22. Putting

If you want your golf to be based upon sound prin­ciples, beware of the feu de mots. Avoid falling a vic­tim to those slogans and catch-phrases with which golfing talk and golfing writing are so liberally pep­pered. The slogan is the enemy of thought, and the fact that a phrase has been current around club rooms and courses right through the golfing ages is no guar­antee that it enshrines a profound golfing truth—it may be just a superficially bright and catchy phrase. My own view is that the fundamentals of golf are not com­pressible into slogans.

A large number of these catch-phrases have gath­ered around putting. We have all heard, "Never up, never in/' "A good putter is a match for anyone," and, "Putting is a game within a game," so often that we must be in grave danger of accepting them as true.

I say "grave danger" advisedly. Take "putting is a game within a game." If you accept that and its impli­cation—that putting needs a method of approach and technique different from that of the rest of golf—your chance of ever becoming a first-class putter drops to round about zero. Putting is not a game within a game: it is the game. It is the essence of correct golfing mechanism. If anyone who has a proper conception of the golf swing will apply this same conception to the putt, his putting will improve in consequence.

Now this chapter is on putting not on catch-phrases, but I want to deal with one more of the latter here because it may help us to get this matter of putting into perspective. "A good putter is a match for any­one." That phrase was popular and accepted as it is now when my great compatriot Harry Vardon was in his prime. Because with the limelight on him Harry had been seen to miss some absurdly short putts, some people (but not the folk he played against) put him down as "a poor putter."

The greatest putter of the time beyond doubt or question was Willy Park. So Willy was pitted against Vardon to confirm the adage that a good putter is a match for anyone. He did not confirm it; how Harry won that match is historic . . . he pitched so close to the hole that he did not have to putt well.

So we must rewrite the slogan and make it, "a good golfer is a match for anyone," not a good putter any more than a good driver or a good mashie player. Golf is one whole game. It is true that if you cannot putt you cannot win, for no hole is won until the ball is down—but good scores are only made possible by good play up to the green.

Is it true, you may ask, that, "good putters are born not made," because if so, what is the use of trying to learn how to putt? Another of those wretched catch phrases you see. You can learn to putt. I was born a good putter, but I became an infinitely better one when I learned how to putt.

In fact I became so exceptional a putter that after playing the morning round with me at Knocke, Walter Hagen called out to Aubrey across the dining-room, "Your brother is the finest chipper and holer out I have ever seen," and though Walter was an inveterate leg-puller, he meant that! I had taken only 29 putts for the round and my holing out up to two yards was exactly one hundred per cent. And oddly enough I had mod­eled my methods largely upon those of Walter Hagen himself—the King Pippin on the green of his genera­tion and the father of modern golf-green methods. In following his lead I was in good company, even the great Bobby Jones went through a period of "Walter imitation/' Though he did not adopt the same wide open stance, he used Walter's reversed overlapping grip and smooth slow follow-through.

To teach yourself to putt successfully, you must study the putt in its relation to the technique of every ether shot in the game, not as a thing apart. That is why I say to my pupils at the very start of their golfing days, "I putt as I drive."

Of course, having seen with their own eyes the fierce sweeping through of a long drive and mentally com. pared it with the delicate accuracy with which a short putt is stroked on its way, they look incredulous when I first tell them this. Later, as their understanding of the game develops, they see the truth of it—though some of them are then inclined to argue that, "I putt as I drive," should really run "I drive as I putt!"

Now as I have told you, I wanted to find a mechan­ical action—a golf movement—with which all shots could be played, so as to develop perfect and uncom­plicated reflex movements. I hope I have already made it clear why it is that if we change our fundamental golf movement for the playing of any shot, that shot not only fails to help build up reliable feel and reflex movements—it actually complicates and confuses the feels and reflex movements which have been built up.

Before I had reached my present conclusion on these matters, I knew that Bobby Jones had said that the putting stroke was like any other and that in actual application the Pendulum Stroke is a physical im­possibility. Incidentally he had also classified keeping the head still as a fallacious golf maxim. Also one day when Walter Hagen was putting, he turned to Aubrey and said, "I can't stroke from in-to-out to-day."

Now all of this confirmed my opinion that it should be possible to putt as we drive and encouraged me in my search for the method. And you need not be sur­prised that it took me quite a few years to find and to master it.

Firstly, the fundamental golf movement is centrif­ugal, and we are used to using centrifugal forces so forcefully that to tone it down until one could stroke home a nasty four-foot putt on a fast green took some doing. But when it was done, I found I could sink more of these nasty short putts than I could before.

