The guys from Ping.
They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters. I just love that I can hit any shot.
I kind of want we're gonna be able to tell some fun stories about what goes on here to help golfers play better golf.
Welcome back to the Pink Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm shape Bag and that's Marty Jersey. Marty, how we doing today? We're gonna talk a little putting. I'm struggled with my putting. I can't make anything right now. I need the advice for our guests.
Yeah, there's a lot to putting. I think Sashow has been doctor Sasha mackenzie has helped us in a number of ways as an engineering brand ambassador for US, but he's spent going deep on putting. How do you make more putts? How do you miss less putts? And what
is the causal reason? I think that's where we want to dive really deep with Sashow today of why you miss putts and then tie it together to putter fitting Shane, because that's kind of the you know, we want to kind of tie all these different pieces together.
Sasho, I'm not making a lot of putts what am I doing wrong? I mean, without looking at me, without seeing my stroke, without saying the way I'm hitting it, What is what am I most likely doing wrong? To where I'm to Marty's point, either missing more pods, putts are not making as many as I like.
Yeah, Number one reasons probably green reading. So that's a massive chunk. At least fifty percent of miss putts are due to green reading errors. Let's assume we're talking about makeable putts, you know, like twelve feet and in kind of kind of thing. Then it's probably your speed control. If you improve that, you're gonna sink some more putts.
Then probably face angle control, so face angle variability, speed club head speed variability, putter it speed variability, and then it's then it's a steep drop off to things like where the ball is hitting on the face and path, but those those top three green reading is the biggest, Then speed control and then face angle variability.
Esasho, how do you practice green reading? I mean, you know, I mean obviously we've got green reading books and things like that, But how does someone go out and actually work on that part of the game. Because it makes sense to someone like me to work on path and to work on speed and things like that, but to go out and actually perfect my ability to read a green seems relatively daunting for me.
Yeah. Well, then the number one thing that most people can do that they're not doing is and this is when I work with players, especially Mini tour players are really good college kids. I asked them, how many different putts do you see in your putting sessions? So you're practically putting for an hour, how many different putts are you hitting, like different starting positions to different holes. A lot of them don't really know the answer, but a
lot of times it's like, well six, you know. So the more experience you can have hitting different putts, so you have to actually assess what are you going to do and then consciously thinking about what happened. That's a big thing is that most people do not know if they've misread the putt or if they've miss executed on the putts, so then there's no learning. So you need to see a lot of different putts, and especially putts where your ability to read the green matters and you
can discern it based on the outcome. So forty footers not so much. But you know, if we're down inside twenty feet and definitely if you're missing putts, you know, eight to twelve feet, you should be able to say did I execute as intended? If you did, then it's a misread, and then you can learn. You can start to learn. Okay, I'm underreading the speed. You know, I'm bad at judging whether the putt is uphill or downhill.
Because I hit this put as hard as I wanted to, and I thought this is going to be close, and you're like, whoa, you know that's that's still rolling right? That was a misread, sash.
So this is very anecdotal, but I think we can have Shane chime in on this because he was a caddy at St. Andrews, done a lot of caddying in his career. I feel like I was the best at green reading when I was a fore caddy. I was a fore caddy at Castle Pines in college and I would just watch a ton of putts. I'd have to debate Shane. You know, you know how this goes, like should I tell the player where to actually hit it or on underreading it for him? But I just was
maximizing the learning. I think, Sasho, Shane, what are your thoughts on that from your experience Caddy.
Yeah, well, I mean Sasha made a great point about the lengthy putts. I mean, Caddy and at St. Andrews, you know you'd have a guy having eighty footer. I mean it's not I'm not gonna give you a whole lot of help in terms of speed. I can maybe give you a line, but yeah, I couldn't agree with you more Marty in terms of being on the back for someone and watching a whole lot of different point
of putts. I mean sashow bringing up the idea of a great player saying I hit six putts on the practice screen and a half hour, and then you think about going out on the golf course in real time and how many puts you might face in around of golf. I mean there's a chance you might face eighteen different putts, right, I mean, there are a whole lot of different ones
out there. But Marty, I think you're spot on and the idea of when you're watching someone else do it, it feels like you learn a lot more than when you're actually doing it yourself.
Yeah, Sasha, I think you also brought up something interesting there, which is that path is not too big of a factor to necessarily practice. So what are those kind of like ballflight laws of a putt and why is it exactly that a golfer should be focusing way more on minimizing their face variability than their path variability?
Right, So what I look at is you want to know from just a straight up physics standpoint. Okay, let's say we're hitting a twelve foot putt. Just pick a putt, straight flat twelve foot putt to pick one, So we can, you know, set up some boundaries here, some understanding. Well, you have to have your face angle be plus or minus or sorry, your path be plus or minus three and a half degrees to miss that twelve footer in order to pull the ball far enough off your intended
start line. So you have to take the physics and then say, okay, well what is a golfer's variability and path? You need to look at both. So okay, is this something that if I improve it will make a difference. The worst putters that come through my lab do not have have path variabilities that get plus or minus three point five. Tour players are within plus or minus one. So grinding on on nailing your path improving your path is not going to move the needle and sinking more putts.
