Speaker 1: Hi. This is Michael olfand from Farlow, North Dakota. I
play at Rose Creek Golf Course.
Speaker 2: This is golf Smarter number nine eight nine.
Speaker 1: So if you play slow greens and you were going
to practice the proper approach speed, you would put a
club shaft behind the hole at exactly fifteen inches past
the back of the cup. You would cut to miss
on purpose. You would actually aim maybe a foot to
the right of the actual hole, and you would try
to get your balls to just gently stop right at
that fifteen inch mark up against the shaft. Because if
you play in really particularly on public horses in the South,
with Bermuda grass, which is very slow, it needs to
have more speed than that last foot of going into
the hole to improve your odds of lipping in versus
slipping out. There was just going to be more imperfections
in the green and more footprints, particularly if you play
it in a bermuda green golf course in the South
or like here in Hawaii. And if you play on
medium speed greens, you want that shaft to be at
eleven inches, And if you play on fast greens, which
almost exclusively private clubs, you would put it at seven inches.
So there was the ball would roll by seven inches
if you were trying to miss on purpose on fast greens,
it would roll by eleven inches on medium greens and
fifteen inches on slow greens.
Speaker 2: Pudding and chipping around the green drills, tips and advice
with Jim Waldron from Balance Point Golf. This is golf Smurder,
sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to
help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf
s Murder podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Fred. I think this is my fifty thousand appearance.
Speaker 2: Well guess what, Yeah, I went through the spreadsheet and
I looked it up this time. I couldn't fall asleep
last night going don't forget to look up Jim's how
many times Jim's been on the podcast. And here's some
statistics for you since you're a fan of as. Okay,
your first your first appearance was on episode one hundred
and five on December eighteenth, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: Okay, it sounds about right.
Speaker 2: Okay, you were on and then you were on once
in two thousand and eight, then you were on a
bunch and eleven in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen,
you did two episodes back to back. We were doing
the members only and they were on Putting, which you thought,
we've never done anything on Putting.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, well I'm being treated for Alzheimer's right now?
Should I should let you know that in your audience.
Take what you're here with a grain of salt.
Speaker 2: I hope you're kidding person, kidding good, it's not funny.
And then so that twenty fourteen we did two episodes
in Putting. It was the only time you were on
in twenty fourteen. You were only on once in twenty
sixteen and once in twenty seventeen, m and once in
twenty nineteen. But you were on monumental episodes of four hundred,
number six hundred, number eight hundred.
Speaker 1: Remember that.
Speaker 2: But it's not going to be nine hundreds. It's not
gonna be one thousand. Sorry I don't know what that's
going to be. But anyway, this is drum roll. Please,
this is Do I actually have a drum roll? Oh my,
I think I do.
Speaker 3: Wait wait, look atm No, No that's not no, all right,
shut up, okay, yay, okay, stop okay.
Speaker 2: So the only times I've ever used those buttons. So
this is your thirty sixth appearance. Wow at it far
far more than anybody.
Speaker 1: Else in the podcast. Well, it's almost honored, that is me.
I'm honored and you were a one time with me.
So does it count when I'm hosting you? Does that?
Did you count as one of the thirty six? Well?
Speaker 2: Of course that was what was that eight hundred?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: But you've become a podcast slot, haven't you.
Speaker 1: I'm shameless.
Speaker 2: We're not the only podcast you're on anymore. Yeah, I'm like,
wait a minute.
Speaker 1: I'm getting in for all kinds of bizarre podcasts. It's
it's funny, is that right? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well good good?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And how's business?
Speaker 1: Fantash can't I mean, busiest I've ever been by.
Speaker 2: Far, because you're a podcast star. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'm in Hawaii on the beach like I have
been for the last thirty years and enjoying Hawaiian Yep,
just came up from my morning walk and swim in
the ocean.
Speaker 2: You told me you turned your phone off.
Speaker 1: This is not my phone, that's that's FaceTime computer.
Speaker 2: We've talked so many times about how difficult it is
for you to just log in to this, and we
logged in on the first try today right at the
schedule time. It's amazing. But of course we're going to
have glitches somebody trying to get into.
Speaker 1: Well, hopefully that'll be the only one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully that'll be the only one. And we'll add
a lot of I promise to the audience that you're
not going to hear all of all of us trying
to figure out how to shut that up.
Speaker 1: No's what's funny. We were talking about that because about
how busy so when people you know, that's what I mean.
I've been doing so many webcam lessons, mainly for people
who suffer from yips or just poor mental game from
all over the planet. I'm still working with people on
their swing and their short game mechanics and obviously putting mechanics,
but it's sort of sort of blossom in the yips
and mental game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's a couple of things. I definitely want
to talk about putting today since we haven't done it
in thirteen years. But I also want to talk about
and God, I hope this isn't the yips, but I'm
really struggling around the edges of the green on I
chipping on. I have these great little I have a
great stroke. I have a great practice stroke and then
I go and I either chunk it, double hit it,
or fly it across the green just you know, scull
it and go and it goes and I'm like, what
is going on? I used to be really good at
this and get it right near.
Speaker 1: The hall chipping or putting off the green.
Speaker 2: Chipping, chipping chipping, you know, from like cause I don't
like to putt over rough. I want to get the ball.
