Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number three hundred and forty nine, published on
Speaker 1: September nineteen, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 2: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
Speaker 2: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 2: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: The faster the green, the less slope you can have
Speaker 3: before that point is reached. The slower the green, or
Speaker 3: you got a tilted then you reach the point with
Speaker 3: a greater tilt.
Speaker 4: But it's always the.
Speaker 3: Combination of the grit speed and the slope steepness. And
Speaker 3: so if you say everybody mows their grants today to about.
Speaker 4: Stemp nine, that limit is reached.
Speaker 3: Around a six percent slope. And the all golf course architects.
Speaker 4: Know this one too.
Speaker 3: If they make seven percent slow, the golf course is
Speaker 3: going to stamp.
Speaker 4: Tea and you're not going to have holes there.
Speaker 3: He's just luxuriating and spending somebody else's money by design
Speaker 3: that sort of green. Because the person that owns the
Speaker 3: golf course is not really going to be able to
Speaker 3: use seven percent slope unless they get really slow grass,
Speaker 3: and that members don't like.
Speaker 4: Slow grass, so they're always step nize or whatever.
Speaker 3: If you inform yourself about golf course architecture, you will
Speaker 3: know that the range of steepness of slope kind of
Speaker 3: maxes out around six percent.
Speaker 1: Learning to read the practice greens gives you a huge
Speaker 1: advantage With Jeff Mangam.
Speaker 2: This is Golf Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers
Speaker 2: and golf professionals to help lower your score. It's worked
Speaker 2: for your host, Fred Green.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Jeff, Hey Fred,
Speaker 1: how are you, Budy?
Speaker 4: I'm doing good.
Speaker 3: I'm in western North Carolina outside of Klowe.
Speaker 1: The where in Western Carolina? And what's an.
Speaker 3: Ncwe It's it's near the Cherokee Indian Reservation on the
Speaker 3: west side of Asheville.
Speaker 4: Noway to Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And did you stop and teach there today or where
Speaker 1: did you teach?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: I taught in Winston's that set the country Club, and
Speaker 5: now I'm headed to Atlanta to teach some friends. Down
Speaker 5: in outside Atlanta in a place called Canton, there's a
Speaker 5: golf course down there called Bridge Mill that's run by
Speaker 5: Tom Lessinger and George Killenhaufer.
Speaker 4: My good buddy's down there.
Speaker 3: George Killenhoffer is a long term legend in golf teaching.
Speaker 4: He taught a lot of the people.
Speaker 1: Oh, can we get him on the show?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he left you.
Speaker 6: He's the inventor. He invents suff about two or three
Speaker 6: times a week.
Speaker 1: Wow. All right, So you are obviously not in a
Speaker 1: hotel with a direct connection here, because it's kind of
Speaker 1: breaking up. Where are you sitting right now?
Speaker 6: Oh, I'm right outside of McDonald's. That caesar salad.
Speaker 4: In the coffee, and it's beautiful weather.
Speaker 3: It's a Bomby sun SETI nice clouds. But I didn't
Speaker 3: I couldn't get my Motel six to set up for
Speaker 3: you today because I'm still traveling after after we do this,
Speaker 3: we'll talk.
Speaker 4: I gotta keep rolling.
Speaker 1: Okay, So your signal just got a little better, and
Speaker 1: we'll keep our fingers crossed, and if this signal gets bad,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll stop recording and pick it right up and
Speaker 1: no one will ever know the difference. But let's I
Speaker 1: reached out to you a because you are so much
Speaker 1: fun to have on this show. Because in your eye
Speaker 1: because you poke sticks in my eye.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: The level of detail that you go into is just
Speaker 1: a golf junkies dream, all right, you. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: never heard a short answer, and that's why I want
Speaker 1: to have you back, because the level of detail is
Speaker 1: un unrivaled, unrivaled on what you do.
Speaker 4: We'll call it baroque. Why lots of ornamentation?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, we'll call it baroque. That's not the
Speaker 1: name of the show. We're not going we're going for
Speaker 1: baroque today.
Speaker 4: We're going.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that was really bad. But and if nobody
Speaker 1: has ever heard you on Golf Smarter before, why, I mean,
Speaker 1: Jeff's been on a lot. He was also a regular
Speaker 1: contributor to Golf Smarter Tips. And there's still all there,
Speaker 1: a year's worth of amazing content. And it's putting, putting,
Speaker 1: and more putting. I don't know if there's anybody in
Speaker 1: the world, Jeff, who has the encyclopedic baroque knowledge of
Speaker 1: putting that you have on putting or on Native Americans.
Speaker 4: That's because I'm mainly disturbed.
Speaker 1: And that's why we get along so well.
Speaker 4: Obsessive, compulsive to the square.
Speaker 3: And exponentially multiplied against itself several more times.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's why we're such good friends. So the latest
Speaker 1: piece that I got from you fascinating and I think
Speaker 1: it just hits right into the heart of it on
Speaker 1: reading the pot on the practice green, right right, So
Speaker 1: do I need to have you order another cup of
Speaker 1: coffee or and and just let you go, or do
Speaker 1: you want me to ask you a specific question about
Speaker 1: where we should get started when we're on the practice
Speaker 1: putting green and how to read and well, okay, my
Speaker 1: first question is when we're on the practice putting green,
Speaker 1: before we start around, how much should we say to ourselves? Okay,
Speaker 1: this is how these greens on this golf course work.
Speaker 3: Pretty much today's green's agronomy and managed practices. There's not
Speaker 3: that big of a difference between the practice green and
Speaker 3: the golf course. They're mode the same, they're built the same,
Speaker 3: there's subject to the same chemical treatments, the same irrigations.
