Speaker 1: For members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and eighty nine,
published on June eighteen, twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our
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Speaker 3: But now we're getting into the green reading, which is
an important factor because in the green reading again, we're
talking about three major areas. What's the speed of my putt?
And what's the slope of my putt? Am I efficiently aiming?
Am I efficiently making a ball to roll end over end?
Speaker 1: Two feet?
Speaker 3: Straight? Two feet and straights? Am efficiently aiming? Now? How
do I read the green? So? How do I read
the green? Is as I decide what the speed of
this green is slow, medium, or fast or super fast.
We assume that all greens are two degrees of slow,
which quite frankly is probably true on an app two
degrees around.
Speaker 1: I have two degrees I know when you have multi
level greens.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm looking at the hole. I'm standing around the
cup because keep in mind, the last five feet in
my puttet are the most important aspects. As the ball
slows down, that's when gravity has its bigger effect. So
when I got a thirty foot pott, the first fifteen
or twenty feet of that are important, but not as
a massively important to the slope. The most important areas
that sloping area around the hole.
Speaker 1: Breaking down the details of vector putting are two with
John Grunt.
Speaker 3: This is Golf Smarter.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only. John.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you're still here. All right. I want
to pick it right back up where we were on
stag right, and to redefine stagg. It's kind of your
method of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a methodology that I think that
are four principal areas that good putters are always involved in, Okay,
as being speed, speed t two feet and straight two feet.
Speaker 1: And straight aim for a and G is green reading.
Speaker 3: That's correct, all right, So.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about do we do we fully finil one?
Speaker 3: One thing I need to add about the speeds see
is important in that based on the new technologies of
green reading which vector and and aim point involve, which is,
you know how how a ball travels over over distance
in time and friction and uh, slope and all those
things that are involved, which which are derived from mathematical
equations to help you read putts. Okay, now that sounds
very complicated and and uh, but both of them have
done a better job of breaking it down so that
you don't have to be a nuclear physicist to figure
it out. But I found vector to be a little
bit more simple for myself. But one of the components
is the speed, And both of them kind of agree
that about twelve inches past the past the whole is
what they equate into their their algorithms to to at
the appropriate point or the appropriate aim alignment to make
your putt. So what this means to the average golfer
is if I roll a ball one inch past the
front edge of the cup, I'm gonna I have a
better chance of my ball going in than if I
roll it by fourteen inches. Okay, the faster the ball
comes to the hole, then the less surface space I
am using of that cup from a gravity standpoint for
that ball to go in. So that once I start
getting past about two feet, the chances of my ball
going in the hole unless it hits dead center are
becoming very slim, and.
Speaker 1: It might even just hit the back of the cup,
pop up exactly.
Speaker 3: That's at about two and a half feet. That's pretty
much the equation. Okay, so once you get to three
feet past the cup, you know, the idea of never up, never.
Speaker 1: In is I don't know what that means.
Speaker 3: Well, if I never got the ball to the hole,
it would never go in.
Speaker 1: Oh well, of course, okay, one hundred percent of butts
that are short, Well I'll here's my other say, one
hundred percent of the puts that are too fast don't
go in either. Well that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Okay, So so you know, so speed becomes an essential
component and how much speed we have, so how we
plan to hit every put is important and the speed
as a major factor. I use more of the hole
if I have proper speed than I do if I
have the improper speed.
Speaker 1: So you're cutting out if you have too much speed,
You're saying that you're eliminating a lot of the hole. Right,
And not only is the place where the ball is.
Speaker 3: Going not only if you don't have the proper If
you don't have the speed that's based upon your reed,
then you can't hit the putt appropriately. So one of
the aspects of speed that's really important, which is very
profound to me, and once I started looking at it,
was my first component of after I've hit a putt,
in analyzing the putt that I hit or or evaluating
the putt I hit, is that I have the right speed.
That's more almost more sportant to me than the line,
because what I want to reduce for everybody, and especially
the higher handicap golfers, but even golf pros, we want
to eliminate three putts. So really, really, for most people,
their problem isn't that they misread the putt by ten feet.
They just mishit it by five feet, you know what
I'm saying. So generally our speed is as a big
a factor. I mean, the chance of having a putt
that breaks three to five feet is less often than
a putt that maybe break eight to twelve inches that
we just had the wrong speed on. So speed becomes
a much more a very important component of becoming effective
at putting, or become what I call functional.
Speaker 1: When I play over at the nine hole course down
the road, here, which we've talked about before at McGinnis,
and you teach there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I play with somebody who's new to the game
or has been playing long. I always love to ask them,
you know, on putting, what is more important? Speed or
distance or direction?
Speaker 3: Speed or direction? Right?
Speaker 1: Distance or direction? Yeah, And they're like, oh, direction, it's
really important. It's like, yeah, well, let me let me
show you something here. And so you just hit a
ball right at the hole but goes eight feet past
or you hit a ball at the exact right speed
but it's twelve inches wide. I'd much rather have that
one correct.
Speaker 3: And and you know, it's I think it's part of
the bigger thing is people because if their first thing
is hitting the ball and they just can't get it
to go where they want. But most people, if I
hand them a potter and say here's a twenty foot
pot I can kind of get them within a few
seconds to get that ball moving towards the target within
within some sort of efficiency.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: But the thing that they have, over a period of time,
they have a tough thing of doing is getting their
speed consistent. And that's a challenge that's a hard thing
to Yeah. So so the first part is stagg is speed,
and the next part is two feet and straight.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me that means well.
Speaker 3: Two feet and straight is is you've seen. You might
have seen this now with a lot of PGA Tour players.
