From the hearth: His prolific writings on the game notwithstanding, I've always found talking with Dave Pelz more pleasurable than reading him, if only because of a well founded aversion to anything smelling remotely of textbook science. It may simply be the enthusiasm in his voice that's so welcome. He truly enjoys his work. The opportunity to listen to someone who left behind the security of one career only to find his faith rewarded is also an opportunity not to be wasted. All the better if the conversation bears fruit on the green.

THR: What don't we really understand about putting?

Dave Pelz: Most golfers don't understand why they miss putts, or why they make putts. It's really very simple. If you start the ball on the right line at the right speed then it has the best chance of going in, but it's not for sure going in because there are many, many unknown and unknowable conditions that the ball has to roll over. It's in contact with an unknown surface. It's got footprints, spike marks. Vagrancies of the green are always going to be there that golfers cannot see. Golfers can't predict or deal with the wind, and the wind does effect a rolling ball, even winds down to as low as five, six, seven miles an hour - a nice pleasant breeze; you really enjoy having it, but it effects where your putts roll.

Golfers can misread a putt, miss hit it badly and it can go right in the hole and they think they did something right. Or they can hit the putt perfectly, read it perfectly, aim it perfectly, stroke it perfectly, do everything perfectly and it cannot even go near the hole because you might hit the edge of a dimple, the wind might blow it, it might hit fourteen footprints. It misses well below the hole and you think, "Jeez, that was an awful stroke." So when you don't know what you're doing right or wrong, when you don't know what causes the ball to go in or miss, it's hard to learn to do it better.

That's the problem with putting. . .Golfers don't know the difference between a good putt and a bad putt. They don't know why they miss or make a putt.
That is the problem with putting, Jim. Golfers don't get the feedback. They don't know the difference between a good putt and bad. They don't know why they miss or make a putt. It's not hard to do but it's very hard to learn to do.

THR: You must know that Gene Sarazen at one time was a proponent of enlarging the hole. They tried it. Everyone was still short.

Pelz: The hole size would not really change the game in that sense. It would lower scores because everybody would make more but the good putters would still make their percentage more, the poor putters would still miss theirs. It wouldn't be a significant difference unless you made it so big that as soon as you got on the green there was no such thing as putting. I don't think that's in the cards.

THR: The conventional wisdom is that a straight uphill putt is easier. You don't agree. Why is a downhill straight putt an easier putt?

Pelz: It's easier to make. I wouldn't say it's easier. It is easier to make because it's like. . .the perfect analogy: putts roll under the influence of gravity just like golf balls from drivers fly under the influence of the wind. If you're driving into the wind and you drive a little bit off to the right, then the wind, coming straight at you, pushes the ball further to the right. If you started to the left a little bit then the wind pushes it to the left. So it pushes it in a divergent pattern. On the other hand, if you drive with the wind, it's trying to make the ball go straight with it. And if you're driving in the same direction and if you drive it off a little to the right, the wind pushes it back, not back on line but it keeps it from going further off line. So it straightens out drives. Driving with the wind it's easy to hit the ball straight. Driving against the wind, it's very hard. Uphill putts have gravity pulling them to diverge from the proper line just like driving against the wind does. If you start it right, gravity's going to pull it off to the right further. Going downhill, straight downhill, with gravity, putts tend to roll straighter.

So if you're trying to make a putt and you don't care if you go by if you miss, then putting downhill is the easiest way to make putts.

THR: You just want to get it started.

Pelz: That's right. Just get it started on the right line. It'll stay there.

THR: Don't we focus way too much on line at the expense of speed, or pace, or however you want to describe it? I remember something in one of Harvey's books, wholly unscientific, of course, that on shorter putts we ought to concern ourselves with line where on longer putts we should concentrate on speed.

Pelz: That's exactly right. When you're taking a putt of over, say, fifteen or twenty feet, there's just no way on earth that you can read it completely accurately because of the footprints, the spikemarks, the different undulations in the green. Speed controls the line that a ball rolls on.

The faster you roll a ball the less it will break on any given slope and the slower you roll it on that same slope, the more it's going to break on its way to the hole. Golfers don't realize. They'll say, "I pushed it," or "I pulled it," if they miss it one side or the other. And it could be, and it usually is, the fact not that you pushed or pulled it, but that you didn't hard enough, or you hit it too hard. I've measured that eight out of ten putts that miss the hole could've gone in if they'd have been rolled the right speed.

Eight out of ten putts could've gone in if they'd been rolled the right speed. In other words, they were on a good enough line that they could've made the hole.

In other words, they were on a good enough line that they could've made the hole. There's always a cone of directions that you can start a ball on and make the putt. You can hit it as easy as possible and it can still fall in the top because it's breaking more. Or you can jam it in the hole and minimize the amount of break. But there's only a certain limit to that. You can only go so high, so low, so fast, so slow. Golfers always think about the line and they practice and work on it but four out of five putts are missed because they're rolling at the wrong speed. And it's hard to practice speed if you don't know the games that develop touch because it's not intuitive. Line is intuitive. You see it. It's obvious. You look at it. You think you understand it. But speed is something that nobody has a handle on.

