Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Hello and welcome to Flaghunters ! It is a privilege to bring to you this powerful insight into playing better Golf. In all my years of being in the game of Golf from competing at a high amateur level, to caddying, teaching, and being a overall Golf geek, I have an insatiable, curiosity driven desire to get down to the bottom of what it takes to truly get better playing the game of Golf that we all unconditionally love. This has been one of the greatest journeys of my life and I am deeply grateful for all that Golf has given me. Thank you for joining me in this incredible journey. This is my ever evolving love letter to Golf. Jesse Perryman P.S. Please Rate, Review and Subscribe !
Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Unlocking Superior Green Reading and Putting with Ralph Bauer: Insights from the Tour Read and Twirly Apps
Feel free to text me at (831)275-8804
Is it possible that most of your missed putts are due to misreads rather than poor strokes? Join us on the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast as we uncover the secrets to mastering green reading and putting with our special guest, Ralph Bauer, the inventor of the Tour Read app. Ralph breaks down the science of green reading, revealing how understanding slopes and break conditions can transform your performance on the green. From PGA Tour anecdotes to practical tips, this episode promises to elevate your confidence and lower your scores.
Proper alignment and visual tracking are crucial elements of a successful putt. In this episode, we dive deep into the technical aspects of putting, including saccadic vision, smooth pursuit, and the importance of neck posture. Ralph shares a compelling story about a PGA Tour player’s journey to correct his putting alignment, shedding light on how small adjustments can yield significant improvements. We also introduce Twirly, an innovative app that uses your smartphone to measure ground slope, offering insights that can dramatically enhance your putting accuracy.
Technology is revolutionizing the way we approach golf, and Ralph’s apps are at the forefront. Learn the origins of these groundbreaking tools, developed through a unique collaboration between a seasoned golf coach and an engineer. Hear success stories from PGA Tour players like Nick Taylor and Tom Hoage , and discover how these apps can benefit golfers at all levels. This episode is a treasure trove of expert advice and technological advancements aimed at making green reading accessible and effective, ensuring that you can enjoy the game more and achieve better results.
To access this incredible Application, download from the App Store and Tour Read should be available for Androids by September of 2024.
To reach Justin easiest, email him at Justin@elitegolfswing.com
To reach Jesse easiest, email him at Jesse@flaghuntersgolf.com
A big THANK YOU to TaylorMade and Adidas for their support ! 🙏
Hello, this is Jesse Perriman of the Black Hunters Golf Podcast, welcoming you to another edition. Short, sweet intro here On behalf of Justin and myself. We thank you for tuning in, of course, and we're going to do a little bit of a deeper dive on putting coming up. We've got some folks that are coming on to help us really to get down to the nitty-gritty of what it takes to be a good putter, what are the proper things to work on and give you some good thoughts, some good rabbit holes to go down, and this, undoubtedly, is one of them.
Speaker 1:I've always said, as well as many others, my great friend Bobby Schaefer put this into my ear about 25 years ago when he said the greatest potters are the greatest green readers. And our guest today is a man who has invented an app called Tour Read. His name is Ralph Bauer. He works and has continued to work with many of the best players in the world on improving their green reading. So what he's done? He's come up with a system and it's available to all of us. So for the first time, we have tour-level information that's available to all of us. The app is called Tour Read. Go to Tour Read, click on it, download it to your iPhone. I think he's going to be available on Android hopefully September 1st is what he says and get this app. I have it, I'm using it. It's helping my green reading immensely. I'm making a lot of putts, and when you're making more putts, you are definitely having more fun on the golf course and, besides, it pisses your opponents off too, so you have that little extra satisfaction. Go to Tour Read, download it.
Speaker 1:Listen to this episode. You're going to get a lot out of it. I'm excited, I'm pumped up about it. We're talking about playing the game, we're talking about getting the ball in the hole, and this is undoubtedly a very important part of the game of golf. Tourread, tourreadcom. Download it. Listen to this episode, maybe a little bit more than once, to get the real depth of what Ralph is saying, and a lot of it is complex, but in its very nature it is extremely simple and there's no excuse. There's no excuse to become a better putter and, by definition, to become a better putter, you must become the best green reader that you possibly can be, because when you know what it's going to do and you're up over the putt, you're going to have that much more confidence to stroke the ball where you want it to go, which is in the bottom of the cup. Cheers everyone, have a great week and thanks again for tuning in.