But again it's this relationship to the target concept that
I like to share with people. If you put a
line on your ball, and if I if I hit
that ball, if I put that line directly at the
top of the apex of the ball, which is directly
on the line I want to hit it. If the
green is relatively smooth and I make good contact in
the direction that line is going, the ball will roll
end over end and I'll see it. I'll see a
direct line that's going end over end. If I've made
a stroke where the ball is wobbly, if I haven't
made solid contact, if my face doesn't match up to
where my intention of that line is, then I'll see
a wobbly line. So what I want to do is
I want to make sure that my student make sure
that ball is rolling end over end towards his intended target.
If he's doing that, then there's a certain amount of
efficiency lack of side spin with that club face in
the target, and that's kind of what I'm after. All
good putters do that very effectively. One of the drills
I have that you'll see during this that I could
show I show my students is I actually have them
put off a three foot steel ruler, right okay, And
I usually make it only two feet. I give him
a foot behind the ball, and I give them two
feet extending out with the line in the middle of
that ruler on the ball, so that when they hit it,
it's going to roll off that ruler and go straight
for two feet. Because the in the end, I believe
that every put in golf is straight.
Speaker 1: When it leaves the club face.
Speaker 3: No, every putt is straight. Gravity pulls it. I don't. Oh,
So I plan to hit every put straight and I
and I let gravity take care of itself.
Speaker 1: And that's where the break is, right, okay.
Speaker 3: That's where gravity and friction could be. Could be some
grain involved, but either gravity or grain or wind could
be a little bit of wind involved less less often
on that issue. But I let the break happen. I
hit it on a point that I have predetermined, and
I hit it straight, and I let those things happen.
And that's most people see it in straight lines. They
don't see in curve lines. Most people see, you know, uh,
in that sort of dimension more effectively. So I find
that if I can get a putt a student to
hit a putt two feet and straight, then from a
from a mechanical standpoint, he's on track right and and
and could we always improve our efficiency of our putt.
I can put you on a SAM putt lab, I
can put you on some other technology out there and
probably find that, yeah, it could be slightly better. And
that involves a lot of different variables in the stroke,
the pace, in the time of your stroke, the distance,
the speed of which you go back and forwards, the
consistency of that, all these other things. But primarily, if
a putt, if a guys are women, young men, old men,
all whatever a golfer is getting that ball to roll
end over end, then we're on the right track and
we don't need to spend too much time there.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so.
Speaker 3: Two feet and straight is a double combo. It's a
it sort of solves, it's sort of a it's sort
of a thermometer or or sort of a check for
his mechanical aptitude abilities to hit the putt. But it's
A also helping me define, helping them see it's more
simple to hit a putt just straight and let the
break happen.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get back to G and stag.
Speaker 3: But we're up to A and now A is for
aim right now. The fact is that it's our relationship.
The target is often determined by our aim. But I
have seen over the years all sorts of odd aiming
with their body. I've seen guys stand more open. I've
seen great putters Bobby Locke stand to look closed and
make hit great putts.
Speaker 1: When you say open and close, you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Body alignment, right. But but the one thing that's pretty
tried and true is face alignment to the intended target. Ironically,
which I always thought was the best putters will be
best aligned with their club face. Well, the truth is
is that even the best putters don't aim exactly perfect
to their line, their intended line, but by impact time
they are perfect. Okay, But my contention is that if
I can get my students more efficiently lined up with
their club face to their intended line of target, they
have a better chance of repeating a higher quality of putt.
Speaker 1: But that's the basic truth with every club in your hand,
as long as the club face is square at impact,
correct at impact.
Speaker 3: But you know, we're also talking with standardizing the address position,
and that's primarily what I'm doing here with the aim.
I don't worry too much about the aim when the
impact is taking care of what this ball rolling end
over end okay to my intended life. So I can
get a guy. Oftentimes I'll get it like a higher
you know, low handicapped tour type player, college whatever, really
good amateur, and I'll say, hey, get this ball to
roll end e rent, and he'll roll it end over it.
And then we go to the aiming point and I'll
find that at four feet he's aimed half an inch.
I'll outside the cup on a straight pot. Well, how
does that happen? Guess what? The brain's smarter than what
we you know, our brain's out smartness. You know, our
visual acuity system is working in a in a dimension
that we don't fully understand. And that's okay, you know,
but I find that if I can improve upon that,
then it becomes more simple because he's making some compensation.
If he's starting with an open club face and getting
him back to square. Then he's making some compensation in
his stroke that's not as simple. He's making his his
stroke more complicated or or her stroke more complicated. I
want to make their stroke more less complicated by starting
off with a face that is lined up to their
intended line. And if we can do that, and I
show them to do that with simply with a sharpieon
a credit card, like I showed you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, explain that.
Speaker 3: Well, what I do is, I like sometimes I can
eliminate the credit card, but the credit card kind of helps.
If if I get you, I have you line up
without any without any aids on the ball. I get
you to line up at a spot, say four feet
away or five feet away, and when you're lined up,
I remove the ball and I put a I put
a I put a credit card up against the face
of your putter. I have you pull away your putter,
and then I draw a straight line across that credit
card where your face was. And then I draw a
ninety degree angle across that credit card. And then I
extend that line with the other aspect which we which
we haven't really talked about, which is a line that
I have above the ball that extends out to about
ten feet.
Speaker 1: And it's about a string.
Speaker 3: It's a string that's that's on some knitting needles. It's
it's a spongy string that extends on a straight line.
And I and I show you that line out to
the hole at ten feet with the ruler underneath it.
But I can move that line over and show them
very quickly if I extend the I've now made a
ninety degree angle to that credit card line I made
with the sharpie on the green, and I've now made
a ninety degree angle. And if that angle is not
pointing towards the t four feet away, then we know
you haven't lined up directly to your club face. And
most people, I think, even you, who lined up pretty good,
we're about a half an inch off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that's a really really important.