Speaker 1: You have to you have to chip pitch for sure, right,
And I.
Speaker 2: Know that Tony Manzoni gave me this one tip that
works so well for so long of taking like an
eight iron and putting it more upright and putting it
on the toe and just do a little putting stroke
for it. But it's just it's not.
Speaker 1: Well, that shot does not work if you're out of
the rough. That only works if you're basically on the
fringe with the ball sitting up in a really good line.
That's called chipping. Okay, Yeah, it's what's something that Paul Runyon,
famous touring pro back in the thirties, forties and fifties
advocated for, but it doesn't work unless the balls Basically
you have to be on the fringe with the ball
sitting up for that technique to work.
Speaker 2: Okay, So if I'm another yard off the green and
im and I'm in rough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then you either have to do what's called modern shipping,
which is chipping with a little bit of riskcock and release,
or you got to do pitching, which is a half
to even a full wrist cock, so different, you know,
different technique than what you've been using. You you know
which whenever you're in the rough, you have to come
in on a steeper angle to get some club face
on the ball, right, you can't come in shallow and
classical chipping you come in pretty shallow, so you can't
use classical chipping, you know, old school chipping. So it's
a little harder shot because you have to time the
release anytime, anytime you're setting a wrist angle, you have
to release the angle on the downswing and that takes
obviously timing and skill, you know, more skill than if
you're using no risks. Yeah.
Speaker 2: M hmm, Okay, are we solved? Is it is that
all I need to know?
Speaker 1: No, there's always more than that.
Speaker 2: That's why I brought you one. Of course, well more
I need more. Fix it, fix it.
Speaker 1: Well, you got to keep your way forward, right, because
if you want to, if you want to increase the
angle of attack, you have to One way to do
that is to put your weight more forward, lean your
hands forward more so you have more forward chaffleen. Open
the face of your lob wedge or your sand wedge,
which are the two primary tools you're going to use
in a shot like that. When you open the face,
you expose more bounce, and the bounce slides through the
rough better than the leading edge. The leading edge if
it presents first, it'll it'll it'll encounter too much resistance
from the grass.
Speaker 2: And do I want like on my my the wedge
that I use for my lob is a fifty six
degree and and then there's a second number on these wedges,
and that's basically what the bounce is, right, I think
mine is a ten. So what are the numbers? Not
much bounce? What the higher number is less bounce and
the low number is more bounce.
Speaker 1: Now the higher number, the higher number if it's the
bounced number, because it could also be the loft some
of these wedges have the loft angle imprinted, like fifty
six degree would be the loft for example, right, And
the most common bounce degree of bounce with a fifty
six degrees sand wedge is fourteen degrees of bounce, but
you can get them with twelve or even as little
as ten. But I mean, to me, having only ten
degrees bounce out of sand wedge is crazy. It kind
of defeats the whole purpose. So, I mean, I've got
one that has sixteen degrees of bounce. So you want
you want to you know, bounce as your friend. You
want to have a fair amount of bounce on your
sandwich for sure.
Speaker 2: Right, and that's for softer sand I mean, we really
discussed this a little bit more. I think it's enlightening
for a lot of people to understand what what bounce
means in their.
Speaker 1: In their way, Yeah, what the way bounce works? Well, Well,
the best way to understand is to know the story
of of uh uh Am. I'm having a senior moment,
who was the Italian tour pro who invented the sandwich,
whom I thinking of back in the nineteen thirties of
the British Open. I don't know, I'm having a senior moment.
But anyhow, he invented the same, but he invented the
sandwidge Toeppe sandwich, Yeah, exactly, just Gisepe, my friend Giuseppe.
But he kept it was such a powerful weapon because
he added he basically had a welder weld some type
of metal I forgot what it was on the bottom
of his U pitching wedge, and he had the club
fitter bend the pitching wedged like a lot, so there
was a more loft. I think it was lead if
I remember I so had this gobs of lead on
the bottom and that works the way a keel on
a boat works, so it can go through the water faster.
So basically, when you have bounce on the bottom of
a wedge, it's it slides through the turf better and
it slides through the sand better. But if you don't
have bounced, then the leading edge tends to dig in
the grass or dig in the sand. So that's the
whole idea. To provide some some more speed, more zip
through the ground with a more stable club face angle,
you need bounce.
Speaker 2: Okay, And for those folks who are playing jee.
Speaker 1: Jeans Sarason there you go.
Speaker 2: I knew it was going to pop into your head and.
Speaker 1: Made those Alzheimer drugs are really helping today. I say.
Speaker 2: So for those folks who live in areas that have
more uh packed sand, it's not fluffy.
Speaker 1: You want lower bounce, Yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Want lower bounds. And then what about if you're playing
a hard pan and you you know you're going to
use a pitching wedge out there, and you're playing and
that's not a lot of grass and it's the ground
is kind of hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was. The harder the pan, you know, the
less fluffy the lie is, so to speak, whether it's
in sand or on the on the fairway or in
the rough. Uh, the firmer the lie, the less bounce
you need they want, okay, because if you have too
much bounce, then that bounce will keep the leading edge
too high during the impact, just before, during and after impact.
