The World of Putting

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Table of Contents

The Final Word on Putting By Al Barkow

Foreword...... 3

Introduction...... 4

Chapter 1 The Hands and Their Connection to the Club...... 8

Chapter 2 The Stroke...... 19

Chapter 3 The Address Position...... 42

Chapter 4 Aiming and Figuring Out Where to Aim...... 49

Chapter 5 The Psychology of Putting...... 57

Chapter 6 The Putting Personality...... 64

Foreword

Having grown up around Pinehurst, N.C., and reading Golf World while some kids were reading Mad magazine, I had a pretty good grounding in golf. Then, as a young writer/photographer/editor at Golf World I went to work for Al Barkow, in 1986, when he was editor-in-chief of Golf Illustrated. In the five subsequent years around Al my knowledge of the game, particularly as it relates to golf history and technique, increased a great deal. This was because of Al’s enthusiasm and deep knowledge for those parts of a game that has been such a big part of his life from boyhood in Chicago to adulthood, when he was good enough to compete in the U.S. Amateur and in time become one of golf’s wise and seasoned observers. In no small measure because Al had some game himself, he always has been interested in the paths great golfers took to get to the summit, what shaped their personalities and how they mastered—if fleetingly—a game that can be so maddening. While golf at its most basic level is about “how many,” Al is captivated with “how.” This explains his lifelong fascination with golf instruction. He has queried many of the best players, over several generations, about how they go about their work and collaborated with them in countless magazine articles and several books. No golf journalist has taken the study of instruction more seriously than Al has. About seven decades since he found his first secret, he continues to look for them. Al and I manage to have a game every year or so, despite living on opposite coasts. We played not long ago near his home in California. Lately, Al has been thinking a lot about putting, the part of golf that really separates winners from losers, whether on tour or at the club. In a nutshell, Al theorizes that the best way to putt is to rely on your dominant hand, whichever it is, and to hit shorter putts with a descending blow. It seemed to be working for Al in our recent round. He hardly ever missed from inside ten feet, and lagged all his long ones up cozy. I know how excited he is to have the opportunity to explain this approach to putting to a wider audience. Bill Fields Senior Editor, Features Golf World

Introduction

There was a time in golf when some average golfers could actually hit drivers and iron shots and pitches at approximately the same level of efficiency and effectiveness as the touring pros; not often, but once in awhile. And, they used equipment very similar to that used by the pros. It was also possible to play from the same tees that Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus did…once in awhile. All of which gave the relationship between the game’s best players and their fans a certain empathetic charm. There is only one thing left in that relationship. We who play for the fun of it will never be able to make full swings with the power of a Tiger or Lefty Phil or Bubba—fly the ball incredible distances, and put all that suck-back spin on the pitch shots. But, we can putt with the pros; even out-putt them now and again. Putting doesn’t require the seemingly improbable flexibility of modern-day pros, or the specially shafted and ground and weighted clubs they use. The only difference is, the pros on tour week after week after week putt on greens so marvelously conditioned, so smooth and fast, that we ordinary folk would have to practice a little on them before we could handle them. But we could.

After studying the techniques of the game’s best putters over the past fifty years, and helping a few of them write books on the craft, I have come up with a consensus on putting technique that will put you in the tour pro class. I have found that there are some universals of technique that all golfers at every level of competence can put in their games and lower their scores. The consensus culminates in a stroke concept and method that almost all the great putters in the game’s history have employed, and a lot of very good ones, some perhaps without even knowing it or at least articulating it. You will find little to no mention of it in conventional putting instruction, even in the books on putting I have helped professionals write.

I’ve collaborated with two distinguished putting masters to write their books on the art of putting (and there is an art to it, as well as craft)—the legendary George Low, who

Arnold Palmer credited after he won his second Masters, in 1960. And, modern-day putting star Dave Stockton. I also helped Billy Casper write a book of instruction that included a lot on putting, which was one of his great strengths as a champion. The same with Phil Rodgers, who learned at the fount of short-game expertise, Paul Runyan. I’ve also written hundreds of instruction articles for such magazines as Golf and Golf Illustrated, both of which I was at one time the editor-in-chief. In these pieces I collaborated with some of the most notable teaching professionals in golf—Jim McLean, Billy Harmon, Hank Haney, Carl Lohren, and many others—more than a few of them on putting. Those fellows aside, in my fifty years of hanging around the tour I’ve talked putting with all the game’s best putters, as well as the mediocre ones, and even the poor ones—you can learn, of course, from the mistakes of others; sometimes more than from the good ones.

Finally, as a serious golfer who has played in a U.S. Amateur Championship (1972), and on an NAIA national championship college team (1959, Western Illinois University), I have fiddled around with what I’ve seen and heard and felt from my own real life experiences with the wand. I’ve been doing it for a lifetime.

Ben Hogan said more than once that putting was a different game from golf, and in a sense he was right; it’s not in any way a power stroke. But in other respects there are certain intrinsic similarities between three-foot putts and bashing a driver as far as you can. You stand at the side of the ball, for one important thing. You have to aim properly, and have a feel or touch for the distance you need to hit a 6-iron or a putt. You even have to play the wind once in awhile when putting.

It is an axiom in golf that the mediocre ball-striker who can putt well will more often than not defeat the superior ball-striker who cannot. That is to say, there is no substitute

for good putting. Even the great Tiger Woods, no matter how well he may be striking the ball from tee to green; when the putts aren’t falling he is not a sure- thing winner. And on those days when his ball-striking is not up to standard and he doesn’t make up for it by putting lights out, he is just another very good player out there.

The year Billy Casper won his first U.S. Open, at Winged Foot Golf Club, in New York, he played a couple of rounds with Ben Hogan. After the second of the rounds, in which Casper missed a lot of greens in regulation but holed numerous putts to save pars and shoot a score that put him in the lead, Hogan said to him, “Son, if you couldn’t putt you’d be selling hot dogs for a living.” Perhaps, but Casper could putt and never ran a hot dog stand.

Hogan’s remark to Casper reflected an attitude in golf that said it was not macho to be proud of your putting prowess. No one wanted to be known as someone who got away with erratic or ordinary ball striking because he could roll the ball well on the greens. The attitude was not unlike that in baseball when the bunt came into the game; it was seen as a cowardly way to play. Ben Hogan was part of that generation. In his famous instruction book, The Five Fundamentals, there is not a single word about putting. It wasn’t because Hogan didn’t know anything about putting, or didn’t care about his putting. He wouldn’t have won the major titles and all the tour events he did if he didn’t give putting any thought. It was, in his mind, a necessary evil and he just didn’t care to discuss it. For Hogan golf was cutting 2-irons into tight pin positions, nicking 6-irons low under the wind, turning a driver to the left into a left-to-right wind. That’s what golf was all about. Can you imagine what his record would have been if he put his terrific golf mind to putting, and practiced it as much as he did 2-irons from tight lies?

He could have. You can work hard on full-swing concepts—think about them and practice them — but you can do the same with putting, and one right after or before the other. We aren’t Johnny One-Note drones incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. It must be said that one of the things that makes putting so fascinating an

endeavor is that, among all the acknowledged great putters in the history of the game, no two have or had the exact same style or method. Indeed, putting is the most variable of all the methods we use to play golf. Which seems to say that we all have to find our own way with the flat stick.

Years ago I might have agreed with that, but not any longer. There is a way of putting that I think all golfers can do and that would make them better putters than they are. It’s what I call the Dominant Hand Method, that is combined with a backstroke that can be called a number of things—Tilted, Hooded, or Tucked. However, while I will be promoting these techniques it doesn’t hurt to know of other methods and points of view that have lead me to this consensus putting method. I will offer those thoughts as I move through the central themes of this book.

CHAPTER 1

The Hands and Their Connection to the Club

For starters let me put the Dominant Hand Method in a simple, declarative sentence. You control the putter in terms of stroke path and the speed at which you putt the ball with the hand you use to brush your teeth, turn the key in your door, pet your pet, mark your ball on the green, and so on. It is the hand with which you have the most control of whatever tasks you have. In golf terms, to bring the left hand into the picture other than as a passenger on the ride home is to needlessly introduce a component for error. When I tell people about putting right handed or with their Dominant Hand, they almost always reply that they will lose control of the putter, which will wobble like jelly. But does your razor wobble when you’re shaving? Does your pencil scrawl out of control when you write something? Why did basketball players quit the two handed set shot in favor of shooting with only one hand (their Dominant Hand). Because, with the two hander the left hand could skew the release, put unwanted spin on the ball, and misdirect it. As the fabled champion player and teacher, Tommy Armour said, “Hit the hell out of the ball with the right (dominant) hand.” That said, onward and upward.

Connecting the Hands (All references to handedness in this book are directed to right-handed golfers, but only because they are the majority. In no way is this meant to diminish left handedness. All left handers simply reverse the references to your dominant hand; there is nothing different left handers have to do.)

Conventional putting instruction has been and continues to be based on the idea that the right hand is the culprit in all poor putting, and that everything must be done to keep that hand under control, to keep it “quiet.” The main problem, the mantra goes, is that the left hand breaks down and for the most part the right hand causes that to happen. The left

hand breaking down it is to say that prior to or at the moment of impact with the ball the hand cocks (or, the left wrist hinges to form a kind of concave cup) that alters the angle of the clubface in such a way that the putt is misdirected—it doesn’t go where you mean it to. The ball almost invariably goes off-line to the left—a pull, or a tug in current golf parlance. That is assuming the back of the left hand and the wrist at address form a straight or unbroken line, as though they are a solid wall. When the wall crumbles you have broken down. Ideally, that left hand/wrist wall should remain a single unit at impact and beyond.

The most commonly used putting grip with both hands held closely together and connected is the Reverse Overlap, in which the fingers of the left hand override or overlap those of the right hand. Depending on the size of your hand or length of your fingers, or what feels most comfortable, you could overlap with one, two, three or even four fingers of the left hand. The “baseball” or ten-finger grip is one that produces more feel, as all the digits are touching the club.

Some will say that the break-down of the left hand occurs because the golfer has not made a conscious effort to retain its original position. But the most common notion is that the right hand is the offender; that because it is a right handed person’s Dominant Hand and is therefore intrinsically stronger than the left hand it overwhelms its weaker brother…if allowed to. The right hand forces the left hand and wrist to change angles or alignment in relation to each other—to break down. To that end, most if not all putting instruction says you must keep your Dominant Hand quiet.

The club should always be in the fingers of the left hand for maximum feel. Three ways to place the right hand on the handle: 1. The “V” formed by the thumb and forefinger pointed toward the right shoulder. 2. The hand turned more “under” the handle. 3. The hand turned a lot under, a la Nicklaus.

I’m saying that if you dismiss the left hand altogether and allow your Dominant Hand to dominate there is no need for this warfare. I am not espousing a radical notion. The fact is that most of the best golfers in the world control their putting with their Dominant Hand. They just haven’t said so, in so many words. Or, they may not realize it.

The battle for authority between the hands starts with how you grip the club. The standard formation of the hands on the putter is the Reverse-Overlap grip, by which the forefinger of the left hand rides atop the little finger of the right hand, or sits in the crevice formed by the little finger and third finger. A variation has the forefinger and middle finger of the left hand placed atop the little and third fingers of right hand. Golfers with large hands and/or long fingers go even farther and place the last three or even all four fingers of the left hand atop the four fingers of the right hand. The Reverse-Overlap grip—be it a one-finger or a four-finger overlap—is designed to make the left hand less susceptible to the force of the right hand. But for all that, the left hand still breaks down a lot. The concept is sound, on paper, but it is by no means fool-proof. However, it is not even an issue if you split your grip-the hands separated on the handle- and leave the left hand out of the action except as a stabilizer of the club. I’ll discuss this in more detail in a moment.

Seve Ballesteros and a few other tour pros extend the right forefinger down the handle to provide stability in the stroke and especially more feel for the clubhead.

George Low taught that maximum control of the putter is obtained through the forefinger and thumb of the Dominant Hand. Pressure on the handle is applied with only these two fingers. The other fingers are kept very lightly on the grip.

The term Reverse-Overlap is used because it mimics or is just the opposite of the overlap or Vardon grip, in which the little finger of the right hand overlaps the forefinger of the left hand. This is the grip almost all golfers use for hitting shots with every other club in the bag. It is rare to find players who connect their hands for putting in this way, because if they putt by the conventional notion that the left hand must lead the way it increases the chances of the right hand being too aggressive and forcing the left hand to break down.