Speaker 3: And you're a very good at line's. That's a good number, by.
Speaker 1: The way, Well, thank you. Well, I've always marked the
line around my ball, and I've always tried to line
that up right, you know, with my target line. And
then when I address the ball now I'm trying to
be exactly my feet, my body, everything ninety degree perpendicular
to that line.
Speaker 3: And you see that way by the way, just a
little footnote, not everybody sees parallel lines like effectively. So
so Jack Nicholas used to line up a little open
with the ball in front. He's left eye dominated. If
I was to as a little drill that I do
at ten feet or twelve feet, We're all take a
dime and two dimes, and have you line up over
one dime and tell me when I'm lined up, and
then I put a I stand about two thirds of
the way out there, and I put a dime in
the middle of it, and I go, is that dime
on a straight line to your target? That what you see?
And they say yes, And then they stand back and
look at it, and that dimes two feet right or
I mean two inches right of their line because they're lying.
People don't often see in effective straight lines. You know,
they don't often see effectively as they think they are seeing.
So what they actually see and what's actual reality aren't
often the same. But what you've done, and by putting
a straight line on the ball and using the string
drill and using the ruler, you can kind of retrain
yourself to see lines that are our actual straight lines
and it's such a.
Speaker 1: I think, a critically important drill to do for yourself,
because you know, I mean, it blows my mind that
people don't even stand behind the ball to make it.
They just step up to the ball and think that
they're lining it up. And then then then I fall
over laughing when they you know, they hold their club
up with their shoulders and like, okay, yeah, I'm lined up.
It's like, you know, I was standing behind you when
you were trying to do that. Right, You're about, you know,
twenty two degrees away from what you're really aiming at,
but you think you're there.
Speaker 3: Right, you know, keep in mind that our brains has
the optical system is an amazing and I've only touched
a little bit on the surface of my research lately.
But when we stand behind the put, we're looking at
it with our eyes hopefully level to the terrain, and
that's how we're taught to see depth, perception and things.
But then all of sudden we get up the ball
and now we're looking sideways. And then finally when we
look at the ball, we're not even looking at the target, right,
So what are we looking at and what are we doing?
And so having these aids and training ourselves to do
this is you'll see golf pros doing this all the time.
That again, these are one of the things I learned
as kid. Why why do guys put chalk line on
the ground all the time When I was a kid, Gosh,
they had this chalk line out there. One of the
things I did is spent I spent a lot of
time in motel rooms when I was traveling as a
kid as a young man. And one thing I would
do is I'd kind of line up. I'd put my
rear end up against the wall. I'd find a flat
wall in the hotel room, and i put my rear
end up against the wall, and I'd drop a ball
underneath my left eye, and I'd mark that spot, and
i'd measure that spot from as a distance from the wall,
and then i'd measure that distance down ten twelve feet away,
and then i'd put a ball, and I'd put two
coins down there, or a ball marker or something, and
I are teas or something, and I would put. I
would put my ball where I'd drop the ball underneath
my eye, and then i'd put and so my body
both both cheeks would be touching the wall, So now
I'm parallel and then I'd have it over that ball,
and I'd train my body to be parallel to my
target and to see that line parallel to me and
what it feels like and what it feels like to
be in that moment. Again, golf is just a golf,
is not around a golf. It's a collection of moments
that equal around. So the quality of those moments equal
the quality of the round. So how can I enhance
the quality of that moment? Again, it's the relationship to
my target. And again STAG is just a constant evolution
of developing and of developing the quality of that relationship
to that target in that moment. And keep in mind
that we're playing this on a big piece of property
where elevation changes and the light changes over the course
of the day, and the weather changes, and all these
things are constantly changing, and so it's a challenge to
be constantly re evaluating my relationship to a target in
spatial terms. And the air at one hundred and fifty yards,
it's acceptable to hit it ten feet long or left,
but it's not acceptable to hit at ten inches right.
At twenty feet it greatly affects my round, you know,
or even at five feet to be five inches right
or three inches right or a half inch right. If
I don't have the right speed, I get to use
a lot of the whole four to quarter inches basically
is I think a diameter of a hole. I'm thinking
real quicker it's but right along that four point twenty
five is the width the behole, and I get to
use if I have the right speed, I get to
use all of that. Right, So all these factors again,
speed two feet in stea right, aiming four point four
point twenty five, So I get to use all of
that hole, right, And that's my that's my objective. What
can I what can I maximize in this moment to
my given abilities?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Right? That's all I'm trying to do. And now we
get to green reading.
Speaker 1: And now we get to the critically important element of
this right and this is no green is flat? People
think though it's a straight putt, there's.
Speaker 3: Right, No sen Why aren't Why aren't fred Why aren't
all greens flat? Irrigation correct? Why?
Speaker 1: Because you can't have standing water on the green it'll die,
it'll die, A and B people won't come up if
it's raining I mean because we have a glass here,
we have a course out here, a stone tree that
drains incredibly well. It could rain for three weeks straight
and it stops on Monday Tuesday. You can go out
and play. You'll be stepping a lot of mud, but
the greens will be in phenomenal shape.
Speaker 3: Right now. Again, the fairways too that they've done a
good job. But soil also helps with that too. They
have a nice li home soil over there, but drains
down real well. But they've done a good job at
drainage there, and that's important. So we know that's a
good tip. Okay, so let's look at green reading. What's
the old fashioned way right?
Speaker 1: Plumb?
Speaker 3: Well, how about this? Where's the where's the water around here? Oh?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Where everything breaks to the water, Everything breaks to the
wash and they break the ocean everything breaks to Why
do when you're in Palm Springs? Why do they say
everything breaks towards Indio.
