A ten foot level putt here at Old Waverly takes an average of 4.5 seconds to get to the hole with a speed the ball will go in. Inside the teaching center (where the stint roles a thirteen) it takes almost exactly 4.0 seconds.
A ten foot downhill putt (Old Waverly, where the greens are basically a nine) it takes nearly 6.0 seconds for the putt to go in.
A ten foot uphill putt takes just under 4.0 to go in.
UPHILL PUTTS ARE MADE MORE OFTEN BECAUSE THE BALL IS ON THE GREEN LESS TIME. JUST WATCH AN AUTOMOBILE RACE, THE CAR ON THE TRACK FOR THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME BETWEEN START AND FINISH (ASSUMING THEY FINISH) WILL WIN THE RACE (BARRING ANY TIME PENALTIES) AND THE less THAT CAR'S CHANCE OF HAVING A WRECK.
vj: You have touched on this before seeing the put in real time in your minds eye when reading the putt. I had never thought of this before always looking at the putt almost mathematically . Since reading your posts I am now watching my playing partner's putts more closely to get a better understanding of how putts behave on the green and better putt time awareness. How do you teach your players to have a better understanding of the awareness of time in putting?
You are doing the right thing. Awareness on its own teaches all of us many things. From time to time practice time elements on the putting green. For certain practice the time element at new golf courses when you are getting accustomed to speed. Watch other player's putts.
As anybody who has read his posts in recent weeks knows, VJ is the 'real deal.'
Quiet.
Unassuming.
But make no mistake...
The Real Deal.
Anybody seriously interested in improving their golf and who is within walking, driving or flying distance of VJ should seriously consider the question, "Why am I not spending some time with this person?"
No question about that in my mind. vj's putting advice has had a huge impact on my putting performance.
vj: You have been described as a putting expert but you are also an AI. Do you see your expertise as mainly a putting coach ? Do you feel you are as competent in the full swing and short game as you are at coaching putting ? As the inventor of the Putting Arc. Do you have plans for producing putting video. With the market awareness your product has and your knowledge I would imagine there would be a big market for it. I know that I would buy your putting video if you ever get round to making one.
Yoda is too kind. I know what I know about putting because I missed too many of the damn things.
I am an instructor. I teach the full swing all day, nearly every day, and teach putting only to those who ask for it. It (putting) is very individualistic. The keys in my mind are just the same as for the full swing: proper understanding, proper mechanics, proper practice, and then play.
As a wise man once said, "Sorry is the fool who trades his love for a corvette, he thinks he will get the girl but he will only get the mechanic."
So, hopefully I can help those who need it and hopefully those that can help me will do so as well. If you ever need anything I can be reached.
And vj. Your posts are great. I am sure there are loads of people like myself lurking this section, gradually collecting information & fixing to go deeper into putting than they ever thought possible. Indeed hope you can make it to Scotland.
I will most likely be at St Andrew's this year . working as a spotter for ABC TV . I will be up for the TGM workshop there . A year is a long wait so I am thinking of coming to the States at some point to learn more but have difficult family issues here to deal with before I can think of going. I can see that I will be in St Andrew's in 2006 for the event.
Time in putting -- there are many things to watch for good timing in the stroke and in the rolling of the ball on the green and in the ball's falling into the cup.
I like to use the old bi-colored PING balls to watch them slow and come to a stop. The two colors "flicker" as the ball slows, and watching the ending of the roll is the main key to learning good touch. The ball should always arrive at the hole with approximately the same pattern of ending roll, regardless of the length of the putt or even the condition of the green. This makes all "flickering" endings look alike.
Another thing to notice is how fast the ball arrives at the front lip of the cup, which should always be about the same. A ball that is traveling at 9 revolutions per second (rps) is traveling too fast to drop enough crossing the 4.25-inch diameter hole for the ball to stay inside the cup. A ball that is traveling at 8 rps at the front lip might drop in, but only if its path is centercut and has the full 4.25 inches to work with. he hole for an 8 rps putt is effectively only one dimple wide. As you slow down your delivery speed, the hole widens. At 7 rps, the real "hole" for ball capture is still very narrow. At 6 rps it may be only 1 inch wide or so. At 5 rps, it may be 1.5 inches wide. At 4 rps it's about 2 inches wide. At 3 rps, it's about 2.5 inches wide. At 2 rps, it's about 3 inches wide. At 1 rps, it's about 3.5 inches wide. Thereabouts. I like 2 rps at the lip. To 'see" this timing, roll one index finger twice around the other in the tme it takes you to say "one mississippi."