Over the past fifteen or so years there have been more than a few players who have sought to make the left hand even more resistant to the powers of the right hand by taking a Cross-Handed putting grip. In this the left hand is below the right hand. They generally connect with the little finger and third finger of the left hand sitting atop the first two fingers of the right hand. It’s an overlap in reverse, so to speak. The cross-handed grip is not new, by any means. I remember me and my buddies trying it back in the 1940s. We found it uncomfortable. If we had stuck with it we surely would have gotten used to it. At the time we found that while putting cross-handed was excellent on short putts—those in

the five feet and under range—it didn’t produce a good feel for distance. Getting the right speed for longer ones was difficult. Obviously, none of those issues exist for today’s players who cross-hand it, and they include some pretty good ones— Jim Furyk, Paul Goydos, Padraig Harrington, among others.

The Cross-Handed grip does help the left hand resist the force of the right hand. However, by rendering the left hand practically immobile the Dominant (right) hand ends up pushing the club through to impact and beyond. Therefore, it too is a grip that plays into the Dominant-Hand method.

Splitting the grip by dropping the right hand well down the handle emphasizes the Dominant Hand method.

We have been talking about connecting the hands in the putting grip, but there is also a disconnect method, so to speak—the so-called Baseball or Ten-Finger grip. With a slight modification this becomes the Split Grip that I recommend and of course goes with the central idea proposed in this book.

The Baseball Grip is what it says it is; there is no connection of the hands. They each wrap around the handle of the putter much in the way they do when holding a baseball bat. I think it’s a good way to go, because all the fingers are on the handle and that gives maximum feel for the club-head.

The spin-off of the baseball grip that best facilitates the Dominant Hand concept being offered here is the Split Grip. This also speaks for itself. The left hand is placed at the top of the club’s handle, and the right hand is placed at least three or four inches below it or any distance you like. I’ve found that the lower down I put my right hand the more

emphasis is put on that hand in the stroke. It is the grip you see golfers using with the extra-long putter. The left hand is at the top end of the club, and the right hand is well down on the handle. Their left hand helps to stabilize the club during the stroke, but the chest or belly the club butts up to is what really does that job. The left hand actually is nothing more than an onlooker, so to speak.

Golfers who use the extra-long and even the belly putter are effectively putting with only the Dominant Hand. However, many golfers find the weight and size of the extra- long putters difficult to manage. Well, you don’t have to use that length putter. You can very easily use a Split Grip with a standard length putter and get the same effect. Actually, a putter was designed with a separate grip wrap down near the clubhead. Your Dominant Hand is essentially in total control of the club. You can of course be a Dominant Hand putter with your hands close together on the club—Reverse Overlap, Baseball, etc.—but I have found that my splitting the hands, and the lower down you set the Dominant Hand, the more conscious you become of that hand being the one in charge of the action.

Where to Hold the Club in Your Hands

All the best players in the game position the handle of the putter in the fingers of the left hand, or along the conjunction of the fingers and the palm—the so-called callous line. It’s also where golfers hold (or should hold) the club for their full-swing shots. The only difference, and it’s an important one, is that for putting the left hand is not turned or twisted to any degree clockwise to the right. You see no knuckles when looking down at your hand when at address. It is called the weak position; the back of the hand is flat and facing the target. Some golfers use the weak grip when playing all their shots in order to keep the left hand from breaking down at impact. That’s why it is referred to as “weak.” Ben Hogan was a prime example. He weakened his left hand in order to beat the hook that kept cropping up in his long game and was keeping him from success on the tournament circuit. Although the pressure on the left hand when putting is not nearly as

severe as when hitting a driver or iron shot, it is still a good idea to maintain a weak left hand. It makes the right hand all the more effective.

The weak left hand applies to Dominant Hand putting, because the hand not being used to any extent should not be allowed to intrude on the action. A “weak” left hand grip on the putter is a universal principle. However, Loren Roberts doesn’t use the split grip but sets his left hand in a way that almost automatically creates the Tilted or Hooded back-stroke that will be described at length in the chapter on the stroke itself. Robert’s left hand positioning will be explained at that time.

There are some golfers who place the putter handle in the palm of the left hand, or at least a bit above the callous line, but it isn’t really necessary and can cause some loss of feel for the club-head because the fingers are not as much in touch with the club.

The position of the right hand is another thing altogether. Being the Dominant Hand, the one that is going to dictate everything you have to say about your putting, you want the handle of club held almost entirely by the fingers. There is going to be a bit of overlap into the callous line simply because of the diameter of the grip, but for the most part the fingers hold the club. One of George Low’s chief principles is that the thumb and forefinger of the Dominant Hand are the ones that control the club and in a very definite way. They don’t touch, but each puts a bit more pressure on the handle than the rest of the fingers. Those are the only fingers that really count, according to Low, who used an everyday activity to make his point. He noted that when we reach into our pocket to get a coin, for example, or lift a piece of paper off a desk, we do it with the thumb and forefinger. It is a clear-cut affirmation of the Dominant Hand concept.

Whether the hands are separated or clamped together, some golfers will position the right hand super-strong; that is, it is turned so far to the right that it sits “under the handle,” as we say, with the palm pretty much looking up at you. Jack Nicklaus’ right hand was in this position. This reduces the play in the hand, which then more or less pushes the club forward. That’s how Jack Nicklaus described how he putted—he pushed the ball, which you can only do with the right hand. Not many golfers on the tour

position the right hand to that extreme. They modify it a bit, but maintain an essentially strong position. To whatever degree you modify the position, in the end you want the back of the right hand either facing directly down at the ground, or directly away from the target.

A recent innovation on the putting grip that is keyed to the right hand is The Claw. In a 2009 Senior PGA Tour event Andy Bean, who adopted this grip, had a mere 46 putts over 54 holes. That’s a phenomenal stretch of good putting and prompted Jim Thorpe to become a member of the Claw Club.

The most conventional form of the “Claw” grip, four fingers of the Dominant Hand slanted across the top of the club handle. Jim Thorpe’s version (right) has only his forefinger angled across the shaft, with the thumb holding the club steady underneath. All versions of the “Claw” are effectively split grips, further evidence that the Dominant Hand is in charge.

Mark Calcavecchia is credited with inventing this innovative grip, which now has a number of advocates. Chris DeMarco and Mark O’Meara are among other notables using the Claw. O’Meara calls his version the Saw, others call it the Paint Brush, but they are all basically the same. Whatever you call it, it is the Dominant Hand that is the claw. The left hand is placed in the conventional way on the club. Then, the four fingers of the right Dominant hand lay more or less horizontally across a portion of left hand’s fingers but mainly across the handle of the club. The right thumb is hooked under the handle. Thorpe’s version has his four fingers split slightly into twos.

However the fingers are placed, when completed the back of the right hand faces pretty much outward. It is held very lightly in this position. The grip is essentially one controlled by the Dominant Hand. It is assumed that the Claw renders the right hand

virtually immobile and takes no part in the stroke. In fact, Thorpe says the grip actually makes the right hand the leader in the stroke action. For one thing, it gets him into the lower right shoulder position that Jack Nicklaus has. This then motivates a Dominant Hand action in that it prompts pushing the ball to the hole with the hand. The uncommon position of the right hand speaks to the Dominant Hand method.

The Forefinger Position

There have been some interesting variations on the position of the right forefinger in putting. Most golfers simply wrap it around the handle. Seve Ballesteros, however, a brilliant putter in his prime, straightened the finger and stretched it down the right side of the grip. When he had a particularly tricky short putt on a very fast green he’d stretch that finger down onto the steel part of the shaft. This placement of the forefinger is designed to stabilize the club, keep it from the slightest waver during the stroke, but it also emphasizes the use of the Dominant Hand to control the club. Jeff Sluman also extends his forefinger this way, but not many pros do. Why not? Perhaps they associate it with amateur golfers and don’t want to be identified with that category of golfer. Silly. It can help.

What To Do With the Thumbs

Most golfers place their thumbs on the center of the handle, even those who use a baseball grip. Most putting grips are manufactured with a flat front to accommodate this positioning of the thumbs, which helps keep the hands square. (That is, the back of the left hand facing the target, the back of the right hand facing directly away from it.) However, some golfers prefer the round grip because they don’t like being “told” where to put their thumbs; they want to dictate the arrangement of their hands and thumbs.

However that goes, with the Split Grip the left thumb is not a big factor if only because the hand as a whole exerts very little pressure on the club. I feel that keeping the left thumb off the center of the club helps to reduce even farther the influence of the hand.

Grip Pressure

A final word on gripping the putter. One of the more colorful phrases in golf instruction has to do with grip pressure. Jimmy Demaret, the first three-time winner of the Masters and someone who could have fun with descriptive metaphors, told me once that you want to hold the club just as would your girl friend or your wife—or just a lady friend. Others have put it another way; hold it like you would a soft tomato, that is, the fruit. Or, as though it was a small bird. In a word, hold it gently, lightly, just enough to control it with no hard squeezing pressure. The same goes for full swing shots with the driver and all the other clubs in the bag.

When golfers are told to hold the club lightly they get a little nervous. They feel the club will loosen in their hands when they swing it. That doesn’t happen with a full swing, so why should it for the much milder action of putting. The reason you won’t lose the club when you hold it lightly is because the physics of motion takes over. When you start your swing an intrinsic force- or instinct- makes your hands tighten on the handle. Because it will happen no matter how tightly you are holding the club before going into action, a problem arises. If you start with your hands very tight on the handle, they get even tighter as the swing begins and the muscles “say” they are over-worked and loosen up. Now the club can and will change position in your hands, which will change the angle of the clubface and break up your rhythm. Specifically to putting, the stroke itself is usually jerky and too fast. The club-face angle will be altered and the ball will not go where you aimed it. And, you have less control over the strength of the stroke; your speed or distance will be erratic. One time you may hit it too hard, another time too soft. There is no consistency in either the speed of your putting or direction. When you start with a light grip those problems are far less likely to arise.

Because in Dominant Hand putting the left hand has little relevance it should be held very lightly on the handle whether you use the Split Grip or a conventional positioning. It should certainly not be not tight, but not super-loose either. Its positioning is conventional, the back of the hand facing toward the target.

Of course, the right hand, which handles every aspect of the stroke, must also be held lightly. This is more crucial to the overall effect of your putting. How light is light? Everyone has their own degree of natural strength and must arrive at their own level of lightness—or, un-tightness. A tried-and-true way to find your personal pressure is to “milk” the handle as you stand over the ball. Squeeze on it hard, release the pressure, squeeze again not quite as hard, and repeat that process until the feel you get when you release the pressure is comfortable and the club feels secure in your hand. Guaranteed, it will be the lighter pressure, and if you stick with it and trust it you will be a more effective putter. Or, as noted earlier, if you concentrate your pressure with only the right thumb and forefinger the issue is taken care of. The rest of the Dominant Hand will also go along for the ride.

Sam Snead used a conventional reverse-overlap grip to putt and liked to put a little more pressure on the handle with his entire left hand. That gave him the sense of security he wanted, but it also made the right hand the more active one, the leader of the action. That is to say, Snead was a Dominant Hand putter. And when he went to the croquet- style and then the side-saddle method of putting—in the former he putted the ball from between his legs, the latter at his side while he faced the target directly—he used a Split Grip and was of course a Dominant Hand putter. When Sam began putting this way, Jimmy Demaret said he looked like he was basting a turkey. Everyone thought Demaret was making fun of Sam, but in fact the wrist action is the same as when brushing oil or juices over the turkey. There is no sideways rotation, only a simple back and forward bending that is very secure against changing the clubface configuration. More on that in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 2 The Stroke First of All, Stand Still Before getting into the path of the stroke and other aspects of how to make that happen, I want to discuss at some length an element you don’t hear enough about but that has a huge impact on results. I’ll start with a statement made by George Low.

At the 1994 U.S. Open, where I saw Low for the last time, I asked him what he would tell someone about putting if he had only one thought to give. No complicated theories, just one simple thing. Low’s answer? “Keep your weight on your left side.” The interpretation is, do not move your body during the stroke. If you are on the left side at address, chances of moving off the ball during the stroke are minimized. In other words, stand still.

Nothing is more important to good putting than standing still. Indeed, when Arnold Palmer gave Low credit after winning the 1960 Masters, he said, “The only thing I did…was keep thinking of what my friend, George Low, always says, ‘Keep your head down, and don’t move.” (my italics)

Movement is most harmful on short putts, those in the two to twelve foot range. If you are missing those putts it is probably because you are moving. At least you should go to that reason first. It will very often cure the problem. It is also a factor in poor long putting—it can result in hitting behind the ball, drop-kicking it—but is more prevalent on the shorter putts. Why? Because they are the ones you expect to make, for one thing. And, they usually mean making a birdie, saving a par or a bogey, or winning a skin. Thus, they are a psychological issue involving your ego and your score (which are associated; never mind the psychologists who say they aren’t or shouldn’t be). Under pressure-stressed nerves it is not uncommon to produce some unnecessary physical movement.