And in fact that you can even you can literally
even bounce off the ground. You can skull the ball
over the green if you have too much bounce, it
literally bounce off the ground. Yeah. So like in the
Pacific Northwest where I live, and you know in Oregon
and Washington, we get a lot of rain most of
the year except for a couple of months in the
middle of summer. And so generally the better players here
have like a if they have a fifty six degree
sand wedge, they may only have twelve degrees of bounce
eleven something like that. But if you look play in
South Florida where they have those those almost talcum powder
greenside bunkers where it's really light, powdery sand, you might
have sixteen degrees of bounce on your sandwich. Yeah, So
generally what I recommend is fourteen degrees on your sandwich
and ten nine or ten degrees on your love which
that seems to be the best combination for most people.
So a little a little less bounce on the on
the love witch.
Speaker 2: So actually I use my fifty three degree as my
sand wedge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's probably a fifty four that was bent
to fifty three, probably, I'm guessing, okay, yeah, because I
don't really know nobody. I really find that a fifty
three degree.
Speaker 2: And I spread my legs wide and I crouched down,
I get down and I'm able to you know, I've
had more success doing that in the sand than using
unless of course I'm on a green side bunker that
the pin is very close, then I'll go with a
higher lofted my fifty six and try to just get
under it and let it pop up. Is that right?
Speaker 1: You never really want to try to get under it.
That you want to try and get under it is
your your conscious mind using language expressing what's called in
your unconscious mind scooping impulse. Okay, even on a flop shot,
you should not try to get under it, right, because
that that'll almost certainly make you either hit it really
thin and skull it or maybe hit it really fat.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, but there's that there's that common myth I
guess or notion of you want to you want to
in the bunker, you want to get like under the ball. Yeah,
that's just hitting behind it.
Speaker 1: Well, you're you're hitting behind it on purpose, you're hitting
it heavy fat on purpose. But you never want to
feel like you're trying to get under it. Remember, you're
think of it from the standpoint of your wrists, and
your wrists on cocking is what creates most of the
downward force into the clubbed on all golf shots where
you're cocking your wrists, which lifts the clubb up towards
the sky on the backswing. Your bus basically reversing chorus
on the forward swing, so you're always hitting down the
clubed's going down from your wrists and any where you
set your wristcock angle on the backswing. So what what's
getting getting under is when people go sideways with their rest,
which is called flipping, which is a bad, bad flaw
that almost all golfers have unless they're really good. Yeah.
The loft built into the club makes the ball get airborne.
You don't need to help out by trying to get
underneath it.
Speaker 2: Okay, so then I don't necessarily need a higher lofty
club when I'm yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Do need a lot. Everybody should have a lob wedge
in their bag, which is generally sixty, but it could
be a fifty eight degree.
Speaker 2: But he's really hard to hit.
Speaker 1: If your technique sucks. Yeah, yeah, but you can.
Speaker 2: You can take a handicap or as a sixty degree. Yeah,
you're not necessarily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, if your handicap is roughly twenty or higher,
you probably don't have the skill to hit a lob wodge.
Well yeah, okay with that, Yeah, I use mine all
the time all the time.
Speaker 2: Oh, I do too. I mean my fifty six. I
used to use a sixty bit, but I was not
getting Sometimes I would need it for like a fifty
yard shot, and with my sixty I couldn't reach it.
But with this fifty my fifty six, I'm pretty good
up to sixty five yards and I can go different
distances on it. Yeah, it's just when I get in
the rough around the green, that's when I I didn't
want to make the choke sound, so I just made
the vomiting vomit sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. We all know that sound.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: All right. Should we talking about putting?
Speaker 2: You want to talk about pudding? I would love to
talk about.
Speaker 1: Putting, Okay, So here's my story. I'm putting. I was
never very good at it until about twelve years ago
my dad.
Speaker 2: What happened then?
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you. My dad was really good. He was.
He only got down to about a ten handicap, but
he was like a plus three at putting. He practiced
putting every night, like like in commercials back in the
day when you couldn't you know, before there were TV
remotes and you had to wait for the commercial. He
would just practice putting. For three minutes all the commercials
were running, and he got really good at it. But
I never liked it. I always thought it was kind
of boring. And I had this round of golf here
in the north shore of Oahu at Turtle Bay, at
the Palmer Course, which is probably the best course in
Hawaii and one of the hardest courses for sure, and
I shot by ball striking that day was really good.
I think I hit fifteen greens or something like that
in like twenty mile an hour trade winds.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: But I missed like four putts, four birdie putts, I
think three birdie putts and one par saving putt within say,
four to six feet, and they were makeable putts. I
ended up shooting like, I think seventy four for the day,
something like that could have been if I had made
all those potts, it would have been you know, like
sixty nine or something. And so that kind of was
a wake up call. So I decided this was like
twelve years ago. I said, you know, I really don't
know what I'm doing, what I'm doing with a putter,
and I better figure this out. So I spent the
next year really intensely investigating putting instantly learned a lot
of stuff that most people, most amateurs, have never heard of,
and even most teaching pros, I think, still don't understand
about putting really and I totally changed my system of
how to teach it, and I've had absolutely incredible results
teaching it since then to people. Yeah, but it's it's
a very different approach. I'll just give you a quick
sort of overview and then you can feel free to
throw some questions at me. But the first principle of
the Waldron putting system is the fact that your ball
is on the putting surface doesn't mean you should always
use the same grip. And you know, you shouldn't always
think of every putt as being basically the same. It's
not so. In my system, there's four different types of
putts you could encounter in a typical round of golf,
and it's based on the distance the ball is from
the hole number one and number two. How much the
distance the ball is from the hole involves line control
versus distance control. So here's what it is. So if
you're if you have a short put what I call
a short putt, and I'm talking about for the vast
majority of golf courses today, they're between nine and eleven
on the stint meter. Probably ten is average today of
a decent, you know, well maintained golf course. There obviously
are faster ones that the tour guys play on, and
there are slower ones here in the un courses in
Hawhi where they're like seven or eight, you know, but
vast majority of courses are nine, ten, eleven. Yeah, So
when you're putting within seven feet of the hole, that's
what I call a short putt. And you should think
of that putt as ninety percent about line control only
ten percent distance control, because most of the time when
you miss a short putt like that, it's mostly not
always it's because you're ball veered left or right of
the intended line. And I'm assuming you know you can
read the line properly right. In other words, you you
didn't hit it on the line you inten So you
miss left or right only ten percent of the time.