Speaker 3: They're in the same weather climate, sunshine and everything. It's
Speaker 3: all the same Satame grass, highly engineered grass.
Speaker 1: So hopefully that's gonna give you a good sense of
Speaker 1: touch and pace when you're practicing, too that you can
Speaker 1: confidently take it out onto your round with you.
Speaker 7: Well, you're just yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 4: Don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: People are overly concerned about the difference between the practice
Speaker 3: green to hear little stuff in golf culture, and it.
Speaker 4: Worries them for thirty forty years.
Speaker 3: They need to use their own eyeballs and look at things.
Speaker 3: There's no big difference between practice greens and the greens on.
Speaker 8: The golf course.
Speaker 4: Hadn't been for twenty years.
Speaker 1: And so it's gonna break, it's gonna roll, it's gonna speeds.
Speaker 1: We're just fine. And so that means that once we
Speaker 1: leave the the practice green and get ready for our round,
Speaker 1: we should have confidence on on our touch and our
Speaker 1: pace when we go out and play, as you know,
Speaker 1: from what we just experienced on the practice green.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what you're doing.
Speaker 3: You're brushing up on your touch, you're brushing up on
Speaker 3: your mechanics a little bit for a straight stroke, and
Speaker 3: then maybe you mess around with getting a little confidence
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Obviously you've moved out of the front porch of McDonald's, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're something's moving in there, something's playing with your
Speaker 1: wires or your headphone. But something's scraping around.
Speaker 4: So I'll try not to touch it.
Speaker 1: Okay, don't touch it. Okay, just put your get your
Speaker 1: hands off of that.
Speaker 4: Okay, I actually have my car on powered up. Do
Speaker 4: you want me to turn my car off?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: Why is your car making No? You got to probably
Speaker 1: have the air conditioning on if you're sitting in North
Speaker 1: Carolina and your car with the windows up.
Speaker 3: Well, I've got some piece and quiet in my little
Speaker 3: Rudyard Kipling house on my back.
Speaker 7: Sort of a deal here, all right.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about being on that practice green and
Speaker 1: what we can learn from it.
Speaker 4: Sure, let's talk about reading putts.
Speaker 3: Yes, I created a thing recently about how you do
Speaker 3: two putts on a practice green that will allow you
Speaker 3: to get a real good sense of what breaks you.
Speaker 4: Will be facing for the rest of the day. Okay,
Speaker 4: let me say that one more time. Two little putts.
Speaker 1: You know, five feet ten feet? Or does it ten?
Speaker 4: I like ten feet.
Speaker 3: The math works out better from ten feet, which I'll
Speaker 3: explain to you in a second.
Speaker 4: But ten divide my ten is easy. Just move the decimal. Okay,
Speaker 4: to the left.
Speaker 1: Now there's something beeping that's try I'm so distracted by
Speaker 1: these little extra noises. I apologize. I'm just a reporting guy.
Speaker 4: I stopped it.
Speaker 1: What were you doing?
Speaker 3: That was the That was my little in car power
Speaker 3: unit where I take the plug into the battery the
Speaker 3: cigarette lighter and then convert.
Speaker 1: It into a beeping noise. All right, So I.
Speaker 3: Don't know why, baby, it's part of the river lit's
Speaker 3: find it made it.
Speaker 1: Be ten foot putts move the decimal point.
Speaker 4: Go okay, here you teach me. All right, here's the deal.
Speaker 3: Most of the putts that you can actually sink are
Speaker 3: within fifteen feet, and for most people they're within ten.
Speaker 3: Everything else is basically a lag putt's going to be
Speaker 3: a two putt.
Speaker 4: Do you have the skill for lag? Yes? Okay, now
Speaker 4: we're moved beyond that.
Speaker 3: We want to make a lot of one putts out
Speaker 3: of fifteen footers. Yes, and now really for amateur golfers,
Speaker 3: you're really talking about ten feeting in then I didn't
Speaker 3: good from fifteen feet right now.
Speaker 4: The second one thing you want to know is that.
Speaker 7: Greens have.
Speaker 3: A certain topography where for reasonable areas of size and
Speaker 3: diameter around the hole, the same flatness or plane or
Speaker 3: shape of the surface persists. Oh usually for at least
Speaker 3: three good steps away from the hall in any direction,
Speaker 3: maybe as many as five or ten paces. And the
Speaker 3: pace that we're talking about is a standard military parade
Speaker 3: pace of thirty inches, which is two and a half feet,
Speaker 3: and every four of those parade steps is ten feet.
Speaker 3: So if you walk four feet away from the hall
Speaker 3: in any direction, you got you're talking about a ten
Speaker 3: foot putt.
Speaker 4: For most putts, I mean eighty five.
Speaker 3: Percent of them, if you're within ten feet, there's no
Speaker 3: aney contour other than a flat surface from ball the
Speaker 3: hole lots lots of times, and that's very beneficial because
Speaker 3: that means that the break is quote simple unquote You
Speaker 3: don't know how much it is, and that's what we're
Speaker 3: focusing on now.
Speaker 4: But a.
Speaker 3: Flat surface of a tilted slope of the green from
Speaker 3: ball all the way to the hole, without enter any
Speaker 3: funny wrinkling of the surface by hills and valleys and
Speaker 3: all that.
Speaker 4: That presents a simple break.
Speaker 3: And for most makeable puts in the seventy five to
Speaker 3: eighty percent of what you actually fast when you go
Speaker 3: to the golf, that happens to be the case.
Speaker 4: And that's because the nature of.
Speaker 3: Designing and maintaining and mowing greens. They can't chain shape
Speaker 3: all that radically, or else you have problems.
