Make Putts Like A Pro

LIV Golf might be heading toward a funding cliff, and that forces a question nobody can dodge: where do all these world-class players go if the current model changes after 2026? We talk through the ripple effects, from fewer PGA Tour starts and the rise of signature events to what a more global schedule could look like under new leadership with an NFL growth mindset.

Then we pivot from the tour drama to the part of golf that actually changes your score tomorrow: course management and putting. We break down why “bad course management” usually isn’t a single bad swing, it’s the decision to aim at every flag. The best players pick smarter targets, accept 15 to 20 feet, and let good misses look great.

From there, we go full putting nerd and make it usable. You’ll hear the case for the one-foot-past rule, what TrackMan’s 1.62 mph entry speed really implies, and why dying putts can lose their roll and get knocked offline by crowning, footprints, or grain. We also cover why long putts rarely drop, how face angle tolerance tightens with distance, and why putter fit (loft, attack angle, arc, toe hang, forgiveness) matters more than chasing perfect “zero” numbers.

We close with simple practice you can actually stick to: a mirror check for eye line and aim, a tee cross drill at 3, 6, 9, and 12 feet to build pressure, and a lag putting target built around a 10% leave zone. Subscribe for next week, share this with a buddy who hates straight putts, and leave a review with your biggest putting miss and why you think it happens.

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Transcript

Welcome And Golf Headlines

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Measured Golf Podcast, where you, the listener, sit down and join Chuck and I as we discuss all things golf. And I would guess that if you are a golf nut like Chuck and I, you are slowly but surely making your way out onto the golf course if you live up north like me. If you're a true D Gin like Chuck, you've probably got about 100 rounds in so far this year because the weather's a little better where you live. But we are definitely getting into it. College seasons are starting to get towards the end. I know the NCAAs are coming up. A lot of teams punching their ticket to that. Uh a lot of good stuff. Moxed. The Mox has qualified. The Moxed. The UTC Chattanooga Mox. They have qualified for the NCAAs. No surprise there. Very strong golf team. But, you know, we've got the second major of the year right around the corner with the PGA happening in May with its new slot. But I would say the biggest news of the week when it comes to the golf world is the sounds like folding up of the tent when it comes to live golf, or at least the backing of live golf right now, with the PIF polling funding at the end of this 2026 season. So uh it could be interesting times to see where all of these golfers that have been playing on Live are going to wind up. But there's less spots available on the PGA tour. They've created the tour within the tour with the signature events, and I think now people are even more interested in what the scheduling is going to look like for 2026 and beyond because we've got all these golfers and it seems like we've got nowhere to put them.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

That is what I thought. I I was uh curious to ask you with a couple guys uh on live that you teach and consult with. What do you think? Um what's this? I mean, I know it's very, very fresh, but what what all are you hearing, or what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Uh I'm I'm hearing a lot of violins. Uh people realize the Titanic is going down, the once unsinkable ship is now sinking, and I think that everybody is scrambling for the lifeboats and trying to figure out what that looks like. But you know, it's been very it almost seems strategic in a way, but I think it's been very well played by the PGA tour not releasing this new schedule that they're that they're kind of teasing us with because I I really I they've created a tour within the tour with the signature events versus the non-signature events. And I really think there's never been a better time for the PGA tour to kind of look at having actually two tours and having their signature tour, uh, to which is basically the signature events, and then having more of these smaller market tournaments to where they're they're filling in the gaps with all of these players that are going to be coming over from Live again. So it's gonna be really interesting. I think the PGA tour is actually likely positioned better than they ever have been before because we know that you know there's a big market for golf. Live has proven that there's a worldwide market for golf, and I wouldn't be surprised if the tour does something where they differentiate their product and have maybe multiple products, or I could potentially see a deeper partnership with the DP World Tour coming up and a lot of those guys kind of moving more that way. But I feel bad for a lot of the guys that are on the DP Asian tours, uh, because I think they're gonna get lost in the shuffle, unfortunately, because you're gonna have just a lot of guys with higher world rankings that are gonna be looking for for starts in tournaments. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

I would have to guess that professional golf has never been as competitive with the amount of people and the amount the quality of play then right now. I mean, we're busting at the seams of guys that that clearly can play and are going to need a place to play. I am excited that the new uh do they do they call him the commissioner or the what do they call him of the commission? Yeah, commissioner, I think. I'm excited that he's come from the sport that owns an entire day of the week, and that he's going to have gone through this with like how do you how do you keep getting more eyes? How do you keep expanding? So I'm I'm excited that he's kind of leading the way. I I don't know what that looks like. Uh I hadn't thought about that until you said it of do you have two tours? You have the signature and you have the the regular.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Um I mean, if you kind of think about it, you know, it's a good, it's that's a good point you bring up with Brian Rolap from the PGA tour, the new commissioner coming from the NFL. You know, traditionally, and I look, I get it, you know, Amazon buys Thursday night football or or whoever has it this year, you know, they want good games to put on their network to attract viewers, but historically, Thursday night football has just not been good football. Um, you know, it's it's not the premier teams, but you know, when you tune in for Sunday night football or Monday night football, generally you're getting a compelling game, especially later in the year. So I I think that you know having kind of multiple tiers without having multiple tiers is definitely something that he probably has some experience with. Yeah.

PGA Tour Strategy And Global Reach

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Uh I'm also uh curious if he tries to do something with the DP or the Asia markets that gives us more golf in prime time. Um it's always so good when they go to Hawaii and they play the Century or the Sony, R I P Century, and you're I can go play golf during the day, and I can come home and I'm cooking dinner and I can flip on live golf.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Um agreed. And I think I think if anything, Liv has proven what a market is out there globally for golf. Um, we could we could do the whole episode on the pros and cons of live. Um, but I do think that live has done a phenomenal job of showing what the appetite is globally for golf. And it's uh you know, the NFL, once again, going back to Brian Rolap, you know, there's a reason that they're having games in London, there's a reason they're having games in Germany. Uh, they're wanting to get into these markets. There's a reason. I know you're a big NBA guy. There's a reason that the NBA wants to have games in China. Like there's a lot of money there. And we've talked about this, but the the market for golf in in the Asian countries, you know, Japan, uh, China, Korea, you know, there the market there is huge. It's vast. And for golf to not want a piece of that pie, like that just doesn't make sense. And I think that the big thing that just really hasn't been discussed uh and hasn't people really haven't thought about yet is that the PGA tour is operating in a completely different way than it ever has in the past because for years the PGA tour was for it was a nonprofit, and now they've taken this huge investment um from the group that you know has LeBron and and the guys that own the Boston Red Sox and all that stuff. They've taken this huge$1.5 billion investment. Dude, they they don't hand out$1.5 billion and hope that they don't see a return on it. Yeah, so I think for golf, um, I think it makes sense to go global, and I think you're gonna see a massive reshuffling of how things are dealt with in the majors because I've talked to you a little bit about this, but you know, the PGA tour has a serious problem that nobody seems to talk about, which is their five biggest events: the Masters, the PGA, uh, the Open, um, the US Open, and the the Ryder Cup. They're five biggest events. You can throw it, make six. You could throw the president's cup in there, which is which is kind of growing as well. But their top five events, maybe six, these top events generate zero dollars for the PGA tour, which is very interesting because obviously those events are using PGA tour players to fill their field and to advertise and to sell their tournament. So for the PGA tour to sit there and go, hey, we're gonna shut down for a week, let you use our players, and we're not gonna make any money, like that doesn't make any sense. So I think it's gonna be very interesting to see how Brian kind of goes to these majors and says, Hey, we want you to open your books, we want to see how much money you're actually generating, and we're gonna want a percentage of that because you're using our players. It's no different than the Canadian Football League borrowing the NFL players for five events a year and the NFL making zero dollars on that. Like that would never happen, not in a million years. Yeah, that this guy coming from the NFL is not he's not going to let them continue to do that.