Curious as it may sound, the movement is so subtle an onlooker can’t see it. Neither can you when watching yourself on video. You can’t even feel it, until you think about it and make yourself aware of the possibility. In my experience, the only time you know you are moving is when you make a conscious effort to not move. And when you make that effort and stand still, you also know you were moving because the putt you stroke will be more solid and dead on target than the putts you hit previously. Also, it will probably go farther than you mean it to because you haven’t hit a ball that solid in awhile.

What’s the nature of the movement? And if it is barely detectable, why does it have such a negative effect on putting? Although it is hard to pin-point precisely, the movement is either a bit of a slide to the right on the backstroke and a bit of the same in the opposite direction on the forward stroke. Or, perhaps a slight move in just one of those directions. It might be a rising up of the body then the equal and opposite reaction, a slight drop on the forward stroke; or one or the other. You might have leaned forward or back just a tad. It’s hard to say, but it happens.

Why does such minor movement cause poor putting? If you rise up and then lower your body the chance of striking the ball solidly with the center of the clubface is compromised—you catch it high on the ball, or too low; or with the club-head not moving parallel to the ground at impact. I know I’ve moved when I catch only the top part of the ball, which comes up well short of the cup. The same could happen when moving from side to side, No matter how small those movements may be, putting is a very delicate maneuver and they affect results.

How do you prevent movement? How do you stand still? You can tell yourself to, but most of us need something we can actually do. George Low’s solution, as already noted, was to keep the majority of your weight on your left leg or left side and keep it there throughout the stroke. Arnold Palmer, many will remember, was knock-kneed at the ball; he looked like someone holding a thimble between his knees. That was how he put Low’s advice into play. Jack Nicklaus had the gift of a very substantial lower half of his body; he had heavy legs, which was a big factor in his ability to stand still during the

stroke. That was a gift of nature, and he made the most of it. Nicklaus was a great pressure putter, and at least some of that was because he could stand so still during the stroke.

Three ways to stand still: more weight on the left side, a wide stance, and the “Palmer Squeeze.”

There are other ways to not move. When we wore metal spikes I liked to feel as though my spikes were sunk a foot into the green. Or, I would press my feet down to get that sense. Nowadays, with no steel spikes, I just put a lot of pressure straight down on my feet.

Nick Faldo kept his head absolutely still. He didn’t look up to see the ball until it was well away. A good technique to achieve this is to consciously force yourself to see the spot where the ball had been before looking up to see where it is going. I have refined this age-old golf instruction by focusing not on keeping my head still, but seeing the ball being hit. You might ask, isn’t that the same thing as keeping your head still? Not quite. When you make a point of seeing the contact with the ball, when you see the clubface strike it, you are virtually assured of the stroke being solid. Point being, you can keep your head (and body) absolutely still but if you take your eyes off the ball you can still move. That’s the true reading of the ageless golf instruction, “don’t look up.” It hasn’t to do with your head, but with your eyes.

This brings me to another insight I’ve gathered from golf’s wisdom bank. One day during a Masters tournament I was under the big tree behind the clubhouse at Augusta National, where everybody in the game who can get in meets and greets and does business, or just talks golf. I asked Paul Runyan the same question I had asked George Low; for all the theories and concepts that Runyan had developed over the all the years—and there were a lot of them, for he was not only a great player in his day (two- time winner of the PGA Championship, the first official leading money winner on the tour, and he became a storied teacher into his 80s), his specialty was the short game, at which he himself was a genius. So, Paul, what is it you would tell a golfer if you had time and space for only one thing? “See the ball being hit,” was his answer. In other words, keep your eyes on the ball. It’s one of the most fundamental instructions in the game but not articulated often enough. Instructors who tell their pupils to keep their head still do better to advise keeping their eyes on the ball.

Think of it this way. Hand-eye coordination is at the foundation of golf, just as it is in baseball or any other ball-and-stick game. If your eyes don’t look at the object you mean to hit, your hands can’t coordinate very well with them. Even if your head moves, you can still keep your eyes on the ball and get a decent result. It applies to all golf shots, which of course includes putting.

Some other methods for standing still when stroking a putt?

* Widen your stance, the way you should when playing in a strong wind. But just to make sure, put some downward pressure on your feet.

*Swing only your arms, or your arms and shoulders to initiate the stroke. (More on this upcoming). And no matter what other technique you come up with add putting downward pressure on the ground with your feet.

The Dominant Hand Concept

The most definitive example of the Dominant Hand concept was displayed by Mike Hulbert, who played the PGA Tour from the mid-1980s into the ‘90s. Early in 1989, at the AT&T National Pro-Am, he was in the throes of a streak of bad putting and decided to putt with only his right hand—his Dominant Hand. He said he didn’t do it out of any pre-conceived theory, it just felt right. “A lot of the guys out there,” Hulbert recalled, “when they first noticed, asked me, kind of amazed, ‘Did I see you putting with only one hand?!’ Yes I was, and it worked.” Hulbert said he had one of his best years on the tour putting with only his Dominant Hand on the club. He dropped the idea after a while, for a reason he can’t remember.

Another illustrative example of Dominant Hand putting comes in the form of Tiger Woods. At the 2009 President’s Cup event I spotted him practicing on the putting green and hitting a number of putts with only his right hand, i.e. his Dominant Hand. When I mentioned this to Bradley Hughes, a fine Australian pro who played well on the PGA Tour and represented his country in past President’s Cup competitions, he said he often saw Woods practice this way, and especially on shortish breaking putts, where he needed even more of a touch and feel for speed and line. He never putted one-handed in competition, but by practicing that way he must surely be developing the feel and touch he wants.

Tiger Woods practices often with his Dominant Hand. It is meant to strengthen the control of that hand when he putts in play with both hands on the handle.

Those who use the super-long putter are very definitely Dominant Hand putters. With the top of the club placed against the sternum, or thereabouts (the Australian pro, Peter Senior, puts it on his chin), and held there by the left hand the stroking is done entirely with the right hand, which is well down on the handle and separated considerably from the left hand. We have seen a lot of good putting by players using the long putters. I have never felt comfortable with it, but as already noted I just hold my conventional length putter in much the same way.

Putting involves a lot of sixth sense. That may sound unscientific to an engineering mentality, which golf seems to attract, but it is what putting is so much about; it is more instinct than those who like to put a wholly “scientific” spin on their golf. When Tiger Woods holed that monster 75-foot downhill four-break putt from the back of the 17th green at the 2001 Player’s Championship, for example, do you think at that moment he had drawn up a precise chart and battle plan for where to hit the ball and how hard to hit it? He certainly brought to the job his ability to read undulation, his finely honed stroke, plenty of experience, and great nerves, but in the end, for a putt of that length and

complexity, it was his sense for it that was translated into action by his hands, and more specifically his Dominant Right Hand.

The Dominant-Hand concept makes a lot of sense. If you are right handed, most of everything you do in life is with that hand. It is most adept at controlling any object it is holding. In putting it can control the club-face angle, the path of the stroke, the degree of force you apply to the ball—everything—if you put the hand in complete charge.

Stroke Path—Straight-Back/Straight-Through, vs. the Arc Over the past few years there has been a controversy going on among golfers and golf teachers regarding the path of the putting stroke. Dave Pelz speaks for many who advocate the Straight-Back/Straight-Through path. On the other side of the question are those who believe the best path is an Arc, in which the club-head moves to the inside on the back-stroke, comes around to get onto the target line at impact, then swings back to the left.

Those opposed to Straight-Back/Straight-Through say that it is unnatural, that there are no straight lines in any golf swing and trying to create them is a prescription for failure. Or at least less success. Because golfers stand beside the ball to hit it, a swing with an arc, or a kind of side-swiping of the ball, is natural. That’s how we swing a club for all other shots, and so we should do the same with putting.

The SB/ST people say that their path makes it less likely the angle of the clubface at address will change during the stroke. Thus, the clubface will be square to the target at impact. Furthermore, it requires no re-routing of the club in the forward stroke. Re- routing—changing the path of the club in the forward stroke—makes for inconsistency in getting the club back on the correct path. But SB/ST doesn’t guarantee there will be no re-routing. What makes putting so frustrating is that even though the total length of the stroke may be a few inches, and is made with very little force, the putter can still swing to the left or to the right of the target line at some point in the forward stroke if you aren’t careful. However, if you put your Dominant Hand to work, the problem vanishes.

In my experience the Arc Path puts a beautiful roll on the ball for distance putts. I think that’s because it tends to be a relatively long, sweeping type of stroke with a degree of arm/hand rotation in the follow-through. And, you are not inclined to “hit” the ball but rather give it a nice, rhythmic pass with the club moving at the same speed throughout the stroke. Control of the speed of putts seems to be better, which is why Ben Crenshaw, an arc putter, has always been an especially good lag putter—someone who from 30 and 40 feet can regularly stop the ball within inches of the hole.

An illustration of both the fan-type stroke and straight-back/straight-through. A fanned face (above) opens in the backstroke and faces right of the target. It then comes square at impact (hopefully) and faces left in the follow through. In the straight-back/straight-through stroke (left), the angle of. the clubface never deviates from square; it always faces the target. This leaves a much smaller margin of misdirection error.

That is the stroke pattern George Low taught. In the parlance of the game it is called fanning. George Low likened it to a swinging gate opening and shutting. It appears that the club-face opens—goes out of square—as it is drawn back, then in the forward stroke comes back to square at impact. It is a stroke pattern used by some players back in the day, and even today: pictures of Bobby Jones putting will indicate that pattern. And Bobby Locke, the South African putting genius more or less fanned the blade. It was more common in those days when the greens were much longer and slower than they are today and therefore required a longer stroke; that inevitably brought the club to the inside, which pretty much dictated fanning the clubface. In making such a stroke, the wrists are going to have to bend or rotate sideways to some degree. With perfect

execution the blade may well remain square throughout, but the wrist rotation opens up a lot of potential for error.

I like the roll you get with the fanned Arc stroke on longer putts, and the distance control. But on the whole I think it’s a risky way to putt. If you go Straight-Back and Straight-Through, on longer putts the putter head is going to go inside a little bit, anyway; the length of the stroke dictates that. And on shorter putts the length of the stroke is not (or shouldn’t be) long enough to go inside. For two- and three-footers, in particular, you don’t want to take the putter back to the inside as soon as you begin the stroke. That, too, is unnatural. It just doesn’t feel right, mainly because it is not right.

So, Straight-Back/Straight-Through is the stroke path. To which I add another component in the back-stroke that comes as close to producing a fault-free club-face angle at impact as any I’ve ever known. The “Tilted” or “Hooded” Back-Stroke

We now get into the second central element in the Final Word on Putting. In fact, it isn’t second so much as it is an exact corollary to the Dominant Hand concept. One pretty much goes with the other. A fine team. I speak of the configuration of the putter head and face in the back-stroke. Or, the top-to-bottom angle of the club-face as the club- head is drawn back from the ball. At beginning of the stroke the top line of the putter’s face tilts forward. Older golfers will use the word “hooded.” A good friend of mine, John Erickson, an All-American when he played golf for Fresno State University, a winner on the Canadian Tour, and now teaching golf via the internet, refers to the action as a “tuck.” I like tuck, but Tilt is closer to describing it.

Billy Casper’s stroke is the ultimate expression of Tilt and Hold. The

clubface at the completion of the backstroke is facing downward. It is dead square to the target line. He holds the Tilt until the ball is struck, then releases it and follows down the line.

At a first glance those who see this will say the club-face is shut or closed. It is not, because the clubface may tilt but it remains square to the target line. A closed club- face is one that angles to the left of the target, just as open-face angles to the right. A tilted club-face simply points down toward the ground.

The Tilt is not a glaring distortion of the club-head or club-face. It’s not a distortion at all. When the club-head is brought straight back from the ball, and the action creating this Tilt practically assures it, the club-face will be dead square to the target line. Next chance you get, watch Tiger Woods putter blade when he hits a putt. With even the shortest back-stroke you will see the club-head Tilt. Brad Faxon, another highly regarded putter on today’s PGA Tour, shows the same thing. Same with Steve Stricker, and perhaps ninety percent of the golfers on the various pro tours. It may be so common that television analysts and teaching pros hardly ever, or never remark on it. Why, I can’t say, but to recognize and know about it expands your capacity to be a very good putter if only because it will get you back to good putting when you’re going through a bad patch.