If you're halfway decent at putting, do you miss those
putts because you blew it by the hole with too
much speed or you didn't get it to the hole right.
So you got to think of that as a putt
that's mostly about having good line control. Yeah, so that
means it's possible to use a different grip on that
short putt than you would use on say a sixty
five foot putt. And I'm loving the timing of this
podcast because I was watching the PJ event Tory Pines
the last couple of days and the number one player
in the world, Scotti Scheffler, has been doing this for
a while now, I think for the last year or so.
He puts with what some people call I like to
call it the paintbrush grip, kind of like this. Some
people call that the saw grip. When he's within fifteen
to twenty feet and when he's outside fifteen to twenty feet,
he does a conventional putting grip. And I've been teaching that.
That part I've been teaching for a long time, over
twenty years.
Speaker 2: And what's the what's the value of that?
Speaker 1: The value is the conventional grip, which is sometimes called
the reverse overlap palms neutral where your palms are basically
parallel to the club face. You do a reverse Yeah. Yeah,
that is really good for feeling the weight of the
club head and the speed that your hands and clubhead
are moving. So it's really good for distance control, but
it's not so good for line control because it allows
too much risk action and risk and forearm rotation. When
you when you rotate your wrists and forearms, you're altering
the face angle. The club face will either will roll
shut or roll open.
Speaker 2: And you know, interestingly, that's kind of why I moved
to a broomstick or now a sweeper. You can't use
the word broomstick anywhere where you're talking about lab golf, Yeah, yeah,
because some company now owns that word.
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, broomstick you can use broom handle is okay?
Speaker 1: And sleeper it's a yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know how they anyway, But I switched over
to a broomstick. I'll call it that for now because
we all know what I'm talking about. I did that
for about because my hands were getting in the way
with my normal length thirty three and a half inch putter.
And but I used the broomstick for about four months
and I could barely get under thirty six putts, where
before I was in the thirty two thirty three range
and sometimes thirty you know, so I went back to
my thirty three inch thirty three and a half inch,
talking about four months with the broomstick's work.
Speaker 1: Anyhow, So in my putting system, you use two grips.
Use what I call a short putt grip around fifteen
to twenty feet or less wow, because it creates better
face angle stability, So left hand low would be the
most popular of those. Then there's the saw grip, the
one that Scotti Scheffler's using. Then there's a Christ Marco
clawgrip up, there's a Paul Runyon grip. There's split hand
left hand low, which is what I do. I separate
my hands by about an inch left hand low, and
I rotate my left hand about forty five degrees to
face the sky. So that's a form of an armlock grip.
So the knuckles on my right hand are pressing against
the inside of my left wrist with equal sideways pressure.
So the universal aspect of a short putt grip is
it creates massive club face angle stability, and it also
tends to almost totally inhibit any tendency to flip your wrists.
And you know, mid to high handicap amateurs often will
flip their wrist sideways during right before impact, which is
a bad flaw to have in your putting stroke. So anyhow,
so that's part of it. So you use the standard
putting grip that can so called conventional putting grip roughly
outside fifteen to twenty feet and one of the short
putt grips inside it. Then there's four types of potts.
Again to mention, the short winners are seven feet and
in from eight feet to about fifteen to twenty feet
our medium distance putts. And then from twenty one feet
to about forty four feet our long our medium long putts.
And then anything outside forty five feet I call a
long putt. And what I teach is differing amounts of
grip pressure, four differing amounts of grip pressure. What's called
sideways triangle pressure, one of Hogan's concepts, which applies to
all golf shots, including putting. That means you squeeze your
upper arms, your elbows, your forearms, and your hands toward
each other sideways with equal pressure. And the more stability
you want in the club head and you want a lot,
you want a ton of stability in the club, particularly
in the face angle on a super short putt, the
more triangle pressure you apply and the more grip pressure.
So when I'm working with a student, I'm teaching him
how to be much better at putting, at making putts
within seven feet, he has very firm ret pressure. Overall,
he has high intensity sideways pressure, and he also has
high intensity connection pressure. Connection pressure means the pressure of
your tricep against your pectoral muscles going behind you. And
if you watch Tiger Woods, who's insanely great and very
short putts within seven feet, you can see him do
that and how he doesn't do it on longer putts.