Speaker 1:Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, along with my co-host, good friend, great instructor, one of the best minds in golf and just as curious as I am, which is kind of rare.
Speaker 1:His name is Justin Tang and if you're a longtime listener of the podcast, you're very familiar with his voice, and Justin and I have been talking lately about how we can really get into the do, a deep dive into scoring, how to score next level scoring. I think we know a lot about the golf swing, we know a lot about the short game, we know a lot about technique, but what isn't really talked about, in my opinion, what really isn't talked about is what separates great putters, and it's undoubtedly well received in this threesome here sorry for the long winded intro that green reading separates great putters. The greatest fighters in the world are the greatest green readers in the world, and we have one of the great green reading teachers on the planet. His name is ralph bauer and he is the inventor of the app called tour read, which you are going to immediately get after this conversation. I promise you, justin, as always, my friend Ralph, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate it. We look forward to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on and love talking about golf, love talking about putting, love the intro. You know I've coached on PGA Tour since 2009,. But I'm a club. You know I teach at a club too.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, the quickest way for people to learn how to make you know to lower their score is to learn how to read greens better, right, like the rest of the game. You know, everybody knows what you know spin rates should be on a driver. Everybody knows what you know. Launch you know what launch conditions should look like on their full shots. And then putting we're just leaving putting to like, oh, everything breaks towards Indio or, hey, everything breaks towards my aunt's house over there or the hills over here. Watch where water flows. So really what we did is, you know, we just tried to simplify it. You know, break down the science of it, make it so that people can easily recognize slopes and can very quickly understand how those changing conditions affect your break. So it's really just a way to train our green reading so that we can make more putts.
Speaker 2:And you had a long intro so I'm going to fire right back at you here. So what happens is the reason people don't get better at putting. I've found and this goes at every level is people miss a pot. Let's say I'm a I'm a right-handed player, I've got a right to left pot. I miss it on the low side. Every player I've ever worked with defaults so I pulled that putt. You know, if we could realize that, hey, chances are pretty good. You didn't pull that putt right and what you did is you misread it. Now you're trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. So you know, I would say, like, get pretty good at straight putts and then get good at green reading and you'll be a great putter.
Speaker 3:Hey, ralph, what you said resonates so much. When I started golf in 1997, putting was simply thought of hey, just go spend some time on the greens, you'll be good. It's such an easy part of the game. Just roll the ball, it's all feel. But that was the dark ages of golf, putting instruction. And if you really dive deep into the weeds you realize that the information in putting is probably three times that of the full swing.
Speaker 3:Case in point people will retire from the tour because they can't putt, but they won't retire from the tour because of my irons are a bit wonky. You never see the latter, but you see a lot more of the former when they can't convert putts. And I think a lot of spectators when they watch on TV they think, hey, all these guys make 50, 60 footers like it's nothing. Those are marquee groups where they are on form that week, but the guys that miss the cut, they're missing a lot of easy putts, so to speak. In that regard, right, could you let's take it a little further back. How did you even start to focus on teaching putting? I know you teach other parts of the game, but putting is your thing. Like what was the inspiration behind it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I taught on the PGA Tour for quite a while and you know it was kind of a weird story. Maybe in about 2015, a couple pretty good players they're both Ryder cuppers, you know they came up to me and said, hey, ralph, you're a putting coach. I'm like, no, I'm an everything coach. Like, yeah, you're kind of a putting coach, like, and I had some guys that I helped turn around their putting right and you know they said, you know why, just focus on putting right. So I kind of you know there's a you know why just focus on putting right.
Speaker 2:So I kind of you know that I got this reputation that I wasn't trying to become a putting coach, but I just kind of got this reputation that I could, you know, help people with their putting and, you know, kind of stem from them. Because then I had this well, if I'm going to be a putting coach, I need to get more information on it and I need to get, you know, dive deeper into it. And I live in the performance world. I just want people to perform better, I just want them to make more putts. So that's the great part about coaching on tour is you got to keep it simple, but it's got to be effective. So that's all I'm about is helping people in a simple manner score better.
Speaker 3:So let's talk about the four skills of putting generally. People think about read, people think about aim, people think about stroke and then distance control. The one thing that gets the most attention is the stroke. Everyone's fascinated the technique varden grip, reverse, overlap, all sorts of grips, the ball position. But no one really talks about reading the green until, uh, I guess, aim point came onto the scene. But I think even before aim point there were a few other variations of the vector button. I think uh correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was uh talked about by an Air Force colonel who was on a shooting team. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:That's interesting I haven't heard that.