Tiger Woods’ putting stroke is another example of Tilt and Hold, although it not as total as Casper’s. The toe is slightly open, but it is mostly titled, and he rotates the clubhead to the left after impact. Woods is also a fine example of keeping the eyes on the ball (and the head still) throughout the stroke through impact and well beyond.

Tilting the putter blade is hardly a new concept. Loren Roberts, known on the Senior Tour (as he was on the PGA Tour) as “Boss of the Moss” for his outstanding putting talent, consciously applies it. Roberts told me he learned the Tilt from Olin Dutra, the 1934 U.S. Open champion. The late Bob Rosburg, another outstanding putter and a Casper contemporary, also employed a distinctive Tilt.

Loren Roberts’ Tilted-blade backstroke is an exact replica of Billy Casper’s. Roberts variation is to tilt the blade upward after impact.

Another image of the Tilted or Hooded back-stroke emulates in a much smaller way the “Square-to-Square” swing concept that Golf Digest magazine introduced some 50 years ago. Older golfers will remember it. Tom Watson did, as he mentioned in recapping the putt he had for par on the72nd hole to get a tie for the 2009 British Open. “During Monday’s practice round I made a slight adjustment in my putting stroke. I wanted to make sure I went more square to square…That’s what I was trying to think [about] on the eight-footer on Sunday, square to square.” He missed in this instance, but the idea is still very sound.

In full-swing terms “Square-to-Square” said, in brief, that the backswing began with the hands pulling the club back with no wrist-cock or rotation of the wrists and arms, and the club swung back to the ball in much the same way. It was an anti-fan swing, and in our context it is to say you do not fan the club open in the backswing ala Ben Crenshaw’s putting stroke. It is generally agreed that the “Square-to-Square” theory turned out to be disastrous in terms of the full swing and the source of many backaches, wrist injuries and the like. Some years later Jim Flick, the famous golf teacher who had endorsed “Square- to-Square,” apologized for having foisted the concept on the golfing public. Alas, the only part of the game where “Square-to-Square” works, and works very well, is in putting. It essentially creates the Tilt or Hooded back-stroke.

As noted, at a glance it may appear that the Tilt shuts the blade down. That has a negative connotation, suggesting that the face is closing or otherwise angling out of square. In fact, the blade is simply de-lofted a bit. If you maintain that de-lofted angle through to impact with the ball, as recommended, the ball is struck just below its equator with the center of the club-face. This constitutes the most solid strike you can possibly put on the ball. You never want to contact the ball with the lower portion of the club-face, because that will almost surely give the ball lift. Nor do you want to strike the lower portion of the ball, for the same reason. Golfers have been led to believe that if they hit the ball when the club is beginning to rise they will put more over-spin on the ball. Over spin is not a bad thing, but more often than not the ball is hit by the lower portion of the club-face which actually puts under-spin on it. Under spin is not a good thing in putting.

Making contact with a slightly Tilted or Hooded club-face more or less drives the ball down and puts a perfect roll on it. Draw a line with a Sharpie on your ball and set it at your target, and you will see the truth of this. The line never wavers to either side.

Keep in mind that all putters have a certain degree of loft built in. It was especially necessary in olden days, when the greens had longer and thicker grass than is now fairly standard. The loft was designed to get the ball atop the grass and into a rolling mode as soon as possible. In the Bobby Jones era and even beyond, the putter loft would be in the 8 to 9 degree range. Today’s putters are in the 2 or 3 degree range of loft. But no matter how much loft the putter blade has, when the ball is hit it hops in the air a bit. Upon landing it skids a few inches before it settles down and begins a true roll. A slightly de- lofted club-face minimizes that hop and skid, and reduces the potential for the ball skewing off line after landing. All of this is in terms of micros, but in putting every little bit affects the results. Recent analysis has shown that Tiger Woods gets his ball rolling true faster than anyone else, which certainly has something to do with how well he putts. In our context it is the result of how he Tilts the club-face on his back-stroke.

Another term used for hitting the ball with a slightly de-lofted (but square to the target line) club-face is trapping the ball. It’s what Ben Hogan did with his full-swing shots, and was what in large part gave him such remarkable control over the flight of his shots. It’s a good term, because it says the ball is not going anywhere but where you want it to go – it is trapped—whether you are hitting it with a driver or a putter.

The Mechanics of Tilting or Hooding

If you go along with the Dominant Hand concept, you will start the putter back with only that hand. You pull the club back from the ball with your Dominant Hand. By that act alone the club-face is going to remain dead square, and will probably Tilt slightly. It just happens. However, you can enhance the action by bending your right hand backward very slightly to as you bring the club back from the ball. To exaggerate by way of describing the move, if you were to continue bending the Dominant Hand and bring the club back as far as your right hip, let’s say, the palm of the hand would be facing the

ground. That’s not going to happen, of course, because the length of the stroke is much, much shorter. The important thing about this move is that it be done only with the hand/wrist, except on very long putts, when some arm movement is necessary. The forearm remains quiet. This eliminates the possibility of altering the angle of the clubface.

The back-stroke wrist action or Tilt and Hold will show the right wrist cupped as seen in the far left image, or the left hand cupping under as shown here by Loren Roberts. Roberts’ extremely “weak” left hand grip is designed to create the cupping action.

Let me describe the action another way. If you putt with your hands together, the slight bending of the right wrist will show the back of the left hand beginning to face down toward the ground. You can also achieve the effect with the left hand kind of curling under, or tucking, as my friend Erickson has it. One way or the other, there will be just the merest crimp or curl in your right wrist. However you do it the clubface will Tilt slightly downward from the top line. Here again by way of exaggeration, if you continued the stroke so the club-head past your right hip the clubface would actually face directly at the ground.

Is this to say the back-stroke is made with only the Dominant Hand, and there is no movement by any other body part? Not quite. As I will point out a little further on, you can put the club in motion with your shoulders or your arms while at the same time producing the Tilt.

The Forward Stroke

The combination of the backstroke and forward stroke is what I call Tilt and Hold. That is to say, the club-face is Tilted in the back-stroke and the tilt is maintained or held in that position all the way to impact with the ball. In fact, the face will not be tilted at impact. You will instinctively un-tilt it at that point. But even if it is tilted, the ball will come off truly. To hold the Tilt you simply maintain that slight curl or bend of the right wrist (or left hand). Indeed, as Jack Nicklaus has said, “The right hand hits the ball.” On longer putts I have found that by releasing the Tilt after impact as Loren Roberts does, you improve distance control. It is like the end of a sweep with a broom, and comes naturally, as long as you are putting with your Dominant Hand.

I call this total action—Tilt and Hold—my U.S. Amateur stroke, because it’s the one I used when I qualified for the 1971 U.S. Amateur Championship. I made a 9-footer on the last hole for a birdie that got me into a playoff for the third and last spot, and holed a 12- footer on the second playoff hole to get into the championship proper. Why I periodically went away from this stroke over the years is a puzzle I have yet to figure out. I am not alone in abandoning, or as Gary Player once put it, forgetting a method that worked. It seems to be in the nature of the game, and those who play it.

Starting the Stroke—Ignition Keys

The need to stand still when putting is complicated by the fact that you have to move the putter to get the whole business going. Because golf is a game in which you hit a stationary object it seems to be the easiest of all the ball-and-stick games. That has always been the take on golf by those who have never played it. But the paradox is, the very fact that the ball is just sitting there waiting to be moved and you too are standing still is what makes it so difficult. You have to generate the first movement, and from a standstill, which makes you susceptible to a twitchy start when a glassy smooth one is what you need. You are not stimulated into movement by a ball coming at you. You can’t rear back or lift your lead leg like a baseball batter or take the little hop tennis players do

when receiving serve. You need to find ways to get in motion with a silky ease while, in effect, not moving out of position. How?

Jack Nicklaus made a bit of technique popular when he came on the scene and began winning big in the early 1960s. He would (and still does) hold the putter head just off the ground behind the ball as he looks at his line and sets himself physically and mentally to make a stroke. (He does the same with his other clubs as well.) He eventually puts the putter head on the ground behind the ball, but just barely. And then he begins his stroke. There are two values in this. One, by holding the club off the ground you obtain a maximum feel of the club-head. It’s like hammering a nail. You don’t start with the hammer head on the nail, you hold it just above and maybe even give it a bit of waggle before whacking it

Two, with the club-head off the ground or just above it the takeaway will be much smoother than if it began sitting on the ground. You don’t have to fight the ground to get the putter into motion. Nicklaus has often said he did this to be sure he didn’t move the ball before beginning his stroke, and thereby incur a penalty. Perhaps, but the tempo of his stroke is a nice tangential outcome.

What are some other ways to begin the stroke?

Don Pooley, one of the best putters to ever play the tour, has a slightly different take on Nicklaus’ club-just-above-ground technique. Pooley raises his putter-head an inch or so off the ground just before he begins the back-stroke, then starts the club back. In effect, he starts his back-stroke with a lifting of the putter head a tad off the ground. This ignition key takes a certain amount of coolness and self-control that most golfers might find a bit much. It’s worth a try, though.

There are other methods by which to start the stroke smoothly so that the rest of the action is well-coordinated and well-paced. One is the forward press. It was very prominent for many years, especially when making full swings, but for some reason fell out of use. However, Phil Mickelson brought the forward press back into vogue when he won the fourth leg of the 2009 FedEx Cup competition. He began to forward press after

taking putting lessons from Dave Stockton, who has always been an advocate of the action. I like the forward press, often employ it, and have found that when done correctly it rather automatically Tilts or Hoods the club-face. This eliminates the need to use your Dominant Hand or wrist to create the angle.

In making the Forward Press, the hands move laterally to the left. Notice how after forward pressing (right), the clubface is essentially pre-Tilted. Now all you need to do is draw the club back with your Dominant Hand.

To forward press, just before starting the back-stroke push your hands forward a tad. If done correctly, with only the right hand generating the action, it creates a movement that produces a smooth takeaway. A cautionary note on this: You must be careful to not change the angle of the clubface when you forward press. If you twist the hand at the same time as you press it forward you will open or shut the club-face and misdirect your putt. I like the forward press. Just be careful to keep the club-face square when you do it.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Going Wristless The absolute first law of putting—the universal of all universals—is to have the club- face square—at a 90-degree angle to the target line—when the ball is struck. A face that is open or closed at impact—aimed right or left of the target—will of course send the ball in that direction. Altering the angle of the clubface (assuming you have it correctly

aligned at address) is the central problem in putting, and the tendency to begin the stroke with a cocking of the wrists, which is intuitive, exacerbates the possibility. You have a fairly light object in your hand and it seems natural to swing it back and forth with your hands and/or wrists. After all, the hands are actually holding the club and would seem best able to control the club. On slow greens that impulse is even greater.

However, the surest way to keep the clubface square is to do it with your Dominant Hand and by Tilting the club-face when beginning the stroke.

The Arms Have It

The most common way to produce a putting stroke with minimum or no wrist cock is to take the putter back with only your arms. One of the advantages, aside from eliminating wrist-action, is control of the tempo. Nothing is so effective to good putting as a slow stroke tempo. When the tempo has a slow pace it is much easier to maintain the original at-address club-face angle. Jack Nicklaus is the prime illustration of that. It seems his back-stroke takes a full minute to complete, as though it was in slow-motion. The arms make that happen because they are heavier and more muscled than the hands and wrists. You can of course produce a Tilt at the same time the arms generate the movement of the club.

Shoulders and Arms? Swinging the club back with your shoulders might be considered the same thing as the arms-only action if only because the shoulders and arms are rather closely attached. The difference is that the shoulders are even heavier muscle masses than the arms, and will move even slower. By this method the shoulders move more or less like a see-saw or rocking-chair. This is how Loren Roberts describes his technique. The left shoulder dips down in the back-stroke and the right shoulder rises. In the forward-stroke the right shoulder dips and the left shoulder rises. There is not a lot of dip in either case, but there is some.

An illustration of the rocking shoulders when they are used to swing the clubhead.

You can experiment with each of these—the arms-only and the rocking shoulders—and find which is more compatible to your feel and physicality. If you stroke with only your arms, the shoulders move with them. And if you start with the shoulders the arms have no choice but to go along. The difference is, with the shoulders-only there is a bit more consistency from one stroke to the next. Both of these techniques, by the way, tend to produce a Straight-Back/Straight-Through stroke path. Either way, the chance of their being any wrist action is minimal…unless you add them to the mix as described earlier.