He actually you can see him kind of fit his
particularly his left tricep against his left peck and press
it there when he's putting within roughly seven feet. So
in that type of a pot, there is no there
should be no slack in the system at all, meaning
your upper arms should stay glued deer pecks anytime you're
putting within seven feet. Yeah, Whereas on a putt that's
outside forty five feet, you need to have some sideways
motion of your upper arms brushing, brushing against your pecks,
moving against sideways against your pecks, still still touching your pecks,
but they're brushing, they're moving. Yeah, because you have to
make a bigger stroke. So you can't. You can't. You
couldn't use a connection pressure stroke on a longer putt
because you wouldn't. You wouldn't move the putter hardly at
any distance in space. Right, So we've got four different
amounts of sideways pressure, connection pressure, grip pressure, and then
the fourth one is called ring the flannel. Have you
ever heard Hogan talk about ring the flannel pressure?
Speaker 2: You know that is never talk to Hogan.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, you should talk to him. He's fantastic. He's
really good at parties. He's very entertaining.
Speaker 2: If I have one, Yeah, you should invite him over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just just you're gonna watch the martinis. Too
many martini.
Speaker 2: We'll get it. We'll get them for episode one thousand,
the Ghost of Smarter. That would be no, no, we'll
just get Hogan. I'm not going on even the.
Speaker 1: Ghost Okay, no no. But anyhow, he learned this from
h Scottish touring probe and he applied it to all
his golf shots, full shots, short game shots and putts.
But what you do is you, once you take the
proper grip, you gently squeeze each hand toward each other
in a twisting motion, So your left hand on the
putting grip twists like an eighth of an inch to
the right, and your right hand twists an eighth of
an inch to the left with equal pressure. So it's
almost like ring the flannels the Scottish term for ringing
a wet towel dry. So it's like you're you're not
physically moving your fingers on the handle, that would be
a mistake, but you're only doing it with your muscles
without actually moving your fingers. So I'm talking really really
really subtle pressure. Right, But when I'm doing a very
short pot, I have a higher intensity ring the flannel
pressure than I do on a sixty five foot putt. Right,
I basically have almost none on a long pot, and
I have a lot on a short putt. That's the idea.
And again, because we need more club face stability on
a s and we need more feel awareness for how
big emotion and how fast emotion on longer putts for
distance control, because long puts are mostly about distance control,
not line control.
Speaker 2: Okay, I am such a lab rat. I am so
enamored with with lab golf, and I know not everybody's
bought into it yet, because probably because of price. But
one of the things that they talk about and that
they're trying to they have scientifically cured is torque, right,
is take the torque out. And you I hear you
saying a lot of things about twisting and avoiding the
tist and that's what we're talking about. We're talking about
that's why wouldn't you have a putter that just now
that they're available, what put that prevents that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So the lab putters will make will absolutely create
a more stable face angle during the stroke, but it
still doesn't eliminate uh, instability.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: That you have to do as a skilled athlete. You
have to learn how to maintain a neutral putter face
angle to your path throughout the stroke.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, okay, And that's this.
Speaker 1: Gets to something else I mentioned Tiger. There's there's a
there's a I think mistaken view that Tiger is sort
of promulgated called releasing the putter, which is the idea
when you talk about releasing the club face in a
long game shot, in a few short game shots, it
means that just before impact and just after the toe
is moving faster than the heel, So there's independent face
angle rotation independent of the path. That's not really a
thing in putting in my based on my research, right,
it doesn't. It doesn't actually release. Now, you can do it,
and Tiger does do it. He does rotate the toe
a little faster than the heel. He uses his wrists.
He's using very old school putting methods that he learned
as a child. Right, And you can certainly do it
that way. And so I'm saying, if you can do
it that way, but why would you. Most amateurs basically
suck at keeping the face angle stable. I mean people
that I will play golf with who are average, average players.
They miss a lot of makeable putts within eight seven
or eight feet because their face angle was rotating either
too much to pass the heel, which means they miss
it left if they're right handed, or they go the
other way and they roll the face open and they
miss to the right. So what I teach, which goes
along with the lab thing, is I want, even on
long putts, I want the face angle to be stable
throughout that I don't want. I don't want any club
face rotation at all. I think I think that's just
a myth that you need to have that you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh there you done. Usually no I was waiting
for you going please okay, no, no, no, please keep going.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the idea is when you have connection pressure,
which again is the upper arm pressing against your pecks
in the in the behind you direction, and when you
have sideways pressure, and when you have ring the flannel pressure,
and when you have firmer grip pressure, the combination of
those four things to the highest extent that I advocate,
which again is nowhere near maximum, it's still pretty subtle,
that does something I call it takes the slack out
of the system. And the reason why I was a
poor putter until twelve years ago is I had way
too much slack in the system. And I can guarantee
anybody who's listening this ninety nine point ninety nine nine
percent of people listening to this podcast have way too
much slack in the system. The system is the so
called triangle of your shoulder girdle and your two arms.
And when you have slack in the system, and it
could be anywhere from your fingertips all the way up
into your armpits, the very fact that there's give or
slack or not, you know, not being taught enough. No
tautness allows the face angle to rotate open or shut
and allows your path to be inconsistent. And you want
a neutral path, and you want a stable club face
that stays neutral to the path, and you can't have
that when you have a lot of slack in the system.