So I look at just since you brought a path, but there are really four things that are predominantly under the control the golfer. You've got path variability, face angle variability, impact spot variability in the face of whether you're hitting it off the toe the heel out of the center high or low. And speed variability. And so you look at, okay, well, how far let's take impact spot variability out of this away from the center of the face. Do I need to be before I miss that twelve foot putt? And
it is like plus or minus half an inch? Okay, before you're going to start to miss a twelve inch putt. And then you say, well, where am I at? How many if I hit one hundred and twelve foot putts, how many of those impact spots are going to be outside plus or minus half an inch? And the answer is zero. Right, Your directional miss is going to be two percent of put length for every one centimeter outside
the impact spot. So you know, twelve foot pot one hundred and forty four inches, you go, what's two percent of that that? You know? If you go to the extreme of how terribly you can miss a pot on the putter face. It's it's accounting for virtually nothing left or right of the hole, and it's only one percent of rollout distance, so one hundred and forty four inches, well one percent of that. I mean, the impact spot variability gets completely washed out by face angle variability and
putter head speed variability. So that's when I say, what should a person work on? Green reading is really important seeing as many potts as you possibly can with different slopes and brakes, and quantifying whether you misread it. But then that same type of practice will benefit your speed control. Right, you want to hone in your speed control. Okay, let's hit a downhill pott. That's you know left right now we're going uphill from fifteen feet now we're going side hill.
You start to that's the best way to get a better sense of your speed controls to hit lots of different putts to see it. You know, can you judge those those speeds. Don't do drills are going to work to reduce your very building path, to reduce your very the impact spot. There's just not going to be any gains to be had from improving those things.
Sasho.
How did you get into this world? I mean, I mean listening to you talk has already opened up my brain a bit. I mean the fact that you're telling me I can hit a bad putt and still make it if I've read the putt correctly makes me the weight is lifted off my shoulders. Hearing you talk about putting is amazing already. How did you get into this world?
I think I'm really drawn to it for two reasons. One, there's not a put out there and any green that any golfer can't sink. There are a million different shots that only the best players in the world can hit. You know you're going to try to carry a bunker at three twenty, Well, that's eliminated just about everybody in the planet. But everybody has the ability to sink every putts, So that that's very attractive to me from like, hey, like,
let's see what we can ofpud. The other thing is that it seems like there is a ton of room for improvement. So if you took someone who's not into golf and you watch them, you said, let's let's watch Scotty Scheffler here hit this drive. You know, a hero world challenge, and you said, are you impressed by that? Everybody like holy smokes, like they'd be so impressed by how far the ball goes. And then if you took him on a putting green and you said, okay, here's
an eight foot putt. What percentage of these do you think Scotty Scheffler's sinking? And they'd say, I don't know. I just watched, like I hit probably like ninety nine percent. Like you know, this this hole is like barely any distance away, and you're like, well, he'd be doing good to make half of his putts from here. So it's like what you know, and if you go into a lab situation, you can get players sinking nearly one hundred
percent of his eight footers. So there's a massive you know, there's a massive potential there, I think to improve in the putting green. And maybe I'm being a bit naive, but I think that someone could come along and separate themselves with putting to the same degree that say, you know, Bryson did a few years ago with driving, or Rory's you know kind of does with driving. But you know, we haven't quite seen that with putting on a consistent basis.
So those are the two reasons. Is that it seems like there's a lot of potential and everybody can do it.
Marty, it's so interesting to think about. I've never thought about that before. Where you know, if you and I go to the Masters and we go stand where Bobba hit the shot on ten, I mean there's seven people on the planet. They're going to hit up ye pull you know, a pull hook gap wedge to twenty five feet. But if you go stand on the back of the eighteenth of Tory in theory A. Sasha's point, everybody can make the putt raw mate. I mean, you know, you get it on the right line with the right speed,
it's going to go in. I mean, I've never I've never thought about that before.
