Hi, This is Charles Probot from Boca Raton, Florida, and I play at the Boca Ratone Resort and Club.
This is called.
Smarter Number ninety eighty.
Joy the podcast. If you go to ask a touring pro do you misread greens that cause miss putts? Their typical answer is going to be occasionally, but not often, And then other pros will reply, you know, I never miss reading green because I work harder than all others. That translation to that answer is I memorized each putt for each tournament four days times four pin placements, times
four directions times eighteen holes. So there's some brainwashing that goes on into their head, this kind of green reading brainwashing that continues to this day. And frankly, I don't blame the tour pro for succumbing to this brainwashing since you're standing over putts with zero confidence. If you don't have confidence in your green read, that will affect your putting stroke negative.
Egos. The Expert green Reading operating system that's based in math with surveyor Andrew Walters. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
Here's your host, Fred Green.
Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Andy, great to be here, Fred.
Congratulations, you're the first episode of our twentieth year. We've just completed nineteen years of the podcast. Wow, and this is our first one. Yeah, so nine and eighty and.
Then when they were doing podcasts that far back.
That was the problem nobody did. But I love to talk talking about all the way back. I've always loved to talk about putting because there's always one more thing we can learn. And I think the most important thing is they don't all drop, no matter how good you are, they don't all drop, right, or do they?
Well, I would argue with that it was ten feet that should all drop, especially for a tour pro because they're the best of the cream of the crop.
Yeah, but the percentage of even the tour pros from ten feet is what about fifty percent?
And guess what, Fred, that's all going to change? Why Because Egos Expert Green Reading operating system is pure math. It is it's infallible in a sense that if you do something wrong, it can be corrected. And tour pros take two thousand green reads around in a season, which is what the book and other things I said. And you can imagine how much expertise they're going to have with that many green reads, and how good they're going
to get. And if they ever have a problem, they just give me a holler and then we go to that exact spot and I'll show them what they did wrong, because it's math based, math pace.
And is that your background is the math based not the golf base.
Exact side of it exactly? Well, of course they intertwine. Sure, my background is where, Oh I had this eight foot putt that I had money on. You know, they had a five dollars nassau. I make it. I went twenty five dollars eats, money for the kids and all that
sort of stuff. Now I've had this putt. I mean, I've been playing this eighteenth green for fifteen years and I had said, oh, that's going to do a little slight left break and I hit it and it fell off the table like it broke like it broke off the table to the right, and I go, whoa, So I walk off the green. I'm all mad. We'll find somebody to teach me green reading expert green reading, Well, who would that be? Somebody that knows topography, land contours, maps,
ground ground slope. While beinging to realize as a civil engineer, professional engineer, that's what we start with every project that we start, A bridge, a building, a road, it's all. It's all ground slopes and all of that. Then I began to realize I was the expert. So I sat down and I figured it out. And I haven't misread a green since.
Wow. Well, oh, so you say you were the expert because you are a civil engineer.
That's correct. Absolutely, you apply math to projects to fix it. Yes, I am a professional civil engineer. Okay, So, and so.
I want to get rid of this myth immediately if in fact it is a myth or it's a fact. And that is everyone says, oh it always breaks to the ocean, Oh it always breaks to the mountains. Oh is that or is it just you know? From what I've learned in talking to golf course architects, they tell me, no, it breaks. It's irrigation. It's all about irrigation, and it breaks to where the water is going to flow.
Uh. All one hundred percent nonsense. Matter of fact, I teach that you completely ignore any of that stuff. You don't want outside influences to bother what you do, getting the exact break in front of you. So architects. Of course, most of the time you know the the drain flow of a green is going to be from a mountain to an ocean, but not all the time. So so it's just total myth. Matter of fact, I found most
of all of green reading is voodoo nowadays. You know there there are there are basically four types of green reading, all right, and all of them don't work. And you can see it on TV all the time. And these are the professionals speece all the best. And the four types of green reading is one is staring. You walk all around it, you look at it. But that's actually what causes the problem. Optical illusions are the only reason you would ever missread a green period. Optical illusions and
staring is the actual cause of the problem. The other way to read a green is somewhat common these days is foot field well, foot feeling. It doesn't work. It's no math behind it. And the you know I can say that is because you go find an algebra book, a trig book, a calculus book. Nowhere are you're going to find in there a chapter on feeling. It's just
not going to happen. And then there's map contours, which have been banned anyway, so math contours are and then again they have no math either that untrained person can't see. And then the other way is memorization. So if you memorize, you know you you have if your tour pro you have four tournaments, I mean four days of a tournament, four sides of the green, different distances and all that, and and basically it becomes unless you're rain Man or something,
it becomes untenable. So you know. So anyway, all four of those ways don't produce any results that egos can do because they have no math. They have you just can't do it. So we're still in the primitive age of green reading until of course this comes out.