Prime Time Golf And Majors Money

SPEAKER_02 9:56

I mean, he's he's coming from the biggest money-making machine that there ever will be in sports. I mean, they uh it was uh they split up, I think it was 10 years ago. I don't know what the number is now, but I know 10 years ago, they sp the team split up nine point something billion dollars. Um and they so they know how to make money and they know how to grow it. Umly thing I would like to see is I would love to see primetime golf. I would watch more golf. Um not that I don't already, but I would watch more like I'm I'm out playing golf while the tournament is going on. Or you're working.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

I mean, let's working. Yeah, right. I mean, it's you know, the the problem, one of the problems that the PGA Tour has is that their demographic is like 65 to dead. You know, I mean, it's a very old crowd that's watching. And and look, I don't think putting golf in prime time alone is gonna fix that problem, but you know, younger people tend to be more kind of looking at stuff, doing stuff later in the day versus earlier in the day. Yeah. So I mean, I think if you are gonna get eyeballs on your product, if you are going to try to work on this demographic problem that you have, I agree with you. I I think golf in prime time is gonna do a lot better than than golf that's you know, your favorite players wrapping up at two o'clock in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Yeah. Because who are they coming during their season? Who are they competing with? That's the great thing that they have going for them. They don't compete with the NFL at any point, hardly. The only time they do they compete with anybody is that um January-February window.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

The January-February window, but which I think is gone. It's it sounds like we know the century's gone for sure. Yeah, uh, but it it sounds like they're not gonna kick the season off until March now, is what I've heard.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

And that and that golf was at least played in prime time. So you you were done with with football, or at least it was finishing, and then the only other time that it um has a conflict is that uh tour championship with college football the same weekend. Um so they've got a uniqueness that other sports would kill for that they don't compete with the NFL or college football. And um I hope they get it figured out.

What Course Management Really Means

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Uh I mean, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of people that are gonna, you know, boo hoo, live, these guys made million. Not everybody made millions of dollars. Um, you know, there's a lot of guys that were just looking for a spot to play and they slotted into live and and they didn't sign huge deals. Uh, and I just I always, you know, I always put myself in the shoes of the guys that are normal. And, you know, there's a lot of guys on the PGA tour, there's a got a lot of guys on Live, there's a lot of guys on on all the tours that are trying to break even, trying not to go into debt, chasing this dream. And, you know, I just feel bad that a lot of these guys are gonna really have a hard time finding a place to play because I don't think the PGA tour is really gonna do them any favors. I think they're gonna be very strategic. I think there's gonna be certain players they want back. You know, I think if you're John Rom, if you're Terrell Hatton, uh if you're some of those guys, you know, Waco Neiman, you know, some of these top talents that are out there, I think that they're gonna be able to find their way. But I think as you go farther down the trough, man, I I think for a lot of these guys, there's there's a big demotion coming for them, unfortunately. Yeah. That is uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Um I don't know how to transition us cleanly. I I like to be able to have a really easy way into the next. I don't I don't have a clean one. We last week we teased um we teased a little bit of course man some more course management along with expectations around the green.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Which by the way, I don't know how you separate. Like I I don't know, I'll give you your segue. I don't know how you separate those two things because bad course management is firing at every pen. That's the definition of poor course management. Not balls in the water, not balls out of bounds. It's firing at every pen. That's the worst course management there is. I mean, I I can't tell you how many times I've I've been walking with golfers, uh, I'm with a family member of theirs, I'm with a friend of theirs, and they hit a shot into the water, they hit a shot into the trees, they hit a shot that's just not good enough. And the first thing that the person I'm walking with says is, oh, they just don't have any course management. No, they made a bad swing. Like those things are gonna happen. But course management, you know, I I think correct me if I'm wrong, but the the tournament not so long ago, not the one that he won with his brother, not Matt Fitzpatrick is the player I'm talking about, not the one he won with Alex, but the one he had won before that. At Harbor Town, where at Harbor Town, he's like, Yeah, I pulled that shot that he hit close. Yeah, you know, and like people just don't they don't realize that I get it, when you watch these guys play golf, they hit it close a lot, but they don't hit it close because they're aiming close. They pick a good target, and then when they pull it a little bit or they push it a little bit, it winds up getting close to the hole. But generally speaking, you're not seeing these guys upset hitting it to 15-20 feet, which is where if you're watching like the group that's leading the tournament, by and large, you know, for the most part, they're hitting it to 15-20 feet all day long. Every now and then they sneak one inside there, and it's kind of a tapping or whatever. But it is refreshing to start hearing a lot of these players, and I'm sure Scott Fawcett's rejoicing somewhere, hearing, you know, Matt Fitzpatrick say, Yeah, that shot worked out great and was close to the hole, but I pulled it. Like that's not where I was aimed. Like I was aimed 20 feet right of that pen because there was trouble left, and I just happened to pull it and it wound up working great. But that's where I think people don't really understand course management and their ego gets in the way and they think that they can pull every shot off and they just start lining up on every pen. And unfortunately, when they pull that shot lined up at the pen, instead of it winding up close, it winds up in the bunker or worse.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Yeah, I think uh I I would like to go back through some of my most recent rounds, but if I have anything over if I have seven iron in my hand or more, I uh if I hit it close, that means I did something it was pushed or pulled and was close. Like there's there's not a single time that I was attempting to fire at that pen with a six iron, five iron, four iron. Um and you um you brought up hitting it to 15 or 20 feet, and it it kind of sparked a question. You hear Scott Fawcett talk about and correct me, I don't have his verbiage quite right, in putting. You hear him talk about um it's okay to leave things short outside of a certain distance, like leave short leave.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

I thought that was a really good post you put up, actually.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

So at 15 to 20 feet, obviously you know we we can't three putt. Um but and I guess you just answered it. So you you like that thought of we're gonna let this ball drip in if it's gonna go in.

The One-Foot-Past Putting Rule

SPEAKER_00 18:19

My my so goal, right, versus outcome or reality. My goal, if I like had a blue genie, golf genie, and I can make a wish, my goal and my wish would be that every single pot I hit the rest of my life finishes exactly one foot past the hole, speed-wise. You like it a little past, yeah. Yeah, so for all the the golf freaks out there that love love the technical stuff, uh track man defines entry speed as 1.62 miles an hour. Now, if you take 1.62 miles an hour and you put that on a 12-stamp meter green, uh you wind up about a foot past the hole. The reason that entry speed matters is because generally speaking, everybody who's played before you that day has walked near or around that hole. Not only that, but the person who put the hole in the ground doesn't have the most sophisticated ways of making sure that that hole is actually flush with the surface around it. So there tends to be a little bit of crowning around the hole because they pull it out and shove it in. So there tends to be a little bit of crowning. There tend to be some imperfections around the hole where everybody's walked around it. And how many times have you seen a putt going right in the middle with perfect speed? It's gonna just fall into this hole and it snaps across the hole right at the front of the hole. Happens all the time. Well, the reason that is is partially because of crowning, it's partially because of the imperfections. But in reality, what's happening is when we drop below 1.62 miles an hour with the ball speed, we lose the axis that the ball is rotating on. So when we lose that axis that the ball is rotating on, when it finds that imperfection, when it finds that crown, it very easily is diverted off of its line because we've lost that axie. So it's very important that we have some speed on the ball to carry it over that crown or to carry it through that imperfection while maintaining its axie and has a chance to hold its line and fall into the hole. So that's where the argument of like perfect speed doesn't really work outside of theory, and we have to have some speed on the ball. Now, with that said, at 1.62 miles an hour or one foot past the hole, you reduce the size of the hole to 74% of the hole being available to you. So where people really struggle with the math is that people get to let's say five feet and they go, Oh, I'm just gonna jam it in the back of the hole. Well, as you get above the 1.62, so let's say you're gonna firm this in, and if you miss the hole, it's gonna go three feet past. Well, now you've actually made the hole quite a bit smaller, and you're probably dealing with 40 to 50 percent of the hole being available to you. So it actually the math to put it plainly, the math doesn't math trying to firm it in the hole. But to your point, when we're talking about that 20-footer, I have a much higher probability, especially as my handicap goes up, I have a much higher probability of three putting from there than I do one putting from there. So the the job that I'm playing is I'm the dealer at the table, and I got to get the money in when I've got the odds in my favor, and I got to get the money out when the odds are. In my favor, so from 20 feet, if I have that ball wind up one inch short, right in the heart, yeah, you kick yourself a little bit because you're like, Oh man, just one more roll that would have gone in. But in reality, you've got a tap in, and you've done your job from 20 feet, which is, in my opinion, anything 20 feet and out, even 15 really for a lot of our listeners, but anything 20 feet and out, your job when you putt is to do everything you can to have a tap in on the next putt, period. You want to be able to tap this thing in and move about your day. You're not supposed to make 20 footers. The math doesn't say you're supposed to make 20 footers, but the math says that there is a higher statistical probability of you three putting than one putting. So if you can walk up there and tap it in, hey, good on you. But that's where you really got to start kind of thinking more like a dealer and less like a gambler and try to do the thing that's works best for you. So in an ideal world, we're getting the speed perfect, which is this 1.62 miles an hour and getting it one foot past the hole. But in reality, if I'm out there playing golf and I've got a 20-footer and it dies on the front edge, hey man, it sucks it didn't go in. And yeah, that kind of stinks. But at the same time, I did my job and I flipped the math, and now I've guaranteed a two-putt versus running the risk of a three-putt.