POINTS TO STUDY

The reversed overlapping grip gives more right-hand feel. (In fact, the palm of the right hand facing the hole gives the impression that the ball will be "rolled out of the hand towards the hole.")

The club is held not in the tips of the fingers of the right hand, but down at the roots of the fingers. The right thumb is on the top of the shaft.

The right elbow and forearm rest lightly in the curve made by hip and thigh.

The back of the left hand rests lightly on the left thigh. The left elbow is almost facing the hole ... as is the back of the left hand.

Both knees are slightly bent, the weight is well back on the heels—as if sitting on a shooting stick.

The weight is more on the left foot than on the right. The ball is just inside the left heel.

REVERSED OR PUTTING GRIP

AUBREY

The second big problem I came up against was how to follow through a short putt on a fast green. I took to cutting down my back swing, making it shorter and shorter, but never—it seemed—quite short enough. Then one day while I was practicing on the green, I put my putter down behind the ball and just rolled the ball forward—with no back swing at all, only a forward push of the club head from the right hand.

Now I know that this was a foul stroke, but its sen­sual value to your golfing education cannot be over­rated. Try it yourself, and you at once feel and realize how the ball should run off the face of the putter and how little muscular power or pressure is needed to roll the ball into the hole. This muscular power (such as it is) should come entirely through the right hand and forearm; the left only comes into play on the back swing.

Since in putting the movement is so slight and deli­cate, very little centrifugal force is generated, and it is most difficult to feel the club head; so we try to get as much feel as possible in the right hand. That is the reason for adopting the reverse overlapping grip—it gives increased right-hand feel.

When you first try this trick of rolling the ball towards the hole, you will find that you are holding your right hand and forearm as stiff as a poker. They should not be stiff at all. You should hold your putter no tighter than you hold your pen. In playing the longer shots we mainly need to use the grosser muscles, but we must learn to progressively hold our muscles more and more lightly as the shots become shorter. It is because we do not realize this that we are bad put­ters, not because we are born to be bad putters as the stupid adage suggests.

"Let the club head do the work” is just as good ad­vice in putting as in driving. But how much work is there in putting—how much pressure does it need to roll a ball four or five yards? Practically none; there­fore the tension in our muscular system should be prac­tically nil. The last thing I say to myself before I take my putter back is, "Don't tighten, you old fool."

The next thing I had to work out was which was the primary of those two essentials, strength and direc­tion. And I concluded that strength came first.

Now, before I came to this conclusion, I thought all over and around the subject and studied it in practice, especially in tournament play and in the four-ball ex­hibition matches which Aubrey and I used to play a great deal ten to eighteen years ago.

I remember holing three successive putts from eight to ten yards in such a match against Jurado and Perrz on the Mar del Plata course. As we walked to the next tee after the third of them went down, Aubrey said to me, "How in the name of fortune do you find the line over these greens?" He might well ask for the greens were terrors! Well, the answer was that I did not try deliberately to find the line—I looked for the feel of the strength of the shot, and the direction developed out of that feel. That is why I say that strength comes be­fore direction.

How can you learn to develop this sense of direction out of the feeling of strength? Firstly, do not putt at a hole. Just learn how far you can possibly make the ball roll. The farther you can make it roll with a given feel of power applied, the better you are stroking the ball. This is an essential study; it is so important that often, when I see people practicing at a hole before a tourna­ment, I feel they would do much better to take at least a few preliminary putts without the preoccupation of the hole at all. The good putter is the one whose ball starts to roll over as soon as it leaves contact with the club head.

This rolling over is imparted to the ball by the fol­low through of the club head, and though it must not be thought about, it should be felt. The feel that we are rolling the ball along is an essential one, and we cannot get it unless we follow through.

The more roll you can give to the ball the farther it will travel in response to a stroke of a given degree of force. In other words, distance depends upon an equa­tion involving both force or power, and roll. There is a maximum to the roll you can produce and conse­quently a maximum to the distance which you get from a given power. This maximum is known as dead strength, and when we can achieve it consistently we can make our putts stop at exactly the distance we de­sire—exactly hole high. That is why it so often seems, when a really good putter strikes the ball, that it will never be up—yet it creeps on and on and just manages to tumble into the hole.

"Never up, never in," is not the adage of these put­ters, nor must it be yours. Dead strength must be the objective. Putt so that if the hole were not there your ball would stop dead on the spot it occupies.