Four out of five putts are missed because they're rolling at the wrong speed. . . Speed is something that nobody has a handle on.

You don't know if you roll your putt six miles an hour, or four miles an hour, or two. There are no numbers out there. Nobody's telling you that you did it too hard or too easy, so you've got to play these games. That's one of the things we do in our tour clinics and in all of our schools, of course. We teach students how to work on controlling the speed of putting because that's a quick way to get better.

THR: The subject of feel comes up quite often. Many people believe that it's something elusive, something that can't be studied and quantified and improved. I know you disagree.

Pelz: Absolutely. We have drills and games we use to develop touch and the great putters have to have it. The truth of putting, it's true for the whole game: you can't be a totally mechanical player and be any good at all. And you can't be a totally feel player and play any good at all unless you are a God-gifted, naturally born, perfect mechanical putter - and there aren't very many of those.

You can't be a totally mechanical player and be any good at all.
The interesting thing that I've found over the years, and I've been really fortunate to work with a whole lot of really good players - some of the best in the world - and what I find is that they work really, really hard on their mechanics. They work on their set-ups and their eye positions and hand positions. They get their shoulders parallel to the line and they groove their strokes in these putting tracks and teaching items available. They really develop a good mechanical stroke and they do it so often, so repeatedly and consistently over a period of time that it becomes subconscious control. Then they go out and hit these great putts that don't go in the hole and at that point, after I've been really bugging them to work on their mechanics, I go out and say, "OK, forget your mechanics. When you're on the course you've got to play with the stroke you have that day. Forget about mechanics."

Read the green, commit to the line, focus on speed. In that order. . . Forget about mechanics. When you're on the course, play with the stroke you have.

The only thing I like to get the players to do is: read the green, commit to the line, then focus on speed. In that order. Read the break of the putt, commit to it, convince yourself that if I hit the ball on that line, and I hit it the right speed, it'll find the hole…you know a high percentage of the time. You never know. It might hit a footprint break or something. But if you give it a chance and you'll make your share. All you're doing when I say focus on speed is you're trying to match the size of your putting strike to what you expect that sized stroke to roll on the speed of the ball. That's when people putt really well: when they forget about mechanics. When they forget about it, they have good mechanics because they've trained themselves to have good mechanics. The average golfer when they forget about mechanics they have a terrible stroke. If you first work on mechanics and then change your focus on speed when you get on the golf course, that's when you're going to putt well. You've got to do them both.

THR: The old adage, 'Miss 'em quick.' Golfers are spending too much time over their putts, aren't they?

Pelz: You should never spend any more time on the golf course when the pressure's on, for the last putt, for the bets, than you have when you practice. One of the secrets, and there are many in golf, is to play like you've practice and what that means is be smart enough to practice like you're going to play when the heat's on. Take a couple of practice putts, try and gauge your speed and go ahead and roll it. That's all you can do. Start on the right line, roll it at the right speed and if God and the greens don't want that ball to go in, it's not going to. Don't worry about it. Give it the best chance you can and do it in the same rhythm and the time and tempo that you've practiced so you'll have your best chance at putting your best stroke on it.

THR: There are people still croquet putting. I played with one out in Portland, an elderly man who had one of Bob Duden's old putters and learned golf from him. If croquet putting were still allowed, which of course it's not, how many top players would you think, would be using it?

Pelz: Jim, I honestly believe every one of them would. I've done a lot of testing on that and it is an easier way to putt. When you stand on the line and you're looking right on the line, and you're hitting the ball from between your legs like a croquet mallet except if you did it with a nice putter with a vertical shaft, there's no wrist break involved. There's no rotation of the forearms. You see the line that the ball starts on. In present day golf, when you stand on the side of the line, that's one of the things that makes the game difficult and preserves the challenge. You don't see what line the ball starts on. When you look up, you don't see the ball until it's about six feet away from you so you don't know exactly what line you started on. You just have to assume. When you croquet putt you can see it.

In a way, I felt very sorry when they did outlaw Bobby Shave and Bob Duden and the players who were really good at croquet putting because they ruined their golf careers in terms of being able to make money and win. It [banning] did preserve the style of the game that we play. It kept the challenge in there. You know we don't want to go around and putt balls in slingshots and shoot them like bows and arrows. That would be too easy.

How many top players would croquet putt, if they could? Every one of them.

© THR, 2001

Talking Points - Edition I - Ron Green
Talking Points - Edition II - Dr. Patrick Cohn
Talking Points - Edition III - Bradley S. Klein
Talking Points - Edition IV - Doug Sanders
Talking Points - Edition V - Curt Sampson
Talking Points - Edition VI - Geoff Shackelford
Talking Points - Edition VII - Bryan Gathright
Talking Points - Edition VIII - Tim Rosaforte, Ray March and Gary Player