Speaker 4: Maintain them and mowing them.
Speaker 3: You know that old Urilco commercial that wintertime where Burl
Speaker 3: lives is riding a razor across the snowdrifts and rain.
Speaker 1: Buzz or yeah, he was dressed as Santa Claus ears.
Speaker 3: Of singing arel coo as there's all that. Well, that's
Speaker 3: the nature of a mowing deck of a Touro triplex more.
Speaker 3: And you can't change the the radiacing of the green
Speaker 3: surface too radically, or else you'll scout the green every
Speaker 3: time you moull it. And that can't happen because you've
Speaker 3: got a mold once a day. So the rate of
Speaker 3: change of the surface of the green is conditioned and
Speaker 3: limited by the technology, and so you happily. You face
Speaker 3: a lot of situations in machable putts where there's no
Speaker 3: funny contour between the ball and the hall. There may
Speaker 3: be subtleties like a footprint and the ball pitch mark,
Speaker 3: and maybe a little something a little stand of poe
Speaker 3: ai in a way and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 3: generally speaking, if you have a good, well maintained golf
Speaker 3: course with plane jain uniform homogeneous grass coverage on the
Speaker 3: green mode nicely. You got a lot of chances where
Speaker 3: you can one put a simple putt right now. What
Speaker 3: I teach and what I've created its two puts on
Speaker 3: a plane, flat surface with a tilt.
Speaker 4: To get you so.
Speaker 3: You understand all the breaks on the tilts that you'll
Speaker 3: be facing from all the distance inside about fifteen feet.
Speaker 3: The only assumption is that the green is actually unwrinkled
Speaker 3: between the ball and the hole.
Speaker 1: To find unwrinkled, well.
Speaker 3: If you take a piece of paper and you let
Speaker 3: it down on a kitchen counter and flatten it out
Speaker 3: real good, that's unwrinkled. If you lift it up in
Speaker 3: the air and stretch it tight, that's unwrinkled. If you
Speaker 3: lay it down over top of your and bend a
Speaker 3: little bit, that's wrinkled.
Speaker 1: That's concord contoured, Okay, contract.
Speaker 3: The word contourd means not flat and plain the way
Speaker 3: I'm using it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'm thinking of I'm thinking of like
Speaker 1: those mornings that the groundskeepers didn't drink enough coffee or
Speaker 1: they had a bad morning with their wife or something,
Speaker 1: and they they put the flag right at the crest
Speaker 1: of a hill. No matter what angle you're coming from,
Speaker 1: you're going up and over.
Speaker 3: Well there there there are guidelines published by the US
Speaker 3: Golf Association about pen placements.
Speaker 1: Is there really?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and I've been I'm a greenskeeper. I've done
Speaker 3: this for you know, more than one year US that pens.
Speaker 3: So I'm not just a lawyer and a golf coach
Speaker 3: and a physicist and neuroscientists.
Speaker 4: I'm also a greenskeeper.
Speaker 1: Well, don't forget you're an Indian expert, and no, I'm
Speaker 1: the top Indian expert.
Speaker 3: Sorry, look at my little puddingtone dot com, forward slash
Speaker 3: indians dot A stm L and then just drool it
Speaker 3: what I've got?
Speaker 4: All right, it's there, it'll see it, all right.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the the.
Speaker 4: The guidelines of the U s g A.
Speaker 3: Basically don't want greenskeepers to do what you just described.
Speaker 3: They don't want sudden changes of contour. They want golfers
Speaker 3: to have the opportunity, from anywhere on the green in
Speaker 3: relations to.
Speaker 4: The whole, to send the ball to the hole.
Speaker 3: And be able to stop it there within about two feet.
Speaker 4: Really, that's one of the guidelines.
Speaker 1: Oh, I wonder if these guys read that because they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't because they're just educated, clod headed, rude individuals
Speaker 3: also called cretns.
Speaker 4: I am c r e t I in this Okay,
Speaker 4: whatever that word is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I want every golf smarter listener ever to
Speaker 1: just whenever they see the ball roll, you know, they
Speaker 1: get it to the hall and then it just keeps
Speaker 1: rolling by another five or six feet it that's against
Speaker 1: the rules.
Speaker 4: That's right now.
Speaker 3: There there's a physical issue the combination of green slope.
Speaker 4: That means steepness. How steep is the tilt of the surface.
Speaker 4: The surface is flat, let's say that, but you tilted.
Speaker 4: That means it's not level.
Speaker 3: Now, golf people on TV, they are frequently also prettons
Speaker 3: or cretence how you said, They don't know the difference
Speaker 3: between flat and level those words in the English language
Speaker 3: that we all are supposed to speak by about age
Speaker 3: three four, Flat does not mean level in gravity, it
Speaker 3: means uncontoured and plain R. Hate the word planar because
Speaker 3: of the way you stretch out the same syllable.
Speaker 8: R are plain r.
Speaker 4: Okay, So, but flat does not mean level.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, now you take a CD rom it's flat, right,
Speaker 3: if you bend it, it's not flat.
Speaker 1: Right, it's contoured.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you slap it down on the kitchen counter,
Speaker 3: it's both flat and level.
Speaker 1: So flat could be on an angle.
Speaker 4: Right, it's tilted, but it's tilted.
Speaker 3: All greens are. You don't make greens level. The water
Speaker 3: comes down, the water won't go anywhere. That'll drown the grass.
Speaker 3: It's called root rot. It's most common cause of problems
Speaker 3: on greens. All architects in the world not to create
Speaker 3: root rot, so they don't. They don't build flat green.
