Golf is Not a Game of Perfect

by Bob Rotella

  After his round, he’d spend a few hours in the bar, drinking something like Pabst Blue Ribbon and telling stories.

  Years later, when I read his autobiography, I learned that someone had told him early on in his career that a good player had to be relaxed. Locke said he had set out to cultivate relaxation in everything he did. That certainly described the man I knew in Vermont.

  It was not that he did not care about how he played, because he did. When he gave an exhibition, he warmed up more thoroughly. The club had no practice range, so he would take some balls to the first tee. I shagged for him, and I brought my baseball glove with me. He started off hitting high 7-irons with a pronounced draw. I would wait until the last moment, break to my right, and make a running catch off the first or second bounce—looking, I no doubt thought, very much like the Red Sox centerfielder of the future.

  “Master Bob!” he called out after I had caught a couple. No one had ever called me “Master” before, but it seemed to go with the way he was dressed, so I came running in.

  “Master Bob,” he said when I arrived. “My ball always will curve to your right. And I want you to walk, leaving early, to catch it. That makes me look good, and this is my show, Master Bob, not yours.”

  I went back out and shagged balls his way.

  At the close of every exhibition, Locke would answer questions. Whenever someone asked him about his putting secret, he would say:

  “Well, you just hit it and listen.”

  And someone would inevitably say, “What do you mean, hit it and listen?”

  And Locke would reply, “You just hit it and listen.”

  Then some genius would ask, “Yeah, but don’t you want to see if you make it?”

  And Locke would respond, “I don’t have to see if I make it. I can hear it.”

  Then some real genius would pipe up, “Well, if you miss it, don’t you want to see how it will break coming back?”

  And Locke would say, “Why would I want to see it if I miss it?”

  The point, I now realize, was that he wanted nothing to impair his confidence.

  He didn’t want to dwell on the putts that he missed, because that would only make it harder to be certain that the next one was going in. And that was one thing Locke insisted upon. Putting was about confidence. “Hitting a putt in doubt is fatal in most cases,” he wrote in his autobiography. Locke had to be certain that the putt was going in. Looking back, I can believe that he was.

  PHYSICALLY, PUTTING IS the simplest of all the golf strokes. Anyone who can toss a beanbag underhanded into a wastebasket has the required coordination.

  The style of the stroke is unimportant. There have been great wrist putters and great shoulder putters. There are good putters who putt cross-handed. Johnny Miller won the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach in 1994 with something he called the claw grip. Bernhard Langer won the Masters in 1993 putting with one hand clasped to his forearm.

  Yet, you can still find teachers who will dissect the “proper” stroke and grip at great length and insist that their pupils master these mechanics.

  I don’t think there is a classic putting stroke. Locke took the putter back a little to the inside of the target line, with a closed stance and a slightly hooded clubface, to put overspin on the ball. All of those things were wrong, if you go by the conventional wisdom about putting mechanics.

  Brad Faxon told me a story about a friend of his who is a teaching pro and Ben Crenshaw. The teacher called Faxon and asked for help in getting inside the ropes at a tournament practice green, so that he could videotape Crenshaw’s putting stroke. Faxon agreed.

  Crenshaw, as usual, was friendly and accommodating as the teacher taped his practice putts. The teacher got more comfortable.

  “Ben, will you tell me what you’re working on while I have the tape running?” he asked.

  Crenshaw obliged.

  “I’m trying to make sure my head and my knees move a little and my stroke feels longer,” he said. “Because when it feels like that, I always putt real well. But every once in a while, you start getting a little careful, and you try to make sure your head stays still. And if your head stays too still, you lose your feel and you start putting badly. You can never putt well without feel.”

  The teacher was dumbfounded. The best putter in the world had just denied one of the tenets he held sacred about the mechanics of putting, the still head.

  The point is not that the head should move and the stroke should be long. Or that the head should be still and the stroke short. The point is that what’s important is not the mechanics of Crenshaw’s stroke, but his feel for it, his belief in it, his trust that it will make the ball go in the hole. When doubts started to erode this confidence, he had to catch himself and get back that feeling of trust.

  Attitude is what makes a great putter.

  Putting is largely mental, and you have control over your mind and attitude. To become a good putter, you must make a commitment to good thinking. You have to fill your mind with thoughts that will help you, not excuses for poor putting. You have to decide that, come what may, you love putting and you’re glad that every hole gives you a chance to use your putter, because that’s where you’ve got a big advantage over all the players who dread putting.

  Nick Price, when he was dominating the tour in the summer of 1994, told me he was so confident when he stepped up to a straight putt he almost felt as if he were cheating. That kind of confidence guaranteed that he would make a lot of putts.

  The late Davis Love, Jr., once told me an illustrative story about putting attitude. Love had himself been a touring pro, and for a while in the 1950s he cut expenses by sharing a motel room with another young pro, Gary Player.

  Their first tournament together was on a course down South with very slow Bermuda greens. This occurred before the development of the modern, hybrid Bermudas, and the greens on this course were like shag rugs. Love thought they were the worst he’d ever played on. But every night, Player would come back to the room and talk about how much he loved slow, shaggy Bermuda greens.