So removing the slack is why we do those four things,
especially on a very short put and having a little
bit of slack on a really long putt is good
because a little bit of slack in the system on
a longer put gives you better distance control.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense, yes, because distance control is critical.
So what kind of drills? What kind of drills can
we do so that we can ingrain this and make
this you know, unconscious competence.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a there's a there's various training aids in
the market. There often called the putting tripod. It's one
of them, and it's two fiberglass poles that are about
maybe I guess they're about four feet long that connect
with a clamp on the shaft of your putter below
the grip, and the poles themselves go underneath your armpits.
So it looks like this V shaped device that's underneath
your armpits, and then you simply squeeze your your upper
arms and your forearms and elbows toward each other again
with the sideways pressure. So basically this really works. This
gives you the sideways pressure almost automatically. I highly recommend
some type of a putting tripod aid like that for
people who learn to take the slack out.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, I've never heard you, you know, talk
about aids that offer value.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. The
other way you can think of it, it's just strategically
is anytime you're putting, and again I'm not talking about uphill,
I'm talking about level pot obviously got to adjust for
uphill downhill, but anytime you're putting around forty five feet
or more, you have to think of that putt as
first of all, your odds of making it are close
to zero percent, right, So you're what you're really trying
to do is not three putt from there, yeah right,
And that means your first putt has to be reasonably
close to the hole withther than a three foot circle.
And again, most people when they three putt, it's not
because they're like eight feet left or right of the hole.
When the ball stops, it's because they're eight feet short
or eight feet long of the hole. True, right. So
distance control is really so I always say think of
that as ninety percent. That putt is ninety percent about
distance control, only ten percent about line control. And when
you're putting from about twenty one feet to about forty
four feet what I call medium long, it's like seventy
percent distance control, thirty percent line control. And when you're
putting from around eight feet to about fifteen twenty feet,
it's like fifty to fifty line control distance control. And
when you're putting seven feet or less, it's ninety percent
line control only ten percent distance. Yeah, And so that's
partly why I want people to use two putting grips,
a putting grip for sure outside fifteen twenty feet that
promotes good distance control, and a different putting grip within
fifteen twenty feet that promotes better line control. And then
along with what I mentioned earlier, having varying amounts of
ring during the flannel pressure connection pressure, sideways pressure grip pressure.
I mean most of my students when I show them
my grip pressure on a putt within seven feet they're
shocked how firm it is, because there's this myth that
as the putts get shorter, you could hold on lighter.
And all I can say is, if you want to
get the putting yips, do that. In fact, so many
of the students I work with who have putting yips,
they mistakenly think I got to hold on really light
with pressure. That's like inviting the yip in, right, because
you're starting out with so much slack in your fingers
that it invites the fingers tightening up. Whereas if you
start out tight, they're already tight. There's no more room
for the yip to come in, right.
Speaker 2: Sure, Sure, Yeah, I don't know if I've ever played
with anybody who had two different grips.
Speaker 1: Well, well, apparently I haven't been playing with Scotti lately then, yeah?
Speaker 2: Or Phil, No, I've not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Phil started doing that about four or five years ago.
There are about, I guess about ten percent of the
guys on tour I would guess are using two grips,
and have been from the last starting about five years ago.
It's gotten to be a thing, though. Yeah. I think
I think twenty years from now everybody will be doing it.
There's no there's no reason not to do it. There
really isn't. There's such an advantage, you know.
Speaker 2: So, uh, well, I'm fascinated by if you're short or
long and you're ten feet you have a less chance
of putting it in is if you're seven or eight
feet wide left or right.
Speaker 1: On long putts, I'm talking about very long putts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, on long putts, yeah. Yeah. And that's interesting to
me because it kind of rings true. I'd like, oh, yeah,
I think the ones that I missed the read, but
if I missed the distance sometimes I'll be three putting. Yeah.
Why is it then that apparently the tour average the
best players in the world from ten feet are at
fifty percent.
Speaker 1: I don't even think it's ten feet. Fred. Last I
looked was about a year ago. The fifty percent mark
was like at seven feet. I think from ten feet
they're only making like forty percent. Wow, they're making fifteen
percent roughly a little bit more from fifteen feet. Back
in the day, when Pels first wrote his book put
Like the Pros, I think it was the name of
the book. It came out in the early nineties. He
had done a test at Westchester Country Club. Back then,
the Westchester Greens were the best on tour, and he
took the top ten putters on tour and they made
exactly from six feet. Their make percentage was sixty percent
from six feet straight in putt that had no break
in it, And of course there's going to be less
on a putt that has a break, right, which most
of the time they will like the pros.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he also has the putting Bible right right.
Speaker 1: The other thing in my system, which is kind of cool,
is that for distance control, it's really important to understand
what's called Have you ever heard the term approach speed
and putting approach speed?