Yeah, it is fun to think about, and I like that, Sasha. What he brings to us is an engineering ambassador. Is this first principles thinking right. It's just like some of the the concepts are obvious in hindsight, Sasho, now that we've established the importance of face angle and delivered face angle, let's talk about how we can affect that with the
putter right. Sure, and I think a big thing our founder and a ping we've always known is that hey, you know, if you have more arc in your stroke, you generally do better with the more toe down putter, less arc, more face balanced putter. Can you dive into a little bit of why that is and the kinetics and kinematics that connection and expand upon that a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely, so. I think there's there's two ways you can you can measure or what you can look at in terms of a of an outcome of what the putter is doing to decide whether a putter is going to be better fit a better fit for you. You've got reducing the variability yep, so being more consistent with it, and that's I think predominantly when we're fitting for a
stroke type. That's what we're trying to do. So this is a little bit theoretical, This is kind of a getting a bit into my opinion, but I you know, I still think it's a pretty cool way to think of it. You have folks that tend to put a little bit more straight back, straight through, and they tend to putt better with a face balanced style putter, where you know, if you balance on your finger, the face
is pointing to the sky. These putters inherently give very little feedback if you rotate them in your hands, because the center of mass is very close to the shaft. And I think there are a lot of folks who don't want to feel the face opening and closing or get any sensation of that. They set up an address and they think, Okay, I've got this putter face pointing
where I want. I want to make my stroke. I just want to know that if I don't do anything, the putter doesn't do anything, this thing's going to be delivered square. And those folks tend to do better with a face balanced putter. Then you have people who inherently like to feel the face opening closing. They want to feel that that mass moving or so they have some natural arcs, natural opening and closing of the face, and you can enhance that feel with a putter that is
toe hang so. And that's where you'll see if you go through like the putting sizes I've done in my lab, and you know it happened at ping for a number of years. Those putters that like to have some arc in their stroke or tend to smark on the stroke, they like little more feel. They do better with a toe hang face balance better for the straight back straight through. So that's that's one way to look at it. But then I think some really low hanging fruit is addressing biases.
So a lot of people don't realize, but as you go through the course of a round of golf or a practice session, you might miss sixty five percent of your putts to the right, and that's enough to make a difference. You want to be fifty to fifty right. You want to be in have that middle of the bell curve of your misses be centered on the whole. But you know, if it's sixty five thirty five, that's not enough for us to remember right as we go we're focusing on other things. It's tough to mentally if
you miss one hundred percent. Yeah, you're like, okay, I've missed every put to the right, but it's tough to track. So those systematic biases can kind of go on notice. But hopefully you've done something where you pick up on that right. Hey, i'm a right handed putter. I'm missing
everything out to the right. So we've done some really neat studies showing that you can address those biases with your putter type, and it seems like, well, we know that toe hang putters, so uh, putters that have the center mass off the shaft right, you're gonna tend to leave the face a little bit more open at impact. And that goes right across the board for pretty much everybody. So if you tend to pull your putts, you're your missing putts to the left. Hey, let's move you into
a toe hang we can address that bias. Your stroke feels good, you don't want to start changing your stroke. Okay, let's just go to a toe hang putter. Similarly, if you tend to be you know, missing your putts the other way, you tend to be pulling your putts, go to a toe hang putter that's going to tend to leave the face a little bit more open. I think I've said those correct.
So, Sasha, is just a wrap a bow on these two concepts. Here one would be and we've seen this with iping. We have our consistency score that incentivized as being more repeatable, and we can measure do a b testing with different putters. We've seen it time and time again. Like you said, if a player wants to feel less resistance or the putter kind of feeling like it's going to stay more square through the stroke. They have generally a higher repeatability score. We can measure that, we can
we can improve the repeatability. That's number one, trying to match the balance of the putter to what they're kind of innately like the feel of. And then number two, we can we can adjust the delivered face angle, which will affect the face delivery. And because we know face angle is is the primary thing we want to influence there. We can eliminate a pull by playing a more toe down putter, eliminate pushes, reduced pushes by playing more face balanced putter.
You got it?
And why is that? Why is it that the face is delivered more open? Uh, if you play more toe down putter.
Yeah, And this this comes down to the kinetics, so that the forces and torques that the golfers applying to the club. So I'll try my best to do this on a podcast, but there is a natural tendency of you the center of mass off the shaft. When you start your stroke, you're applying a force on the grip away from the target that's actually going to tend to close the face. So if your toe hang, the face is going to start to close more in the backstroke
than the face balanced. And then what's interesting is then from there on it's gonna be lagging the face balanced, and it's going to get even more exaggerate. So as you transition into your forward stroke, now you're applying a force towards the target, and that starts to swing the putter more open. So the towinguter is going to start to open up more than the face balance. Okay, and
so now it's lagging in this open position. What's very interesting is that that's going to be maintained all the way up to impact so that it never catches up to the face bounce. It's actually going to remain more open. But what's interesting is that the rate that it's closing. And so, I mean, I don't know whether this is like a subconscious thing where folks realize who you know, they're not perceiving it, but they're trying to close it faster, or it's just just a reaction that you know, they're
not even controlling themselves. But the rate of face clothing is faster at impact with the toe hang, so's it's open, but it's trying to catch up. So that's the cause for that face to be a little bit more open with the toe hang hutter, and it's important to point out that that's not a bad thing. You might actually overclose with the face balance, so you need that little bit of open bias.
Sasha, how important is it for people to maybe give multiple putters a try, I mean to I mean, obviously going through fitting is important and use an iping, but to get those feels that you're talking about, to kind of see throughout the options that maybe ping has available to see maybe what you're describing on the pod.