Speaker 3:I can't remember the name. I should have checked earlier. It's called vector putting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm well aware of that and you know, like you mentioned earlier about is on the, is on the stroke, which you could argue is by far the least important of of all, of all the poor skill.
Speaker 3:Can you repeat that again Louder please?
Speaker 2:So, and I'll give you an example, I had a, you know, a player I was working with on the PGA tour new player, you know, a couple of months ago, on the PGA Tour new player, you know, a couple months ago, and he said, ralph, I have to aim right because I pull all my putts. I'm like, no, you pull your putts because you aim right. Let's, let's aim correctly. Well, the first 10 putts he didn't pull, he peered him right into the middle of the hole and it's like, oh my gosh, I've been wasting. I've been wasting the last three years thinking I had to aim right and pull it right. So our stroke is going to adjust to our alignment and our read. It's not the other way around.
Speaker 3:I call that the curse of the good player. And it's very obvious with good players. They aim a foot to the right, they'll pull the putt. One foot to the left Perfect all the time. But if you're not a good player, you aim to the right, they'll pull the putt. One foot to the left Perfect all the time. But if you're not a good player, you aim to the right. The ball goes there and you think, hey, you know supposed to miss it that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but aiming a foot right and pulling it is pretty tough on breaking putts right and it's pretty tough on the more. Golf is a variable sport we're lucky. That's why we all love it so much. It's a challenge and I want people to line up properly, start it online, read it properly and just hit good putt after good putt after good putt.
Speaker 3:So that's the aim of the four skills of putting Before we get into the read putt, can I just get?
Speaker 2:your thoughts on eye dominance and ball position as well as neck tilts. Yeah, so I've got, um, I was lucky, I I used to do some consulting for nike and, uh, they kind of gave me all tiger woods's information, which which was pretty cool and and so I kind of ran with that. So I've been, I spent quite a bit of time on on vision training and how our eyes should work. Um, and I feel like you know, it's very important and and we probably don't have time to dive into this, maybe next time we can dive into this. But there's if. For anybody that's interested, there's something called saccadic vision and smooth pursuit right, and the if we can get our eyes.
Speaker 2:I'm big into either visualizing or tracking the path of the putt in real time. So if we can track the path of the putt in real time, that's going to make it much easier for us to put our putter down on the path of the putt. It's also going to make our distance control that much better. So alignment is super important, but it starts, you know, behind the ball. It starts. It's a whole routine that we build in a series of little steps that that seem simple like that that you can't even tell what somebody's doing, but they're, they're ticking off the steps to to get their eyes in the right position, to, you know, to to perceive the line of the putt the best they can the neck tilt thing, the the neck tilt thing.
Speaker 2:I've got theories on, not theories, but I think we should have good posture. I think posture is important in golf, it's important in putting too. If we don't have enough tilt from our hips, then our upper spine takes over and gets us into trouble. If we have good posture, our our knee flex, our kneecaps are over the balls of our feet and and we're tilting, you know, from from our hips until we get into a comfortable position. Kind of an easy way for, uh, for people to think about it is, you know, if you lean not lean against the wall, put the ball just inside a wall and then put your forehead on the wall, you have pretty good posture so when I talk about neck tilts, I also like to think about sighting the ball.
Speaker 3:So when I'm over the ball, if my neck, if my neck's too vertical, and then when I look to where I'm aiming, it always seems that I'm aiming too far to the right, and then when my neck's, too, tilts too far towards the ground, when I look left, it always seems I'm aiming left. Can you talk about how, how we should calibrate a, an optimum neck tilt to prevent parallax error? It's parallax error I'm talking about yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2:Um, you know you guys weren't kidding. You guys are good at this holy smoke, okay, so you know it's gonna be how to calibrate. That's a little bit different for everyone. Um, I, I, what I do with my players and, if I can give a quick plug for my, for my app, I've got a video series in there that, like that covers setup. You know, alignment, like alignment routine. It's basically the same thing I do with my tour players, right? But, um, what I like to do, um, I'm sure you use a mirror with your students, right?
Speaker 2:What I like to do first of all is is measure, like get on a mirror and measure how far away your, your, your toes are, the front of your shoes are from the center of the target line.