Grain Bermuda And Speed Control

SPEAKER_02 23:27

I've got a couple things, a lot of good points there. Let's go all the way back to the speed that the ball needs to be traveling, um, the 1.6 miles per hour. The um trying to get my thoughts straight with with everything you just said. That 1.6 and it makes it makes the whole effectively 25%. Yeah, yeah, 25% less area. And you were saying that it's gotta stay at that speed. If it doesn't, is that where we would see like that wobble start to take? So now for us that play a lot on Bermuda Greens in the South, if you haven't played on Bermuda Greens very much, um the grain that is in that, that there, I would assume what you're saying is at that 1.6, that's where the grain is really grabbing it because it's losing its axis, it's now wobbling with that grain, and that grain's gonna have more of an effect on it. Correct. So if I'm putting from five feet or I'm putting from 10 feet, I could really go in and say, okay, as long as I keep this speed to the speed I need it to be, the grain should not affect it nearly as much because I've kept the axis of the ball moving.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah, I I kind of struggle with this because don't get me wrong, if you go to a golf course in Florida or somewhere south, and they have old Bermuda greens that haven't been replaced in God knows when, you definitely get some grain, you definitely get some of that stuff going on. But the people that go down to Florida and play on some of these new amazing golf courses that they built, they've really done a phenomenal job with the new strains of Bermuda to where the grain isn't really nearly as much of a factor as it's been in the past.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Um, so I think some of the new Bermuda stuff is really, really good. But I think generally speaking, I I think grain grain exists in every type of grass. It does. Uh, whether it's bent, whether it's Bermuda, excuse me, POA, they all have grain to them. The thing that makes Bermuda grass typically react differently is that it tends to be a bit more sticky and there tends to be a bit more friction. And where I think golfers really struggle the most with Bermuda is kind of what you're saying, which is they don't do a very good job with their speed control, and then it really starts showing up on the Bermuda, more so than on Bent or Poana.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Is there a um this is just me curious? Does Track Man then have uh I guess it would would all depend on speed of of the green uphill, downhill? They don't they probably don't have like an exit velocity like off the face of your putter that they like to see. I would assume it's just all based on some of that gets based off of green step speed and different things like that.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Yeah, it's just it's more about where that entry like you want that entry speed occurring, that 162, because like before 162 it's moving 163, which is too fast, but then after 162, it's moving 161, so it's slowing down. So it's really about getting that entry speed to occur at the hole. Okay, so it's 162 at the cup, okay. Um because it's constantly losing andor gaining speed because of friction on the ground, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:34

Um, which then you would say okay, we know that a downhill putt, it's going to be gaining speed when it leaves my putter face.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Uh well it's gonna have an initial velocity, and then as soon as it gets into the roll phase, it's gonna start losing speed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

Um the the putt you you went from uh giving us the um the speed needed, the 1.62. If I've got a okay, let's say I've got a five-footer, and you were talking about oh, do we firm this? Do we not? At 1.62, and let's say we're playing on 12 stem speed greens, is how much is that? Let's say it's a left edge putt, or or we we deem it to be a left edge putt. At that speed, does it hold from that distance? Like, does it stay right there on the edge? Where then, hey, it really needs to be inside slightly inside the cup. Um, I don't know if I'm asking my question well enough. I'm I'm trying to get at when we aim and when we match up the speed well enough, at what point do we start to see that ball move? And I know it's probably also based off of a percentage of slope, but I didn't know if you had a thought there of if we've got to keep the speed correct.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

If I have a left edge putt from five feet, yeah, and I want it to break off of that spot where I aim it, you know, at the left edge of the hole, let's say. If I have 1.62, my axis is gonna be good, and that ball is gonna break the way I expect it to break. Okay. If I hit it, let's say less than and I try to drip it in, there's a chance it's gonna move more to the right. Okay, so now all of a sudden, if I catch an imperfection or if there's some crowning there, that thing might snap in front of the hole, yeah, right, going less than, but if it's going more than, chances are it kind of catches the left edge of the hole and doesn't go in or just misses the hole on the left side altogether.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

And if we don't have a track man set up behind us, typically you would just say one foot past the if if you were practicing just one foot by. Yeah. Everything one foot by.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

One foot by. Um, that's my goal. Like that's kind of my general rule. You know, if they're if they're a little quicker, uh, you know, I might move move something out to like 18 inches past the hole. But like that's I'm never when I put, I'm generally looking past the hole and trying to get the ball to go there. I'm like, I'm generally not like my last look that I take, I'm generally projecting through the hole on where do I think it's going in? Is it going in at six o'clock, five o'clock, four o'clock? Where's it going in at? Projecting that line and kind of going, okay, that's the spot I want this ball to end one foot past the hole or 18 inches, whatever it is. But that's generally kind of how I'm doing that. Uh, when I'm kind of calculating and kind of trying to figure out how hard I want. Like, if you stare at the hole, guess what? The the brain, the nervous system, whatever you've trained to control speed control, you know, that is that's going to like do a pretty good job of giving you enough speed to get it to the hole. So we got to be pretty precise with our orientation system that exists internally, and going, hey, that's the spot, that's where I need this ball to go, and then kind of just trusting to do that. That's why, like, when I I do one thing I do is I I'm pretty adamant about going out and practicing the short game, which is why that part of my game looked good when we played. Uh, but a lot of times I take ghost holes with me, yeah, when I when I practice my putting, because if it hits the hole, like don't get me wrong, like I've got a pretty good sense for things and I'm paying attention to it, but with that ghost hole, it's like it I can tell if it was going in or not, but then I also can see well, how far past the hole did that go? Right. And I think that's super helpful to kind of dial in things.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

And I if you get a putt uphill or downhill that is losing speed, let's just uh let's go, let's let's give it an uphill putt. It's losing speed, and let's say it finishes more than a foot past, but it like it drifted, would you would you say that that is poor aim? Like it's like, oh, I couldn't have hit that much harder uh because it moved X amount, or is that just like you had really poor, you misjudged the aim badly, and it just took it, it the effect of the slope took over more, so your speed really wasn't that good, like it just was traveling further away from the hole out of the way.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

