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