Speaker 3: It's level, Mom'm sorry, excuse me, level greens. They don't
Speaker 3: build level greens. That kills the grass.
Speaker 1: To wait a minute, all this stuff people going, yeah,
Speaker 1: it always breaks to the mountain, it always breaks to
Speaker 1: the water.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily true, right, because it's about.
Speaker 4: The golf course.
Speaker 3: Architect must design the subsurface of the green so that
Speaker 3: it's tilted. And if it's not tilted a certain steepness,
Speaker 3: the water will just pool under the under the surface
Speaker 3: and sit there and fester, and it messes up the ecology.
Speaker 4: Of the green system.
Speaker 3: The ancient Athens, where I have been in ancient Athens,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm I'm working on my twenty first incarnation right now.
Speaker 3: There is a there's a there's a subway in Syntagma
Speaker 3: Square in downtown Athens, and you go down into the
Speaker 3: subway and they have a little display case, a museum
Speaker 3: case where in five hundred BC the engineers of Athens
Speaker 3: built terra cotta sewage pipe.
Speaker 4: And the sewage pipes. There's a little placard at little
Speaker 4: fold over cardboard.
Speaker 3: Placard in there in the case, you know, like you
Speaker 3: did the dinner party that sit here, kind of a
Speaker 3: fall over thing, and it explains that unless you tilt
Speaker 3: the terra cotta piping at least two degrees of grade
Speaker 3: or two percent of grade I'm sorry, not degrees percent
Speaker 3: of grade, the water will not build up enough velocity
Speaker 3: and momentum to clear the sludge out of the pipes,
Speaker 3: and the pipes will fill up and stop up.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: So the modern golf course architects, if they don't know
Speaker 3: that going in when they start building these five million
Speaker 3: dollar golf.
Speaker 4: Courses, they will never work again. Wow.
Speaker 3: Okay, So they learn by hard experience that they better
Speaker 3: tilt thems under surface of the green.
Speaker 4: They fill.
Speaker 3: French drains in the herringbud pattern, and they collect the water.
Speaker 4: Fourteen or fifteen inches beneath the.
Speaker 3: Surface of the grass into a pattern and then redirect
Speaker 3: it back into the general terrain pattern of the erosion
Speaker 3: of the local train, which is typically away from the mountains.
Speaker 4: Store it's the ponds, that's true.
Speaker 3: Golf Course architects will play with that because they're crafty
Speaker 3: little devils, and sometimes they will tilt it contrariwise to
Speaker 3: the natural flow of the landscape in order to mess.
Speaker 4: With the golfers and challenge them to pick up on
Speaker 4: what they've done.
Speaker 1: They're primary function mess with.
Speaker 3: Us, that's right, And there's a limit on how much
Speaker 3: they can do before the tree reveals itself and the
Speaker 3: gig is up. So they're subtle when they do it,
Speaker 3: but they do it on purpose. All greens complexes, they
Speaker 3: are basically structured by hand by the golf course architectures
Speaker 3: and architects, and so they pretty much decide what they
Speaker 3: want to do.
Speaker 4: This is a question of whether.
Speaker 3: They're skillful and and concealing their art. If you, I
Speaker 3: don't know, if you won't go into all that stuff.
Speaker 3: But you remember a couple of years ago they played well.
Speaker 4: Wait, a minute.
Speaker 1: You know what, I'm sorry, I don't hold that thought.
Speaker 1: Please remember, because I know I will forget, But I've
Speaker 1: also forgotten that I'm supposed to say that. This episode
Speaker 1: of the Golf Smarter Podcast is brought to you by
Speaker 1: all Right, Jeff, let's get back to your stuff, because sure,
Speaker 1: not like we're running out of time. But we don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of time left.
Speaker 9: But we are going to do a part We're gonna
Speaker 9: do a part two.
Speaker 1: We're going to do a members only episode. So let's
Speaker 1: take this to our limit here and then we'll come
Speaker 1: back and do a member's only episode.
Speaker 3: Well, let me give you the diamond bullet and the
Speaker 3: forehead shot on two butts.
Speaker 1: Okay, two putts.
Speaker 3: You go, you find a flat area of the green
Speaker 3: that allows you to make a ten foot without running
Speaker 3: over any funny contour, and then you find a flat
Speaker 3: tilt that is about percent.
Speaker 4: That would be a very how many because of the
Speaker 4: I was telling you that there is a physical limit
Speaker 4: on how much you.
Speaker 3: Can tilt the green before the ball will not stay
Speaker 3: on that surface. It will always roll downhill no matter
Speaker 3: what you do. That limit is really a combination of
Speaker 3: green speed and slope the faster the green, the less
Speaker 3: slope you can have before that point is reached. The
Speaker 3: slower the green where you got to tilt it. Then
Speaker 3: you reach the point with a greater tilt. But it's
Speaker 3: always the combination of the green speed and.
Speaker 4: The slope steepness.
Speaker 3: And so if you say everybody mows their greens today
Speaker 3: to about stemp nine, maybe stamp ten on occasion that
Speaker 3: limit is reached around a six percent slope, And the
Speaker 3: all golf course architects know this one too. It makes
Speaker 3: if they make seven percent slope, the golf course is
Speaker 3: gonna stamp ten that he's just wasted pendable positions.
Speaker 4: You're not gonna have holes there.
Speaker 3: He's just luxuriating and spending somebody else's money by design
Speaker 3: that sort of green. Because the person that owns the
Speaker 3: golf course is not really going to be able to
Speaker 3: use seven percent slope unless they get really slow grass, and.
Speaker 4: They don't like that.