Speaker 2: No, but let's uh, let's let's talk about that right
after this. Okay, okay, I interrupted you and you wanted
to talk about something that I've not heard about, and
that's called approach speed on the putt.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So this this relates to both how how
you master the skill of distance control and putting, but
it also has to do with critically important Yeah. Yeah,
it has to do with improving your odds of of
a of a putt that actually hits the hole it
being in versus lipping out. That's the whole that's the
key to understanding approach sped. What it means is the
last foot or so that the putt's traveling before it
hits the hole. There's often invisible footprints that Pels discovered
years ago, and you called it the lumpy donut or
the volcano because people are standing there and bending over
to get their ball out of the cup, particularly if
you play in the public golf course late in the
afternoon in the summer, there's all these there's like an
invisible depression there. And you know, even though we have
soft spikes to say, they still can make little marks
in the green. So there can be little invisible imperfections
in the putting surface that you might not even see
with your naked eye. Because the ball is moving its
slowest right before it falls into the hole, those invisible
imperfections and the footprints can knot get offline.
Speaker 2: So it happened to me last week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: So you want the putting right to the Yeah, what
what was that? Exactly? What that?
Speaker 1: So you need to know, oh, that you have to
have the proper speed so that the ball will go
up the volcano, over the lumpy donut and will not
get knocked offline. Very often by the invisible imperfections, but
also not be moving so fast that it actually lips out.
And that speed is dependent on the speed of the
average the average green speed of the courses you play
most often. So in my research I've come up with
a way of measuring it and then a drill to
practice it. And here's what it is. If you're playing
on fast and I'm not talking about super fast greens
like they play at the US Open or maybe the
PGA or sometimes the British Open, I'm talking about which
are usually you know, thirteen or higher. I'm talking about
more realistic horses the average people play. So medium speed
greens are ten to eleven and a half. Fast greens
are eleven and a half to thirteen, and then slow greens,
which we have here in Hawaii with the old Hawaiian bermuda,
are eight and a half to ten. Right, So if
you play slow green and you were going to practice
the proper approach speed, you would put your club shaft
eight club shaft behind the hole at exactly fifteen inches
past the hole, past the back of the cup, and
you would you would put to miss on purpose. You
would actually aim maybe a foot to the right of
the actual hole, and you would try to get your
balls to just gently stop right at that fifteen inch
mark up against the shaft, because if you play on
really particularly on public horses in the South, with Bermuda grass,
which is very slow, it needs to have more speed
than that last foot of going into the hole to
improve your odds of lipping in versus slipping out. There
was just going to be more imperfections in the green
and more footprints, particularly if you play in a Bermuda
green golf course in the South or like here in Hawaii. Yeah,
and if you play on medium speed greens, you want
that shaft to be at eleven inches, And if you
play on fat greens, which is almost exclusively you know,
private clubs, you would put it at seven inches. So
there was it. The ball would would roll by seven
inches if you were trying to miss on purpose on
fast greens. It would roll by eleven inches on medium
greens and fifteen inches on slow greens.
Speaker 2: Well, I've always been under the impression that you want
to get your speed so that it goes past the hole.
I want to have enough because everyone everyone comes up
short most of the time because they're just trying to
let it just drake, you know, just dribble into the
dribbles not the right word, just drop right into the
front edge of the hole versus hitting the back rim
of the hole. Right.
Speaker 1: Well, that's kind of my point of saying this. So
this is another way I've explained. When I working with
a student, I have the student, he and I kneel
down on the green. We put a cushion down so
we don't make a hole on the green, but we're
nailing on a cushion, right. The greenskeeper on nuts. If
you see this without a cushion, And I say, if
you play on really fastens, then you want the ball
to roll in, to roll over the front edge and
then drop into the front edge of the bottom of
the cup. And medium speeds it rolls to the middle
of the cup and then drops, and on fast greens
it rolls to the back edge or even hits the
back edge before it hits the bottom pops down. So
you need to practice again depending on what kind of
greens you play.
Speaker 2: Either, and also it's dependent on if you're going uphill
or downhill.
Speaker 1: Well you have to go for that of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right uphill you're gonna want it to go to
the back of the hole right and downhill you wanted
to just kind of like fall in correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you have to practice that. I mean, that's
a skill to make the ball go. The other thing
is that when people have bad distance control. Of the
people who suffer from poor distance control, it's it's like
seventy percent they're short and only thirty percent are long
in my experience, so the vast majority of people don't
get the ball to the hole. You know, when I've
asked people who were liked it, I go, where do
you see the target? They go the I go, No,
the cup's not the target, right, and they look at
me like I'm nuts. I go, they go, what are
you talking about? I'm trying to make the ball go
to the hole. No, you have to putt it to
go past the hole to have decent you do right,
for all the reasons we just mentioned earlier, the hole
can't be the target. You have to always think a
little bit past the hole should be the should be
the for distance control, especially.
Speaker 2: Right good yes, yeah, good. Now. There's been a lot
of controversy in the last few weeks about aim point yea.
Lucas Glover has come out on his on his uh
Serious XM show, and he was lambassing. Even Jim Nantz
was complaining about that game point because of what it
does to the pace of play, and does it work
or does it not tell tell us your feelings about
aame point.
Speaker 1: You know, I've worked with a lot of people, good
players who use it, and the general consensus seems to
be if you suck at reading greens, and sometimes good
players do suck at it, it can really help you
to read the green better. There's no question about that.
It helps people come up with more accurate reads. The
problem is it can put you in a non athletic mindset, which,
if you know how you know what I teach, I'm
so big, I'm not doing that what I call contamination,
you know, thinking too much, right, paralysis from over analysis.