Yeah, absolutely, I think that, you know, Pink does an awesome job with the putter fitting. It pushes you very strongly in a direction, but when it comes right down to you, you do really want to try a couple of putters, you know. Yeah, I firmly believe in that. So there's there's always going to be someone who, you know, if if you're not comfortable with it, it's probably not
going to work in the long term. It's tough to really start to love a putter over time if you don't like it, you know, within the first few days. So I think that especially if you have you know, you're like, I could use either of these, Hey, great reason to go with the fitting, and the fitting is certainly going to give you an excellent head start. But I think I think testing out one or the other is you know, we're both is obviously the best way to go.
Sasha. We've had fun doing studies in our lab and then you duplicate them in your lab and we don't share results until until we both kind of completed them, and that's kind of like two factor confirmation on our our findings. One of them we did was on putter offset. I know that's something you know a lot of the golf world and you know, folks who followed the Proving
Grounds podcast probably curious about. So give us a little overview and that that study we did a few years back on a putter with more and less offset and what we saw and maybe some of the again the kinetics reasons for the findings there.
Yeah, So the offset is a really interesting one where the first study of ping was done mostly with iping, and I use a motion capture camera, so I get a little bit different data, some of the little bit we'd say even extra data in terms of what's happening it's set up, and with the iping data, it was pretty clear that if you play with more offset, you are more likely to start the ball to the left.
You're right handed, part of your start line, your facing, the impact, everything's going to be a little bit left bias. And the question was, okay, well this is showing up an iping is it's something that's happening in the stroke that would be my flinch. What was interesting is that when I repeated this study in my lab, I saw the same thing. It was actually and I will add, you deliver more loft and you start the putt more left.
But what's interesting is that those biases are pre set at address, and it's not something that the golfer is obviously conscious of. So when I run tests, I'll have participant number one will come in and they will hit five putts with a putter that has offset, and then they'll hit five putts with no offset, and they'll go back and forth in these blocks. Participant number two will start with a different condition first and they alternate throughout
the So we try to remove biases. We try to have a nice balance study design, and this effect shows up. But it's actually unlike predominantly unlike the toe hang versus face balance, which is a thing that happens during the stroke and interacts with the kinetics. The offset is more of a visual thing that the player tends to adjust to an address and then it stays in the stroke, which is very interesting. That seems to be the dominant effect, Sawsho.
I've got a dumb question that I figured you'd be a perfect person to ask, Why is it that? And I don't do this anymore because it just doesn't work for me in my putting. Why is it that when I put a line on my ball, I line the ball up perfectly where I think the break's going to be In all that, when I stand over the ball with the putter, why does it at times not feel
like it's directed where it should be directed. Because I've talked about this with a lot of my buddies, especially my good playing buddies, and you know, it's a real debate.
Do you use the line? Do you not use the line?
Why is that something that happens to us golfers when you get over the putt and you feel like the line's not not accurate.
Well, the reason is how we've evolved to use vision and when our eyes are over the ball and we're looking down at a line to sum it up. You know, it is not a great way to line something up with you with your eyes exactly exactly, no one would ever shoot a gun point being, you know, holding the gun below them, you know, the way you have your line on the ball and be like, right, I am going I definitely like snipers aren't like you know you're featuring me.
That you would be.
Yeah, you have very limited ability, so that I mean, that's the short answer. Why is that we have not evolved to try in if you know we're chasing down prey or trying to you know, things over time, get away from something you know, we want to be behind it, lining it up, whether we're throwing a projectile or lining up a gun, you know, without getting into the reasons behind how our vision works.
Yeah, I mean, so trust it. It's it's trust the line you put on the ball when you set it down. Don't trust in theory your eyes that are seeing something that's not not accurate or it's like you said, your vision is telling you something different.
Right, And I think you can if you work hard and have some trust, you can calibrate yourself to believe that that is straight. You know, That's one thing that our vision is potentially good at is we can adapt. You know, our vision will will start to adjust. It's also sometimes you know, your alignment can drift over time as well, because you know you can get these biases can work in, and that's that's why we end up, you know, having alignment rods to prevent that bias from
drifting in, so you can you can recalibrate. So you know, if you work hard hard enough out of chain, I think you can start to make that line on the ball. Look right as you're standing over it, Marty.
This came up so much with the Jordan speedth phenomenon early in his career when you would, you know, look at the hole right, and it was you know, Steph Curry's not you know, he's looking at the bass right, He's not looking in theory at the ball.
And I feel like that was a debate.
And of course I know Jordan's bounced back and forth with that, but I mean you're thinking that's six foot circle, right, I mean five foot circle scoring circle, and almost Jordan's theory or you know what he used to win golf tournaments was such a different idea, yet it was something that works in almost every other sport or every other you know, athletic feet out there right.
Sasha has done a little bit of research on this, Sastra, I heard. I don't know if it's true, but over half your town putts heads up putting up there. But tell us about your your research and heads up putting, your find your your kind of academic findings behind it, and uh and where you where you stand currently on on uh this this technique heads up putting versus not?