Hitting It on the Downbeat

Another stroke for slow greens is what George Low taught. Strike the ball with the club-head moving slightly downward. He called it “hitting it on downbeat.” It’s amazing how good you can be with this, especially from five feet and under. A terrific player from the late 1940s into the 1950s, Lloyd Mangrum, putted this way and was an exceptionally good putter from short range.

I’ve found that hitting it on the downbeat works best standing pretty close to the ball at address. Mangrum was right on top of it. As you might imagine the club-head needs to rise a bit in the back-stroke in order to hit the ball on the downbeat, although it is not to any extreme. Instead of keeping the club low to the ground going back, as is customary, just lift it a tad when first moving it away from the ball. Or, take it back low and raise it a bit at the finish of the back-stroke. It is very much a Dominant Hand stroke.

It’s in the down-stroke, of course, where the feature attraction is playing. You want to strike the middle of the ball with the blade going on a downward path. Once the contact is made there is no need to follow-through. Believe it or not. Mangrum didn’t follow- through at all, at least on the shorter ones; he stuck his pick, as the old pros put it. Low said that was fine.

I don’t think the no-follow-through is the way to go on longer putts. But for the short ones it is deadly good, so good that I have no problem using a more conventional downbeat for longer putts then reverting to the downbeat inside four feet. It’s remarkable how accurate the putts are when hit this way, and they are almost never short of the cup. It will remind you of those times when you have a one or two footer left after a first putt and, if there is nothing on the line, you reach across and tap the ball toward you and the hole. You are effectively hitting the top portion of the ball with a downbeat, and you almost never miss. That’s a kind of proof that the stroke can be very effective.

The "downbeat" stroke. The path of the club to the ball is slightly vertical, with contact between the center of the clubface and the equator of the ball.

Stroke Length and Pace

Generally speaking the length of the stroke—the distance the club-head travels both back from the ball and through impact—is determined by the distance the putt must cover. The shorter the putt, the shorter the overall stroke, although on the high-speed greens played on the pro tours these days even longer putts are getting tight little take- backs and follow-throughs. Tiger Woods is the first-class example of that. One way or another, fast greens, slow greens or in between, there is a definite correlation between the length of a putt and the length of stroke to get the distance, especially in respect to the

back-stroke. The longer it is, the farther you are going to hit the ball, unless you decelerate at impact. Deceleration is not a good thing.

It’s important that the length of the back-stroke matches that of the follow-through. This is another universal rule of good putting; if your back-stroke is eight inches, the forward-stroke should be the same length. Lloyd Mangrum may have putted very well “sticking his pick,” but he was unusual for that even in his time. If the length of the follow-through does not match that of the back-stroke it is often because you have “hit” at the ball rather than stroke through it. As the pros say, you want the stroke to be the same length on both sides with the ball just getting in the way of the club.

That brings up the overall pace of the stroke. Ideally, you want it to be the same from beginning to end. There have been some pretty good putters who have made a fairly short back-stroke and then hit the ball with a faster and overall shorter forward-stroke. Hubert Green, for example, who won a lot of PGA Tour events and two majors (U.S. Open and PGA Championship), accelerated the putter head into impact and didn’t have much of a follow-through. That takes a tremendous amount of practice, not to say exceptional talent. I don’t think it’s for the average golfer.

The value of a short back-stroke is that there is far less chance the angle of the putter blade will change; it is more apt to stay as it was at address. If you have it aimed properly you are probably going to make the putt (if you put it on the correct line).

At this point I have to talk about the opposite of the Tilt and Hold stroke. It is Crenshaw’s stroke. Because he’s such a wonderful putter it may seem odd to come down against it, but that’s what I’m going to do. George Low characterized the stroke he taught, and that is Crenshaw’s, as a gate swinging open and shut. It is basically the Arc Stroke I talked about earlier. The putter head goes back to the inside, then swings back to parallel with the target line at impact then swings back to the inside. The key problem is that the wrists rotate sideways, whereas with the Tilt they bend forward and back. If the club-face opens when fanned it must be closed or squared by the time it gets to the ball. There is a very wide margin for error with this type of stroke. A supremely talented

golfer such as Crenshaw is able to produce that stroke consistently, but not without hours and months and years of practice. It is not the way the average golfer should go about putting. He just doesn’t have the time, for one thing, to perfect the stroke. It is so much simpler to take the putter straight back with a slight wrist bend (or none at all) then bring it back to the ball. The margin for error is far narrower.

Hold It!

Finally, a last word on the putting stroke that you may not hear much about. If you can do it, at the completion of the back-stroke hold the club for a moment before starting it toward the ball. That little pause can be very, very refreshing. It’s the equivalent of taking a deep breath before going forward. It is the best antidote to the rushed stroke. One day I was playing a round of golf with Gardner Dickinson, a tour player in the 1950s and early’60, and a disciple of Ben Hogan. I had my pause going with my putter, and when Dickinson saw that he damn near collapsed with what I suppose was envy, or just amazement that someone could do that. Apparently it was something he had always strived for but couldn’t reach.

There’s no technique involved, it’s a question of self-control. If you can do it you will instantly become a much better putter than you’ve ever been.

The Sweet-Spot

Whatever stroke path you may have, and no matter how long or short your stroke may be, in the end you must make contact with the ball on the so-called sweet-spot. This is the absolute center of balance on the club-head. When you strike the ball on the sweet-spot the blade will not deviate from its original address position. By contrast, if you hit the ball to the right of the sweet-spot—toward the toe of the club—the blade will turn to the left—close—and the ball will move to the left of the intended line of putt. If you hit the ball inside the sweet-spot—toward the heel—the face will open and the putt will start off to the right of the intended target. Hitting it on the sweet-spot not only makes you a more accurate putter, your distance control is also enhanced. If you have correctly gauged how

firm to strike the ball, you will get what your instincts told you is the right speed on which to stroke the ball if you hit it on the sweet-spot.

Many putter manufacturers define the sweet-spot on their clubs with a line or a dot at that point somewhere on the blade, usually on the top of it. It is not necessarily in the exact center of the blade. The most precise manufacturers will put the sweet-spot mark where it actually belongs, which is more likely closer to the heel. All golf clubs are stronger or more stable at that point, because it is nearer to where the shaft and club-head connect. However, not all putter makers mark their sweet-spot at all, or correctly. You do well to find it for yourself. It is easy to do. Hold the putter with the fingers of one hand on top of the grip and vertically in front of you. Then, with a finger of the other hand tap the face of the club where you think the center point or sweet-spot is. Or, where it is marked. If the putter head goes straight back without a wobble you have found it. If it wobbles or angles off to the right or left, you haven’t found it yet. Once you have found the sweet- spot, if the manufacturer’s mark is already at that point you’re in business. If not, re-mark it yourself or delineate it with a Sharpie and, if you don’t mind nicking your clubs a little, make the mark permanent with a file.

If the putter head goes straight back (left) its angle not changed, you have tapped the sweet-spot. If the blade angles out of square to the right (center) or left (right) you haven't.

CHAPTER 3

The Address Position

Ball Position and Width of Stance Lee Trevino has a routine when preparing to hit his shots, be it with a driver, a 6-iron, or a putter. He moves both of his feet laterally to the left along the target line. He is making sure that he has the ball positioned well between his feet. He is expressing a cardinal rule: The ball must be on a line somewhere inside your feet. That sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many golfers align the ball left of their left foot, or at least off the big toe. Usually it comes without realizing it, and derives from the instinct to get the ball in the air; you feel that with the ball forward you can hit it on the upswing and loft it. In full-swing golf that may work, although only with the driver. It doesn’t apply to putting, because you don’t want to loft the ball. You must check ball position every time you address the ball to putt and make sure the ball is aligned at least a few inches to the right of your left heel. I recommend a few more inches than that.

It can be difficult to visualize just where the ball is aligned. Lee Trevino does his slide step action to the left, because he uses a fairly significant open stance—his left foot pulled back farther from the target line than his right foot—which makes it harder to visualize the ball position. There are other ways I’ve found to make certain of your ball- to-feet alignment.

For example, once into your address position pull the putter straight back from the ball to between your feet. That will show you where the ball is situated in relation to your feet. Curtis Strange has always done that.

I came up with another method that Johnny Miller thought was pretty good when I showed it to him. When you take your address position, look to see where your left leg is in relation to the shaft of the club. The more space you see between the shaft and your left leg the farther to the right is the ball aligned. The shaft is the landmark, so to say.

In all shot-making the ball must be within your feet at address, but it is especially crucial when putting because of how precise you must be. Putting does not have a large margin for error. The exact position within your feet can sharply influence the effect of a putt. If you play the ball just inside your left heel you are going to hit it somewhat on the up-stroke. Many golfers do this, but this opens up the chance of not catching the whole ball when you strike it. You are liable to contact it in the middle or even slightly above the middle, and you will have a problem getting the distance you need. You could also misdirect the ball, because the putter face will or can be opening or closing at impact.

If you play the ball in the middle of your feet you have the best chance of hitting it solidly. However, there are special circumstances when ball position departs from the standard. For example, on right-to-left putts, especially those with a lot of break, if you play the ball farther back in your stance—close to the right instep—you will hit the ball a little sooner than usual and it will move to the right of your target when stroked. You won’t have to manipulate the club to get this result. It’s how you assure getting the ball up on the high side of the break.

When you have a sharply breaking left-to-right putt play the ball more forward in your stance than you would ordinarily—more toward the left heel. Now you will hit the ball with the blade having leveled off and moving just a tad to the left of the target line, which will send it onto the high left side of the hole.

Width of Stance

How wide to space your feet at address is a matter of personal comfort, and balance. As a rule, the wider you spread your feet the more stable you will be during the stroke. However, Tiger Woods has a very narrow stance and putts pretty well. The thing you have to be alert to when your feet are close together is ball position. You can’t use any preset notion such as playing the ball so many inches off the left heel. As Dave Stockton points out, if you play the ball four inches inside your left heel but your feet are only a few inches apart, you are going to be putting off your right heel.

Otherwise, you will see even Tiger widen his stance when putting on a very windy day.

Body Angle at Address

Some of the best putters in the history of the game have putted with an open stance. That is, the line of their feet, hips, and shoulders is left of the target; they are at an oblique angle to the target line. Some have opened up more than others. Gene Sarazen told me he had an open stance because he could see the line better on which he wanted to roll the ball. Jack Nicklaus did it for the same reason. When you are opened up you can look at your target with both eyes, as opposed to peripherally with one eye or perhaps one-and-a- half eyes. Those who stand square should turn their head completely to face the target when are looking down the line. Dave Stockton does that. Some golfers stand open at the ball believing it frees up the arms in making the stroke; they feel they are not blocked by the body. I think the putting stroke is too short for that to happen, but if you do feel comfortable standing open go with it. With a proviso.

Three ways to address the ball with respect to body angle. Open, Closed, and Square. Square is the way to be most consistent in putting the ball on the chosen line.

I have often putted with an open stance, and did some decent putting. But I find that in doing so I sometimes tend to push my right shoulder out toward the target line; it is closer to the ball than my left shoulder. This leaves open the possibility of taking the putter back to the outside of the target line. This, in turn, requires an adjustment in the forward stroke; you need to re-route the putter to get it moving down the target line. You can pull a putt to the left one time, push it to the right another time. If you want to stand open at address do it but only with your feet and hips and keep your shoulders parallel to the target line—in other words, square. That is the key to the body angle at address.

You can avoid all these complications by simply standing square to the target line in all respects. That’s the way Tiger Woods does it. His entire body—shoulders, hips, both feet—are dead parallel with the target line. He is not only a great putter because he has a gift; he has excellent mechanics that include his address position.

Posture, and Distance from the Ball at Address

Posture is an issue in putting because it has an impact on the path of your stroke. It can also affect you physically. For example, Raymond Floyd began putting with a longer putter so he could practice more; not having to bend over was easier on his back. George Low liked to get down close to his work. Nicklaus did too; he bent quite low at address,

a posture that may well have contributed to the back problems he would suffer as he got older. Tiger Woods stands tall to the ball, and many modern-day players follow that pattern.

To a large extent, your posture is determined by how far you stand from the ball at address. The closer you are to the ball the more erect your posture. The farther you stand from it the more bent forward will you be. Is there a right and wrong here? Not really. Whatever makes you comfortable is the right way, but you must recognize that your posture will be a factor in your stroke path. If you want to take the putter straight back and straight through you are better off standing fairly close to the ball, and tall. If you stand farther back from the ball you are likely to produce an Arc path, the putter going inside to out to inside.