Okay, and how long have you been practicing egos and egos? We should just make clarify what your system is, the expert green reading operating system.
I've been doing it since nineteen ninety.
Okay, so and you haven't. You haven't missed a read since.
That is correct, except except for when I make an error myself. You know, I don't. I don't play as often as I used to. So then I got to go back and see what I did, what I what I missed.
Up, So that then we're then we're just talking about distance control.
And speak control. The two or a perfect late read is for a put that. Yeah, a perfect aim line is a putt that goes in at the speed that you want it to go in. Do you want to diet in the hole? Do you want to ram it into the hole? Or do you want to have it if it has a cellophane top on top of it, it'd go twelve inches past. So speed and aim and are tied together. They're married together. So EGOS will give you that exact line for any way you want to
hold the putt. And it's all done on calibration at the practice screen, which is detailed in my book.
Okay, uh, and again tell everyone the name of the book so we can find it.
That's a good good point.
Do you not remember the name?
Well, come on Math and Analysis Green Rating Methodology on the PGA Tour today and tomorrow veos.
Okay, it available exactly, and I'll put that in the show notes. And what is it available on Amazon or wherever? Get books?
Okay, Amazon, Amazon, Kindle and it's twenty seven books for a lifetime skill.
I like to say, yeah, well, then that's a worthwhile investment, I would think, especially if your frustration is there and everyone has room to become a better putter. So, you know, we can talk about the hardware all we want, but until you learn how to read a green, it really doesn't matter what the hardware is. Sometimes that's right.
If you haven't read the green read properly, you're putting stroke matters not right.
And that would be where you start, as long as you can get on the starting line that you intend.
At the speed you intend.
At the speed the line and the.
Speed speed because they are married together. And my contention is tour pros one hundred and fifty five t off every weekend and they're the best in the world. And it's my contention that those tour pros can do that. They can hit the ball where they want to at the speed they want to all the time, or they wouldn't be the top one fifty five in the world.
Andy, tell me about the people that you've worked with. Have you been working with PGA tour pros or college players or corn fairy? You know, the guys trying to get their way up to the tour.
That's a great question, and it's a kind of a little bit of a long answer.
And taking time.
And I have talked to a bunch of people about it, including some teachers and stuff like that. But what I'm finding is that there is a tremendous bias out there about green reading, and when you present something that you say is going to work, there's a tendency that they don't believe it. But I've done it to some tour pro teachers, doesn't matter if I name maybe Derek u Wada and you know he absolutely gets it and loves it.
Another one is Blair Philip another work with Barney Adams and you So I've get some X tour pros that just absolutely get it because again they're mathematically inclined. But if you go if you go to ask a touring pro, for example, you know, do you misread greens that cause miss putts? And you know their typical answer is going to be occasionally but not often, all right, And then other pros will will reply, you know I never misread
because I work harder than all others. Well, it took a while, but that translation to that answer is I memorized each put for each tournament four days times four pin placements, times four directions times eighteen holes. So there's some brainwashing that goes on into their head, and I call it this kind of green reading brainwashing that continues to this day. And frankly, I don't blame the tour pro for succumbing to this brainwashing since you're standing over
putts with zero confidence. If you don't have confidence in your green read that that will affect your putting stroke negatively. So that brainwashing is there. So I have that bias that I have to overcome when I show them that it'll actually work, and that's been very difficult to do.