You can do a great deal to develop dead strength by constant practice on your carpet. As it develops, a sense of direction will begin to appear, and it is in this sense of direction that you will begin to trust. In fact, you must feel direction rather than see it. Of course, what you see with your eyes does help you to find the line, but alone it is not enough.

The sense of feel that guided Hagen when he putted his way round Muirfield in 19 over those fast crinkly greens was something to marvel at. I played over them that day too, and I know! He relied upon perfect strok­ing to help him find the line, sometimes across as many as three ridges and hollows.

Incidentally, there is one reason not generally appre­ciated why we Pros take so long looking for the line on the greens in tournament play—it helps us to keep quiet and not to hurry. To see old Ted Ray creeping up to the ball, as he used to do after he had got his line, was a lesson in preparation for a smooth feline stroking of the ball.

One of the first points to be studied in bringing our putting into line with our other shots is the position from which we play. The first wrong impression we get about putting is that we should be "over the top of the ball/' This is often brought about by having too up­right a putter and is a great mistake. This being over the ball is the pendulum idea again, with elbows stuck out away from the body.

The good putter feels inside the ball, and his elbows, forearms, and left hand are kept very close in—even touching the body. Actually we can stand as near to the ball as the "pendulum down the line of flight" people can, maybe nearer. But with our flatter putter we can keep our hands close in without cocking the toe of the putter up in the air—it can touch the green all along the sole.

Another advantage of not having to feel over the top of the ball is that we can keep well back on our heels, which is an essential to stroking from in-to-out.

About the putter itself. The face of mine is neither too wide nor too short, and its angle is almost 90°, but not quite because we need just to see the face. To off­set this, the front bottom edge is rounded off so that, if I do come up a little, it is a rounded edge not a sharp one that is presented to the ball. So the bottom edge of the blade is underlapping a concave face from half­way down, a detail which helps toward perfect strok­ing. Also, I have the top of my shaft, where I grip it, flattened. This I prefer to a square shaft because while it gives the same effect it encourages a lighter touch, and lightness of touch is important.

Now, here is a curious coincidence. I came by this putter almost by accident, in fact it was picked out of a batch as likely "to suit the Boss" by one of my club makers at St. Cloud. Years later curiosity prompted me to measure its lie (the angle between the sole of the blade and the shaft), and I found it to be exactly the same as that of Bobby Jones's famous putter "Calamity Jane.”

Now though we must not stand over the ball, we need to be more squat about the knees and hips for the putt than we do for longer shots. Yet above the waist we must feel up, because unless we are up with our head and shoulders, we cannot feel that we can keep the club head down through the ball.

Next, do not try to take the club head back along the line of flight. Take it back low with the left hand and do not open the blade. If you will study this on a car­pet with lines on it, you will find that when you do this the blade goes inside in spite of you. This is as it should be; in putting as in driving or playing any other shot, we should not consciously take the club inside on the way back; though if we are properly set well back on our heels and keep the putter blade low, that is where it will go.

To lift the putter blade back is putting suicide. To keep it low in the follow through is one of the signs of the great artist.

I feel that I take the putter blade back with the left hand and then roll the ball forward out of my right The club head and right hand become one in feel. I do not feel that I hit the ball forward but feel that I roll it along from behind. I can feel the ball roll off the face of the putter. In fact when I am putting well, I feel the ball stick for an instant against the face of the putter and then unstick and roll forward as I fol­low through. With such a feeling, I can be confident that the ball will attain full run dead strength as we have called it.

But I warn you that all this will be of no avail if you hold yourself stiffly. To putt well we must be supple and loose. We must not be flabby; we must be con­scious of our body being held up by its braces, yet not so braced as to impede movement. All our muscles must be mobilized, but they must be mobile. Do not sway to-and-fro, but on the other hand do not get fixed; there is a great deal of difference.

Remember that if we are to swing our putter head correctly every muscle from head to foot must co-oper­ate. Some of their movements are invisible; some of their changes in tension infinitesimal; yet they are all essential. The putt is just as responsive a movement as is a full shot, and there must be opposition to every movement.

I have told you that I putt as I drive, so the same rules hold. If when you are driving you become a di­rect hitter, you will begin to pull and slice and exactly the same thing will happen (on a reduced scale of course) if you hit your putts direct.

And to close this chapter I will give you a paradox to think out. No beginner thinks putting difficult; he just goes up to the ball and taps it along to the hole, and as often as not it goes in. It is not until he misses a few as he is bound to do that he forsakes this natural and effec­tive if inelegant style and tries to "learn how"—from then on he becomes an ordinary handicap putter. So here is the paradox: natural golfers are bad golfers but natural putters are good putters.

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