There are caveats in this. Stand too close to the ball and you are liable to take the putter back to the outside or toward your target line, which requires a re-routing of the club to get moving down the target line at impact. This sort of adjustment leads to inconsistency in accuracy and distance. By the same token, if you stand too far from the ball at address you are apt to swing the putter too much to the inside, which usually produces a roundhouse approach to the ball and putts that go left of the target with right-to-left spin.

Check Your Putter’s Lie Angle

There is another thing to bear in mind in regard to the distance you stand from the ball. Most golfers fail to consider it. In order to strike your putt as solidly as possible and consistently you want the entire sole of the putter head flush to the ground at address. If not the entire sole, at least 90 percent of it. The most notable example of the toe of the putter being up in the air is Isao Aoki, the fine Japanese player. He sets his putter on the heel with rest of the club-head jutting up. Aoki is making contact with the heel of the putter where it attached to the shaft. This is the strongest part of all golf clubs, in terms of construction, and where you will get the most solid impact, which is why Aoki does it. However, Aoki plays golf for his living and over the years has hit millions of putts to

perfect his unusual technique. It is not for the average golfer, or even the rest of the pro tour players.

If the toe of your putter is off the ground a significant amount at address you are probably standing too far from the ball. Move up closer to the ball to get the sole completely grounded. That will tell you the distance you should be standing from the ball. However, if you are comfortable standing a bit farther back from the ball, and you like the putter you are using, you can reset the lie-angle of your putter so it will sit flush to the ground. A professional club repair man can do that for you—he can bend the hosel to reset the lie angle. Or, you can cut down the overall length of the putter, which will get you closer to the ball. Or, find a putter that already has a lie-angle in which you can take the position at the ball you are comfortable with—with the lie-angle that suits you—and that sits flush to the ground. I have seen golfers at address who have the heel of their putter off the ground, but that is very unusual.

Eyes Over the Ball?

A final detail in regard to the address position. Should you stand at the ball with your eyes directly over the ball? That is, when at address an imaginary line down from your eyes will fall on the top center of the ball. That is taught by many teachers. Jack Nicklaus is a strong advocate. So are Dave Stockton and Phil Rodgers. The reasoning has to do with visual perception. If your eyes are on a line an inch or two inside the ball, they say, when you look down the line of your putt you will see a right-to-left curve that actually isn’t there. And, if you should happen to have your eyes on a line past the ball or to the other side of it (which is very rare) you will see a left-to-right break that isn’t there. I’m not going to say Nicklaus, Stockton and Rodgers or any other top player or teacher who professes eyes-over-the-ball don’t know what their talking about, but surveys taken of the tour pros have shown that on average most of them have their eyes just inside the ball.

The only advantage to having your eyes directly over the ball at address is you will stand closer to it, which promotes a straight-back/straight-through stroke path.

If you are someone who likes to stand fairly close to the ball at address, your eyes will probably be directly over the ball at address. If you stand farther back you will probably need to bend forward to some degree to get that. I’m not sure the bending is worth it. As noted, you want to stand with a posture that is most natural to you and if being back from the ball is your thing and your eyes are inside the ball, go with it.

CHAPTER 4

Aiming and Figuring Out Where to Aim

A famous story in golf’s anecdotal history concerns the very young Ben Crenshaw. When he was just beginning to learn to play golf his teacher, the legendary Harvey Penick, noticed the youngster was hitting putts and coming close but not making them. He didn’t seem to mind. Penick told him that the idea of the game was to put the ball in the hole. On went the proverbial light bulb. Crenshaw did not know that, but once he did, as we know, he became one of the finest putters in the game.

Aiming your putter is actually a simple business. You just set the clubface at a 90- degree angle to line of putt you have chosen. The alignment of your body does not have to match up. Jack Nicklaus, among others, as we’ve remarked, putts from an open stance. In other words, you don’t aim with your feet or hips, because the putting stroke is so abbreviated compared to a full swing. I will say, however, as I said earlier, it is a good idea to set your shoulders parallel to your target line. If you can do that, even if the angle of your feet and hips are open you will have little trouble putting the ball on target.

Nothing is etched in stone, of course. Gary Player putts with a slightly closed stance— his right foot pulled back a bit farther from the target line than the left foot. Player is emulating the technique of Bobby Locke, a South African and boyhood hero. Player’s putting stroke, however, comes nowhere near the in-and-over path Locke used. In fact, at the height of his career, Player hit his putts with a downbeat. Still, the slightly closed stance does encourage taking the putter back a bit to the inside and setting up an arc stroke. Player, though has not completed the arc; he comes back to contact with the club- face square and follows through right after it.

Back in the 1940s and ‘50s a lot of us would stand square to the ball when putting but pulled our left foot back a few inches from the target line. It wasn’t an open stance in the true sense, and we did it thinking it allowed a bit of freedom on the left side for the arms to swing through. You never see that anymore. One way or the other, the idea is to have

the face of the putter at a 90-degree angle to the target line. The main issue in this chapter is finding that line of putt.

Reading the Greens—Which Way Will the Ball Break, and By How Much A very high percentage of the putts you play during a round of golf will have some break in them—the ball will not go dead straight from beginning to end, but will turn or veer in another direction before reaching the end of its journey. That can happen when you mis-hit the ball and put side-spin on it, but we will take for granted you are going to make a sound stroke and discuss here the undulation in greens that affect the course of its roll.

On golf courses constructed before the 1960s the greens were almost always sloped from back to front. This was designed for drainage purposes, so rain water would not puddle in the middle of the green. It would run down off the front of it. As a result, on these greens the only perfectly dead straight putt is from directly in front of or directly behind the hole. All others have some break in one direction or another, but of a very subtle kind. There was not the gyroscopic hill-and-dale undulation we see so much of these days.

In the early decades of American golf economy was the first consideration in the construction of golf courses. The less earth that was moved artificially, the less expensive the cost of construction. Same with the elevation of greens. In most cases they were merely a shorter-grassed extension of the fairway. Of course, even in the old days there were a few course designers who would significantly shape the putting terrain, which is a friendly way of describing the sometimes humungous mounds they created to make putting, especially, a torturous event. Charles Banks, a course designer who built some wonderful courses from tee to green in the 1920s and ‘30s, was nicknamed “Steam Shovel” for the extreme mounding he put into his greens with the use of the first mechanized earthmovers. The term, “there are elephants buried in the greens,” may well have derived from Banks’ work. He didn’t inter any elephants, of course, but legend has

it that a steam shovel he was using to expand the Whippoorwill CC, in New York, sank in ground softened by exceptionally heavy rains, and is still down there.

With the advent of more modern earthmoving equipment beginning around the 1960s, and Americans enjoying a booming economy, course designers became far more “inventive” in their green constructions. They now go so far as to defy nature. For example, it was a commonplace in golf that if there is water to one side of the green, say a pond or lake or the ocean, a putted ball will almost invariably break toward it because the natural flow of the terrain is in that direction. Or, on a course in the mountains or hilly country, the ball usually breaks away from the higher ground. But modern-day architects, with their ubiquitous bulldozers and scrapers, have put the lie to these old truths. They can move ground so easily now that they shape the contour of a green contrary to what it would naturally be. They can fix it so the ball will break away from the water, or toward the mountain. This confounds older golfers more than the newer generations.

One way or the other, you must learn to read the greens to determine the contour between your ball and the hole in both degree and at what point and by how much the ball will change direction. Into that mix you must definitely gauge the speed at which to hit the ball, because the speed of the ball as it rolls along categorically affects how much break it will take. The more speed, the less the ball will break. And vice-versa.

A very interesting comment was made by the aforementioned Bobby Locke, the South African putting genius, when I interviewed him in Vermont in the 1970s. We talked almost exclusively about putting and at one point Locke said, “Every putt is a straight putt.” What he meant was, once you decide where you believe the ball will begin to turn or break toward the hole your job is to putt the ball to that point; which effectively makes your putt a straight one.

Fair enough, but determining at what point the ball will begin to change direction and head for the hole is still the central issue. In essence, it is un-teachable. It takes a lot of experience to develop a good eye for reading the break, and even then it’s never certain. You’re dealing with a kind of void. You are looking into space, as it were, with no hard

landmarks, and have to decide where in that space the ball will change course. No matter how much experience you’ve had, there are variables that are difficult if not impossible to see and that affect the direction of the ball. I recall watching Andy Bean, a very fine tour pro, checking each golf ball he was to use in a round with a magnifying glass to see if each dimple was perfectly smooth. Sam Snead could tell just by hitting a ball if it had too much paint in the grooves, which affected the flight on full shots and how it rolled on the greens. But even a perfectly manufactured ball rolling over the smoothest of putting surfaces can and will hit invisible bumps in the road and veer off course. There could be a bit of grass higher than the rest around it that you simply can’t see and that will knock the ball off line. If you take a Stimp meter, the funnel device used to measure the speed of greens, and run ten balls through it at the same position from twelve feet or so, nine will go in…but one won’t. Why didn’t the tenth one go in? It was going at the same speed and on the exact same line as the others? Because putting is intrinsically an uncertain activity. The slightest depression in the green, a tiny nib of grass poking up can knock the ball off course. It doesn’t take much.

Still, figuring out where the ball will begin to break, by how much and in what direction involves some relatively hard facts that can make the task easier. If you know what to look for, and how to look for them, you stand a decent chance of getting it right—or very close to right.

Grain on the Greens

In the old days of the tour one of the first things the pros would do when they arrived at a new course was to see where the sun set. That would tell them the direction of the grain of the greens in the morning, and then in the afternoon, and especially late in the afternoon. Grain is formed by the direction in which the tips of the grass blades lie. They always seek the sun and, so to say, aim themselves toward it. In the morning the tips will point toward the east, where the sun is coming up. In the afternoon, the tips will begin to turn to catch the rays of the sun as it begins its decline in the western sky.

If the tips are laying to the left, the ball will roll in that direction. And vice-versa. If you are putting into the tips, there will be resistance and a slower putt. If you are putting with the grain it will be a faster putt. You can also read the grain in terms of the speed of a putt, when the sun is shining. If the grass looks shiny and bright in the direction you are putting, you are going with the grain and it will be faster putt than if the grass is dull, which means you are going against the grain.

You don’t rely entirely on the location of the sun, however. You also have to look closely to spot the grain. That was a ritual in the old days, when most greens had a lot of grain. Players leaned over as though looking for a needle or a contact lens to see the direction of the grain. Just how much the grain will affect the direction and speed of the ball is hard to say; here again, experience will tell you.

Despite what Johnny Miller says every week he works golf tournaments on television, most of the greens on which the pro tour is played have very little to no grain. They are cut too short to have any, for one thing, and the modern-day grasses that are used for today’s greens have been developed in good part to avoid having grain. I remember an interview I had with Hord Hardin, who was secretary of Augusta National Golf Club and made the major decisions on the condition of the course where the Masters is played. He told me that when the greens were re-sodded, in the 1980s, it was with a strain of bent grass that did not create grain. Hardin, a good player in his own right, hated grain. So did all the pros. Nowadays, the only time the tour pros deal with grain is during the winter circuit when they are playing in the south and on older courses, which have greens with old-fashioned Bermuda grass.

More common, and problematic, is Poa annua, a genus of grass that goes way back in golf and is still a factor in play far more than grain. It is especially prevalent on the west coast. Po, as it is generally referred to, grows randomly and faster on a putting surface that has mainly bent or rye grass. As a result, those greens get bumpy where the Po is, which makes the putting very uncertain. Po is a kind of vagrant that roams the world and finds homes wherever. It also infiltrates golf courses off the shoes of golfers who have

played on it elsewhere. Clubs that re-sod their Po-ridden greens with bent, at considerable expense, have beautiful putting surfaces for about a year or so. Then, the Po begins to infiltrate and in time takes over. An entire green composed of Poa annua is not a bad putting surface, and some courses, tired of fighting it, just let them go to Po. Pebble Beach’s greens have been all Poa since the beginning. However, to keep them smooth all day—it’s fast-growing stuff—they have to be verti-cut fairly often and mowed twice a day and as short as possible. Few golf courses have the financial resources for such a maintenance program. So, if there is some Po in your line—and you can tell because it has a different color than the other grass—you just can’t predict how your ball will ultimately roll. The only solution is to hit putts so firmly that they will ride over or through the Po. That’s a tricky solution.

Getting the Line

Everyone knows to get down low behind the ball and look for any contour that will affect the putt. You then make a judgment on where to aim your putt. A lot of golfers will take another look back toward their ball from the opposite side of the hole. I have always found this confusing. For some reason I have never been able to understand, if it looks like a right-to-left putt from behind your ball it usually looks like a left-to-right putt from behind the hole. To avoid the confusion I only take my look from behind the ball.