Speaker 3: Their members don't like slow grass, so they're always stimp
Speaker 3: and izes or whatever. And so the reality of today's
Speaker 3: golf course architecture of greens, which should inform every skillful
Speaker 3: golfer's mind, which I doubt that it does. But if
Speaker 3: you inform yourself about golf course architecture, you will know
Speaker 3: that the range of steepness of slope kind of maxes
Speaker 3: out around six percent. And if you stretched the numbers zero, one, two, three, four,
Speaker 3: five and six out on a bell curve, the zeros
Speaker 3: in the sixes are practically non existent, the ones in.
Speaker 4: The fives are rare.
Speaker 3: Two and four percent slopes are pretty calm, and three
Speaker 3: percent is the wheelhouse core of the whole deal. Two
Speaker 3: and three and four percent are the slopes that you
Speaker 3: run into most frequently. And that's what we're about, learning
Speaker 3: the ones you run into most frequently. We're not trying
Speaker 3: to learn mathematics and physics formulas like these, ya who's
Speaker 3: from Yale teaching how to calculate with lang Lagrangians formulas
Speaker 3: in four dimensions what exactly the ball will do to
Speaker 3: a pinpoint target that is infantasmally small. We're not doing
Speaker 3: that kind of silliness. We're playing golf like rough and
Speaker 3: rowdy Scots walking across the sheep pasture.
Speaker 4: So what we want to do is to.
Speaker 3: Bushwhack the most common putts that we actually can sink
Speaker 3: and actually run into.
Speaker 4: And that means we really want.
Speaker 3: To know inside of fifteen feet and specifically ten footers
Speaker 3: on two percent slope, three percent slope, four percent slope,
Speaker 3: and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: So here are the two putts. Will tell you that
Speaker 4: find a two.
Speaker 3: Percent flat area of the green that you can make
Speaker 3: a ten foot put on without running across a funny contract.
Speaker 3: How do you know it's two percent slope?
Speaker 1: That's funny? That was my next question. How do you understand?
Speaker 1: How do you say that's a x percent?
Speaker 4: Right? To say to a two percent slope? The word
Speaker 4: percent means one hundred per one hundred.
Speaker 3: So if you walk one hundred inches straight down the
Speaker 3: fall line, straight uphill downhill line through the hole away
Speaker 3: down the steepest direction from the hull down that fall
Speaker 3: line one hundred inches, and then compare the elevation of
Speaker 3: the grass where your foot is with the elevation higher
Speaker 3: back up that one hundred inches where the hole is.
Speaker 3: If the drop in elevation from the hull to the
Speaker 3: foot is two inches, it's two percent slow.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess that's pretty easy.
Speaker 3: And now how do you know it's one hundred inches
Speaker 3: that you walk downhill? Military paces are thirty inches? Three
Speaker 3: of those plus ten more inches three steps plus the
Speaker 3: one grip of a putter.
Speaker 4: All grips of pudders on conventional putters are ten inches long. Also,
Speaker 4: your foot is about ten inches long, so three.
Speaker 3: Inches three military paces straight downhill from the hull plus
Speaker 3: ten more inches that's one hundred inches.
Speaker 4: The second way to.
Speaker 3: Know one hundred inches is that most conventional putters are
Speaker 3: around thirty four to thirty five inches. If you flip
Speaker 3: three putters, you're there good enough for going to work. Now,
Speaker 3: if you're standing below the hole one hundred inches away,
Speaker 3: how do you sort of assess how different it is
Speaker 3: in elevation.
Speaker 4: You have to imagine a string.
Speaker 3: At the hole that you draw out kind of like
Speaker 3: a razor stripe or whatever. You draw a string level
Speaker 3: away from the hole, over top of that line that
Speaker 3: you walk down so that the string is level in gravity,
Speaker 3: and you pull it out, and then the string is
Speaker 3: poised in the air a certain elevation above the ground.
Speaker 3: And if it's two inches above the ground, that would
Speaker 3: basically sit on the top of your shoe at the
Speaker 3: toe area. That's about how the toe area of your
Speaker 3: shoe is. If it's three inches, that string would come
Speaker 3: to your foot and meet somewhere about where your laces are,
Speaker 3: not quite the top of the lacens. Right in the middle,
Speaker 3: near the top of the lacens is about three inches
Speaker 3: off the ground. If the strain comes to your foot
Speaker 3: and hits the ankle bone or your foot, the ankle
Speaker 3: bone is about four inches off the ground. So basically,
Speaker 3: you walk three inch three steps downhill from the hole,
Speaker 3: straight down the fall line, and they add ten more
Speaker 3: inches and you look back at the hole and you
Speaker 3: imagine that strain coming out level and gravity and hitting
Speaker 3: your foot somewhere, and you say, is it top of
Speaker 3: the toe to two percent? Is it laces three percent?
Speaker 3: Or is it ankle four percent?
Speaker 1: All right, So here's what I want to do. We
Speaker 1: need to continue this because I need to know more
Speaker 1: about the percentage and what it is. So, okay, I
Speaker 1: figured out it's two percent. What am I supposed to
Speaker 1: do with that information? I also want to know, well, no,
Speaker 1: don't even answer me, because I know that's gonna be
Speaker 1: another site and we still have we have to bring
Speaker 1: Terry on for our short game academy. But I also
Speaker 1: want you to explain what the hell is DIMP meter
Speaker 1: is and where it comes from and any gadgets out
Speaker 1: there that are that are fall line gadgets, you know,
Speaker 1: like beyond your plumb botty and that stuff. So will
Speaker 1: you come back for a members only episode for next week?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, all right, then we'll record that in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But thank you very much. Is there anything you'd like
Speaker 1: to tell our general audience about getting this paper that
Speaker 1: you've uh oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure, please free well send me an email and uh
Speaker 3: and say hello and ask for the papers. You can
Speaker 3: ask for the green Reading paper or PDF, a meta pdf.