Speaker 1: Because there's a gigantic lake there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh it's.
Speaker 1: Uh called the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, well it was just called the Gulf
of Mexico one time. It then became the Salt and
Sea at some point a million years ago Uh used
to be a great fishing place for cravina for people
that are into sport fishing, not not so much as
salt water fish. So is it so sort of a
landlocked sea. But that's a body of water. So guess
what when as time over history water receded, it was
going towards the Gulf of Mexico. It stopped at some
point because that was a little lower point. So things
go that way. That's why they say Indio, which is
an entirely correct, but that's why they're saying India.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and I don't always buy when when they
when they you know, the starter tells you, okay, everything
breaks towards that mountaintop over there, and it's.
Speaker 3: Like away from that mountain top.
Speaker 1: Well, no, they'll tell you it breaks towards the mountains.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's courses of course they'll do.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I'll look at each well.
Speaker 3: And that was okay, And why is that so from historically?
We you know, in the old days, they kind of said, okay,
we're going to do a routing around this golf course.
We're gonna build a golf course, and we're going to
move the least amount of dirt to make save the
most amount of money and the and the technology. I mean,
you know, you go over and play a course like
Mona kay uh uh or which was built Robert I
think it's a Robert Trent Jones facility built in the twenties,
and you go, wow, what a golf course, right, And
and you know, you look at these pictures and they
were moving it with horses and and and you know
they had donkeys and horses with these things attached to
the back and that's how they move the dirt around.
So so we're gonna let gravity do its own thing here.
We're gonna work within that, you know, really and truthfully,
you know, the quality of the golf course is almost
has a good relationship the quality of ground that God
gave you to build it. But uh and and usually
the golf course architects objective is not to ruin that,
you know. But but but still, the the old concept
of moving designing greens is what are we working with
gravity already here? Right? So? And and then also how
do we speed up play and make golf a easier
game to play? We slant the greens from back to front.
So there's another little trick right. So in the old days,
howard greens built, they were off and often built from
back to sloping from back to front, because we don't
want the green balls to run over the green. We're
gonna run up the green and stop right. So so
that's that was the old way. Water gravity, What did
God give us to deal with here? What was the
national landscape? What was all that stuff? So that was
the simple way. Then came along the evolution of higher
technology of machinery being moved around the world to build
golf courses, the the the advanced technology of you know,
plotting golf courses using all sorts of technology out there,
and so they could kind of defy you know, you
could go to Lott's Berry Farm when I was a kid,
would you know, show you am I uphill or am
I downhill? Here? Right? And you'd say, well, I'm uphill.
Now the car's going the other way or whatever, water's
going the other way. So now the trick was, and
I started playing golf a lot in the seventies and eighties.
You go around the golf course and they'd have these
little drains around the golf course, around the sides of
the green. You go, where's that drain over there. So
not all greens. They might be sloping up in the front,
but in the back they might slope away from you.
So now it's a little more difficult to read a green. Right,
So what I mentioned is a key word there is
slope and I mentioned some other words of gravity. Right,
So where is this ball pulling? What is a ball
doing on the green? It's rolling from one point to
another in time? And how much time does it take?
That's the ultimate question. How much time does it take?
And at what slope is it? There's going to be
a slope involved, and there's gonna be amount of time
and that time is usually friction, which is slope, and
maybe the other ingredient here. What's the speed of the green?
How does it roll? People talk about stimp, which I'm
not sure if most people could actually tell you what
a stimp meter is, but it's out there, right, And
that's a good way that the USGA will determine speed.
If green stimp really is just a level with a
ball attached to it. They raise it up at a
certain height. Then when the ball rolls off, how far
does it roll on a level surface?
Speaker 1: So, and I've told you my own personal stamp meter, right,
how I do this?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Okay? So, and I think it was in Zen Golf
from doctor Joseph parent. What I do is, I'll take
three balls. I'll go to the practice putting green, and
the first three strokes I take, I don't look at
any hole, I don't look at anything. I have three
balls right in front of me, and I'll just take
my normal swing. And generally, if all goes well, i'll
take the normal swing. All three of those balls will
be very close to one another, if not touching one another.
I'll walk that off, okay, and then I'll know, okay,
that stroke on this course, that's that's four steps, okay,
that's your stint for the good. That's my step for
the day, so I know what its.
Speaker 3: Somehow we did and then a level lie by the
way fairly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm looking for the level lie. And then
sometimes it'll be six steps. Okay, So this green is
a little bit faster than I'm used to. Right, So,
my own personal STEMP met without having to ask anybody,
it makes no sense to me.
Speaker 3: And I would fool around with that a little bit
because keep in mind that almost all greens aren't level
right right, So we're usually and so this is where
I'm going to get back to the green reading again,
which is, you know, there's two theories out there. There's
there's the aim point and there is the vector and
and uh and both involved this these equations of time
and speed and ball travel over green which involves slope
and friction which is the speed of the green the
stint reading. And so what what I found I found vector,
which I showed with you, is that they kind of
divide it up into slow, medium, fast, and super fast,
the quality of the greens, the speed of the green,
speed of the greens, where I think game point has
actual stimp readings. Now they both both systems give you
a way to kind of determine what the speed of
the green is. And both involve hitting a putt at
ninety degrees to the to the to the actual straight
line of the slope on that green. And so if
if I hit, if I hit, let's say I'm five
feet and I hit a putt at the center of
the hole and it breaks five inches below the cup,
that might be an eight stemp. If it breaks seven inches,
that might be a nine stemp. If it breaks ten inches,
that might be a ten stemp, whereas vector might say
if it breaks only five inches, that's slow, or four
inches that's slow. If it breaks five inches or six inches.