  The next week, they drove north to a course with bent-grass greens, which the superintendent had shaved until they were like linoleum. Player, of course, came back to the room talking about how much he loved to play fast, bent-grass greens, the faster the better. Love couldn’t stand the contradiction.

  “Which is it, Gary? Do you love slow, Bermuda greens” he asked, “or fast, bent greens?”

  “You just have to love whatever greens you’re playing on,” Player replied.

  To someone unfamiliar with the way great athletes think, Player’s attitude would seem to verge on foolishness. A golfer might like fast greens or slow greens or medium greens, but he cannot rationally like fast greens one week and slow greens the next. And only a fool could stand over a twenty-foot putt and be absolutely confident of holing it, when he has a lifetime of experience to prove that his chances of doing so are really about one in ten.

  But this kind of foolishness is precisely what all great putters have in common.

  Losing that foolishness is what happens to players when they get what are commonly called the yips.

  There is no neurological basis for the yips. Nothing about the physical aging process dictates that a golfer cannot putt as well at sixty as he did at twenty.

  The great players usually start out as confident putters, even bold putters. But over the years, even the great ones have trouble maintaining this attitude. Maybe playing for years with major championships on the line inevitably produces memories of missed putts in crucial situations. After a while, those memories become so burdensome that the golfer can’t keep them out of his mind as he stands on the green. Then he loses the instinct to look at the hole, look at the ball, let the putt go, and know that it’s going in.

  In other cases, a player’s ball-striking actually improves as he gets older. Then it becomes agonizingly apparent that the only thing that is keeping him from winning is his putting, particularly his
short putts. That places enormous pressure on his putting, pressure that did not exist when he was younger and could blame other flaws in his game for his bad rounds. Little doubts and smidgens of indecision creep into his mind as he putts.

  Then, perhaps, the problem becomes public knowledge. People hear that Hogan can’t putt anymore, or Snead can’t putt anymore, or Watson can’t putt anymore. Golf magazines write about it. Johnny Miller talks about it. That multiplies the pressure. Pretty soon, the only thing the golfer can think about when he stands over an important four-footer is, “The whole world knows I can’t make this kind of putt anymore.”

  At this point, fear infects the player’s mind, and fear destroys putting. A good putting attitude is free of fear. A good putting attitude blends ideas that almost seem contradictory. The golfer has to believe the putt will go in the hole, but he must not care if he misses. He has to try enough to maintain a disciplined routine focused on sinking the putt, but not try so hard that he tightens up. He has to find a balance between determination and nonchalance.

  Arnold Palmer, in his prime, instinctively had that balanced attitude toward putting. A few years ago, he and I were speaking at a corporate golf outing in New York. I was talking to the duffers in the audience, or so I thought, when I made some comments about nerves and putting. I told them that golfers don’t physically lose their nerve on the greens. They simply start buying the myth that age brings on the yips. Then they lose the habit of looking at the hole and reacting to it with confidence.

  “That’s exactly my problem!”

  It was Palmer, breaking in, unable to contain himself. “That’s what I’m doing!”

  Palmer went on for ten minutes. In his youth, he said, he had been decisive, even bold on the greens. But he wasn’t any longer. He had become careful and tentative. He had to get back to being decisive.

  I respected him enormously for speaking publicly about it. Upon reflection, I was not surprised that he did. Playing golf well demands honesty. Palmer would not have become great if he had been in the habit of deluding himself. I think that this willingness to confront the problems in his mental game and not to blame them on the inevitable onslaught of the yips is one reason he will keep winning the occasional Skins Game to supplement his Social Security checks.

  Unlike Palmer, most players have their putting confidence spoiled well before they become champions. There is a process of socialization at work. As kids of twelve or thirteen, I think most golfers, if they have any athletic talent, are instinctively good putters. Like the young Bobby Jones, the good natural putter begins by simply walking up to the ball and rapping it at the hole.

  But eventually, the good young putter will miss a five-footer. And when he does, some well-meaning adult will tell him that he missed it because he was too casual. He will tell him that putting is hard. He will tell him to size up every five-foot putt as if he were buying the putting surface instead of playing on it. And the youngster will start to tighten up and get careful with his putts, the way the 20-handicappers at the club do. More often than not, he’ll be on his way to having a 20 handicap himself.

  But kids, before their attitudes are spoiled, have a confident approach to putts. A few years ago, I was watching the Buick Open. Brad Faxon had a six-footer to win the tournament. My daughter, Casey, who was about nine years old, walked into the room and noticed that the adults were all nervous. She asked why, and I explained the situation.

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” she said, mystified by our attitudes. “Brad always makes those.” She left the room, supremely confident in Brad. And Brad made it.

  Brad doesn’t always make them, but any golfer will make more putts if he can get close to Casey’s attitude.

  I remember once watching, along with Tom Kite’s mother, as Ben Crenshaw sank a few long putts to win a tournament.