Speaker 3: It's forty forty five pages long.
Speaker 4: It's got pictures, diagrams, videos too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And it does I've got my I got a little
Speaker 3: YouTube video show I did that string thing I just
Speaker 3: told you about. And you send me an email to
Speaker 3: Jeff at putting Zone and the Jeff is spelled funny.
Speaker 3: Geo starts out like George, ends up like Jeff g
Speaker 3: e oh f f at putting Zone dot com and
Speaker 3: you send me an emailop, I'll send it right back
Speaker 3: to you at three am in the morning.
Speaker 1: And also there are there are Putting Zone certified Putting
Speaker 1: Zone instructors everywhere nowadays, aren't there.
Speaker 3: That's right, there's one hundred and forty eight coaches and
Speaker 3: twenty countries around the world.
Speaker 1: So if you're as enamored with Jeff's content as I am,
Speaker 1: and you want really to work with somebody one on one,
Speaker 1: you can find them and they're all listed on your
Speaker 1: putting zone dot Com website.
Speaker 3: Correct, I have a Google map that shows exactly where
Speaker 3: they are.
Speaker 1: And you're traveling around the country all the time doing clinics.
Speaker 4: I swear I'm going right now.
Speaker 3: I'm going to Kentucky to work with the University Kentucky
Speaker 3: coaches and also my friend Matt Jordan there in Lexington, Kentucky,
Speaker 3: and before Sunday, I have three more catches.
Speaker 1: Amazing. All right, so uh, we're gonna for all the
Speaker 1: Golf Smarter members who want to continue this listening to
Speaker 1: this conversation, stay tuned because it'll be coming up next week. Jeff,
Speaker 1: we will speak with you on our next episode. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, buddy, and go take a swig of
Speaker 1: that at McDonald's coffee.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you very much, And now it's.
Speaker 9: Time for scre Zone Short Game Academy with Terry Taylor.
Speaker 9: If you have a question about your short game, click
Speaker 9: on the score Zone Academy button at golfsmarter dot com
Speaker 9: and let the experts at score Golf put a new
Speaker 9: money club in your bag. If Terry answers your question
Speaker 9: on the show, you'll receive a free score forty one.
Speaker 1: Sixty one wedge. Better yet, click on their ad at
Speaker 1: golfsmarter dot com and you'll get ten percent off your order.
Speaker 1: And here's another reason to join golf Smarter for members,
Speaker 1: only fifteen percent off your order from score Golf. At
Speaker 1: additional five percent that could easily pay for your membership
Speaker 1: for the next few years. Terry, welcome back to our
Speaker 1: Short Game Academy. The reaction from our audience to your
Speaker 1: advice and generous offers has been pretty awesome. There have
Speaker 1: been some great questions that have been coming in, and
Speaker 1: I get the sense that more than the opportunity to
Speaker 1: get a free wedge, our listeners just love your insights
Speaker 1: to the short game.
Speaker 8: That's what we're here for.
Speaker 10: We're here to help people score better and learn more
Speaker 10: about their scoring clubs. And the only thing I have
Speaker 10: to tell you is if they're looking for a free wage,
Speaker 10: they can't get one from score Golf because we don't
Speaker 10: make wedges.
Speaker 8: We make precisions scoring clubs.
Speaker 1: Ooh, got me?
Speaker 8: Okay, gotcha?
Speaker 1: You got me? Yeah, And so we would love to
Speaker 1: give away some scoring clubs because that's what you're gonna do.
Speaker 1: You're gonna score better when you play with your score
Speaker 1: golf scoring club. And if I can be a testimony
Speaker 1: on that one, I'm loving mine. But because of my
Speaker 1: insanity of moving, I haven't gotten a chance to play.
Speaker 1: So I'm watching other people play a lot. But I
Speaker 1: want to get to these questions. And we're going to
Speaker 1: concentrate today on one question that came in from Randy Starbuck,
Speaker 1: who lives in Elk Grove, California. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's just coincidence that they're Californians that are that are
Speaker 1: we're doing this. But his question says that the conventional
Speaker 1: wisdom is that bounce needed in a wedge, he'll call
Speaker 1: it a wedge is governed by one course conditions hard
Speaker 1: tight or versus lush and soft, and or two your
Speaker 1: swing a sweeper versus a digger. Well, that creates some
Speaker 1: wide variations. So when buying a wedge, what should we
Speaker 1: lean towards for selecting the right bounce? Courts? Conditions and
Speaker 1: our swing type. I hope that makes sense, does it?
Speaker 1: I'm sure sense to you.
Speaker 10: Well, that very question is what led me to develop
Speaker 10: the patented vesol about twenty years ago. But instead of
Speaker 10: getting into a commercial, let's talk about Randy's dilemma, because
Speaker 10: everybody has that same dilemma. And what I'm going to
Speaker 10: start with is make sure everybody really understands what bounce is.
Speaker 10: Because I get hundreds and hundreds of questions through my
Speaker 10: blog and people calling in and people are confused. I
Speaker 10: had one of the top one hundred retailers in the
Speaker 10: country approached me at the Golf Show and this is
Speaker 10: a top one hundred teacher and a top one hundred retailer,
Speaker 10: and she says, can you really explain to me what bounces?
Speaker 8: So that's how confusing bounds is. Let me try to.
Speaker 10: Clarify for this you got for all your listeners out there.