Speaker 2:So if we're standing the correct distance away from it, it's going to make it a lot easier. So, for the average male who's between 5'9 and 6'2, it's going to be about 10 inches from their toes to the, to the center of the of the target line, right, and then you know if we're staying too far away. That's when we start getting you know into issues with with our spine tilt if we're too close to it. You know that's kind of, I think, what you're talking about. So I like to kind of go about the the way of just getting people to stand the correct amount, getting their kneecaps to be over top of their the balls, their feet, and then to get down to the golf ball with a hip hinge, as opposed to. I see way too many people who have very poor upper spine, like they don't have enough hip hinge or enough knee flex, so then they're getting down to the golf ball with too much spine like upper spine, rotation like not rotation like a C-spine.
Speaker 3:So before we go into your app. I started using it. I told you this on more than one occasion. The first putt I made using your method was a downhill 30-footer with double breaker. I canned it for birdie. I've been using the app for two or three weeks now and I realized that my share of 12 to 30 footers have gone up significantly. I'm making a whole lot more birdies on the golf course than I ever have In the past if I've got to make, but if I make birdies they were from a five foot six foot range, easy one, so to speak. But now I'm getting that fair share and a lot of it is due to understanding how to read greens correctly.
Speaker 3:I've done a lot of these green reading courses and it ranged from going to the side of the putt let your eyes take in the undulation and slopes uphill, downhill, left to right, uh, even another system that came out, I suppose, in the late 2000s, where you use your fingers to kind of assess if this is the percentage break you're going to aim right or left. That worked for a while. But my, my take on the finger thing is this how does it work for a guy with thick fingers and slender fingers? And I think it doesn't adjust for it. Now, your system is super elegant, it's based on facts and it comes in a neat little package. It teaches you to read the greens and it trains you with a. What do you call it? A test training? Uh, a training system? I guess? Yeah, the answer is covered, so to speak. So I'm gonna ask you the million dollar question what inspired the app?
Speaker 2:so basically, what happened was, um, you know, I had all these theories. You know, working on tour, I had all these theories. You know, working on tour, I had all these theories and you know that I'd put into practice that guys were playing well with. But I only had five students. And if you weren't one of my five students, you know, on tour, then I didn't want you to play well. I, you know, I just wanted my five guys to play well.
Speaker 2:So, you know, during COVID, I had a change of pace. I thought, okay, I'm going to go well. So, you know, during covid, I had a change of pace. I thought, okay, I'm gonna go home, you know, get a job. You know work at a club, do that for a while. Um, so my very first lesson I gave uh, a putting lesson was to an engineer and he said, hey, what about reading greens? I said, okay, well, I'm not gonna. I might as well, I'm gonna share my secrets with everybody. So I I explained to him how, how to read greens, and and he's like, no way. So you know, we should turn this. It was 10 minutes. He said, it can't be this simple. We should turn this into a, into a system, right, and so the two of us have spent way too much time together and you know, we, we, we just it was kind of a nice combination of an engineer right and, you know, a performance coach, where we're trying to take the science and then turn it into something that people can very easily use.
Speaker 3:Is your partner, stephen the engineer.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Now.
Speaker 3:I want to ask you guys are obviously very smart. I know I'm guessing some part of the formula is based on Pythagoras theorem. How did you guys even distill all that information into that simple Turing formula?
Speaker 2:You know, there's a few things right. No-transcript the app so people could really, we designed it for for, you know, the average person, but the, you know, the, the. I got all my friends on tour to use it. They loved it so that, well, if it helps them make make better, more putts, you help the average person too. So, um, you know, I've personally, like live, taught it to 1200 people, right, and every one of them loved it, right and it's, it's been a lot of fun, you know, being able to travel around the world teaching us people and but I, you know I can only reach so many people, so we did a much, much better job in the last six months of, you know, of putting videos in the app so that now you don't need me, right, you can just, you know, we've got a really nice video library that runs you through everything and it's, you know, it's. It's pretty simple.
Speaker 3:So can, can. Can we talk a little bit about the process. What Twirly is all about for our listeners? What do they expect with this process?
Speaker 2:So we've got an app. So, first of all, phones are amazing, right, you know phones. I mean, who would have thought 10 years ago that phones would be able to do all this stuff? So phones have a level in them, right, that's very accurate. And so what we do? You open up the app. Let's say you've got a nine footer. You place the app, you know, two thirds the way to the hole on the ground. It's going to measure the slope of the ground. You type in the fact that it's a nine footer, right, and they'll tell you where to aim. It's very, very accurate.