So I've got an uphill putt, I hit it more than a foot past the hole, and it was offline. Yeah, so you can't hit it any harder because you already hit it too hard, yeah. So now it's okay, I didn't pick a very good line there. Okay, for sure. And I think that's the thing that like people, you know, I ask people all the time because it's like people's dirty secret, like they don't want to tell me they're bad putters, like nobody ever tells me they're a bad putter. Everyone's like, Oh, putting is probably the strength of my game. No, you don't hit your putter out of bounds and into the water, so you don't have this big reaction to being bad at putting. You just kind of like you know, die a slow death with your putting. But people hate to tell me that they're bad at putting. And when they finally admit that to me, I go, Okay, well, are you bad at line or are you bad at speed? Like, I don't know. Well, you can't answer that question without understanding the speed component first. So, like, the first thing I do with people with their putting is I put out a ghost tool and I go, Okay, I want you to try to make this putt for me. And you know, they'll hit it three, four, five feet by, and then I'm like, okay, I file that away. And I then put them on the well putt table, which we can make break left and right, and I'm like, okay, where do you think you got to aim this? Right. And I'll give them like a 2% slope, right to left if they're right-handed, uh, left to right if they're left-handed, kind of what what they like. But I'll give them a right to left, two percent slope and ask them where they got to aim this, and they're telling me that they got to aim this like right edge or a ball out or two balls out. And then when I project a line on it, they're like, holy smokes, I can't believe I got to aim that far out. But generally, in my experience, people have really poor speed control when it comes to putting. And because they have poor speed control, they can't possibly be good at reading the putts because they're never hitting it the right speed, they're generally hitting it too hard. So if I put them on that putt to where it's a 15-foot putt with a 2% break right to left, and they think it's two balls out, well, naturally they're gonna hammer that thing trying to get it to hold its line because they didn't have enough break. But you've got to teach them how to dial in the speed and then kind of work the line more out to the right to get that to where it's falling into the hole. So it's it's just it's one of those things to where I think a lot of people, A, don't spend enough time with their putting and B, don't really know what to look at. They don't know whether to look at speed or to look at line, but it's a combination of the two, but you've got to have the speed in place before you can worry about the line. And then if you can control your line and you can control your speed and you're still not making a lot of putts, well, then I might recommend, you know. And look, I'm not saying aim points for everybody or it's something that everybody has to do, but I do think it starts giving you a kind of way of starting to read read greens in a consistent manner and helps people develop a process for green reading. And you can kind of take what you like out of that and and not use certain parts of it. But generally, you know, for the people that are really good at putting, they've got speed control, they can start the ball where they're looking or where they're aimed. And then the last part to that is getting really good at reading the greens.

Why Long Putts Rarely Drop

SPEAKER_02 36:16

And then following up on your 15 to 20 foot, and we're gonna be the dealer in blackjack, and we're gonna just gonna keep playing the odds, keep stacking it in our favor. If you as um if you hit a five-iron that you were aiming 30 feet right, and you hit it to a foot, so you've pulled the hell out of it, and it's great. Would you say that if you've um if you're trying to get everything to a tap in if you make one from 20 feet is are you did you kind of luck into your speed was maybe a fract? Like I don't know if I get it.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

I mean, I think the goal, right, even on a 20-footer, is to get it one foot past. Okay, so you know, if if you get like the problem with the longer putts, speed control doesn't get any harder. Reading the putt doesn't necessarily get any harder. What gets harder is the window that you can launch that ball on and get it to where it's online gets smaller and smaller as you get farther and farther away. So I'm I think, and I'm going out on a limb here, and I'm sure I'm gonna get killed for this because I'm probably wrong because I'm I'm pulling this straight from my memory. I think it I think the math works out where it's either eight or ten feet. I'm gonna say eight feet to be safe, but I think it is ten feet, but let's say eight feet to be safe. From eight feet away on a straight putt, flat, straight putt, right? You're on my table. But from eight feet away, you can have the face one degree open or one degree closed relative to a zero path and still make the putt. Really? You have basically two full degrees to play with on that eight-footer, let's say, and you can still make this putt. Now, when I get out to 20 feet, now of a sudden, and I and once again I don't know the math, and I'm just trying to pull this from recall, I think it's like 0.3 uh degrees open or closed that the face can be relative to a zero path and make the putt. Now, the reason I keep alluding to the zero path is because most people don't have a zero path with their putter, no matter what they think, and no matter what they think they see. Most people like swinging the golf club are a little out to in or a little in to out, one or the other. But generally speaking, the tolerance for the face angle has to be way, way tighter the further I get from the hole. That's where making these long putts gets way more difficult for us is really getting that face fine-tuned, especially relative to the path. So it's it's really, you know, and I try to tell people this, but a 30-footer, process-wise, what you're trying to do is not any different than a three-footer. Now, the expected outcome is a lot different, right? Like from three feet, you expect to make it from 30 feet, you're hoping a two-punt and get the hell out of there. But realistically, you're trying to create the same speed, one foot past. You're trying your best to get a good read on this thing. What's it gonna do? Is it gonna move? Is it not gonna move? And then once again, it's it's being able to execute getting that ball to start where you're aimed. And the other thing, too, that kind of comes into it, which I'm really getting in the weeds on this, but you launch a putt. People think a putt just naturally rolls off the it does not, it sits down in its own depression because of gravity pulling on the ball against the grass, which is not you know rigid, it's got some bend to it. So the ball is no matter how tight these greens are, you're always sitting in a depression. So you literally have to pick that ball up out of the depression and kind of launch it, which is why a putter has loft. Okay. So when you launch that ball, when it lands, depending on where the face was, right, is it landing exactly down on its axis and starting to roll immediately, or is it hopping a couple times as it finds its axis again? And that's where once again it gets harder from 30 feet than 30 feet because we're hitting it harder with a lot more initial speed than it would have had on the three-footer. So the the opportunities for that ball when it lands to skid or to get off its axis or whatever else gets a lot higher as well.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

I need a notepad today to keep up with all the questions I'm getting as you're going. This is I I didn't think we were getting into a putting uh pod today, but that's where we're at, and we're gonna keep going. Uh the um interesting to hear you say that you can be a degree open or closed to your path from eight or ten feet and still make the putt. Um and maybe that frees up some people hearing that because I know me, I do not like a straight putt for that reason, because then I feel this pressure of okay, you've got nothing. It's almost like I've got nothing to aim at, or like this margin of error that I've gotta line everything up pretty straight. Like I had a uh had a tournament this past weekend and had a a meaningful putt from like five feet that I was sitting there with my caddy and I'm like, it's gotta do this. Like, what do we and he's like, it's a dead straight putt. Like, do not overthink it, just it's dead straight. And I made it, but I hate having to hit a dead straight putt. Um so that's interesting to hear tolerance. That's interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

That's interesting to hear you say that there's some tolerance there, which this is why I don't like, and look, I I'm not saying it's not a useful tool, and I'm not saying there's not an application for it, but I really dislike Sam Puttlab. And I dislike Sam Puttlab because it's trying to like force you into a bunch of zeros, and they're like, Oh, well, there's side spin, there's this, there's that. What the best players in the world do when they putt is they're consistent. Yeah, and I mean, I've seen some very, very good putters, and you know some of the people I work with. Uh, two of them are probably in the top 50 all-time statistically as putters uh of all time. And you know, one of those gentlemen in particular, his path with his putters four out to end. He slices every single putt. His path is always within two tenths of a degree, four degrees out to end when he putts. His face is always, and I do mean a face to path, I should say, is always like two. So he literally cuts slash slices every single putt he hits. And if you look at his statistics, what you'll find is that he is absolutely lethal with left to right putts. He's gonna make you so many left to right putts, it's gonna make your head spin. He struggles a bit with the right to left putt. Yeah. But he is a slicer and is a historically good putter slicing it. But he knows what that ball is going to do every single time. He knows where the point is that that thing has to start based off his delivery. So I really I like getting into the details with putting because so many of us have been taught that you know the path has to be, you know, exactly zero, that the phase has to be exactly zero, that the ball has to get into the roll phase and roll phase incredibly early. Like all these things that kind of from a theoretical perspective make sense, but in actuality, man, that's not what we see. And there's a lot of putters who have been really, really good that have pretty wonky strokes from a data perspective, yet they are consistent in doing that, which allows them to make a lot of putts.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

Does the player you're referring to, if he had a straight putt, does he aim a little left? He'll aim like left center. Left center to hit it straight. Yeah. Um well, I think that's a good thing for everybody here. It certainly helps me when I think about my putting of, oh wow, okay. I I don't have to be as perfect as I think I have to be on the straight putt.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

By the way, another fun one, you might this might give you a little bit of solace next time you're out there. A uphill five-footer is not easier than a downhill five-footer. All this talk about getting it below the hole is complete nonsense. I don't know the the uh the physic the physics term, I don't even know what to call it. The physics or the mathematical term for it, but if I have an uphill putt and I start it right or left, it's always moving away from the hole. If I'm downhill and I pull it or push it, it's gonna fall towards the hole. Downhill putts are actually your friend.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

I it's funny you say that. I to somebody asked me this past weekend. Um I made some putts early, and they were asking me about my putting, and I said, I actually prefer the downhillers, especially on fast screens, because I'm not you have to hit it. I don't even think about speed. I I'm like, I know that that ball is getting there. I just need to get it started where I'm looking.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

I love fast screens. I love slopey fast screens, man. Yeah, because then it's like for me, it just takes the options out of it. And it's like, okay, I'm gonna play as much break as I possibly can and just get it started. Because, like you said, you know it's gonna get there. So you you really it takes I think it takes some of the options away when you get those fast kind of downhill putts, and you're like, okay, like, you know, is this a you know, and I'm I'm not the biggest of aimpointers, but I definitely understand it and like it. Uh I don't do it all the time, but it's like, oh well, I think this is like a two or a three. Well, if it's fast, I'm just gonna play it at a three, and you know, if I have to adjust later in the round because I'm over reading, so be it. But generally speaking, those fast putts, man, it just it takes a lot of the options and the opinions out of it. Yeah, it's still breaking towards the hole.