Speaker 10: If you hold up your wedge or any golf club
Speaker 10: and look at the bottom of the golf club, look
Speaker 10: right down that what I call the worm's eye view,
Speaker 10: you will see that a wedge has a downward angle
Speaker 10: from the leading edge where the soul meets the face
Speaker 10: backwards to the rear trailer edge of the soul. This
Speaker 10: downward angle is called bounce. And very simply what bounce
Speaker 10: does because of that downward angle is it causes the
Speaker 10: turf to reject that golf club, if you will so
Speaker 10: on contact the amount of bounce, it acts like an
Speaker 10: airplane wing. It provides lift, and so it the turf
Speaker 10: will tend to reject that. So the functionality of bounce
Speaker 10: is governed by the width of the soul and the
Speaker 10: and this actual angle of the downward So when we
Speaker 10: talk about high bounce wedges, we talk we're typically talking
Speaker 10: about wedges from nine to fifteen degrees of bounce, and
Speaker 10: the modern modern wedges typically all have about the same
Speaker 10: width of soul. If you look at the you know,
Speaker 10: the wedge rack from all the different brands, you don't
Speaker 10: see a lot of variation and soul width unless you
Speaker 10: get into there. But obviously if you have a lower
Speaker 10: bounce angle and a wider soul, you know you're going
Speaker 10: to have more bounce effect than a narrow were sold.
Speaker 10: The challenge for wedge play comes into if you go
Speaker 10: back and look at the history of the wedge. The
Speaker 10: earliest wedges had a wide soul but not a lot
Speaker 10: of bounce on them, but bunkers were all very firm
Speaker 10: back then. As the wedge evolved through the forties and fifties,
Speaker 10: we saw wedges get bigger souls. Some of you might
Speaker 10: remember the old Hogan shure out There was a bunch
Speaker 10: of other wedges out there that had bigger souls and
Speaker 10: rounded souls, and bounce began in the sixties, and really
Speaker 10: in the seventies and eighties you began to see these
Speaker 10: variations of low bounce high bounce. But the industry has
Speaker 10: been very consistent. All the wedge companies will tell you
Speaker 10: that just as Randy astid, you need a high bounce
Speaker 10: wedge for soft and lush lies, you need a low
Speaker 10: bounce wedge for hard and tight lives. Well, the challenge
Speaker 10: there for all of us is, my golf course has
Speaker 10: got all of those. My golf course plays tight and fast,
Speaker 10: except at rain last night it's less and soft. The
Speaker 10: tour player has an easy solution that he goes into
Speaker 10: the equipment trailer and gets a much free new edges
Speaker 10: so he can deal with whatevery got dealt with. But
Speaker 10: in our world it really doesn't work that way. Conventional
Speaker 10: wisdom also is if you have a steep angle of
Speaker 10: attack and you're kind of coming down on the ball
Speaker 10: more abruptly. You need a higher bounce wedge to give
Speaker 10: you more rejecting force. If you have a shallow angle
Speaker 10: of attack, you kind of nip the ball off without
Speaker 10: much DIBt. You can get away with the lower bounce wedge.
Speaker 10: The problem is, if you're a good player, you vary
Speaker 10: your angle of approach because the kind of shot you're
Speaker 10: trying to hit. So if you're trying to hit a
Speaker 10: little lower shot, you're going to swing shallower through impact.
Speaker 10: If you're trying to hit a higher shot, a flop shot,
Speaker 10: you're going to pick the ball up more, the club
Speaker 10: up more abruptly, and have a steeper angle of attack.
Speaker 10: If you're a fifteen to twenty handicapper, you vary your angle.
Speaker 8: Of attack completely by accident.
Speaker 10: That's why you're a fifteen to twenty handicapper, because you're
Speaker 10: not grooveed into the exact same angle of attack.
Speaker 1: Be nice, I'm trying to be nice.
Speaker 10: But the problem is is that how do you fit
Speaker 10: something that constantly changes. And I was talking to a
Speaker 10: fitter one day, and I'll divulge off into this little parable.
Speaker 10: I'm talking to this club fitter and he says, well,
Speaker 10: I like to fit Bounce. And I said, well, let
Speaker 10: me ask you this. If a guy came in for
Speaker 10: a driver fitting and his first swing he hit a
Speaker 10: highest slice. His second swing he hit a smother hook.
Speaker 10: His third swing he hit one right down the middle.
Speaker 10: His fourth swing he topped the ball, fifth swing he
Speaker 10: skied it. Sixth swing he hit a big high hook.
Speaker 10: Seventh swing he hit a low, squealing slice. How would
Speaker 10: you fit that guy when he can't make two swings
Speaker 10: in a row that are the same.
Speaker 1: And I can't fit that guy.
Speaker 8: I can't fit him.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I said, well, then how do you fit Bounce when
Speaker 10: every wedshot the lie is going to be different than
Speaker 10: the one before that? And he said, wow, I never
Speaker 10: thought of it that way. So, Mandy, I'm going to
Speaker 10: tell you that the easiest solution what you're doing is
Speaker 10: to go buy a score forty one sixty one with
Speaker 10: our patented vesol which has a high bounce and a
Speaker 10: low bounce in every wedge and every soul rather and
Speaker 10: you know every one of them is designed for that
Speaker 10: particular loft.
Speaker 8: Short of that, you know what a lot of people will.