Speaker 2:I tested against 10 PGA Tour players, right, and the app was was, you know, 10 and 0. Right. And then and that's really cool and and helpful, so I always get people to start with giving them the read I'll just say, ok, that's going to break eight feet or eight inches, that's going to break 12 inches. And then they can start to see that and they're like, wow, I wouldn't have had that. I'll tell you, if you don't mind a quick story here, the first two people I showed to, one of which was Nick Taylor, who has won a few events since then. He said, okay, I'll try it, ralph, he tries, he goes hey, ralph, the app is wrong, but he hit the putt anyways, it went in the hole. He did the same thing again hey, the app is wrong, he trusted it, you know it went in the hole. And after 10 putts he goes wait, the app's not wrong, I've been wrong, I've been.
Speaker 2:So Nick's a good example of he was, you know, initially probably our heaviest user, right, and you know he's. He's won at least two PGA Tour events since then and anyways, he's won a lot of tour events. You know he's won a lot. It's done well for him, right, and it's yeah, it's been fun, it's, yeah, it's been fun. Another one of the first users was Tom Hoagie who, you know, since he started using it, as you know, become a great putter and you know, I think he's won 15 million since he started using it, or or 14 million, which is pretty good, but more importantly, he's got a better feel, feel for reading greens now. So, um, and I apologize, I'm having so much fun talking to you, I kind of forgot what the question was full disclosure no, no, no.
Speaker 2:The process of it, like I'm sure by now our listeners would be very curious to know what's to read so the first step is putting the phone down and having it give you the read right, which is a learning experience and it's great. But, that being said, we're trying to get you to make more putts on the golf course. So there's a three-step process. Number one, let's say we do a circle drill and we give you the read. The next step is what we call hide to a read. So what we do there is you'll pick some more pots. The app will give you, once you engage, hide to a read, it'll give you the slope. So it'll say, okay, it's right to left. You know one degree and half degree downhill, and then you have to estimate the amount of break and then you click on it to get the answer. So that's basically trying to wean you off the app. So you're starting to get the feel for okay, well, that's what the slope is, that's how much is going to break. And the third step and this is the one that, to me, is the magic right of the app that, to me, is the magic right of the app is that the on course system that the, the video library, teaches you, that uses simple math equation. You have to know your two times tables right. So, as long as you want, two times four is, you know, two times seven. You'll be able to figure out. It's very quick, very easy and we're not gonna be able to get into the whole excuse me process tonight of it, but you know it's, it's very simple.
Speaker 2:If you go on, if you go on our youtube, there's um. One of the wasn't a student of mine, but I had pj tour player win a tour event, you know, and talking about how simple it was for him, you know, and how much he liked it you know better than any other system he's tried. So so that's. It's a three-step process. One you put the app down to start giving you a feel for how much a putt breaks. Number two what you do is use a high tour read. It's only giving you half the information you have to know the you know, start to estimate the rest. The third one is that process that you've been using on the golf course to help you make more putts now how important is, how precise do you need to be?
Speaker 3:so I'm quite familiar with the the process by now and then I go like, okay, I've got to aim like 12 and a half inches. Do we need to be that precise?
Speaker 2:well, I feel like it's kind of funny because I feel like, with putting, because there wasn't really a great system before people had this, you know this myth that, oh, we don't need to be precise, just feel it, just aim over there and let you know, hope for the best. But those same people will be in a fairway and use a range finder with a slope and say, oh, it's 153 yards, but it's playing to 158 there's no way they're going to hit 153 to begin with, most of them no, true.
Speaker 2:However, it's nice to you know. I always think the more information we have, better, and then let our brain take over, right? So exactly if? If somebody told me hey, would you like to know exactly how much this pipe breaks, or do you just want a rough idea? You know, I would want to know exactly how much it breaks yeah.
Speaker 3:So, case in point, last night I was talking to one of a friend. He said, hey, how important is fundamentals? And feel. I said, dude, you want both, man, you want as much as you can get. It's like saying, hey, there's a $10 note on the ground and a $100 note on the ground, which one do you take? You take both. You take them both, man. And on the golf course I feel that, especially to your point about the amounts of money these guys are playing for every week. They need every bit of advantage that they can get.
Speaker 2:But it's not just them. The average person that uses our app after a month tells us their handicap dropped by two shots.