Do you putt heads up? Sasha?
I absolutely putt heads up? Okay, and it feels so wrong to putt heads down. Now. I have a million anecdotes and thoughts on this, but let me start with a stat that eighty percent of the golfers that come through my lab end up putting meaningfully better heads up. And these are golfers, you know, they could been playing golf for thirty years, they could be scratch handicaps, and they think I'm crazy to even have them attempt this. So what's the motivation. I've done three three really solid
studies looking at heads up putting? Now, what was the motivation for that? Well, it comes from, as Mary would say, first principles it's like, well what matters? What what can I do to sink more putts? What are we under the control of putter? Head? Speed variability is massive? Right, so what can we do to improve our speed control? And what are currently people doing that are really hindering that.
So if anybody who's listening to this, ball up a piece of paper, grab a pan, a set of keys, wherever you got in the desk, find the garbage can and go, okay, I'm gonna fire something in the garbage can over here. But then look down. And there's been research that is shown outside of golf, but as soon as you stop looking at a at a target, our memory of how far that target is begins to exponentially decay.
So that's why even if you see some of the best golfers like Aaron Baddeley, when he hits a putt I remember trying to film him at Whisper Rock once he wasn't. I was just on the side of the green, you know, kind of covertly filming, and I missed the first two attempts because he starts his stroke as his head's coming back to the ball, so he's minimizing that decay time. Now some golfers probably have a really good ability to do that. Vast majority of us do not.
So in the research, I would look at not just the number of putts that were made, but I looked at, Okay, when you're putting heads up versus head down, what happens to your variability and impact spot path, face angle and speed and what you see as a reduction in speed control variability, a little bit of increase in impact spot variability, but that doesn't matter. It gets completely washed out by speed control going up. And you know, there's lots of
clues in other sports. A hockey player, where there's way more going on, you know, in terms of the pucks moving around on the blade. Ninety percent of the things they do when they're shooting passing, their head is up. Basketball shooting you would never look down. And some people say was shooting a basketball? Yeah, but that's because I'm holding the ball. You know, I'm not trying to impact it. But then you look at billiards. The best billiards players
they don't look at the cue ball. They look at where they want the cueball to go. And that's you know, so you have two targets. In golf, you're trying to hit the golf ball, but you're also trying to project it to a second target. And everybody should really try heads up hutting, and so quickly, if I was going to give somebody, you know, okay, what do I do to heads up hutt your routine doesn't change. Everything's exactly
the same. And let's both of you caddied. So if I was like asking a caddy, hey, you know, where should I start this putt, you'd be like a cup outside left and universally that is understood that that is your start line. Right, that is the line I want to start the ball on. So what I say is, okay, nothing changes your routine, get up over the ball. When you bring your head down for the final time, you
don't start your stroke. Then you look. You imagine a laser line coming out of that putter face, and you just follow it to the hole. And where that laser line would pass closest to the hole, that's what you stare at and you think, I'm just going to roll the ball over that spot. That's how your heads up putt.
So you know, if you think, okay, this is a foot of right edge stair at the right edge and go I'm gonna roll this putt over the right edge, and people put better, and then even starting to look at things like head movement. So head movement there's it's called alo centric heven. So the best putters tend to move their head ace like in the opposite direction to the putter. And it's small movements, but still that's that's
correlated with better putting. There's a motor control researcher from Canon and Timothy Lee that's showing that you putt heads up, you tend to have you're more in line with that that style head move and the magnitude of your head movement is also smaller. So two things, your head moves less, the movement it does have is more in line with the better putter. And there's all sorts of other cool things that you know, for people that struggle with putting,
it takes your mind off of mechanical thoughts. It becomes more of a feel. You're you're less concerned about what exactly the putter's doing.
Sasho, I did it for I did it for six months a few years back. I noticed the thing I noticed the most with it was I would hit the five six foot putts right kind of the scoring putts. I felt like I hit them with a lot of speed, Like I hit them and I made them.
With a lot of speed versus to your point.
If you're standing over the putt, you're looking down at it, you know it's a quick potter, it's moving away from I'm a left handed putter, maybe it's poop into my left and you're kind of trying to drip it on the right side. I noticed that when I was putting well face up, I was hitting those putts in the hole and they were going in with like serious make speed, the kind of make speed that you want to hit putts with in the first place.
Nice one point seven to four miles per hour.
Is that the perfect make speed? Yeah.
The question on this is would an alternative be to do something a little bit more Let's say I don't not comfortable going one hundred percent heads up? Would a more air and badley approach where you try to reduce that time? I feel like I've done good with that in terms of my routine. Would that Would that be a viable kind of alternative? Maybe next best?
Absolutely? Yep. If you're not comfortable with the heads up, then that's the way to go is that? Okay, I've decided, you know, this is the putt I want to execute heads down? Where you go?
Gotcha? Gotcha?
Are you putting every put heads up? Sasha?
Are you doing I mean thirty footers everything like that?
