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    The Final Word on Putting
    The Final Word on Putting
    The Final Word on Putting
    Ebook99 pages2 hours

    The Final Word on Putting

    By Al Barkow

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    About this ebook

    After studying the techniques of the game’s best putters over the past fifty years, and helping a few of them write books on the craft, I have come up with a consensus on putting technique that will put you in the tour pro class. I have found that there are some universals of technique that all golfers at every level of competence can put in their games and lower their scores. The consensus culminates in a stroke concept and method that almost all the great putters in the game’s history have employed, and a lot of very good ones, some perhaps without even knowing it or at least articulating it. You will find little to no mention of it in conventional putting instruction, even in the books on putting I have helped professionals write. I am confident this little book will improve your putting dramatically in a very short time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAl Barkow
    Release dateMay 18, 2015
    ISBN9781310634352
    The Final Word on Putting
    Author

    Al Barkow

    Al Barkow has been the editor-in-chief of Golf and Golf Illustrated magazines, chief writer on the original Shell's Wonderful World of Golf television series, and writer of countless articles on the game for such publications as Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest, The New York Times, Golf Monthly (UK), Golf World, and Travel & Leisure. He has co-authored numerous golf instructional books with professionals that include Ken Venturi, Billy Casper, and Dave Stockton. He has written previous histories of golf, including Golf's Golden Grind: the History of the Tour and Gettin' to the Dance Floor: an Oral History of American Golf, which in 1986 won the first annual United States Golf Association International Golf Book of the Year award. Barkow also appeared for some ten years as a television commentator for Inside the PGA Tour and the Senior PGA Tour programs seen on ESPN. A native of Chicago, he was a member of the Western Illinois University golf team that won the NAIA national championship in 1959 and also competed in the US Amateur Championship in 1971 as well as other national and regional golf competitions. He currently lives in Clifton, New Jersey.

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      Book preview

      The Final Word on Putting - Al Barkow

      Introduction

      There was a time in golf when some average golfers could actually hit drivers and iron shots and pitches at approximately the same level of efficiency and effectiveness as the touring pros; not often, but once in awhile. And, they used equipment very similar to that used by the pros. It was also possible to play from the same tees that Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus did...once in awhile. All of which gave the relationship between the game’s best players and their fans a certain empathetic charm.

      There is only one thing left in that relationship. We who play for the fun of it will never be able to make full swings with the power of a Tiger or Lefty Phil or Bubba—fly the ball incredible distances, and put all that suck-back spin on the pitch shots. But, we can putt with the pros; even out-putt them now and again.

      Putting doesn’t require the seemingly improbable flexibility of modern-day pros, or the specially shafted and ground and weighted clubs they use. The only difference is, the pros on tour week after week after week putt on greens so marvelously conditioned, so smooth and fast, that we ordinary folk would have to practice a little on them before we could handle them. But we could.

      After studying the techniques of the game’s best putters over the past fifty years, and helping a few of them write books on the craft, I have come up with a consensus on putting technique that will put you in the tour pro class. I have found that there are some universals of technique that all golfers at every level of competence can put in their games and lower their scores. The consensus culminates in a stroke concept and method that almost all the great putters in the game’s history have employed, and a lot of very good ones, some perhaps without even knowing it or at least articulating it. You will find little to no mention of it in conventional putting instruction; even in the books on putting I have helped professionals write.

      I’ve collaborated with two distinguished putting masters to write their books on the art of putting (and there is an art to it, as well as craft)—the legendary George Low, who

      Arnold Palmer credited after he won his second Masters, in 1960. And, modern-day putting star Dave Stockton. I also helped Billy Casper write a book of instruction that included a lot on putting, which was one of his great strengths as a champion. The same with Phil Rodgers, who learned at the fount of short-game expertise, Paul Runyan.

      I’ve also written hundreds of instruction articles for such magazines as Golf and Golf Illustrated, both of which I was at one time the editor-in-chief. In these pieces I collaborated with some of the most notable teaching professionals in golf—Jim McLean, Billy Harmon, Hank Haney, Carl Lohren, and many others—more than a few of them on putting. Those fellows aside, in my fifty years of hanging around the tour I’ve talked putting with all the game’s best putters, as well as the mediocre ones, and even the poor ones—you can learn, of course, from the mistakes of others; sometimes more than from the good ones.

      Finally, as a serious golfer who has played in a U.S. Amateur Championship (1972), and on an NAIA national championship college team (1959, Western Illinois University), I have fiddled around with what I’ve seen and heard and felt from my own real life experiences with the wand. I’ve been doing it for a lifetime.

      Ben Hogan said more than once that putting was a different game from golf, and in a sense he was right; it’s not in any way a power stroke. But in other respects there are certain intrinsic similarities between three-foot putts and bashing a driver as far as you can. You stand at the side of the ball, for one important thing. You have to aim properly, and have a feel or touch for the distance you need to hit a 6-iron or a putt. You even have to play the wind once in awhile when putting.

      It is an axiom in golf that the mediocre ball-striker who can putt well will more often than not defeat the superior ball-striker who cannot. That is to say, there is no substitute for good putting. Even the great Tiger Woods, no matter how well he may be striking the ball from tee to green; when the putts aren’t falling he is not a sure thing winner. And on those days when his ball striking is not up to standard and he doesn’t make up for it by putting lights out, he is just another very good player out there.

      The year Billy Casper won his first U.S. Open, at Winged Foot Golf Club, in New York, he played a couple of rounds with Ben Hogan. After the second of the rounds, in which Casper missed a lot of greens in regulation but holed numerous putts to save pars and shoot a score that put him in the lead, Hogan said to him, Son, if you couldn’t putt you’d be selling hot dogs for a living. Perhaps, but Casper could putt and never ran a hot dog stand.

      Hogan’s remark to Casper reflected an attitude in golf that said it was not macho to be proud of your putting prowess. No one wanted to be known as someone who got away with erratic or ordinary ball striking because he could roll the ball well on the greens. The attitude was not unlike that in baseball when the bunt came into the game; it was seen as a cowardly way to play. Ben Hogan was part of that generation. In his famous instruction book, The Five Fundamentals, there is not a single word about putting. It wasn’t because Hogan didn’t know anything about putting, or didn’t care about his putting. He wouldn’t have won the major titles and all the tour events he did if he didn’t give putting any thought. It was, in his mind, a necessary evil and he just didn’t care to discuss it. For Hogan golf was cutting 2-irons into tight pin positions, nicking 6-irons low under the wind, turning a driver to the left into a left-to-right wind. That’s what golf was all about. Can you imagine what his record would have been if he put his terrific golf mind to putting, and practiced it as much as he did 2-irons from tight lies?

      He could have. You can work hard on full-swing concepts—think about them and practice them — but you can do the same with putting, and one right after or before the other. We aren’t Johnny One-Note drones incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same

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