And that's why I'm in the middle of a topic, you know, trying to get it in front of a guy like Bryson, who I know has mathematical proclivity and will literally, you know, when I get halfway through a twenty minute demo, he's going to come and grab me and thank me, as did Blair, Philip and a couple other gentlemen that I know of, because they just get it.
So that's I guess back to your question. Yeah, I have, but unfortunately most young expiring collegiates and everything, and even tour pros themselves say, if I don't see it being used on TV, I'm not going to get involved. And it's an incredible bias that I had no idea existed until the years I started getting into this.
Yeah, and I've had I've come across that so much myself. I recently went, yeah, I in a sense that you know here as we talked about this. I've interviewed hundreds of golf instructors, and I've learned a lot from the golf instructor perspective. But when I go out to play with some people at a country club who play every week with the same four guys in the same course every week, and I start sharing some of the things I've learned, They're like, Nah, yeah, no, doesn't exist. Yeah,
you're wrong. I don't see it. So I get I get feel like I'm banging my head against the wall sometimes too. That's why I pretty much just like to ask the questions and learn from people like you.
Well, I again, the people with mathematical privity. I've developed a putter that you use with the system. It's a surveying instrument putter, and I've sold five hundred of those putters worldwide, all right, So they're people that get it, and it's just unfortunately I don't have anybody on the tour pro circuit yet that will do it and use it.
But I'm totally convinced if I can get somebody out there, it's going to take their pprs down into the twenty sevens or maybe even lower, which is always top five. And from there, I'm convinced it's going to go viral. And especially a tour pro because he's, as I explain in my book and all, he's going to get ten more looks at making Birdie. This is with the average
tour pro, you know, and making Birdie. Then he has now with using egos, especially with taking two thousand egos Green reads in this season, how expert he's going to get. And then the other thing is, you know what, even if a tour pro doesn't even want to do it, because I don't see John Daily doing doing this, and I don't see Bubb Watson do it, So why don't you just tell you caddy to do it? All right?
So the caddy becomes really really good at it, so and I think the he'll he'll start to have trust in his caddy as the ball disappears all the time, you know, So there's that option as well. But it just hasn't happened yet. So I'm hoping it will happen, you know, in my lifetime.
I hope, I hope it happens for your lifetime as well. So I am uh and have been for four or five years now a big fan of the lab golf putters that are lie angle balanced versus toe or heel balanced, and they claim to have a lot of science behind that as well. The putter that you have developed, what makes it unique.
If you were to take I call the putter the psn I egos, which stands an acronym. I'm big into the acronyms putting and surveying instrument. Instrument is that if you take your fingers and to put your fingers out like you're pointing, and then put your putter over the over it and balance it, you'll come to some tow hang on most putters, you know, forty five thirteen degrees whatever. Well, the PS and I egos you can put it in any direction, the toe point in any direction and it'll
just stay there. So it's not a I call it an all balanced putter. You know, there are face balance putters that will if you do what I just said that the face will will be looking straight up to the sky axis. One makes a putter that the it'll be one hundred percent, or it'll be ninety degrees pointing down at the ground and the lab that way.
We don't put that way.
All that's true, but the perfect I've sold quite a few putters just because they love the feel of an all balanced putter. But the tricker with an all balanced putter is that it becomes a surveying instrument and it doesn't really matter where your toe is pointing. And so that's that's why I sell that. But you can use your own putter if you just know what position to
hold it every time. And I've been doing battle with the USGA, and it says, well, if you mark the putter with a mark slot, you don't put a little dot and center it and all that. But the USGA has sent me back, Oh, this has been about ten years of correspondence. He keeps sending back. I don't know that's illegal because you can't put any marking on a putter other than decorative or to align the face the when you're setting the putter down. So I've been I've
been through all that as well. Now the lab putter, that is a little different creature. And I do know an awful lot about putters. I believe that they they've got a certain angle to the ground, a lie, as you would say, and they make the putter balanced in that lie, which is the lie where in the swing
plane you have. So that's what makes them special. Again, you would have to take that putter and try and find out what when you hold it doing egos, what makes it a true perfect vertical in other ways of surveying instrument, I haven't got one yet, but I've got about every other putter known de mand.
