for granted that a difficult trick, which you master during practice, also works under the mental pressure of a tournament.)

Don’t get too enthusiastic about spin shots. Remember that their direction is always more difficult to control than spinless basic shots. When you are practising a lane for competition, first test the spinless options, and only if none of them gives satisfactory results, then give in to your inner voice demanding the use of the spectacular spins...