Loft Attack Angle And Putter Fit

SPEAKER_02 47:28

Yeah. Um you um you talked a second ago, um and now I've lost my train of thought. Um this is this is great radio. Um you were talking about the uh the straight butt, you've got some tolerance. Um and you were talking about um how the tolerance decreases with distance. Yeah, tolerance decreases with distance. The then you talked about the launch. Um you've got uh you yeah, everybody's got these putters now, they've got loft or take loft away. What is what are you actually you were talking about the launch, so you gotta get the ball up out of its own uh depression. Depression. What's um what do you like to see at impact? Do you like to see that loft is off the face, but it's hitting up, or that that you're adding loft? As what what do you like to see there at the point of impact?

SPEAKER_00 48:44

I mean, it's that's where that's where I think a putter fitting really comes into play. And understanding, like, hey, do I hit up on my putts? Do I am I pretty neutral, meaning I don't have really an attack angle, or do I hit down on my putts? And once again, like historically, we've seen all three. We've seen guys who really hit up a lot on their puts, we've seen guys who hit down on their puts, we we've seen a lot of different things, which is why I think you know, certain players over time did better with certain courses, certain types of greens, uh, different kinds of you know, grasses. But generally speaking, you know, once again, from a theoretical perspective, I want to kind of move the handle and the head together. I'm not really trying to bend and put a lot of speed into this ball. So I'm not really trying to, and I hate this term, but I'm not really trying to lag it in there, so to speak. Right.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

So with that being said, you want to see you want to see both head, shaft, you want to see them working exactly together.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

Not not like we've we've stopped the shaft and now it's just kind of the head swinging, for sure, because when we stop the handle and the head keeps moving, well now the face is opening and closing, right? And like we said, from eight feet we've only got one degree of tolerance. So, you know, I like seeing them move together. And for me, you know, once again, going back to why a putter fitting is helpful, if you're somebody who hits up a lot on it, you know, you probably don't need that much loft. And there's a lot of guys on tour that are out there with two-degree putters, one degree putters, because they don't hit up on it very much. Or I'm sorry, they do hit up on it, and because they hit up on it, that kind of lifts it out of the depression. So they don't really need the loft. Now, if you're somebody who hits down on your putts, which once again is fine, I'm not saying you can't do that, but if you hit down on your putts, you're gonna want something with some loft because you're literally driving that ball right down into its own depression, then it pops out. So that's where I think understanding the role of loft in relation to the attack angle with your putting is so important. So, kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier, you get this bent grass. It's freshly mowed, it's pretty firm. Bent grass is. It has its own root, it grows straight up out of the ground, it's pretty firm relative to our Bermuda grass, which tends to be a little spongier and tends to grow out and grow in all directions. So, really, where I think a lot of people get in trouble on Bermuda is they take their old trusty putter from up north where they play on bent greens that doesn't have a lot of loft on it, so they putt well there because the ball doesn't sit down very much. They go down Florida where there's Bermuda, and that ball's sitting down in that depression a little bit more, and now they get that thing skidding and doing all kinds of things because they can't get it out of the depression. So a lot of your putters, you know, or a lot of your guys on tour will it'll it'll be the same model. It'll be like they that's what they like. But you will see that when they're doing the Florida swing, they're generally over in the tour van adding a little bit of loft to the putter. Just like when they're up northeast playing in a US Open, they might be taking some loft away because they're really trying to fine-tune that and understand like, hey, how do I get this ball rolling on its axis as quickly as possible? That's the name of the game for high-level putting.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

And if you hit down on it, and I know that you're saying that if that's what you do, it's okay as long as you're consistent, but that is gonna add some skid, correct? Now that can add some spin for sure. Yeah, which can affect you.

Arc Toe Hang And Forgiveness

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Yeah, for sure. But if you're consistent and doing that, you know, then that kind of naturally builds itself into your speed. Okay. Just like if you're hitting up on it and get it rolling over end over end really fast, like you kind of know that, and you're like, oh, okay, well, I tend to have a little more speed, and you just kind of start adjusting to these things. The name of the game with with putting, in my opinion, is just finding something that you're very good at doing consistently. Um, there's some things that are non-negotiable for me. You know, the amount of arc that your putting stroke has, you know, it's it's if you talk to the high-level guys, uh, which I have, if you talk to the Phil Kenyons, the Steven Sweeney's of the world, you know, there's a lot of agreement around the fact that you generally want to live between like an 11 and 13 degree arc with your putting. Like that's kind of a good place to be.

SPEAKER_02 53:35

Um you see the the putting aids that have that they sit flush to the ground, but then they have the edge that comes up. Is that uh is that about that degree of?

SPEAKER_00 53:49

You can get different ones. I just ordered some new ones actually from Wellput. They're awesome. Uh, but I got a new mat that you put on the ground and it has the the line on it, and it's at a 12 degree arc, which is kind of split in hairs, right? Between 11 and 13. And then they make these bumpers that you can put on either side of the putter, and it's like a track, and that's at 12 degrees. Okay. So, like I had a had a junior in here today, uh, really a bad putter. I felt bad for the kid. Really, really nice ball striker, just can't putt. And uh, it doesn't measure it, it doesn't give me an arc uh with track man putting, but his path with his putter was eight degrees into out. And he's like, I just can't get the face to close. Well, no kidding, you can't get the face closed because you got so much arc and you got so much toe hang in this putter. He's got a Newport style putter. You got so much toe hang with so much arc. Like it's just it's either a really bad fitting or it's the concept's bad. So what I did with him was I was like, look, let's see if you can even do this with your Newport putter before we talk about a different putter. Because my natural thing was I'm gonna put him in a different putter because what he's trying to putt with doesn't match his concept at all. So before I did that, I put him on the mat and he couldn't get it to trace the line to save his life. Then I put so I took him off the mat, I put him on the bumpers and gave him the bumpers, and he's like, Oh, this is what you want. And I'm like, Yeah. And I kept, you know, I gave him some some leeway either way on it and let him kind of start getting better at that. Then I narrowed it up, then I narrowed it up, then I narrowed it up. Then I put him back on the mat. Then he could trace the line, and when you know it, the kid started making putts. So, you know, it's you know, Parker, I'm I'm always stealing from Parker McLaughlin, but it's it's really about figuring out what your recipe is, and then it's it's figuring out like, okay, this is this is where I kind of live. Okay, like this is what I do if I'm like not thinking about it, if I'm not troubled by all these thoughts about 1.62 miles an hour and all that stuff, like this is what I do. Okay, cool. Well, if that's what you do, that's fine. But does the putter line up with what you do? So, for example, if I've got like a super big arc, let's say I'm at like 18 to 20 degrees with my arc, which I've seen. Okay, and I would say that that young man was probably living in that neighborhood. But if I'm 18 to 20 with my arc and I've got one of these putters that has a ton of toe hang, meaning the toe wants to stay down, I'm gonna have a really hard time lining that face up to where I'm aiming. It's not gonna want to want to stay. Yeah, for sure. So if I've got that, then I'm gonna need to get into more of a face balance putter or more of a zero torque putter. But if if you've got this arc that's somewhere between 11 and 13 degrees, you know, you can do a lot of different things, and it's you don't have to necessarily be in a zero torque putter, or you don't have to necessarily be in a face balance putter. You can do some different things. But generally, what I have seen in the years that I've taught putting is that as many people that think they're into out with their putting stroke, they tend to be out to in. And the reason that toe hang putters have historically outsold face balance putters is because if you're out to in, then the face is wanting to shut. So give them more toe hang, the face stays open and they can actually start it on the line they think they're lined up on.