Yeah? Absolutely?
Ok.
And it gets very different when you are executing a pitch shot or a chip shot, because then impact spot becomes very, you know, a lot more important, and your lies change a lot, your stance changes a lot. On the putting green, the ball is never stopping anywhere that has more than a you know, a four percent slow four percent is probably even getting extreme. So your setup is always the same. The ball is always in the same spot, your feet are always you know, feeling the
same weight distribution. And it's interesting me that we're looking down, but that information is always the same in every put The information from the putt to the hole is what we want to react to, you know. That's that's the information, and that's why most of our practice strokes are taken looking up. We're trying to, you know, get a sense for what that is, and then we look down. So when I putt heads down, now, it's just it's like
it feels the same as everybody that's listening. When you go to throw something in the garbage, can you look? That's what it feels like to me. You know. I was just talking to P and M from uh Vision fifty four and they said, Anica tried it a long time ago and she made eighty four in a row from twelve feet whoa, And they said, so, yeah, so were you gonna Are you gonna take this to the course. He's like, no, everybody's gonna be looking at me. Funny,
you know. Yeah, so she didn't. But it's like, wow, that's that's a lot of putts in a row before, you know, got some confidence, Marty.
You know what I'm doing after this podcast?
Oh, I know, we go back back.
I'm going to like the next hour and a half just faced up pudding every pot.
I've got all the putting grid. It's happening.
Yeah, Sasha, what about uh what about the topic of uphillers versus downhillers? What would you rather have? You know, uh, downhill eight footer versus uphill eight footer? What are some of the considerations there? You know, maybe talk a little bit about some of exploring that both theoretically and then maybe with some some measured empirical data.
Yeah, so I've got two fantastic data sets to look at this so when I do putter testing. So actually with I did a combined heads up versus heads down and toe hang versus face balanced study. It was over two days. Golfers hit ninety six putch eats various combinations of conditions, and two of the holes were straight uphill eight footer in a straight downhill eight footer, and everything was using motion capture so we would make sure the
green is perfectly calibrated. We hit the ball, we tracked the ball, and we'd just agreed to make sure that these two putts, the eight foot uphill and the dela are absolutely dead straight, no question. Significantly more putts were made on the eight foot downhiller compared to the eight foot upliatter wasn't close meaningful difference in percentage of make putts.
Then fast forward to now with stack putting, where we have you know, I think we're probably getting close to a million potts and we can look at Okay, we're telling people to go hit a straight uphill eight footer, a straight downhill eight footer, and it's reversed uphill potts are easier than downhill putts. You're more likely to make an uphill putt in reality, and there's a subtle difference
here in the lab. I've got a dot on the green saying this is where you're gonna hit your putt from, and you're hitting it to this hole, and you know that it is dead downhill. You know that it is perfectly uphill, okay, Whereas in stack putting and in reality on the golf course, you go, I think this is straight uphill or I think this is straight downhill. And
that's the subtle difference. If you if you go, okay, this is uphill, you have to hit this a little firmer, so it is it's traveling for less time, you're going to be more aggressive with it, and there's a chance that it's not perfectly uphill okay, So that versus downhill. Again, you don't really know if this is exactly downhill. And you also have to hit it with a little bit less speed, so that takes a little more of the very building in the green is going to come into
the ball kind of meandering left or right. So it's interesting to see how those two things flip in practice give me the uphill eight footer.
What would you rather have to win your club championship? A six foot or straight up hill or a six foot slider downhill left or right? And why and why.
They're both the same distance? Six feet?
Yeah, six feet.
Give me the up Yeah, the straight uphill putt. Just based on all of that data, you know, people are making more uphill putts.
Yeah, quick to answer that one. It's like, I'll take the I could be I can maybe let go a little bit more now.
If someone told me, now, that's interesting. If someone told me, also knowing what I know, they said this is one hundred percent straight down the hill, then I take the downhill putt.
Well, if it's a slider downhill left or right?
Yeah, no, I'm avoiding the slider. Okay, I'm avoiding the slider unless it's at least two feet closer. If it's you know, if it's closer, I'm taking the slider. Distance is still king. I'm taking the five foot slider over the seven foot that I think is straight up hill.
Yeah. I think that's a pretty fun inside and putting is uh yeah, just being closer to the hole. It means everything, right, Sosha.
Absolutely that's been proven throughout the bag, right. I mean that was the whole kind of flip in the way even professional golf was twenty five years ago versus now where Now I'll tell you this, Marty playing in the amateur this past year and playing those practice rounds with the players and diving into the data there and how they go about their business. It's simply it's driver here
because this data tells us it's driving right. And rarely are you seeing those level of players hitting anything less than driver off of tea unless it just tightens up up there. I mean, it has sinned it all day, every day. And I mean same thing in terms of putting. It sounds like saus show is it's as long as you're closer, no matter how much movement's involved, take the closer putt.