So andy, I'm not mathematically inclined, I may say I'm even math challenged. So how can I make egos work for me? I'm the creative type.
Well that's a great question. Then the book goes through the three steps that you just need to do men memorize in order to get into the proper positions to get this angle gap I call it right in front of your eyes on every putt, and the three steps invoke the math that is involved. So I've got two pages in the book of the actual math tenth grade geometry proven as you were to see by a professor. But you don't need to know that it is. All you have to do is know how to stand, where
to stand, and how to hold a putter. Just those three things and you can become an expert green reader immediate.
Okay, how to stand, where to stand, and the third one, how to hold the so grip is what you're saying.
The grip. Yeah, yeah, how to hold the putter. You have to you have to put a putter out in front of you. And I don't like to use the word, but everybody else does, like you're plumb bobbing. Okay, yeah, so again, and before I get into that, let me just explain what I call plumb bobbing. I mentioned the four ways of green reading. Well, one of those ways, excuse.
Me if it's for me, just take a message.
One of those methods is what I consider staring with the putter in front of you, and it is that that's what I call plumb bobbing, because the putter in front of you does absolutely nothing if you don't know all the other steps on how to stand or where to.
Stand, let's let's get into it.
Love this, okay, let's start with the first The first step is too and let me.
And it's how to stand. As you're saying, the first step.
The first step is how to stand. So the first step on how to stand is you you need to take a wide stance at which gets your spine perpendicular to the ground slope, all right, And this is where we're going to create an angle gap in front of your in front of your face with the putter and some imaginary lines that you're going to draw. So wide stance, don't tilt your head or your torso or anything in
any direction. And you wouldn't know which way to tilt it on subtle slopes anyway, so you can, yeah, here we go. So anyway, that's how to stand. And it's important that you just stand the same way every time so that if there are any quirks about you having one leg short or another, it'll all come out in the calibration. So that's how to stand. The second thing is where to stand. Well, you need to stand where
the ball will break. So when you see people plumb bobbing and the ball is in front of them, that's a mistake right away because you don't put backwards. So you need to go stand up around or just slightly in front of the ball with the ball between your legs, spread your legs, stand correctly, and that's and that's where you are going to get the read or the slope of the ground as the ball travels store as a hole. Now, let's say in my book, covers a ten foot putt
to win the US Open. So you go there, You take a stance right in front of the ball, right at the ball, take a read. Then in the minute you take a read, you're going to have an angle gap, and from the practice screen calibration you're going to know exactly where to aim that ball for the speed you like to make the ball. Okay, now the question is will it continue to break that way all the way?
Does the slope remain the same. So, since you were going to win the US Open with this ten foot you go up to the hole, right at the hole, with the hole right between your legs, and take the same read, same do everything the same way as you did over the ball, and you look and you see an angle gap. If it's the same angle gap, you know that the break is perfect. That it'll stay the
same and that your read is perfect. If, for example, though you take a read and there is no angle gap, there's a the putter goes right through your first object. You know that it is flattened out at the hole. So you need to adjust, and you need to adjust your aim line a little less, and of course adjusts for speed as well. It all becomes a real feel at that time, a proportional feel. That's what I call it.
Okay, can you explain to me what you mean by angle gap?
Okay? When you are at geometry, well, when you're standing at the appropriate place, and you're standing where you're supposed to and you're looking at the cup, all right, So you run a ground line right straight to you're growing the middle of your growing an imaginary ground line. And when you get about three two or three feet in front of your on that ground line, you'll see a second object, or you'll see a little object on the
ground that you're running this ground line. Or it could be a spike mark, if be a piece of dirt, it could be anything. So you take the bottom, you take your upholding it correctly and at arm's length, and you put the very bottom of the putter onto the onto that spike mark or whatever, and then you look up to find the cup, and the cup is off
to the left. You know you have a right breaking putt, all right, And how much of that gap you see between the center line of the cup and the shaft, you know exactly where the aim line is going to be. It may be three more of those gaps, it may be four more of those gaps, or maybe just two more of those gaps. That's your aim line for the speed you prefer to hold the putt, and that when
you get good at it, that is instantaneous. And all that becomes because you've got your spine and you've created this angle gap with your body, and then you use you threw in the true vertical putter to expose that ankle gap right there in front of your face every time, and you instantly know from calibration how much that ball is going to break in a perfect a line. Now, again, this goes back to the question you asked about the mountain over here or the ocean over here? Do I
take in account any of that? And you go, no, bet, you best not even look at it, because if you do look at it, and you take your read and all of a sudden it shows an absolute straight putt, and you're going, no, it can't be because I see it falling from the mountain to the ocean. You know. Now you've got doubt in your mind, all right, and you never need that. So I suggest don't even look for the mountain or the other because because then the
way you don't even get confused. But over time when you start making all these putts, so there goes you're not going to care what the tobography is. So all of that what I just said, guess how fast that is and how quick that is. We just eliminated slow play on the on the on the course for all tour pros.