However, there is another perspective to consider that Dave Stockton pointed out to me. It is not quite as precise, if we can use that word, as looking from behind the ball but it does help. View the terrain from the side, from between your ball and the hole, and on the low side of the contour. This is the main way to read whether a putt is downhill or uphill, but somehow you also get another view of just how much right-to-left or left-to- right break there may be in it.

Plumb-bobbing is another method that was very popular for a while but seems less so these days. To plumb-bob you hold your putter vertically in front of you as you face the general target area. Train your dominant eye on the shaft of the club and close your other

eye. It’s like looking through a cross-hair. You will be able to see the general contour of the ground ahead of you. General is the operative word.

There are also some structural things to look for when you are checking out the contour between your ball and the hole. If there is a greenside bunker with its upper lip close to the edge of the green, there is usually a rise in the green itself where the lip is situated. Putts will break away from or off that mound. It’s always a good idea to watch the putts hit by others in your group, which is an incentive to get your approach shots closest to the hole so you don’t have to putt first.

What Comes First, Speed Or Line?

Logic would have it that getting the ball on the correct the line to the hole is of first importance in successful putting. After all, no matter how solidly you hit the putt and how perfect you are in distance, if your aim is off the ball isn’t going into the hole. Not quite. You may start a putt out on exactly the right line, but if it’s rolling too fast it will not take the break it is supposed to—it will be hit “through the break,” as the pros say. Or, if it does catch a bit of the hole it is liable to spin out because it’s moving too quickly. If it’s rolling too slowly it will break too soon, and fall below or to the low side of the hole. In a word, speed comes first. Dave Stockton makes a definite point of that. So does every professional.

The thinking is this. While reading the break of a green is in large part a guessing game and even Tiger Woods can’t be absolutely certain at what point a putt will break and by how much, you are going to come pretty close to getting it right. Everyone who has played any amount of golf can tell that a putt is going to move from right to left or left to right, is uphill or downhill. And, even if your mechanics are not gold standard, you will usually hit the ball fairly close to the reading you assess. Now, say your putt is just a touch off line, maybe an inch off the width of the hole. If it has just the right speed when it gets around the edge of the cup, if it is slowing down and close to coming to a stop it is liable to find its way to the bottom of it. And if it doesn’t drop, you have a simple tap-in. What you don’t want is the testy two- and three-foot putts that remain after you’ve putted

the ball too hard or too soft. The good news is, getting the distance right is an easier proposition than reading the break. You have more control over the process through your hands—especially your Dominant Hand—and your feet. They are real agents for good.

Reading the Speed of the Green

The practice putting green should be your last stop before beginning a round of golf. For one thing, you want to restore some touch in your hands after hitting your practice balls. But you also want to get a sense of the speed of the greens on the course. A well- managed golf course will keep the practice green in the same condition as the greens on the course. Some course operators will not do that, so beware.

You may watch the putts of your playing partners to get an idea of the undulation, but the information from that source as to the speed of the green will be less telling. You can never really know or feel how hard the other players have hit their ball. And, in this day of so many varieties of golf balls with different playing characteristics, some go faster than others when putted (in particular the very hard-covered “distance” balls.). So don’t rely on what the others are getting out of the speed at which they hit their putts.

You can get a pretty good idea of the speed through your feet just by walking on a green. The firmness of the surface will indeed reflect how fast it will run. The harder the surface, the faster it is. And vice-versa. The first time I played the Oakmont CC, in Pittsburgh, with my first steps on the first green I could tell they were going to be lightning fast. I knew by reputation that they were very fast, but treading on them in person sealed the deal.

In the end, though, the best way to judge the speed of greens is by hitting some putts on them. If you don’t get to the practice green before starting your round, just hope your sense of the speed is on the money at the first and second holes. That’s when you get your first experience. And by the way, when playing a putt with considerable break keep in mind that the first part of the putt is going to be uphill before it begins to change direction, and you must hit the ball a bit more firmly than the speed of the green alone dictates.

CHAPTER 5

The Psychology of Putting

Putting is the most mentally challenging part of the game. It’s something like being a dentist compared to a guy working a jackhammer. It’s close work, intimate, and the margin for error is much narrower than having to hit a 35 yard wide fairway with a driver. There is also the finality of it. You can’t make up for missing a three-footer for par the way you can recover from a drive off the fairway. No one wins tournaments, matches, individual bets, or even a little self-esteem who putts poorly. In respect to playing big-time golf, on the pro tours and in top-level amateur competition, you might as well stay home if you’re hitting 16 greens a round but taking 32 and 33 putts. In golf, the negative psychological reaction to pressure is called the yips, the colloquial term for a physical response to a psychological problem that takes many forms, has numerous manifestations. It is muscle spasm, and sometimes a muscle freeze. When you are at a point where you find it difficult to start the putter back, you have the yips. Sam Snead called them the yickies. The yips was Ben Hogan’s nemesis at the tail end of his playing career. He would stand over the ball for what seemed like an eternity unable to get the club moving. Yips show up in a stroke that is tremulous, a yank, a wrench, a joggle. It can be a quitting of the stroke when the ball is struck, the club almost slowing to a stop before touching the ball. The yips occur when hitting drivers and irons, chips and pitches, but not nearly as often as when putting. It is almost exclusively in that domain.

I wrote an article on the yips in 1982 for Golf magazine that got into the subject fully, and I think is worth repeating here, although not in its entirety. I titled it One

For The Yipper, my all-time favorite head for a story.

When you put the putter blade behind the ball and it feels like you’ve stuck it in a sea of quick- set epoxy, and when at last you manage to get the club in motion the forward stroke feels as if you’re touching a hot iron with your finger, then brother, you have the yips.

The term yips probably derives from that hot-iron flinch, which can be so rapid you sometimes hit the ball twice with a single “stroke.” Other manifestations of what might also be characterized as a twitch or jab is hand trembling, a deadening of the arms, shaking knees, a dread hollowness in the stomach, short gaspy breathing.

These are not fictional dramatizations, but the documented experiences of such eminent golfing greats as Harry Vardon, Sam Snead, Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan. Jones once described his yips as giving him “the most incredible sensation” he ever had.

The trembles, the gasps, etc. are external manifestations of what happens within the nervous system. Professor Bob Rotella, a sports psychologist, has an explanation that not only sounds plausible it is supported by scientific evidence. Rotella says yippers are victims of a response to fear that formed in man quite a few million years ago. It is known as the Fight-or-Flight Syndrome, which works in a couple of ways.

Situation: Pithecanthropus leaves his cave one morning to hunt for breakfast. A couple of miles down the road he runs into a big, toothy marsupial lion with its own hunger pangs. Pithecanthropus says to himself, “I’m afraid!” This intellectual revelation signals his body to react. A lot of blood moves to fill the deeper, larger muscles so if he chooses to either fight the lion or take flight from it he will be as strong and or as swift as possible. We are dealing with the fright portion of the equation.

Because much of the blood filling those muscles with strength comes from areas of the body close to the surface, if Pithecanthropus gets cut while either fighting or fleeing there is less chance he will bleed to death. Now, the blood diverted to the big muscles comes from a number of places. The stomach, for one, which is why we get that sudden hollowness when facing a touchy downhill two-foot putt. And also, says Rotella, “It is why for years we have been telling athletes not to eat much before a game. Blood is needed to break down food, and if there is not enough the food burdens performance.”

The blood in fright also leaves the toes and fingers. This especially pertains to golfers and yips. With less blood in the fingers it is harder to feel the club-head, and the desensitized golfer finds it difficult to start the club back or make a smooth, controlled stroke. The nerves are not so much deadened as simply cold, relatively speaking, according to a device Rotella uses in biofeedback

training. This device measures the temperature of the hands under both relaxed and stressful situations.

This brings to mind a habit of Bobby Locke, one of golf’s greatest ever putters. As he walked between shots Locke shook his hands at his sides to keep the blood circulating in his fingers. That golfers lose sensitivity in the fingers would explain why yips seem to attack mostly when they putt. They can manage to hit full shots without a fine touch. Indeed, they may tend to swing too fully under pressure because of blood-filled bigger muscles.

Rotella outlines another physical response to fear: “Hormones are secreted from the brain when we interpret a situation to be stressful. This causes a constriction of the muscles around the chest and throat. Rapid and shallow breathing results, and if this gets severe enough you can choke to death.

“This is where the term ‘choking’ comes into athletics. The only cases I know of this actually happening are with drowning victims. Many will self-suffocate from lack of oxygen rather than water in the lungs. They die from the fear of drowning.”

It is unlikely any putt will so frighten a golfer that he will suffocate over it. On the other hand, any shortage of oxygen is going to negatively affect his efficiency. Modern man has found ways to fight off lions in the wild, but the fight-or-flight syndrome has not yet leached out of our collective consciousness. Some athletes may actually find it useful—weightlifters or NFL linemen—but evolution does not discriminate among players of different games, so golfers, who depend more on feel and touch than brute force, are stuck for the time being. We must find ways to counteract nature, to beat the yips down if not altogether out. This is not impossible. The yips can be zapped.

Fear of missing putts comes in part from having missed previous putts. Golfers are notoriously negative historians, remembering disastrous shots far out of proportion to the good or even just passable ones. The golfer who fears he is going to write more bad history will yip and fulfill the prophecy.

Worse yet, too many golfers take too much responsibility for their acts. “We tend to blame ourselves too much when a missed putt could very well have been caused by a bump in the green that was hard to notice,” says Al Geiberger. “It might also help to avoid the do-or-die attitude, that every putt must be made; it causes far too much tension,” Geiberger concluded.

In short, golfers may be overly sold on the much-touted self-reliance and individuality of golf; a little fatalism may not be a bad thing in curing the yips. Or avoiding them in the first place. Still, golfers are heavily inclined to look for solutions to problems through mechanics, over which they

feel they have some control. While golf’s technical component can be overemphasized, technique is a practical way to cure the yips. There have been more a few developed over the years.

One such is cited by Raymond Floyd, who calls it “putting by the numbers. My yips were a nightmare from in close. I got very reluctant from two feet,” Floyd said. “I got out of it by working up a pattern. A count system. Get the line, one; set up at the ball, two; one look at the line; three; hit it; four. You don’t get long lag times between numbers because the nature of making a count doesn’t let you. After awhile you just count subconsciously.”

Rotella takes the routine idea a bit further. “A routine programs not only the physical motion, but the mental processes, which helps in concentration. When you are concentrating, you don’t think about missing or having missed before. It’s like coming home to your favorite chair. You’ve been there before, feel easy in it and so you read, think, relax better.”

A routine also seems to speed up your pace of play, a good thing for avoiding the yips, according to Gene Sarazen. “The longer you stand there, the harder it gets,” said the legendary champion. “What happens,” says Tommy Bolt, “the longer you take the more you think of ways to miss a putt, and the more tense you get.”

Another common cure for the yips is to make a change in your mechanics, sometimes a radical one. As Geiberger points out, “From years of doing something the same way you can get bored or inattentive and develop hang-ups. By changing a method you can become fresher and more alert.” A notable example was Sam Snead. Sam went to the sidesaddle stance for putting and put another 10 years on his remarkable career. Art Wall, Jr. got over his yips once by going to cross-handed putting. “I did that because it is so good from six feet or less,” said Wall. “When I regained my confidence and made a lot of putts I went back to the conventional grip” [and continued to make them].

Bruce Lietzke’s mediocre college golf career was due primarily to his being “only an ordinary putter and prone to the yips,” as a former teammate described. When he turned pro he went to the cross-handed grip, stuck with it, and has had a superior career.

More than a few players advocate avoiding concentration on the ball when putting. “When I won the British Open,” Johnny Miller pointed out, “I was concentrating on the path of my right [Dominant] hand. I didn’t even see the ball most of the time.”

“Pick a spot, a blade of grass about an inch in front of the ball, no farther,” said Dave Stockton. “Watch the ball roll over that spot. If the spot is on the proper line, the ball will fall.”

Ken Venturi said he often concentrated on the putter blade. “Without moving my head I track the blade with my eyes. I also think this method helps get me out of the ‘must-make’ syndrome,” Venturi concluded.

If a National Yips Remedy Contest was held, it would take a year to hear all the entries: Play all putts as though they were straight in.” (Tom Kite); “Tempo and acceleration. Don’t quit on the ball.” (Hubert Green); “Before crucial putts take a number of practice strokes whipping the putter back and forth as fast as you can. The buggy-whipping produces a nice, light touch.” (JoAnne Carner); “My old friend Jug McSpaden got an old, hickory-shafted mallet putter and weighted it down with 20 ounces of lead. Then he gripped it as tightly as possible and dug the nail of his right thumb into the grip. He practiced this way for hours, hanging on with the left, hitting it with the [Dominant] right, and overcame the yips.” (Byron Nelson).