And that's assuming that I don't hit a putt that
goes twelve inches past the cup. So in order to
do this, I've got to get the putt to aim
at the center. I got to start the ball at
the center of the cup and have it break only
a certain amount in that five feet right, And I
keep in mind, I'm on, I'm on the I'm on
the ninety degree angle to the slope line of the putt.
Does that make sense to you.
Speaker 1: Let's let's break that down a little bit more so
it does make.
Speaker 3: Sense, okay. So just let's say let's say north is
due north is my is my straight line putt.
Speaker 1: So that's the what you call the fall line.
Speaker 3: Call that the fall line. Call that the straight line.
Speaker 1: So if you were standing at that spot and just
drop the ball and let it go, it would go
right towards the hole.
Speaker 3: That's and assuming the hole is on my fall line,
we can use the hole on the font. In this case,
we don't even need a hole to find the speed.
But let's say the hole is there. We put a
hole there, and that's my fall line for this putt.
That's getting a little ahead of this conversation. But that's fine.
I'm sorry, that's okay. No, it's good. It's good. But
it is part of the process. So if I'm just
doing speed, I don't need a hole there. But it
would just be a straight put that roll the ball
rolls straight along that line. And let's say it rolls
straight from north to south. Let's say that is a
straight line on this putt. Then due east and due
west would be ninety degrees to that fall line. So
if I if I dropped a ball five feet from
that fall line, that straight line, and putted it at
the center of that that ninety gree angle, and it
broke only four or five inches, then that might be
a slow green. If it broke seven or eight inches,
that might be a medium spreed green. If that broke,
say ten or eleven inches, and it doesn't roll more
than it gets to the hole, but it doesn't roll
more than twelve inches past the cup, then there's there's
some free wheeling here. But within within a distant within
a way, I can arrive at what the speed of
this green is or the speed of this at least
this putting green, and apply that to the rest of
the golf course.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because here's the issue with that, right, You
can't walk up to a green while you're playing and
go I need to I need to drop a couple
balls here to see what this line and then right.
Speaker 3: But but we do need we do need this information
to use these mathematical algorithms which I'm going to get
into here in a second, to give our green readings
some sustenance. Right, what you gave is a very personal
relationship which I highly admire, and I actually teach a
very similar system to help a player arrive at how
hard he should hit each putt. So, given what my
I usually use, my feed is my barometer, and what
my given stance is my comfortable stance. And if I
take a putter outside of the back of my right
foot and take it that same distance through, how far
does my ball roll? So I know if that ball
roll is fifteen feet, that's my fifteen foot putt for
the day.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, a subtlety that I hadn't even thought of.
That makes total sense.
Speaker 3: Okay, So that's how I help my students relate to
their speed for that golf course for the day. But
now we're getting into the green reading, which is an
important factor because in the green reading again, we're talking
about three major areas. What's the speed of my putt
and what's the slope of my putt? Right? And if
there's any subtle grain might be another issue to this putt,
and like maybe even when again is a more remote issue.
But these are the issues that I'm going to deal
with in hitting my putt right speed right again, We're
gonna talk about am am I efficiently aiming? Am I
efficiently making a ball to roll end over end two feet?
And straights? AM efficiently aiming? Now? How do I read
the green? So how do I read the green? Is
as I decide what the what the speed of this
green is? Slow? Medium, or fast or super fast? And
then I look at my little chart which I have.
But what I did for you is I broke it
down in which I do for all my beginning students,
that even my advanced students, I give them the most
basic principle. We assume that all greens are two degrees
two degrees of slow of slope, Okay, which quite frankly
is probably true, okay, on an average, but.
Speaker 1: What and then and so wait to the whole two
degrees around two degrees? Yes, I know when you have
multi level greens.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm looking at the hole. I'm standing around the cup,
because keep in mind, the last ten feet of my
cup are the most important. Last ten feet of my
putt are the most important aspects, or five feet in
my putt if anyway, Yeah, as the ball slows down,
that's when gravity has its bigger effect. So when I
got a foot pot, the first fifteen or twenty feet
of that are important, but not as a massively important
to the to the slope. The most important areas that
sloping area around the whole. Right, So for the intents
and purposes I do did with you this day was
I said, we're going to assume today that every put
you hit today has a two degree slope to it,
not two degrees two percent. So we're gonna assume that
everything's two percent. And if I do that on a
medium speed green, then for every foot that I put,
there's going to be one inch of break up to
about twenty five feet.
Speaker 1: Repeat it.
Speaker 3: If I assume that there's two percent slope on this putt.
On every putt that I hit, one inch of break
equals one foot of putt. So if I have a
twenty foot put depending on what where, and depending on
my relationship to that fall line or that straight line,
then I'm going to have twenty inches of an aim
point differential. So what that means is I place my
aim point twenty inches above the hole, and then I
I find that I put my my aim and maybe
I shouldn't be using aim point but target, my aim target,
my my my point of reference, my definition destination. I
set that twenty inches above the hole from a twenty
foot putt, and then I'm wherever I move around that
cup within twenty feet, that's going to be my constant
aiming on my aiming target. Right, So every put I'm
going to hit it straight.
Speaker 1: To that spot, to that spot.
Speaker 3: Let gravity take it. If I have a ten foot putt,
it's ten inches. Now if the green is fast rather
than medium. I have a chart that will show you
what that actual point of reference might be that's on
that fall line, and it's always going to be above
the hole, by the way, right, So that point never
changes in space. It always stays above the hole.
Speaker 1: Can I have the chart?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Is it online?
Speaker 3: No? Come see John Grund or come see a vector
green reading instructor near you. There are many out there.