What about you know, if it's a double breaker, they haven't it's going to break one way and then as it gets closer to the hole, it's going to break a different way.
How do you read those great question? So you uh uh, you take you so you got a twenty footer and it's in the book as well. You you take your first read right over the ball, all right, and you got a nice little angle gap, you know, and you go okay, and you know, of course the putters over here the cups over here, which means left break. So you got your boom boom boom. You got the line. You already know that, but you just want to confirm
that it's the same. So you go halfway and you take another read and all a sudden, holy cal the putters on the other side of the hole, and you got and this ground here is right is left, the right break just the opposite of which you just took it there, all right, So now you're going, whoa, this is something. So then you go up by the hole do it again, and you see that continued left break, you know, or the right break, the opposite direction breke.
So then you adjust your original break and you hit it appropriately, and you can practice that again and get good at that on the practice green as well. Do you follow all that? Well?
You ask me, if I follow all that? All of it? No, some of it? Yeah.
If I had an illustration right in front of me, you would be able to follow it a lot.
Sure. Sure, I think that's why we should remind people to buy the book. If this isn't all intriguing to you, buy the book, it's going to be worth the investment. And it's not even.
Well you're going to be able to pay for the investment. Just in four man scrambles or Lauderdale's or whatever you call. I never lose one of those. And the reason is is because I insist on putting first, and if I don't make it, you didn't waste the three other guys, you know, putting it up there pretending they know which way the ball's going or this sort of stuff.
So when you're at your peak of playing and you're using your ego system, how many putts around are you looking at for yourself? I'm sure it's not eighteen?
Well it should be, but then again.
I should be that.
I don't enough to get into that expertise. My fellow players when I was at the peak at playing, they basically said, Andy, you know, you don't really hit the ball that good. You know, you know, you know what Basically what they were saying is, I'm not on the greens is much g I rs so you know I get it up. If I get it up and then six feet it's just dead that you know, I mean?
And I don't miss huh, you don't miss six footers, you don't miss ten foot.
At the peak when I was playing, I never never even thought about missing a six footer. It was a matter of fact. They kick it back half the time. They knew it was good.
That was a gimmey a ten gimme.
Six footers are gimmy with this, will they will be gimmes with two proas.
Yeah, well we would hope so yeah, And you talked about how they would say, well, if it's not on TV, I don't I don't want to use it. That's kind of like what they're talking about Ame Point.
I would think, well, aame points on TV. It's worked his way into it even though it doesn't work. But that just shows the desperation that tour pros have. I mean, Jim Nance absolutely hates it. He's come out with articles can't stand it when you turn your back to the cup and then it's slow and it's goofy looking and there's no math behind it. But other than that, you know, it's just desperation. They don't they don't trust, they're staring
at it anymore. So they're trying to find some alternative and somehow aim Point got out there with Adam Scott a few others. I think Adam was one of the first.
And then getting it on TV, getting these and why do you think it doesn't work?
A point? Yeah, well again, I'll go right back to the there's no math your foot feeling and you're going to have to persent some kind of four percent something and then you relate that to fingers. But what book? What math book do you go to? Calculus, trig algebra, differential equations, all of which I tech as a civil engineer. Where where is there a chapter on feeling? There isn't There is no math. It takes math to work.
Right, But you're also introducing your body.