SPEAKER_02 57:20

The person that goes out to in, um, do they have do they even have an arc? Can you have an Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 57:33

They still have a starting point. It just tends to be kind of a weird one, right? So not every arc is perfect like this. I know if you're if you're not watching on YouTube, you can't really see my finger moving back and forth. But generally when we think of an arc, we think of like half a circle. So if I take that and move the endpoints from being parallel to my target line and I move them this way, I still have an arc.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

Gotcha. I'm following you now.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Yeah. Okay. It's just you kind of have a weird one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:02

So everyone will have an arc.

SPEAKER_00 58:04

Yeah. Um, okay. But it's like if you get that situation where you're out to end, the problem really becomes how do you get the face pointed where you think you're aimed? That's where that gets really difficult. And same with an excessive in-to-out, which is why the math kind of shakes out to where we want to live between this like 11 and 13 degree arc. And the funny thing is, is you know, having this mat here is super helpful. I've got some different mats from Visio Putting that I've used in the past uh that are at 11 degrees. And 11 degree arc, man, it's pretty straight. Like it looks visibly pretty straight. Like there's not a whole lot of moving off that line that that people think they want. So I think, you know, once again, this is where having a track man, having a quintic, having, you know, a Sam Putt Lab, um, having something to like give you some objective data, and then kind of, you know, the thing I do like about Sam Putt Lab is that it gives you consistencies. So it gives you like a consistency score in terms of how often do you do that, or what are your ranges. And like it's like, okay, well, you're really consistent at doing that. So cool, let's do that. But let's find a putter that's gonna help you do that and make putts, versus uh, hey, let's overhaul your putting stroke, let's make you do something that you don't feel very good doing to make this putter work. And that's the problem with most people is they walk into you know a big golf superstore and they see a putter that they saw somebody on TV putting with, like, oh, this is the one. They roll it a couple times, like, oh, I'm good to go. And it's like, it takes a little more figuring out than that.

SPEAKER_02 59:44

What would be um just generally, if you had someone with um an in-to-out path and then an out-to-end path, what kind of putters might you fit those people into?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:00

Yeah, I mean, I I think if you're if you're in to out, you know, have kind of a nice looking putting stroke, you know, the world's kind of your oyster. It really is. I think if you're somebody who's who's out to end, I think you you need to hang. So that's gonna rule out the labs, that's gonna rule out the the the uh face balance putters. You're gonna be in more of that kind of Newport style uh type putter. You know, I think the big thing that's that's surprising to me is, and I didn't really understand this very well until I talked to to a couple of these like high-end putting coaches, but like people do not hit the middle of the face with their putter. They don't, they hit it all over the face, and that's where I think you're seeing things like the spider and even the lab and some of these bigger kind of mallet-style putters really taken off because the forgiveness is so much better. And like I said, in my my world, the way I view putting, if you don't have speed control, you don't have anything. Well, if I've got a blade-style, like Newport style putter, you know, and I miss it on the toe or I miss it on the heel, my initial ball speed is gonna be a lot lower than what I was expecting. But with the spiders, with the labs, with all these different putters that are more mallet style, you know, they have a higher MOI. So generally we're seeing a more consistent ball speed off the face, which is gonna be super helpful for people when it comes to speed control, which, like we said, is pretty important in the grand scheme of things.

Practice Drills That Create Pressure

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

Yeah. Um I think you have. I I've loved this deep dive into putting. I think this has been great. Why uh why don't you give us uh I know you and I worked on it for a minute um when you were here. Why don't you give uh a couple of drills or things that you think are non-negotiables like the mirror? Because I thought that was pretty uh insightful.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:59

Um let's do this. So when Chuck wanted me to look at his putting, Chuck's a good player, good putter.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:08

Uh but when he and my clipped data, like I before I got clipped, I would have said I'm just a pretty average putter. We found out that I'm pretty above average. A good putter, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

Yeah, you are you're a good putter, uh, very consistent in what you do. But that once again is a testament to your practice habits and the amount of golf that you play. But you were very consistent with what you were doing. But when I went out there and gave you some, I think it was like 10 footers, we started with. When I gave you, because that's what clips said you were bad at, it was like eight to twelve feet or whatever. Yeah. But when we looked at your 10 footers, I was kind of looking at where you were aiming and asking you where you were aiming. And you were consistently telling me that you were aimed way more to the right than you thought you were. So, you know, when I when I think of aim, my big thing is the ball is sitting on the ground on the target line, assuming it's a straight putt. If your eyes are not over that same line when you're looking at this, then all of a sudden there's an offset line that your eyes are on relative to the target line. And now you have to draw these connectors to kind of try to get this thing to line up, and that's when we kind of start pushing and pulling the putts. So I would say for you, you were definitely a pusher of the putts.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:39

Because because I was aimed more left than I thought I was, and my eyes were inside when we put the mirror down, my eyes were inside the golf ball.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:51

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:51

Well inside.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:52

Yeah. So for you, it's like you had to kind of push it out to get it on the line, but because it's traveling on a quote unquote straight line, it's gonna push through the target line and miss to the right more often than not, which is what we were seeing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:07

So I'd overcorrect and pulled the hell out of something, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

So for you, you know, was it a stroke problem? No. Was it a technique problem? No. Uh, it was a setup problem, right? So what we did with you was we put down a mirror, and I was like, hey, Chuck, I've got this thing lined up exactly where it needs to be to go in. I think we had to line it up just a little left of the hole uh to make the spikes, it did drift a little bit to the right. But you know, getting your eyes on the line, I literally told you nothing about your stroke, I told you nothing about your speed. I literally just had you get your eyes on the line and that on that mirror. And I think you rattled off like 15, 10 footers in a row, and you were struggling to make one when we were just kind of getting going.

unknown 1:04:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:58

So just that little bit right there, right? So at the end of the day, I think what you got to do as a golfer to kind of answer Chuck's question and and to give him what he wants, you know. I think you need to have a mirror in your golf bag with a line on it. You got to get the the line on the mirror lined up at the hole, preferably a straight putt, right? That makes it a lot easier. But I think you got to have that to start with, and then you've got to like see where your eyes are relative to that line. I think that's very important in terms of getting your mind to understand where the target is. Because once again, if your eyes are not on that line, we start drawing these connectors between the two lines, and that's when we start pushing and pulling the ball offline to begin with. So for me, one of the big non negotiables is definitely having a mirror stationed down and really doing our due diligence and making sure our eyes are on that line so that we know that we're at least lined up. If you're listening to this, I would say that's going to help probably 80% of people because. I see it all the time where people, their eyes drift in, their eyes drift out. Generally, people tend to be more inside the ball than outside the ball, which is why I think you see a lot of people who struggle with pushing putts.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:12

Yeah, it was interesting how when we threw the uh because I said, Oh, I've got the what's that putting a like and you were like, No, no, no, I don't want that. I want the mirror.

unknown 1:06:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:25

So we went in, got the mirror, threw the mirror down. It was very eye-opening to see how far inside my eye line was, and that I had I could see my shoulders, and I was very closed. And so I was like, probably trying to get them all online, right? Yeah, exactly. And it was um funny, we got kind of the eyes locked in. I could kind of fix the shoulders and uh warmed up with it uh every day that weekend during the event, and um never had an issue with starting the ball where I was looking, and it was um pretty jarring how fast it changed. Um and then I think the other drill that you've had me do that uh you could tell people about the T's um and the distances and what you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