Speaker 3:I can imagine that my handicap could go to plus figures. It's just crazy the kinds of putts I'm making. I should really video myself these days on the green.
Speaker 2:So I saw a study. No, I saw Go ahead.
Speaker 3:The greens that I play on are 6% and 7%. I have 6% and 7% slopes on every green, so it crazy, really made a huge difference in my game. In the past it was like just eyeballing stuff, right, but now I know I've got a system that's based on science.
Speaker 2:That's the difference yeah, and the eyeballing. The problem with trial and error is it doesn't work, for first of all you'd have to get so many putts it might take decades. But also it doesn't work because people automatically default to thinking they pushed or pulled it, so they're never getting a true understanding of how much a putt breaks, a putt breaks. So I saw a study about PGA Tour players that if they've got a 12 foot dead straight putt in a controlled environment they're going to make just over 90% of their putts from 12 feet. Now the make percentage from 12 feet on the PGA Tour is 30%, so they're missing 60%. There's a 60% gap. That has nothing to do with start line. Right tour players have very good distance control. You know their greens are very, very good right. The big, the big equalizer like we talked about, or the big separator, rather, that we talked about at the start of this is green reading so let's talk a little bit about feeling the slopes laterally and uphill and downhill.
Speaker 3:How precise do your players get after training on this? Like, for example, you put them on a slope, they say, hey, ralph, this is a 2.8% or 3.2. How accurate do they get?
Speaker 2:It's kind of funny because, you know, if I just refer this back to more like a club player who's like Ralph, I don't have any idea, Right, I'm like, well, okay, I always think, like you know, just to give him, give him a guideline, like one is barely perceptible. You know, the average PGA tour pins probably about a two. You know, if you've ever watched the masters they put them on a three. You know four is an aggressive place for a pin. You know the greens you're playing are super slopey right. But it, if you, if you can default to, here's what people can get pretty accurate, pretty quickly to answer your question.
Speaker 2:And here's how you know before, if you're doing trial and error, you go the first hole, you guess you miss it. You don't know if you push, pulled it underrated, or you know you really don't know what the problem was. If you you could say, hey, I think this is a 2% slope, you hit it, it breaks more than you thought, but that was like a 2.5. Now you're learning, now, over the course of a couple rounds, you're getting very, very good at this Right, whereas, and also, if you're on the first hole and you think, okay, well, I thought, is it two, is it 2.5? That's not hurting your confidence if you get that first hole and say, hey, I pulled it. Now your confidence is shot for the second hole and you're likely to push it. So people can get pretty accurate pretty quick because they are, you know, are learning the right thing instead of, you know, going down a rabbit hole of mechanics when that wasn't a problem.
Speaker 3:Yeah, fixing a problem that's not really a problem. You start messing around with your mechanics without really understanding what your problem is and then, before you know it, you probably train yourself out of golf. You're not fixing the cause and that's a sad thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a sad thing. People get frustrated if they don't know what the problem is and they don't want to fix it. If you know, if we know what the problem is, we know how to improve it. Right, then golf is fun and we can start playing much, much better and this really is a low-hanging fruit in improving putting.
Speaker 3:And if you think for a scratch player who hits, who scores a 72, call it hits every green in regulation, then putting is basically 50% of your strokes that you use, so A you should be spending at least 50% of your time on the greens If your handicap, I feel, is five and below, and you should spend bulk of the time understanding how to read greens. So, case in point 6-7% slow If you don't take enough break. Subconsciously you know I've got to smash my putter just to get it through that break. But if you know it's a 6-7%, I'm going to aim 15 inches to the right oh sorry, not 15 inches more like 50 inches to the right. Your brain kind of sees that hey, I've got to play this break and then I'm going to let the thing die down.
Speaker 3:Your stroke, the force that you exert on the ball kind of changes and that's the beautiful thing that I'm getting. That's one of the benefits that I'm getting. I don't really think about distance control now. I feel that if I get my read correct, I aim correctly, it kind of takes care of itself. The brain knows man 100%.
Speaker 2:Couldn't say it better.
Speaker 3:Jesse any thoughts?
Speaker 1:I'm just loving this conversation and it's been a long time coming, I think that you know.