There may also be circumstances brought to the golf course that a person may not realize could cause yips. For example, a national magazine study recently noted that because dentists work many hours a day in very close proximity to people, some tend to discourage hugging and kissing with their family. They need some physical space after eight hours belly-to-shoulder with patients. Is it not conceivable then that dentists who play golf might get the yips on a golf course because they go from one form of very close, careful work to another?

Finally, there is the widely held notion that yips come with age. Or, a variation on this theme that Ben Hogan once delineated: “You can only go to well so many times. I know several 75-year old men who are very good putters. But had they been playing golf tournaments for 20 years, well, the drop of water on the rock is going to wear a hole it eventually, you see. Those fellows haven’t been under intense pressure all this time.”

Actually, both these ideas have holes in them. Many young golfers have had the yips. Twenty- five year old Bernhard Langer, the fine German pro, for instance. Mark O’Meara claims he had a case of the yips while playing college golf. “Yips can make you a very good iron player,” said O’Meara. “I had the yips for about six months and hit the ball great from tee to green. I had to. But I was so bad on the greens that at one point I started chipping my long putts. The coach said I was hurting the team by complaining so much about my yips, so I agreed not to say another word. I think that helped. I also went from a heavy to a lighter putter.”

Dr. Richard Coop, an educational psychologist with a special interest in golf, tells of a young high school golf champion who played his first match for the University of North Carolina on a course with very slick and rolling greens.

“He four-putted a lot that day,” said Coop, “and from then on he couldn’t draw it back. He would double-hit, and knock six footers seven feet past the hole, a feat fairly common among yippers.”

“If older golfers get the yips more often than younger ones it is probably because they have let themselves get out of physical shape,” says Professor Rotella. “When people get into their 50s,” Rotella continues, “it is not uncommon to lose some circulation in their extremities—toes and fingers—and only exercise is going to stimulate some flow. The trouble is people let themselves become run down. They’ve been working hard to make a career and raise a family; they often eat too much, are tired, maybe a little lazy and their bodies get out of tone. My guess is that the 75- year olds Ben Hogan was talking about as being good putters were probably in top physical condition.”

Rotella further suggests that older golfers victimize themselves even more by accepting the idea that yips come with age. “Yips are not an old-folks disease,” says the professor. “If people think it is, then it will be, but it has not yet been proven to be so.”

Well and good, but man does not live by science alone. There is also an incorrigible humanism within our hearts, as Bob Goalby suggests. “When you’re older you just don’t get as many birdie chances,” says the one-time Masters champion. “You feel as though time is running out, you get anxious and yip it. It’s also interesting that we older guys are apt to force our games when playing with the younger players, but are much cooler playing among ourselves.”

Speaking of cooling the yips, Al Geiberger says his mother developed a putting style that fooled a lot of people. “She always putts up on the toes of her left foot and whistling. Everyone thinks she is so cool and casual. But I know it’s her way to beat the yips.”

You can be a mediocre or poor putter without having the yips. If you don’t think about it enough to develop a technique, a routine for getting into address position, and so on, and don’t practice at all you won’t get any better. If you do all that, and start making some putts, you will build up confidence. What comes first, confidence or making a few putts? Making a few putts. The ultimate expression of confidence comes from Jack Nicklaus via Tom Weiskopf.

Weiskopf was recalling a Ryder Cup Match in which he was partnering with Nicklaus in a two-ball match. Nicklaus had a clutch six-footer in a close contest and hit an excellent putt that almost disappeared in the hole but somehow popped out. When

Weiskopf made the traditional remark, “How did that stay out of the hole?” Nicklaus shot back, “I made the putt, it just didn’t go in.” A remarkable reaction that says an important thing about attitude: Never blame yourself when you know you did the best you could do.

Chapter 6

The Putting Personality

One of the most fascinating competitive events in American golf history came in the 1938 PGA Championship, when it was a match-play competition. In the final, championship match, at the Shawnee GC, in Pennsylvania, Paul Runyan defeated Sam Snead by a whopping 8 and 7. What made it so remarkable was that Runyan was no bigger than a jockey and hit the ball around 230 off the tee, while Snead was a powerhouse super-athlete who was the John Daly of his time—a very powerful long knocker. Snead out-drove Runyan by as much as 100 yards on many of the holes and yet got his lunch handed to him. Why? Because Runyan was the best putter out there (he was also a wonderful pitcher and chipper), and just loved the idea of a David like himself getting the best of Goliath. In this attitude, Runyan reflected the quintessential putter’s personality. He was a clever, intelligent man not intimidated by big hitters. This is to say that being a good putter has a lot to do with attitude, perhaps as much as mechanics. The great putters, like a Paul Runyan, understood how they can be as intimidating with their skill as the long hitter can—to some—with his driver; indeed, perhaps even more so, because his act is the final one on any given hole, or round, or tournament. How many times have you seen a tournament decided on the last hole not by the length and accuracy of a drive, or a fine approach, but with a putt that closes the deal?

Runyan liked to calculate the odds on making putts from certain distances. He grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas when it was a red-hot gambling town with a race track and lots of poker games going on. So he knew about odds. He said that the odds of making putts inside 12 feet were in the range of 2-1 up to 12-1, but on everything from 13 feet and up the odds of making any of them were a flat 50 percent. He had to come down to 10 feet when the greens improved so much.

George Low was in the gambler’s mold. All his life he was a horse player. He could play the game from tee to green, all right, but didn’t have much interest in it. And yet, when Byron Nelson’s famous streak of eleven straight tournament victories was broken, in 1945, the winner of the tournament was an amateur, Freddie Haas, Jr. but the low professional was George Low. When I asked George once why, on the basis of that showing, he didn’t play more tournament golf, he said, “I performed a minor miracle in Memphis [where Haas, Jr. won], and got twenty-eight hundred for it. What does that tell you? It wasn’t worth it. I made more betting on myself with the bookies that week.”

As those comments suggest, Low was one of the most colorful characters in American golf. He had an impressive background in the game. He was the son of one of American golf’s earliest Scots immigrant pros, George Low, Sr., who was the first and long- standing head professional at one of the oldest and most prestigious golf clubs in the United States, the Baltusrol Golf Club, in New Jersey, venue for seven U.S. Open Championships. George Sr. was also a pretty good player. He got a second in the 1899 U.S. Open.

Young George was born on the Baltusrol club grounds, in the house made available to the head professional. He learned much of what he would teach for the rest of his long life when as a youth he spent many hours a day hanging around putting greens, and not idly. He tried every method he heard of and saw, including some bizarre ones, and eventually developed not only a great touch of his own but a putting catechism that he would use to teach at least two generations of golfers.

For most of his life Low was a free-lance putting teacher, and hustler. He didn’t always do the latter with a putter. He developed a knack for putting with the side of his shoe, for one thing, although he attached to the curved instep portion a flat frame or face. He also came to be known as “America’s Guest,” because friends put him up free of charge in their homes, or hotels, sometimes for a whole winter or summer. Low liked to boast that in all his life he never owned an overcoat. Which meant he always had someone who would put him up during the winter months in warm places—usually Florida or

California. Many such winters were spent in the home of Willie Shoemaker, the great jockey, in Los Angeles. Sam Snead liked to tell the story of the times he drove with George around the tour. Whenever he stopped for gas Low would disappear into the men’s room and not appear until he knew, by peeking out the door of the john, that Sam had already paid for the fuel.

It followed that Low gave nothing away for nothing. Once, Tom Watson, who was always searching for a secret to putting, asked George if he would have a look at his stroke and offer some recommendations. Low said he would, for fifteen hundred dollars, his standard fee for a one-day or one-hour or a couple of minute’s session. Watson was taken aback. Pros of his stature were not accustomed to having to pay anyone for help; they assumed any teaching pro would do it for free, if only to be able to add his illustrious name to his teaching resume. George Low didn’t need such endorsements. He was well-established when Watson approached him—it was in the 1980s—and even if he wasn’t he would have asked for the same money. Watson, by the way, did not pony up the dough.

When Low died, in 1997, he was cremated and half of his ashes were strewn over the practice putting green at the Cog Hill G.C., outside Chicago, where he spent the last few years of his life. We don’t know what happened to the other half.

Another great putter with some personality quirks was Bobby Locke, the first South African golfer to gain international renown. Locke won four British Opens, perhaps a hundred or so events in his homeland and on the European continent, and when he played on the U.S. Tour between 1946 and 1948 he won 11 tournaments, finished second 10 times, and in one of his victories set a record for margin of victory—16 strokes in the Chicago Victory Open. He played in baggy knickers and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and wore a white “Ben Hogan” cap. He was jowly, which earned him the nickname of “Muffin Face.” He had a very erect posture and moved from shot to shot with what seemed like the casual mien of a tourist; or, some would suggest, the Pope. All that aside, when he came to play in the U.S. he flabbergasted the American pros with his

putting stroke, which was so unorthodox, so contrary to convention, that a number of them bet considerable sums of money against Locke. And lost just about every time. They were too form-conscious. Clayton Heafner, a burly pro from North Carolina who was a realist, saw Locke making all those putts, bet with him and took a nice piece of change off Lloyd Mangrum, Jimmy Demaret and others.

Locke addressed the ball with a closed stance—his feet, shoulders, hips were on a line well to the right of the target. The club would follow his body line in the back-stroke, coming well inside the intended line of putt. Then, Locke would swing his right shoulder out toward the ball and kind of loop the putter around to get it moving down the line of flight to impact. The putter head continued down the target line after the ball was struck. It was often said Locke hooked his putts, but in effect what he did was pull the ball.

It was exactly the way he swung every club in the bag, from his driver right down to the wedges, although with full swings the ball did move from right to left in the air because of the force of the contact. In fact, Locke took the swing pattern from Bobby Jones, who was Locke’s hero and in a sense his instructor, albeit through his instruction books. Locke’s full given name was Arthur D’Arcy Locke; he added Bobby in homage to the great amateur champion.

Is Locke’s way recommended? Not at all. It was very idiosyncratic. It was for Locke only, and he got away with it because he had a gift for getting the club moving down the line of putt time after time (which of course came from hours and hours of practice), and probably had an the inbred sense for how hard to hit a ball for the required distance.

Billy Casper told me once that he wished he had not adopted the public persona of Ben Hogan. As it happened, the dour, expressionless Hogan mien coupled with Casper’s becoming a devout Mormon, buried the personality that was beneath and may well have made him a far more popular champion. Growing up in San Diego, Casper hung around pool halls and became good enough to hustle some important walking around money for himself. He came from a working class family. And, as is often the case among guys who live by their wits and talent, Casper had a quick tongue and a knack for the sharp barb.

He had the natural makeup of a great putter, which indeed he was. It was honed in some part by his skill at pocket pool and the brash self-confidence and fearless attitude in competition that engenders. He loved to needle the opponent, and nail him with an equally sharp eye and touch. There was the time when he and Arnold Palmer reached the 72nd hole of the 1966 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club. Palmer had blown a seven shot lead over Casper and on the final green he putted for birdie and ran the ball six feet past the hole. Palmer then told Casper that he’d like to continue putting. Casper said, “Keep going while you’re hot.” Palmer did make the comebacker despite Casper’s verbal dig but so that goes.

Casper, by the way, was once asked how he became such a great putter. His answer: He practiced in the dark or at least late dusk. He said that enhanced his sense of touch for speed and direction. It reminds me of when I was a kid playing golf around Chicago. One of my pals was Charlie “Bud” Whitehead, who had a knack for putting. He had a strange technique. He pulled his left foot way back from the target line, bent low and tilted to his the right and seemed to be looking at the ball and hole with only his right eye. But he could putt, oh he could putt, and especially in the dark. We often finished the last hole after the sun went down. We didn’t have any car headlights to shine on the last green, although we did sometimes stick some lighted matches around the hole. Mostly, though, we putted in the dark and “Bud” Whitehead never missed when he needed to make for all the money. It was uncanny, he had the knack, the gift, the nerve, the desire to make putts even when he couldn’t see the hole. Then again, maybe he did see it, maybe had some sort of extra-sensory visual perception, like the cameras that can shoot pictures in the dark. Or, he sneaked off and practiced in the dark. One way or the other, he just loved to make putts. I can still hear his distinctive cackle as he collected the bets under a street lamp; by the time we finished the club house was closed. Charlie “Bud” was of a kind, a Puttin’ Man.