Yeah, so you basically create a cross uh four different directions, north, south, east, west, and you're putting a T at three feet, six feet, nine feet, and twelve feet. And essentially what we're trying to do is we're trying to make all the three-footers and all the six-footers and all the nines and then all the twelves. Um, it's kind of a game, it's a gamified way of practicing your putting. But, you know, we're we're practicing the putts that once again, us as a dealer has some edge on and has the ability to actually make these putts. The big thing that I see with people is when they do practice their putting, they start slapping balls across the green and practicing like 30, 40, 50 footers. A, you're not gonna see that many of those. And B, like just whacking putts across, it's it's very low feedback. But what we want to do is we want to get more competent at making the putts we're supposed to make. And realistically, if you can roll in a couple putts from eight feet to 20 feet and a round of golf, like that that can really be the difference maker for people between shooting kind of, uh, I feel like that was okay, versus, oh, I've actually shot a pretty good score today. So, you know, having the the the cross drill, whatever you want to call it, north, south, east, west, you know, just really starts kind of putting a little bit of pressure on you because I give you a make rate percentage. And, you know, if you're world class, you're making 70% of those putts. Now, if let's say you bang out the first three, three footers and you make those and you miss the fourth one. Well, now you have to make that putt before you can move on. So while this sounds easy, and you're like, Oh, I'll just go bang out 16 putts real quick and it'll be quick. No, you got to make every putt. Yeah, it takes a second. Yeah, it takes a little while, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:17

Like even if you don't miss that many.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:19

Yeah, I got stuck the other night on a nine-footer. I think I hit the same freaking nine-footer like 10 times. Uh, it drove me crazy. But like it forces you to go through your process, it forces you to really hone in. You know, you're putting the line down, you're giving it the full process on every putt, and it does start simulating a little bit of pressure on your practice, uh, which is good because now we're gonna have some better transference of practice to play, uh, because we feel like, hey, I've done this, I've done this with some meaning before. And more importantly, I've seen these putts go in a lot more now. You're actually practicing making putts versus just slapping around the green and not really caring because you're just out there on the practice green.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:00

So I've added the that T drill in when I'm uh focused on putting. And then um would you say your your lag putting is really just like going around, then it's like from flag stick to flagstick large distances. Okay, we got two putt this. Like, all right, this is we're one for one, we're one for two. We're you know, and and then you're because I I think I said something to that effect to you the other night of like wow, my leg putting is terrible. Like outside, because then I started stepping it off to see um to kind of calibrate myself and realized okay, if I'm outside 30 feet, I I can't even get this inside 10%. Um and so I'm I spent some time working that, and then and you were quick to say, Well, yeah, we've got to add here's the tempo we want, but to get a ball moving faster, we've gotta add some acceleration.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

Yeah, length of the stroke for sure. Yeah, like tempo remains the same. Historically, when we've gone back and looked at all the great putters over time, whether it's a three-footer or a thirty-footer, the tempo is the same. Now, the length of the distance that the putter travels is quite a bit more on a 30-footer than a three-footer. But once again, that you know, the mass is a constant. So if I need more force and the only thing I can do is change the acceleration, well, the acceleration still has to happen within that tempo, right? So you're gonna have to move this thing a little bit quicker, adding more acceleration to the putt uh to get that math to math for you. But you know, the big thing I I I do, and I I think it I think it is more meaningful. Um, but you know, I think the two-putt game is a good game. But once again, you know, let's say, let's say you're gonna like, you know, practice some 30-footers. Once again, take four T's out there, north, south, east, west, put them 30 feet, 10%. That's pretty easy math. That's three feet, right? And and go ahead and put your three-foot circle out there. And now it's like, okay, let's get this inside the three-foot circle. Let's quit trying to make this thing, let's quit trying to be the hero, and let's get this to where it's inside of that 10%, which is really what lag putting is trying to take whatever distance you're starting at, generally outside 30 feet or 25 feet or so, and we're trying to have 10% of that total length for our next putt. Like that's if you're doing that, it's it's really hard to do much better. I I get it, it sucks if you're playing over at St. Andrews and you're on one of the double greens and you got an 80-footer. You know, it's it's hard to explain to people that having an eight-footer for your second putt is a good job, but that's just the way it kind of is.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:48

Well, that gives uh that's one of those expectation course managements that um can free you up a bit that you put those T's out to see what the actual radius is from 30 feet that we need to get this inside of. And if we did that, then we did our job. Yeah, and that's the whole like to your point of I shouldn't be 80 feet away, but I am, and now I've got eight feet on my second putt. Like I did my job.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:22

You can't blame the putter for that one. You gotta blame whatever you hit in the end of that green that gave you 80 feet, right?

Avoiding Rabbit Holes With Data

SPEAKER_02 1:13:29

Right. Then it's not I'm a bad lag putter. No, you're a good lag putter. Yeah, you you but you can't be 80 feet, right? Um well, I think uh I you called it before we got on here. I had a I had a whole different uh thought process of where this was going. And as you said, uh we always seem to get going in a conversation and it takes off, and it certainly did with the putting. But this is great. I think this was phenomenal because it was a huge piece of you being down here in Chattanooga, of us getting to work. That was kind of the final in-person thing of putting, and um it was eye-opening for me and very helpful. And I hope that this episode has been helpful to people and helps uh free them up over certain control the controllables, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:22

Like that's that's really that's really what it boils down to. It's you know, I I was doing an online lesson before this, uh, actually a couple before this, and you know, one of the guys that I've worked with for a while, he's like, Hey, I just I got a lot of questions and I just want to slow this down. He's like, Can we can we like not hit balls and just talk through some concepts? Was this Wayne? No, it wasn't Wayne actually, but uh it was Joseph Fountain California who does listen to the podcast. But um, he's like, I just really want to like talk through some of this stuff. And I was kind of explaining some ground force stuff to him and how we do this, and he was like, Man, that's just like such a simpler way of looking at it. And it's like, well, yeah, like I think we as golfers love to make a mountain out of a molehill, and we love to raise my hand for those of you that can't see me. Yeah, I mean, we we really like to get into the nitty-gritty, get into the technical, but as much of the technical stuff is out there, like you've got to be able to read through that stuff and find what are the things that you can do and what are the things that are impactful and meaningful. So for me, like, you know, and I've I've said this to you, I think, in the past, Chuck, not on the podcast, but you know, the one thing that I think does separate me a little bit as a coach is I'm autistic, uh, and I definitely, definitely am, this is all I think about, like literally. I, and you know this about me. Like, I I'm not thinking about other things. I'm not, I'm not, I don't have hobbies, I don't have friends, like I'm pretty locked in on this most of the time. And over over the course of learning this stuff and and going through my journey, you know, there's not a whole lot of rabbit holes that I haven't been down. And where I think I add value to people and where I think I am a a pretty good coach for a lot of people is that I'm kind of sitting there, like you, you show up to the field and there's all these rabbit holes, and you're like, ooh, that one looks good, and that one looks good. And I'm just kind of standing there, I'm like, hey, I can tell you all about that one, where it leads, where it goes, where where's the pros, where's the disadvantages. Like I can tell you all about all these different rabbit holes. And if you like, instead of you having to go through that and experience that all for yourself, like here's here's the take-home from that. Here's the the nuggets that came out of that hole. And let's just focus on the nuggets versus like trying to take it all in and make sense of the whole thing. So, you know, putting uh is amazing. I love putting. I've told you this before. Like, if the if there's like a next chapter to something I really get into and and really want to dive into, it's putting. Uh, because the nuances are just incredible. Like, once you understand the math and once you really dig in, you're like, whoa, like people think this stuff's easy, like this is really difficult. Uh, but at the end of the day, like there's only so many things we as human beings can focus on and do and control when we're on that golf course. So, you know, I like doing episodes like this to where, hey, yeah, it's really technical and 1.62 miles an hour. Holy crap, how do I know? Well, that shakes out to a foot past the hole, you know, like making it actionable, making it easy to understand, and getting people to understand, like, hey, if I get this in place, my putting gets better. But I got to have this in place first. Once I have that, then maybe we're using the thing from why golf, right? And and working on that, getting that ball to start where we think it needs to start. Great. Okay, cool. Once we have that, and now I'm making more puts, I'm loving life, but I want to get even better. Well, okay, well, now I actually got to like dive into reading greens and understanding like percentage of change of slope and things like that, and and grain and and different, but there's always levels, right? Like, but we gotta we gotta take care of the low-hanging fruit before we start trying to climb to the top of the tree and get that fruit because you're not ready for that fruit. You're stick to the low-hanging fruit, right? TLC taught us best, don't go chasing waterfalls, right? Like we we gotta kind of start where we gotta start. But that's what I enjoy about these conversations, man, because as as deep as we go, you have a nice way of kind of bringing me back to well, what's actionable and what can people actually take away from this and and get a little better with.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:43