Speaker 1:Just to add my two cents, especially in my recent tournaments, I've been working on my green reading a lot in the recent six months and you know, using this app is really going to help me to understand the slopes. Even more interesting is a lot of even good players with putting will automatically go back to something screwed up in their stroke if they miss it low or if they miss it high. But one of my experiences that I've seen over the years just being around a lot of golfers uh is they massively under read putts? They under read putts a lot. If you're a right-handed putter. I see a lot of right-handed putters massively under reading left to right putts and somehow, some way, somewhere subconsciously, especially if you're a good putter, you figure out a way to square it up and you figure out a way to, you know, get it up there, get it in the hole. I mean it's. It's remarkable how people can overcome their lack of understanding on the grains. It really is. So this isn't a put down, but I do think that it's a lack of understanding of really how much. How much is happening on the grains how much really is happening.
Speaker 1:But I got to tell you when you know anybody who's listening to this right now, if you're confident in what you're seeing on a green when you're reading a putt, there's a very high likelihood that you're going to be confident with your stroke, whether you're aware of it or not. But if you're behind, if you're stocking a putt from four different angles and you still don't know what the hell is going on and you try to quote, unquote, feel it in there, there's a chance that you're going to stall, you're going to hesitate on your stroke, you're either going to over-accelerate or you're going to de-sell and you know whatever, you're going to be left to pot luck. You know, like I said, the best putters are the best green or the best putters are the best green readers. And, justin, what you said it's I mean, it's low hanging fruit. You know this is a conversation that's long time coming and what's I find interesting is you know, ralph, I know that you've talked to a lot of those guys out there I have two, justin has two and a lot of great putters not not all, but most great putters use capture speed.
Speaker 1:Most great putters drip it in. Most great putters use the entirety of the hole. So what that means to me is they're using max break, that they're actually understanding what the ball is doing, what the green is doing, and they're just going to drip it in. If it's going in at a slow rate, then you're going to effectively expand the circumference of the hole. But if you're powering it in there, and you and you I mean even if you touch a little bit of the hole it's not going to go in. That's sort of the commonalities with what I've seen, you know, in my golf life. But max break, is that ralph, is that? Is that a fair statement?
Speaker 2:well, you have a lot of great statements in there. Let's start with you with your first one, but under reading putts. So I tested 10 tour players right on left to writers. They under under read their putts by 30 percent right, so on average wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 1:What back that up?
Speaker 2:say that again yeah, they on left to right putts. Like on left to right putts, PGA Tour players would only recognize 70% of the break. So if the putt was actually going to break 10 inches, they would tell me on average, this putt's going to break seven inches. Are you with me on that? Yeah, which is? And that's tour players. They're pretty good and, by the way, none of these.
Speaker 1:that yeah, which is, and that's tour players.
Speaker 2:They're pretty good and, by the way, none of the best putters in the world, yeah, and and every player I tested had kept their card for five years. So it wasn't like no offensive against rookies, but it wasn't rookies and stuff. I was testing, I was just testing, you know, pretty good players. Now they were significantly better on right to left putts. They were. They were, uh, they were only under reading it by 15%. So if they thought, if the pot actually broke 10 inches, they're telling me on average, hey, it's 8.5 inches. So I've got a good little, uh little analysis here on on how they can kind of overcome that, but the problems with that. So and this is a little technical, but bear with me, is that okay If I throw some little bit?
Speaker 3:of technical stuff at you here. Okay, please, man.
Speaker 2:So I tested one of the top 10 players.
Speaker 2:Like over the over a five year period he was one of the top uh, you know, 10 putters in the PGA tour Right, 10 putters in the PGA Tour right. I will say he was a student of mine, but so he now I tested him on a straight putt. On a straight putt we're all familiar with angle of attack we should hit up on it a little bit right. So on a straight putt he hit up on it 1.4 degrees, which nothing magical at 1.4, that's pretty good, but it doesn't have to. You know, there's just a range there. Then I tested him on a right to left putt and he was hit up on at 1.4 degrees. Then I tested him on left to right putt and he hit up on it guess what? 1.4 degrees. Right, because he was a great, or he's a great green reader. So if you show me a great green reader, I'll show you something with a very, very consistent stroke.
Speaker 2:Later that day I tested somebody, you know a tour player, who was roughly a shot per day worse than the first person. Again, he went a straight putt, get a 1.5 degree angle of attack. Very, very good. On a right to lefter. He under read it, pushed it. His angle of attack was three degrees up. Are you with me? Yeah, now. And then on the next pot, he had a left to righter. He under read it, pulled it. He was two degrees down. So his angle of attack on the same hole could vary by five degrees. That's a lot, man. Yeah, so he's. Yeah, it's insane. On the same hole, like he could have a right to left or power it through. Under read it, power it through with a three degree angle attack up. Have a left writer coming back, you know, under read it, pull it and be two down. Now who's gonna have better distance control? Right, it's not gonna be close. It's not a fair fight.