Another way to learn what delivery speed you have is to watch your misses. The distance a ball rolls by the cup in missing depends on the speed at the lip and the green condition or speed and the green contour past the cup (uphill vs downhill). On a medium-speed green, a ball that arrives at the front lip with 2 rps that misses will usually roll about two to three revolutions past the hole. Each revolution of the ball is about 5.25 inches (one palm length), so the ball usually stops about 10-15 inches past the front lip, and 6-10 inches behind the cup. A ball that arrives with 4 rps will often not stop until 15-20 inches past the cup, and this speed is the main cause of unnecessary lip-outs.
Another timing aspect to watch is the "decay phase" of the putt. All putts start off with some skidding, then rolling, then a slowing phase sets in at the last as the ball comes to a stop. On slow greens, the ball stops more abruptly than on a fast green. But on ANY green and on all greens with the same consistent green speed, every putt hits the decay phase at the same point in the putt. That's because the decay phase sets in at one specific ball speed. Once the rolling ball slows to this critical speed, the decay phase sets in. Once the decay phase sets in, every putt comes to a stop in about the same time. This makes the endings of all putts look very much the same in terms of timing.
For the skidding phase, you can listen to the timing of the skid. The skidding makes a brushy noise, especially across drier greens. According to the physics, the skid will last until the skidding friction slows the ball's lateral speed down to 5/7th the speed it started out with. This usually means that skidding persists for about 15% of the length of the putt (e.g., 3 feet on a 20-footer). By paying attention to the starting noise of the putt and to the changeover from skidding noise to rolling noise, you can learn something about distance control and also about getting a better roll on the ball at the start. The skidding noise diminishes as the putt skid phase goes along, since the skidding causes increased rolling until the ball is only rolling. It's sort of like hearing a car go past on a rainy street, with the Doppler effect as the car recedes into the distance.
Slow greens require putts that start out with quicker initial speed, and slow greens slow down the rolls sooner, and the decay phase sets in sooner and acts more dramatically to stop the ball. Uphill putts are effectively "slower" than other putts on the same green, and downhill putts are effectively "quicker" than other putts. So uphill putts start out faster and come to a more abrupt halt than downhill putts. That's why 10-foot uphill putt is over quicker than either a 10-foot level putt or a 10-foot downhill putt. Also, putts that end up with the green curving slightly uphill right at the end where the cup is located have abrupt stops.
The biggest timing thing to pay attention to on the green is the timing of gravity. Gravity is the relationship in space-time of two masses. In deep spae, if you positioned two bowling balls near each other, they would very slowly start to drift directly at each other until they met, sort of like if you placed the two heavy balls about a foot apart on a feather bed. On earth, the mass of the earth (the "big ball") is constant, so the attractive "force" of gravity towards the earth of anything smaller than the earth (on the surface of the earth) is constant. (The sun attracts the earth with a much bigger force.) This means that gravity always generates the same timing pattern of motion in all things that fall. If you lift your hand out from your side and "drop" it, it will drop with the same timing as a ball dropped from the leaning tower of Pisa. A ball dropped from the leaning tower of Pisa reacts to gravity this way: it starts at zero speed and gravity imparts a constant rate of speed increase (acceleration) that makes the falling ball go faster and faster in a steadily increasing way. The rate of speed increase is 32 feet per second increase in speed every second. In the first second, the ball goes from zero to 32 feet per second (fps). In th second second, the ball speed increases from 32 to 64 fps, etc. This fundamental constancy of gravity is why a pendulum swings as it does, evenly accelerating down from zero at the top to a peak speed at the bottom and then coasting to a stop at the other side with a mirror-reverse pattern of deceleration. In the same way that any two masses (golf ball vs bowling ball) will drop in exactly the same way and hit the earth in exactly the same time, this means that the mass of the falling object does not matter in the timing. heavy balls and light balls still fall with exactly the same timing. his means that all golfers of about the same size making pendulum-like strokes with putters the same length are all putting in the same influence of gravity. The strokes all have a basic underlying timing given to them by gravity, and any variation off this base tempo is due to muscle activity of the golfer, not gravity. Roughly speaking, a conventional-length putter has a gravity tempo of 1 second from top of any backstroke to top of the corresponding thrustroke. All strokes have the same timing, and a gravity-based stroke has 1-second timing. this means that for all golfers with good stable tempo, the timing from the top of the backstroke to impact is always exactly the same on every putt. For a gravity-based tempo, this timing is about 1/2 second. If you learn how to count your tempo with appropriate timing space between the "one" (top of backstroke) and the "two" (impact or bottom of stroke), you will have better distance control and more consistent stroke form.
There are a number of other things to pay attention to for good timing in putting, but these are the biggies -- ending roll of the ball and delivery speed thru decay phase of the putt plus stroke tempo.
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