And where I I thought we were going tonight was gonna be a bit of you and not chasing rabbit holes, and that uh we can get to that next week. Um and you're for anyone that is listening that is not uh working with Michael, I would um I would encourage you to reach out.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:11

You got another win. You're two for two this year. Yeah, there was there was another win this battle. We didn't even bring up the fact that Chuck won another golf tournament.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:18

Um I would encourage you to reach out because it is such a unique style of coaching. I mean, he even said it to me this week of I know where you're trying to trying to go. I'm yanking this chain, I'm yanking you back in because I see you trying to go down this rabbit hole. We're not going there. Um and we can get into that next week of uh things that are are not worth chasing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:49

Well, I think for you, I mean, and I think I don't think you're that different from a lot of people in terms of you know wanting to know more, wanting to get better, pursuing knowledge, pursuing information. Um I think that's natural. I think that's good. I think that's what that's how human beings got on the moon, right? Is they saw that thing out there and they're like, how do we get there? And then they you know figured it out. But at the same time, and something I'm really proud of with the work we've done together, is I'm getting close. I haven't got you there yet, but I'm getting close to like, hey, like, what are you what are you looking for? It's in the mirror, you know, like it's this is you, this is your golf swing, this is what you're gonna be doing the rest of your life. Like, we're not gonna be doing overhauls every six months just for for giggles. Like, no, this is this is you, this is how your body moves, this is how the the club responds to that. And, you know, that's the joy of this, right? Because once we understand that blueprint, then we know what the house needs to look like. And it's like, oh, okay, well, you know, on second thought, now that I know what the foundation is, I actually want to I want to put a different window in, right? And but we're we're into the the really kind of finer points and really trying to refine this thing versus like, oh, well, you know, we got to change the foundation because I want to add on another room, or I want to that's where golfers I think really and call it rabbit holes, call it what you will, but golfers really in this constant pursuit and this constant chase, like you've got to take the time to to master certain elements before you keep chasing for the next thing. And that's where golfers, because there's just so much information now, you know, they don't spend enough time with anything to really master anything.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:38

And you've you've gotten me away from um what we what we did know before getting on clipped, and I would uh encourage anyone that's listening that is serious about their golf game to get on clipped. It's uh very insightful. We had a feeling that I was a good driver of the golf ball. The clipped app uh reinforced that pretty pretty good that yes, you're a good driver of the golf ball. And I've been trying to see shapes or do and and you've been good at you and your coaching what's been great is the not you're like you are a straight ball hitter. We've got to pick targets that allow for a straight ball, or if it falls one way, it falls one way. And instead of me trying to see this big push draw or like it's really weird with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:33

It's it's been interesting. This this particular piece of the pie with you has been very interesting to me because you and I'm not saying you you intentionally want to be this, but like you so want to be Bubba Watson with your driver and just curve this thing all over the world, and it's like you know, Bubba couldn't see a straight line and just had to curve it. That's why I don't like straight putts, yeah, right. And it's like, dude, you hit it really freaking straight. And I mean, I I don't think it's happening all the time to you, but I I legitimately think that there's rounds of golf where you hit your driver into a bad outcome, but you hit it straight. It's just you were lined up to curve it one way or the other, yeah. And it's like, no, man, like let's let's like realize that you're very good at managing the club path, at managing the face to path, and managing the attack angle and D-plane and all that stuff for you tech freaks and data freaks out there. Like you're good at doing those things, so let's just hit the damn thing straight. But let's make sure the straight line that we pick has enough runway to where when you hit it straight on that line, it doesn't find trouble and run through a fairway or whatever else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:49

Well, let's get to that. I want to get to some of that next week. Of um, there were some other course management things, some target things, specifically with the driver that we've talked about that I think's been insightful. Also when to push the chips all in that we uh teased again. We haven't gotten to that piece yet, because I I think that was super insightful. And uh, and then just before we got on to add our uh detailed uh portion of the show, I wanted to to get into a little bit next week of of driver with what you're seeing with attack angle, face, face to path, path, and the swing direction. I learned something new uh that I think uh can help people. So that that will be next week.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:43

Just for the record, I've been lobbying track man to change swing direction to hand path for years, and they won't do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:52

Well, I wouldn't have known. I mean I didn't understand it, and you explained it, and I'm like, yeah, why is it named that? That doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:00

Yeah, I think it's because another company uses hand path.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:04

Oh. Um well that that I think that wraps us up.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:09

Uh that was fun actually. I I would have never thought doing a podcast episode on putting would have been any good or fun, but I had a good time. I hope I hope the listeners did.

Coaching Info Special Guest Tease

SPEAKER_02 1:25:19

I I think there's gonna be plenty of nuggets and info that people are getting out of this one. Um, I am gonna tease something real quick.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:28

Um, I'm I'm gonna put we we like to talk a lot about math statistics and percentages. I'm gonna put it at 80 percent that we are going to have a special episode upcoming.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:41

And it's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:43

Yeah, I think it's gonna be if look, if if you're listening to this podcast and you like it, and you got some golf buddies, uh, you you best tell them now to go ahead and subscribe to this podcast because if we actually pull this off and we have this guest, I I might retire. I might just that might be a wrap because I I don't think there's a higher honor that could be bestowed upon me than to be able to do a podcast with this particular gentleman. Yeah, that this is uh the holy grail for you. It is. I mean, it's I mean, I have never went back and watched one, I've watched bits and pieces of these podcasts back before. I will probably watch this podcast every morning as I'm getting ready just to just to cheer myself up if we actually pull this off. But I'm looking forward to that. Uh, like Chuck said, you know, I've got some openings right now for my online coaching that I do. Um, real quick, you know, I I think there's a lot of people who have done online coaching in the past. You know, you send some videos to somebody, they send you some videos back, uh, but there's no real conversation, there's no real dialogue. Uh, when I do online coaching, it's it's like getting a golf lesson, only it's through the phone. So it's not like a golf lesson.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:57

It is a golf lesson.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:58

Yeah, it's we're we're actually spending time together hour a week. You have 24-hour access to me. You can send me text, you can send me videos, you can send me questions. Uh, I do the online coaching more or less as close to as the in-person coaching as I can possibly do. So if you're interested in that, we have had some people reach out wanting to know more about that. But that's kind of how that works. If you have curiosity about that or want to talk to me about that, you can always reach out to me, find the podcast, find the YouTube, find everything we do at measuredgolf.com. If you send an email through measuredgolf.com, it comes to me. So I will see that. Uh, and just kind of in the in the uh subject line put online coaching just so I kind of know to make sure I get back to you quick. Um, but if you also want to reach out to us about the podcast, if you have ideas uh for future episodes, topics, things you want to ask us, uh please do. You can find Chuck on Instagram at Hudlow423. You can find me at the forceplate guy, or you You can find us at measured golf on Instagram as well. So make sure that you send us a message. Um, we're still trucking pretty good. We find a way to come up with content, even though we start every one of these episodes just looking at each other going, what are we talking about this week? Uh it flies by, we're having a good time with it. Uh, gonna keep it going for a while and hopefully have that special guest episode coming up, very short order. I'm looking forward to that. So thanks again for subscribing. If you haven't already, uh please be sure to do that because that does help us out a bunch. And you can also find the video version of this podcast on our YouTube channel by going to YouTube and searching Measured Golf. So that does it for us. And as always, uh keep grinding.