And it does take time, so it does tend to
make a slow play issue, and it tends to make
you thinking too much instead of being more reactive. Yeah,
So I think if there was a way maybe to
speed it up, I'm not sure there is, but if
there was a way to do it quickly and then
switch over to an athletic mindset once you've done the
read then I don't see a problem with it. No.
Speaker 2: We We had someone on recently who was talking about
he's a surveyor, I trade right, So to him, it's
all math. Yeah, and he says, if you use his system,
you know you can't misread a putt because it's all math.
Once it's math, how can you go wrong? Right? It's
like x's and o's are ones and zeros. Why why
do why do some of the greats suck at reading greens?
There's so many ways to well.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it. At a point, I mean,
obviously an a point, you're using your external visual channel, your eyeballs.
That's why that's why you do the plumbbob thing and
you do the finger thing. But you're also using your
kinesthetic sense in your feet. You're doing kind of a
combination of both. I mean, I've been okay, I've never
been great at reading greens, but you know, decent my
whole life. I think pretty good at it. But some
of the students I work with are terrible at it.
I mean, I had a guy the other day who
was on a long putt uh at the very end
of a two and a half day school and I
do this as a ritual at the end of a
putting school. So I already knew what the break was,
so I was sort of cheated, but I said, well,
what do you think it does? And he says, he says,
I think he said like eight inches outside the left edge,
and I said, no, eight feet. It was eight feet
of break and he only saw eight inches and that's
not unusual. So I think some of it. You have
to to really see it. You have to get down
really low. I remember Camille vi Jagas years ago used
to get down on his belly. You have to get
low to see it. And then you know, Pels and
his Putting Bible talked about his research was that it's
just human nature to underread the break. And he said
that high handicappers underread it by three hundred percent, and
mid handicaps by two hundred percent, and low handicaps and
tour prosy by close to one hundred percent, which is,
you know, still, that's that's a lot significant. Yeah, And
you know his explanation, which I happen to agree with,
is that because people think there's a point in time
where the break starts, which is he called the apex
illusion and he's one hundred percent right. Putts are breaking
before your eye can pick it up. Right. It doesn't
suddenly have a point where it suddenly starts to break
toward the hole. It's that's it looks like it for
some people, but that's an optical illusion. It's breaking way
before that, which is why when I ask people, do
you do you use the cup as a reference point
for your start line? You know, so it'd be center
of the cup, left edge or right edge basically right,
And people say, no, I never used the cup. I
use I use the apex where the break is. They're
they're terrible at reading greens. That's part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about using the cup as a clock?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What right? And yeah, I want I want the ball
to go you know, like looking right at the cup,
that's six six o'clock. And for young people, sorry we're
not going digital here, but if you're looking at the
cup and you want the ball to go in, say
at four o'clock, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right inside that's when it breaks inside the cup.
You have to do that for sure. You have to
use the clung system. Yeah, okay, or you could just
help you can see control too, right, Oh yeah, for sure, definitely.
But you could rather than use the clock, you could
just say I want I see my start line as
a quarter inch inside the left edge, right, because it's
breaking to the right, so that's where you want to
you want to start at the cour Or you could
say I want to be an inch and half inside
the left edge, yeah, which is basically the same thing
as using the clock system.
Speaker 2: I I ask friends frequently it's like, how many puts
did you have today? They're like, I don't know. It's like, well,
wait a minute. They give you two putts for every
hole on the score card, so you know, are you
one petting at all? Are you You know you're getting
close on your chip ends obviously, But but what what
are the numbers for the various handicap, low, mid, high
handicappers they should be Should they be keeping track of
how many putts and what is the number they should
be trying to achieve?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't even think it should because to me,
putting is so much easier in terms of the mechanics
of the stroke compared to the full swing and a
lot of the short game strokes. There's just no excuse.
Although to ask the average teaching pro how many people
in a year ask for a putting lesson, like one
or two? Nobody takes putting.
Speaker 2: Lessons, Nobody, I want more distance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if they did, and those you can, I
actually can teach people to do as good a putting
stroke as the tour pros and four or five hours. Wow,
and what would be a habit after? No, they still
have to practice when they go home, but I mean,
you know, within a very short period of time they
can learn because there's not much going on and you're
basically all you're doing is rocking your shoulder girl like that,
using your abs, your low back muscles, so there's not
much to it. But you know, if you if you're
halfway decent, if you can break one hundred, let's say,
you know, you don't want to have more than thirty
two putts around? Wow. Yeah again, if you want to
be decent, thirty two is a good number to go for.
I mean the tour pros, I think average is average
closer to twenty eight to twenty nine something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And also when I'm in the thirty, when
I'm in the thirty thirty one range, yeah, thirty two thirty,
that's pretty good. That's when I'm shooting in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it also depends on how good
your ball striking is, because if you if you're missing
a lot of greens, and because of that, you had
to rely on your short game to score. Meaning you're
good at the short game, you're going to have fewer
putts than someone who hits a lot of greens. Yeah, right,
So you have to kind of facor that into it too.
Speaker 2: But absolutely absolutely, Oh good job, Jimmy, thank you, thank you.
That was awesome. I appreciate that. And again, Episode thirty
six with Jim Waldron of the Golf Smarter podcast is
now complete. Thank you, Jim, always great to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks do it again.
Speaker 2: M HM.