Yeah. And the more important point there is that you do not have enough control to guarantee you're If you're guaranteeing the uphill putt, then you're also guaranteeing it's going to be further away.
You know, why why do we not see more pros do face up? I mean, I know the Onica story and we talked about Jordan speed, but why does it like, it seems like someone would take this on and the fact that we haven't really seen a single modern player kind of subscribe to what you're saying. You've got half a talent doing, you know, kind of following along with your data and your philosophies. Why is this not kind of bled into the pro game?
Yeah, I think that on a reason is the number one reason embarrassment.
Embarrassment is really a thing.
So it would take it would take someone with the open mindedness of Fitzpatrick. You know. So Fitzpatrick's a good example of Hey, I'm gonna do this this crosshanded drill with my with my you know, pitching to kind of you know, help get a feel of my swing. And because he tracks everything, he's like, huh, this is this is pretty good done. It's in play now. He's a great putter, so he has absolutely no reason to to
really switch. But it would take someone who both performed better heads up to actually go and try it, and then also to have that open mindedness of like, hey, I'm gonna go full throttle with this, and and to a certain extent that that's kind of speeth. You know, he did that a bit. But if I was to give a practical reason, you know, to to play Devil's Advocate is that, you know, I don't want to give tour players and out here, but there could be a
little bit more movement on the green, you know. So when I put heads up, there'll be a lot of people who when they see you start your stroke, they'll like move to go to their ball as you're starting their stroke. And it's if it's constant movement, so maybe it's fine. On tour, there was constant bustling around, you know, like if you're like shooting basketball, you know, it's like fine.
But if it's like perfect stillness and then something moves, you know, then that could throw you off a little bit. And I notice that with my own heads up putting, but most people are moving around that much. It's usually just and I'll say to them, hey, you know, just kind of be still, just still I hit the ball.
That's to give tour players now, But I really think the number one reason is just it's almost like admitting that they're putting is so bad or something that you know that they've got to go to this extreme technique. But I think it's worth trying, especially for folks who are struggling. You know, the strokes gains not that great. It can't hurt the test it out well.
I mean you think about some of the stats that Scotty was producing in twenty twenty three, I mean with the ball striking, and just to throw anything out there. I mean, Marty, I say this all the time. I'm
very impressed with the professional golfer's ability to tinker. I mean Sascho's point about you know, Matt Fitzpatrick and chipping crosshand that I heard a story years ago that Fred Couples was talked about how he was a better one handed chipper yep, than he was with both hands on the golf club, but he just didn't want to put it out there because he didn't want people in the crowds and galleries to.
Talk about it.
But there is it feels like the tinkering almost stops on the greens, right. I Mean, you might go long putter, you might go with Green Reading's books, you might go with a different grip, but in terms of just the analytics, in terms of what could happen on the greens, it feels like it almost stops there.
Yeah, one of our best senior players in the section here he chips one hand and puts his left hand in his pocket. Boom, and he chips amazing. Yes, he puts it in the pocket.
Hownbelievable.
Next level.
Well, you know, it's interesting because most of the precision things we do in other sports, they're all done with one hand. Never throw darts with two hands. Yeah, you know, you imagine you. You know, we write with a single hand, everything with you know, with badminton because it's a little bit lighter. Always a single hand, you know, most of tennis and unless strength becomes an issue as a single
single hand. So it seems reasonable, but people struggle with trying to do it, you know, like cause I think I'm doing something funny.
I just saw a video some college team football team where the center did a two handed snap and the whole internet was going crazy over that. You know, it's got the opposite, right example.
Yeah, it's like it's like a long it's like a long snapper, but doing it for your quarterback, right. I mean, I mean it's only weird until it works, and then it's not weird anymore.
Yeah, Sasha, what about headweight? What have you found in putting headweight? I mean we've seen we've seen again pretty reliable folks with a faster tempo backswing to ford stroke time ratio generally do better with a lighter headweight putter slower tempo generally with the heavier headweight putter. What are your findings there on putter, headweight and performance.
Yeah, I mean, and that's another one that's lined up very closely in my lab with what Ping's been doing. And I think that that that is also getting at the kinetics. Those faster tempos are indicative of higher the force is changing at a higher rate, and your preference for what you want your stroke to do, and it's nice to have the implement that you're using kind of
match that. So and this is a good example of something that it can be tough to exactly tease out the why, and you're kind of left with the hypothesis. But it's more important to have good experimental data in the end than a good theoretical reason. You know, it's really nice if you can figure out the theory, and that's probably going to help you to design better clubs, but in the end, it's better to have the data.
You know, to have the experimental data that says this, this works better for this type of player.
Yeah, my thought on that sawsho is that if it has a lot to do and even as you mentioned with the stroke type, it has a lot to do with the backstroke. You know what happens right when you try to start, you know, accelerating the object or accelerating the putter. If you do it very quickly and the putter's too heavy, it doesn't you know, it's not moving at the rate that I think your brain and your
nervous system might want it to do. What are your thoughts on the That is kind of like a you know, a theory or way to think about it.