Speaker 1: So there's no PDF or something that's the chart that
we can.
Speaker 3: Not right now online they asked. They asked you to
go to see a aime point specialist. I'm a vectory
green reading specialist to get this. You and I might
have a relationship with this could be worked out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't want to be I don't. I
would love to get You've already.
Speaker 3: Done a thirty minute session and we talked about it briefly.
But get into the chart.
Speaker 1: No, no, we didn't. But but just that information alone
about the one inch per one foot, Yeah, it was
a huge help for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, because because here's what I did for you
in that thirty minutes, and let's sum this up real briefly.
Is I established for you the four basic areas that
every good putter does effectively. One, they establish the proper
speed for in time that they want the ball to roll.
This is important to think about speed and time because
if I have a ball below the hole that's twenty
feet and the ball that's above the hole twenty feet
and we both putt at the same time. Whose ball
gets to the hole first.
Speaker 1: Ball below the ball and ball above the hole at
twenty feet I would And if they both get to
the hole, yes, I would say the guy going uphill
because he has to hit it harder.
Speaker 3: Absolutely correct. You're one out of a hundred that will
say that. But that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: So you think the tragical thing is to go, oh, well,
one going downhill, because it's right.
Speaker 3: So keep in mind, and these algorithms are based upon
the time at which the ball travels.
Speaker 1: And anybody ever think about, oh, that took seven seconds.
Speaker 3: All great putters do, really, but they do it in
their brain.
Speaker 1: They don't. It's not conscious. It's just that.
Speaker 3: They It's like I, you know, I once gave a
lesson putting lesson to Jerry West.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I was the assistant golf coach at UCLA,
which it required me being assistant pro at Beller Country Club,
and so he he had we'd played once or twice before,
and he knew that I was a pretty good putter.
And by the way, he was a very good player,
especially in his younger days, and rapidly took to golf
after finishing his professional basketball career as a player full time,
which is a footnote. Let me just because I hung
around a lot of Laker guys in those days, and
nobody wanted to play Jerry West at the age of
fifteen Horse. I don't care who you were. I don't
care if you were Magic Johnson. You just didn't play
Jerry West at Horse. He'd beat you.
Speaker 1: Well he was, mister, he was.
Speaker 3: He was also a very good golfer and a really
good putter, but he was struggling with some putty for
some reason. So he comes out to see me for
a putty lesson, and I'm thinking, I'm panicked. What am
I going to call Jerry West for pudding? I mean,
this guy, you know, he's rock solid, you know. And
so I got thinking about it, and I'm standing there
watching this putting stroke and I'm going, well, that that's
that's perfect, that's a great putty stroke. Yeah. But if
they're not going in, I said, well, okay, it's golf. Yeah.
Well I wanted to say that, but that's not that's
not what you well, that's why chill anybody, you know,
they're they're expecting some help here. So I'm watching him,
and I said, well, mister.
Speaker 1: West, what did you really call him?
Speaker 3: Mister West? Yeah? Well yeah, I said, mister West, what
do you what do you see? Uh? What do you
what's going on here? And he goes, well, I don't know,
And well, of course he has no idea. One day
I was sitting in his backyard and at a barbecue,
and he was casually shooting baskets one handed while he
was flipping burgers, and he switched about twenty in a
row from a baseline jumper that was slightly behind the basket,
and and and nobody in the family said a darn
thing like that could actually happen. He's like, that was
just auto that was an autopilot all the time, right.
And so I know that what he does is part
of his innate talent to relate to his target right
a period of time, and and so I asked him,
so I'm trying to think, how is he relating to
the target or what's going on? What's going on? So
I finally said, well, what do you see when you
shoot a basket? And he goes, well, you know, I
I sometimes I get a look at the basket. I
just kind of know where it is. I get a
feel for it. I I just you know, and and
you know, maybe I'm looking, maybe I'm not. Somebody's saying,
I go, well, what do you see when you're making
this plot? He goes, well, I don't know. I said, well,
let's pick out a specific let's see this ball roll.
I said, can you see the ball that? Can you
see the dimples of the ball as they're rolling into
the hole. Now that's a tall order. I wouldn't ask normally, guys,
but I'm guessing Jerry West's vision is probably pretty darn good.
Speaker 1: He can probably count the dimples.
Speaker 3: It's all the revolutions, right, So I'm thinking, so I'm thinking,
you know, this is good. I got to get him
to so suddenly going okay, let's do that cur plunk
KerPlunk ker plunk ker plunk about can you make ten
in a row? And our lesson was done and he said, thanks, John,
that's great, And I never really you know, that was it.
So the question was is visually he I needed to
see him in real time what was going on between
him and the target. So what good putters do is
they see the ball in real time rolling towards their target.
And it's a challenge. It's a challenge, right, right, that's
a challenge. So that's that's a that's a massive So
the speed is is everything right and and be relating
to that speed and real time is part of this
bigger equation in the speed of putting. Wow, right, I
mean it is and so how we do that? You know,
and and it takes you know, if you play a
good round of golf. I know, for me, I'm pretty
emotionally drained after it, you know, especially if it's around
that has a has a gravity to it of some sort,
you know, in a tournament of some sort, in the
last round maybe or qualifying or something.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that's a whole nother discussion. But that's
why that's what makes Sundays, especially a major so difficult,
right because it's just mentally exhausting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's mentally exhausting because they need to they
need to. It's very the result is so more the
lack of result is such more more tangible, and the
need to stay in the moment becomes much more challenging.
Speaker 1: Right Well, listen, uh, I'm testimony. It works for me.