  “That’s nothing compared to the way he used to putt,” Mrs. Kite said. “When Ben was a boy, he’d just walk up to the ball and hit it. He generally didn’t even bother to squat down behind it and read the green. And he sank putts from all over.”

  Over the years, Ben has gotten more deliberate and careful. And though he’s still very relaxed on the green compared with most golfers, and he’s still a wonderful putter, I’d love to know whether he’s any better now than he was when he was a teenager.

  WHEN TOURING PROS come to me for help with their putting, we begin as we begin for all shots, by establishing a good routine. All routines have personal variations, of course, and the putting routine differs somewhat from the full-swing and short-game routines because it has to allow for reading the green.

  You might, as you read the putt, want to walk around the cup if this helps you see the whole putt. But I don’t like to see golfers pace off the distance between the ball and the hole. This promotes an analytical, mechanical approach to something that must be based on feel. If you plumb-bob, which some touring pros do, insert it into your routine at this stage.

  The important thing is that you commit yourself completely to the read you make. A decisive attitude is much more important in putting than reading the minute breaks and the grain of the grass.

  It’s easy to fall into the trap of overreading a putt. Frequently I find that players would do better if they didn’t bother trying to read putts at all, if they walked onto the green, looked quickly at the line, and hit the ball.

  Blaine McAllister did just that a short time ago in the B.C. Open. He came to the final green brimming with confidence, tied for the lead in the tournament. He had an eight-footer left. He was so confident that he didn’t bother to line it up. He just walked up to it and hit it in the hole, for the win.

  When we talked on the phone afterward, Blaine was still overjoyed by the confidence he’d displayed. I told him it was a good thing he’d let that confidence dictate his putting. A lot of players would have analyzed that eight-footer until it looked like a free-way interchange. They would have found it impossible to believe that such an important putt could be straight; they’d have read the green until they found a break. Then they would get tentative and leave the ball either short or long. They’d have left themselves a three-footer to tie and gotten even more nervous. It happens all the time. People who overread are, as Billy Casper once said, often really looking for a way to miss rather than a way to make the putt. And they forget a most important principle:

  It’s more important to be decisive about a read than correct.

  ONCE YOU’VE MADE a decisive read, you need to think about, or visualize, the line of the putt. As with full shots, this step depends on individual idiosyncrasies. Some golfers can envision the line of the putt as clearly as they can see a yellow line painted down the middle of a highway. Others don’t see anything in their mind’s eye. But they nevertheless convince themselves that the line is right and the putt will drop. That’s all that’s important.

  Next, for most players, it’s time to pick out a target. There are no intermediate targets in putting, because an intermediate target might confuse you about how hard to hit it. For a straight putt, obviously, you use the cup for your target, but not the whole cup. Pick a particular spot in the cup.

  For breaking putts, you will have to improvise a target. The idea is to try to make all putts seem straight. If you think the putt will break two feet to the right, pick out something two feet to the left of the hole—a spike mark, a discolored blade of grass, or a grain of sand. This can be difficult on courses with excellent, uniform greens, and you may have to settle for a spot in the grass. Or, you can just imagine a hole at the end of the line on which your putt will start.

  On uphill and downhill putts, your imaginary target may be a foot or two in front of or behind the hole. Occasionally it will be even further than that. There are greens with humps and ridges, and the right target may be a spot at the crest of a ridge, from which gravity will pull the ball down to the hole.

  Once you have selected your target, focus on it exclusively. Don’t let your eyes wander to
the cup.

  There can be individual variations. Brad Faxon concentrates on the entire path of the putt, rather than an imaginary hole-high target, from the time he reads the putt until the time he strikes the ball.

  Speed is a critical factor, especially on slick greens, but I don’t advise players to think too much about it. The best putters don’t. Faxon, who consistently ranks near the top of the PGA putting statistics, tells me he never thinks about speed. He goes entirely by instinct, an instinct honed, of course, by a lot of practice and playing experience.

  There is a way of thinking that can help you get the speed right. For a downhill putt, tell yourself that you want the ball to barely make it over the front lip of the cup on its last rotation. For an uphill putt, you might think of hitting the ball so it strikes the back of the cup as it goes down.

  As far as speed is concerned, I have no quarrel with players who try to make their putts die in the hole. Many of the greatest players in the game did that. Other players believe in putting firmly, so the ball bounces off the back of the cup, particularly on short putts. I don’t care which method a putter chooses, as long as he’s focused on putting the ball in the hole.

  If you miss short very often, it may be a sign of tentativeness and indecision. People who leave it short due to fear are afraid of running it too far past the hole and missing the return putt. If that’s why someone is leaving putts short, it’s a problem to be corrected.

  But remember that the goal is neither to hit them firm nor to have them die at the hole, but to sink them. Don’t be distracted from this objective by concerns about missing short or missing close.

  A few years ago, the basketball coach at James Madison University, Lou Campanelli, called me. He asked if I could help one of his players, a senior who had previously been a good free-throw shooter. In his final season, Lou said, this kid was breaking the backboard with every free throw he attempted. He was still a fine field-goal shooter, but his free-throw percentage was way down. Every shot he took was long.