The body the math that's correct. Your body is sets up the structure, sets up your spine, that creates an angle. All right, So that's math anyway.
Now, But I'm I mean you're you're introducing your body in the stroke, not in the setup. I mean, what you're explaining to me seems like all part of the setup. It is, and not necessarily we're.
Talking expert green reading. Now, if you can't hit the ball where you want to hit it, at the speed you want to hit it, that's a whole other subject, okay, And it's my contention that there isn't a two pro they can't do that ninety nine point nine percent of the time that can hit that, they hit it where they want to hit it, at the speed they want to hit it, almost all the time.
I see, I see. So you you said you don't like the word plumb bobbing.
That's great.
Why is why is that taboo here?
Because it does nothing. It's basically it's staring, just holding the putter up. The best you could ever get out of it is maybe if you look at the cup and the cups at a big slant, you can see that there is a big slant that the cup may help you a little bit when the ball starts to get close to the hole, but has nothing to do with what the ground slope is outside, you know, twenty
feet away. And people have looked at my system and said, oh, that's just plumb bobbing, and then they assume they even know what plumb bobbing is. Have you ever had anybody explain to you what plumbbobbing was? Well, I got eighty eight pages in a book. It shows you exactly what egos is.
Uh huh uh huh, I got it. So we talked about how to stand and where to stand. But you said the third part was how to hold the grip.
That's correct, how to hold the putt.
How to hold the putter when you're doing the egosystem, explain that to me, please.
Okay, in doing the egosystem, you have to create a true vertical same thing as if you had a strain on a plumb weight. All right, you want this thing, this putter, to be an absolute, true vertical in front of your eyes. Can you create the angle gap that
your spine is at. Okay, So you hold the putter at the bottom of the grip very lightly, and you put it at arm's length, and you hold it this way the same time, and then you run that line, that imaginary line to the second object and you put the bottom of it on there to create the c So that you need to make your putter a true visual perfect as you look at it. In essence, it becomes a serving instrument.
So and and you're you're doing this so it's exactly perpendicular to the to the ground too.
It's exactly vertical to the world, exactly vertical to the world visually from where you're looking at it. Okay, it might not be that way any other way. So a toe hag putter you know that has a certain toe hang you if you're going to hold it, it'll it'll actually veer off to the right or left as it balances each other. So you don't have a perfect vertical
on most toe hag putters. You but in certain directions or in a certain dimension, when you get to toe at a certain degree, it will be what you call center balance vertically, and it will. You can use your own putter if you know exact position to hold it and get it into. But again, you know, when you got like a two inch break or a two and a half inch break, you need the most the best surveying instrument putter you got uh or you need to
you get the putter right every time. And so if a tour pro complains he's missing, he's missing short putts by that don't break much. The first thing I'm going to do is saying, well, we need to work you get your putter in the proper position.
So I'm a little confused about the math part, sure, and I'm confused about math period, but when it comes to the ego system, I'm confused about where the math part falls in.
Well, the math part is tenth grade geometry.
Ah, that's why I okay, I never did that.
Most people memorize it, take a test, and then forget about it if they even take it right. But that's a high school of course. So the math part is, if I'm watching you do it, and if you're not creating the angles and the gaps, you know, instantly I
can fix it. I can say, oh, you're not holding your putty this way, you're tilting your body when you're standing, or I can say you're not standing in the proper position, you know, And it's all just instantaneous to fix, and we can keep fixing it until you get it right.
All right. Well again, the book is called Math and Analysis Green Reading Methodology on PGA Tour Today and Tomorrow by Andrew J. Walters. Pe available that will put a link for it in the show notes, and hopefully it's going to help you out a lot. It's fascinating to me, and if you do it right, there's no question it's going to help.
Right Andy, Oh, it'll make you the best putter in your group by far, nobody else is doing it. And it'll take a person like Bryson and make him the best putter in the world. And that's a guarantee. It's in the book.
Well, I'd love to tell you that Bryson listens to this podcast, but i'd be lying. I cannot imagine that he does. And it was great talking to you. I really appreciate the education and best of luck with this method.
Hey, thank you, Fred, I appreciate you too,