Speaker 3: Okay, good, it definitely works for me. I mean, it's fun,
and then you know, practicing this way and then my
little system is fun because it gives me. And you'll
see guys. If you go to tour events, you'll see
guys and women and they all use little tools now
to practice with. Whether it's my string above the ball,
the string above the ball, or or a ruler, or
or a chalk line or some other tool. They're using
different tools. Tiger has his gate droll with two t's.
We're all building better relationships to the target. That's what
people do. That's what golf pros do. They better. They're
building better relationship with the target. And it's all involved
with speed, how they're aiming the ball, getting the ball
to roll where they wanted to go, and reading the green.
And that's really what STAG is all about. And when
you get involved in those four areas, you will become
a better putter. And if I give you the tools
to do that, then I feel like I've accomplished something
as a coach and a teacher.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I know someone who was trained in
aim point and just fell in love with it, thought
it was awesome, and then a few months later I
was gonna be interviewing the guy from am Point Sweeney
and I called him, I said, you did aim point right.
Speaker 3: Are you still doing it?
Speaker 1: And he goes, not so much. It was too much
work to do it on every putt and taking out
the chart and blah blah blah. Yeah, but this is
the kind of thing that even with STAG or vector
or whatever we're gonna call this, you don't just figure
it out once and you're done. You really have to
work on this for a while. I mean, you have
to always work on it.
Speaker 3: You have to always work on it. And that's why
I develop STAG is you know, repetition, you know is
at the core of most success stories, you know, I mean,
it just.
Speaker 1: Is so practice practice, right.
Speaker 3: It gets your ten thousand hour Malcolm, glad, we'll get
your ten thousand hours and whatever. We can all go
down those lists and and so by using this system
and including the green reading in with it, you're always
involving yourself in an aspect of what successful people do
that putt well. And and uh, that's that's a challenge,
and it's it's it's part of the game. And if
you neglect it, if you know, if you if you
want to go ostrich on it and put your head
in the sand and say it doesn't exist. Then you're
going to be one of those people that don't get
to play golf to your best ability. And and and
and you know it's interesting if you look at the
demographics of golfers. Guess what we're We're getting a little
bit older. Yes we are okay, and and uh, I
wish we had more kids and more women come into
the game. But we're struggling there and we need to
do a better job of it. Of course as golf
perfesstionals and friends that play golf, getting people involved in
the game. But you know what, we may not be
able to hit the ball as far. But as a putter,
and I will say this that good putters are physically fit.
And there is a reason why it takes why Tiger
Woods makes twelve footers on the seventy first hole to
win major championships because he's better fit. So one of
the tough things to do is when you're really excited
and you're really pumped up, is to stay still. And
so being core fit is a good thing. But anybody
can get involved in these four areas, fit or not
fit and become a better putter. And like I said
earlier in this program, the USGA tells you right up front,
it's fifty percent of the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So and really, you know, there's a there's an old
saying a multipude, a multitude of sins can be made
up for with a ten foot made putt, right. I mean,
you know, you can do a lot of things between
that tea and green, but if you make a ten
or fifteen footer, all's forgiven, right, and you move on
to the next hole. And quite frankly, and I I
tell some of my competitive kids that that, you know,
that par save or bogie save emotionally is maybe more
important than that three foot birdy put in a par
five because a lot of times you struggle on a
hole and it becomes not a hole, It just becomes
an odyssey. It becomes Oh, I hit it in the
crud and I yacked it out and I got it
up in front of the green. I got this tough
pitch shot and I, oh, it was so tough, and
I got it up there fifteen feet and I made
the putt.
Speaker 4: Ah, you know, it's like pretty sure, was you go ahead?
I'm sorry that moment, that moment like, oh, now I
can go to the and I got all this burden
lifted off me, and I go to the next hole
and I rip one down the center of the fairway,
and man, we're off and running again.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I was saying, I think I'm fairly
certain it was you that told me that hitting sinking
a fifteen foot putt, twenty foot putt or longer is
much more exciting the hitting ball in the fairway or
hitting it farther than you've ever hit it. I mean,
that's exciting, that's fun, but it's still there's nothing like that.
Speaker 3: It's pretty such that goes. I mean, you know, the
distance isn't you know, it's a little bit of a
longer discussion, but distance is kind of a god given talent.
I'm not sure it's like teaching somebody to run a
nine to one hundred. You either can run and run
on in the nines at some point in your life
because you or you can't. It's like slam dunk, and
even just slam dunk. It's you know, you don't just
wake up of monks. Oh I'm gonna go slam dunk.
It's kind of a genetic thing. Now you can maximize
it and be more efficient and get all more efficient.
Hit a little bit f but thirty foot putt. I
can get somebody's never hit a thirty foot put before
and get him to make a thirty footer. And there's
the exciting thing for everybody out there listening. You know,
you can learn to be a better putter. You can.
I mean, it's a learnable behavior, interesting behavior, right, it's
a learnable behavior, and and and it it is a behavior,
and it requires some discipline, It requires some functional behavior
patterns to do it consistently good, because we can all
do it randomly good right to a certain extent. But
to do it consistently well takes what I think some
behavior learning process or processes or whatever you want to
call it, if that's the right word. But it does.
And that's that's I find fun. And I've spent all life,
you know, sort of a forty eight years of golf now,
a lot of time chasing that elusiveness and trying to
make it less elusive.
Speaker 1: Well, I had so many notes about things I wanted
to talk to you about on this recording session. But
luckily you live close enough that we can do this again, okay,
because I wanted to talk about, you know, with your
experience on the tour, playing professionally, working with pros, talk
about the anchored putter situation and all the controversy that's
going on there and how that impacts the average golfer.