Speaker 10: Do is carry, you know, a low bounce club in
Speaker 10: maybe a fifty eight or sixty degree and a higher
Speaker 10: bounce club in a fifty four or fifty six. And
Speaker 10: that way, if you have a high bounced situation, you
Speaker 10: use that club. If you have a low bounce situation,
Speaker 10: you use the other one. It's not ideal, but even
Speaker 10: the big manufacturers that make these conventional old style bounces,
Speaker 10: they will tell you that's what to do. I never
Speaker 10: like turning this show into a commercial for Score Golfer
Speaker 10: for the things I designed. But you know, this is
Speaker 10: a big problem because conventional wisdom and conventional wedge design
Speaker 10: doesn't really lend itself to solve this problem. We believe
Speaker 10: we did with our patented v sol. We got a
Speaker 10: cult like following out there, as Fred and a lot
Speaker 10: of your listeners out there, a lot of you all
Speaker 10: know you've tried our idol on wedges and now our
Speaker 10: Score forty one sixty one precision scoring clubs, and we're
Speaker 10: we're really tackling that into the set. We don't make
Speaker 10: drivers and irons, and you know, we're focusing on helping
Speaker 10: people you deal with this high end of the set,
Speaker 10: because people like Randy, you have questions and challenges, and
Speaker 10: so that's.
Speaker 8: What we're trying to do.
Speaker 10: But Randy, and like I say, back to your question,
Speaker 10: you know, my recommendation is I'd love you to try
Speaker 10: our stuff. We got one coming frequently answered your question.
Speaker 10: You can fill out the rest of the set. But
Speaker 10: you know, for the rest of you all, if you're
Speaker 10: not ready to replace your scoring clubs, and we'd love
Speaker 10: a shot at your business if you do. But if
Speaker 10: you're not ready to replace that, try to have, you know,
Speaker 10: clubs in your bag that have a variety, have a
Speaker 10: high bounce and a low bounce golf club in there.
Speaker 10: My recommendation is put your lower bounce on the higher
Speaker 10: loft club and your high bounce on the on the
Speaker 10: lower loft fifty six.
Speaker 1: And why would you separate them that way? And I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if this is being redundant, because it's still I
Speaker 1: don't know if even with this explanation, if I can
Speaker 1: explain to somebody simply, here's what bounces. Is there a
Speaker 1: simple answer of which is best, you know, on the
Speaker 1: higher loft and the lower loft. Well, sorry to do.
Speaker 10: That to you, No, I mean it's not because it's
Speaker 10: a very complex topic.
Speaker 8: It really is.
Speaker 10: If the turf is soft, you need a higher bounce
Speaker 10: to help keep the keep the club from digging, whether
Speaker 10: it's a bunker or whether it's a chip shot or
Speaker 10: a pit shot. If and if the surf turf is soft,
Speaker 10: you're you're going to still be able to lay the
Speaker 10: club open a little bit, so you can add a little.
Speaker 8: Loft to that fifty four fifty six by.
Speaker 10: Laying it open and get you know, get the ball
Speaker 10: flight that you're after on that little short range shot.
Speaker 10: On full swing shots, it's not that critical, you know,
Speaker 10: because you've got a lot of club.
Speaker 8: EDGs beat to get the ball out of the turf.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 10: Uh, the only only time becomes real critical and a
Speaker 10: full swing shot is when you're playing off of a
Speaker 10: very tight, hard pan type line. A high bounce club
Speaker 10: is going to skip right in. If you hit a
Speaker 10: little a little a little behind the ball, that high
Speaker 10: bounce club is going to skip into the ball. So
Speaker 10: if you have a long range shot and you're carrying,
Speaker 10: you know that that it's a I'd love to hit
Speaker 10: my fifty four degree, but it's a high bounce club
Speaker 10: and I've got to I've got a tight lie then
Speaker 10: you know, go to your go to your your pea
Speaker 10: club or your gap wedge and and just grip down
Speaker 10: on a little bit and something with less bounce. But
Speaker 10: it's a dilemma. I mean, I would tell you that
Speaker 10: there is no answer for this except what we did
Speaker 10: with the viola. I'm sorry, guys. I mean, that's just
Speaker 10: that's just what it is. And because our soul never
Speaker 10: meant a lot didn't like and there aren't any other
Speaker 10: wedges out there that do that. Regardless of what these
Speaker 10: little nuanced grinds and they say we took some off
Speaker 10: the heel and the and the toe and all that,
Speaker 10: that doesn't make a big difference. I mean, you have
Speaker 10: to have bounce to make a make a club function.
Speaker 10: And uh, you know, we've done something pretty pretty march
Speaker 10: us with our v soul. But you know, there are
Speaker 10: ways to at least overcome some of the limitations of
Speaker 10: conventional wedge design. And you know, the only the only
Speaker 10: one that I can recommend is that you know, have
Speaker 10: ai bounce club and have a low bounce club. I
Speaker 10: don't think you want to carry two clubs of the
Speaker 10: same loft, but you know, because that gets into your
Speaker 10: full swing gapping but again the short end of the set.
Speaker 10: You know, one of the things at the short end
Speaker 10: of the set, as I mentioned, I've got wedges in
Speaker 10: my collection from the thirties, fifties, sixties, seventy eighties, the wedge,
Speaker 10: which why I say SCOREGolf doesn't make wedges. The wedge
Speaker 10: basically hasn't changed in fifty sixty seventy years. I've got
Speaker 10: a nineteen fifties Spaulding dynamiter that if I took all
Speaker 10: if I took all the graphics off and rechromed it,
Speaker 10: I would defy anybody to be able to tell that
Speaker 10: from one of the twenty twelve models out there.
Speaker 8: Interesting.
Speaker 1: All right, buddy, Well listen, we will talk to you again,
Speaker 1: and we'll cover another question in a couple episodes for
Speaker 1: the next Golf Smarter episode. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: your time and for your knowledgeable answer.
Speaker 10: Always a pleasure. Can't wait for the next show.