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