Oh yeah, and then get into the bifurcation conversation or
even you know, Lead Jansen being d q'ed this past
the other day for wearing metal spot. I mean, there's
so many different things right now that are like, really,
is that is it that important? You know to go
over the bell. We'll do that another time, but I
do before we finish, there was something you said before
we started recording that I want to get you to
repeat because it's so critically important to every golfer to
know this. Because you said, what there are three things
that it takes to be a better golfer, and you
just summed it up so easily, and I think this
should be our closing comment.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, the first thing is get the ball in
the fairway, and the next thing is has become more
efficient at chipping and become more efficient at putting, and
and those are three very manageable areas I mean they
don't require you know, you know what the you know
what the trouble is a little bit is that those
things don't sell equipment, equipment, and so we're bombarded. They
don't sell magazines really, I mean they do kind of,
but do I really you know, yeah, I'll look at
you know, it's become a little more interesting now because
the pros have made it so so relevant to their success.
You know, you've got putting coaches now, You've got short
game coaches now, and so these guys are you know,
and they and they and you know, but you know, really,
do I need a new wedge or do I need
twenty extra yards off the team?
Speaker 1: I got a call from a friend of mine yesterday.
His wife golf me, and she goes. He said, he
wants a new driver and and so I'm calling to
get a recommendation from you. And I said, you know,
you don't want to hear this from me, but a
driver is not what he needs, right, Yeah, that's not
going to change his game that much.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll sum this up. Years ago, I had
the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with
Phil Rodgers, who's a notable golf instructor, short game man,
and was a great player in his own right, one
on the PGA tour. I think had an opportunity once
to win the British Open and didn't, might have won
a US amateur, competed well as an amateur, was a
friend and mutual respected golfer by Jack Nicholas, and actually
spent some time in Jack's later career helping him with
a short game, and I think might have been partially
responsible for his eighty six Masters win. But Phil was
a disciple of Paul Running, a man who I had
an opportunity to spend a lot of time with later.
But before this happened, I was working one summer at
a driving range in San Diego at an old place
called Stardust, which I think is called Riverwalk and twenty
seven holes in the Heartland, and it was Scott Simpson's hangout.
It was a bunch of wonderful golfers. Had spent a
lot of time there in my day with Scott Simpson.
And there's a plthora of great players, most of which
your viewers may not have heard of, but they were
very good at their own right. Spend a lot of
time at start ups. Phil Rodgers was one of those players,
and he taught there. And I had a very lowly
job of picking up range balls on the driving range.
I say lonely because it's usually late at night or
early in the morning. But I would watch Phil and
he had a program in those days where as a coach,
he would charge you a certain fee for certain amount
of months and help you improve your game. And I
rarely saw him on the driving range. And yet these guys,
mostly men, were lined up to write them a check
to get better at golf. And he said, I'll get
you better, and if I don't, you get yours a
proportion of your money back, right, And so guys would
sign up all day long. And this is you know,
in the late seventies, guys going down there, spending good
money with this gentleman to do this. So I asked
them one day, I said, mister Rogers, got to ask you,
what's the secret of your success? I mean, how do
you get these guys get better at golf? And he said, John,
It's pretty simple, he said, I reduced the amount of
spin off the tee. So I usually give them a
more lofted club get I get the ball in the
fairway rule number one, less side spin. I said, once
I get him near the green, I get them not
to chili dip, I get them hit them. I get
them to hit the ball first and make better contact
with their short game and get the ball going at
their target more effectively. That said, I get them out
of bunkers. I get them get the ball, get them
get the ball elevated, and have a little bit of
control over it what they're doing. So I improve their
wedge game around the green, and I help them not
to hit the three putt, and and I increase their
five footer their makes of their five footers. So I
get them to hit it more solid around the short
game area with the intention of where the ball wants
to go, and I get the ball on the fairway.
And and really, what what's itering about that is if
you look at practice facilities around the country for the
average player, they're just not designed to do that. And
no one's really selling that because how does that sell?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: You know? I mean it does a little bit if
success sells. Yeah, yeah, if you go to Dave Pels.
But but but you know, and you spend some time,
maybe you spend some time with me and and you
see the light. But you've got to buy into it.
You've got to buy into that concept, you know. And
so I just asked your listeners to how many just
start tickets from? How many fairways did I hit this week?
And how many how many chips did I hit from
inside of sixty yards got on the green and within
a makeable putt distance? And then how many puts did
I actually have for each round? So just keep my
stats inside of eighty yards and how many fair I
hit forget about all that other stuff, you know, for
the average golfer, that I get it, that I get
it near the pin with a makeable putt for eighty
yards a makeable but I mean thirty favorite it's an
uphill thirty foot is it makeable? You know? And and
and then how many putts did I have? And you
will start to see, gosh, out of my hundred shots,
fifty sex sixty, we're with a driver, wedge or a putter. Amazing, right,
And so where do I spend sixty percent of my
time practicing? It's not getting ten more extra yards, It
just isn't so. And you'll see guys in the PGA
tour they're working on that roller and they're working on
that putter, they're working on their wedge game, and it's flawless.
When you it's it's pure art. When Tom Pernice is
a college teammate of mine who's had a late career
in golf, and I had I've had an opportunity to
spend some time around in recent years and and play
with them once or twice, and it's And Corey Pavin
was another teammate of mine, and to watch them do
what they do with a edgena potter is just spectacular.
It's it's it's unbelievable. So you know, maybe most people
don't view it the way I do. But to take
a bad lie around the green and make it work somehow,
a challenging lie and make it when I mean, we
saw this tiger shot last year from Mirfield. He didn't
play so well this year, but last year he made
that shot from behind the green. You go, how did
he do that? Well? He does that in practice a lot.
We may not think he does, but he does. You know,
the viewers may understand that, but he does. So it
takes practice, takes a little bit of knowledge, some application,
and you can get better