Yeah. I like that absolutely. It's very much in tune with what I would call perception action coupling. You know, what you're doing, the feedback you're getting from what's actually happening. You want those two things to line.
Up, gotcha. Yeah.
What is the text messages like between you guys? I mean, is it like, is it disadvanced? I mean if you dive this deep on the back and forth or do you guys just shoot the you know what every now and again.
Marty and I are ninety nine percent all business in terms of like hardcore science, like.
I want to dive into the text exchanges and see if it looks like this.
It's all about perception in action coupling.
Yeah, new T shirts.
We're gonna have to make uh sashow for you putting. When you're diving into all this data and you're you're you're going over thousands and thousands of you know, I mean tasks and everything you do. How do you simplify it in your own brain when you go play golf?
Oh, it's it's all feel for me. You know, you you think about it, you understand it, but then you're on your putting green. It's it's just it's just reacting, you know, like and I think that's why it can be. It can be so tough to to teach some of these things, like like green reading, especially when you're trying
to factor in all of these variables. Like if you have a perfectly rectangular green with a set slope and the stimp doesn't change from the ball to the hole, you know that you gotta you can make some serious headway with with aim point great, but if you you if you start to have you know, putts flattening out towards the end, you know you're like, all right, it's kind of left to right, but then it straightens out all of a sudden. It's like, okay, yeah, you know,
endpoint can help. But then if you go okay, but then I got some stamp, there's also a bit of do you know, there's a bit of wind. I think that's where it's you know what you really high like heads up putting, because you take all of that information in and you just react to it with your stroke, you know. And I think that's where some of the best putters, like a Battely, when you add, okay, we're exactly you're aiming here, and he's like, well, like over there,
you know, Like I'm like, is it here? You know, you put a tea down. He's like, I don't know, it's over there because he's his subconscious has a very specific thing it's executing. But it's like taking in all this information, so, you know, I often think that some
savant will come along, like Rainman. You've ever seen ray Man, you know, where the toothpicks get knocked off the table and he's like, oh, it's two hundred and seventy four tooth picks, and literally there's going to be somebody who has the skill set that's pretty decent in all the other aspects of golf. But what you know, the three of us might consider a green irregularity, you know, like, oh,
we've we've put our level down on the green. We know how long the putt is, we know what should happen here, and we set up a perfect putter and we roll the ball and it, oh, it ends up short, you know, or it kind of stays out straight. Oh because we didn't see, you know, there's a little wormhole or some ant or a leaf or a pump in the green. But that's really just green rading, you know.
So rain Man comes up there and he's like, oh, yeah, all that information goes in and it comes out in the execution of his stroke, you know, and all of a sudden, instead of in the lab going from ninety percent eight footers down to fifty percent, he's at like seventy five percent and just like leaves everybody in his dust.
Sasha to me, that's watching Tiger's putt last putt on eighteen at Torrey Pines. I mean watching the worm cam of that. I mean, I don't know if that's Luck or if he was rain Man and he figured that out well.
And he's done it so many times. Does he be like bay Hill, like, how many of those those are not easy putts and greens that have been trampled on back in the day with metal spikes, you know what I'm with you like, And he's so late late, he was so late. He still is laser focus, he'd see it. I guess he did put that one in the hero into the bunker, so he could have used a bit more focus then.
But he's rusty, you know, he just you could see he was he was like surveying every square inch of that putt, and you know, maybe subconsciously that was going in there, you know, I don't.
Know, maybe maybe the closest we have seen to this point in terms of what Sasha thinks will be coming eventually in pro golf. Sasha, we have really appreciate the time. Very fascinating I have. We've had a lot of guests
on this podcast. I think you might be a top the list of people I want to play golf with now because I just weave and I want to ride in the cart with you because I just want to just I just want to hear you talk about this over and over again, and like I said, the moment we're done recording, I'm going straight to the putting green because I am I've gotten a'm twenty twenty four is going to be heads up putting for me.
You know, I don't know if it's appropriate to plug stack putting. You're not even doing this, but you you get on stack putting and tag your sessions. Yeah, you know, like this isn't a plug. This is like, this is this is why Marty and I built it into stack putting. So it's like, hey, you have this question, go test it out. Do a few sessions heads up, few sessions heads up. My twelve year old we were prototyping, you know,
like debugging the app. I was like, okay, I need somebody to put in a variable to decide, you know, our statistic comparisons working. I was like, well, I don't know the putter, and I'm like, just this week, do a session heads up, do a session heads down? And he gained three strokes putting heads up. And I didn't you know, I wasn't gonna push, but he's like, well I gotta put heads up.
You know, he's.
Analytical like me, I'm like I can't argue with that.
You should.
There is the data.
The numbers are telling you this, Sasha, thanks so much for the time.
Man, this has been great. Uh, Marty smile and I'm smiling.
We're fired up about the putting. Conversation has been really good. This is the Ping proven Grounds podcast.
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