Speaker 2:And you know, the interesting part was we never worked on angle of attack with the first player, we just worked on green reading, right. And then I always think we should just turn every putt into a straight putt and let gravity, you know, do its job right, as opposed to trying to, you know, trying to, you know, hope for that, like the other way of doing it is to hope your alignment's bad enough and your green reading's bad enough to even out, which is, you know, pretty challenging way to improve from there right. So and I hear you on speed control, guys work very hard. Guys. I always think, you know, we, we want to the last, we want to do a great job on and, justin, you mentioned this earlier about how precise we want to be, we want to know where to start the ball, but just as importantly, we want to think about where it's going to be entering the hole right.
Speaker 2:So you know, justin, if I was caddying for you, I'd go through the system, you know, come up with the 12 and a half inches that you talked about, and then I'd tell you, hey, I've got entering right at seven o'clock here, and that's going to get you thinking about matching up your line and your speed Right. So, which is, which is kind of the final piece of the puzzle and kind of like what you're talking about, is like every player is going to have a should have a good visual of how they want the ball to be entering the hole right. So it's super important.
Speaker 3:So instead of going in from the front door you think of entering in from the side and once you kind of give your brain the intention, it just automatically matches the capture speed. You know, you mentioned something really interesting about the angle of attack and I'm not sure whether you've done any work on this. I've asked a few friends but they've not really looked at it from this perspective. So with a VSP of 45 on the driver, it's a one-to-one relationship angle of attack and club path. Does it matter that much for the button? So let's say you hit down on the button, you should push the path out to the right. You hit up should push left. But how big of an impact is that?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's a very good question and and I've gone back and forth on that over the years right, because you know, we do want to put top spin on the ball. And the reason we want to put top spin on the ball is so that it starts rolling quicker. And the quicker it starts rolling, the less it's affected by imperfections in the green. So there's a rationale for hitting up on it as opposed to being level, because if it's level it's not going to put overspin on it. So we do want to put overspin on it, as opposed to being level, because if it's level it's not going to put overspin on it, so we do want to put overspin on it. Now, the putter doesn't have much loft on it, right? So it's a bit of a catch-22, because you do want to put overspin on it, but you don't want the path going left Right.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense, right, and and I feel like that's counteracted by, you know, a little bit of forward shuffling right To to kind of to kind of match that up. So that's why I did say earlier, like it is important to get good at straight putts, right. Like, like my partner who you were talking to earlier, all he does now is he goes to the golf course, he hits 10 putts with a, you know, a limonade, 10 straight putts, and he goes and plays, because he's a great green reader and he just makes sure his field's good on his straight ones and then he goes out and plays golf and you know he's gotten a lot, lot better, obviously, at putting, but it's an easy way of doing it.
Speaker 3:It's putting on the proverbial straight line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3:Can we talk a little bit about face plane tilt? So I'm talking about guys like Isau Aoki and Steve Stricker on opposite ends of the spectrum. So Aoki had the toe of the putter up in the air and Steve Stricker has the heel up in the air and when my students see it they go like coach. How does that even work? Can you talk a little bit about the face plane tilt?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, there's geniuses that can get away with things and there's exceptions to every rule. I think people should have the putter flush on the ground. I think, optically, if the putter's flush on the ground, if you've got a line or if you've got some type of alignment on your putter, it's going to work best in that position. I feel like the problem with the toe up in the air is, let's say, you've got a line on your putter and the toe is up in the air. The line might look like it's pointed at your target, but the face is going to be left right, so that's going to be getting the face left. Every player I've seen who's got the toe up in the air either has a left miss bias or has manipulated their stroke to accommodate that, which is leading to poor launch conditions. So there's no really good case to try to attempt to to to attempt to do that, especially with you know putter fittings now, and you know we don't need to. We definitely don't want to do that.
Speaker 3:Okay, last last question for me, and then we'll talk a bit about your, your app, membership and certifications for instructors. So at what do we do? Do we treat all three footers as a straight butt and negate any break? Because, uh, when you, when you use tommy, for example, you'll see that the balls kind of airborne for the first foot or so and then gravity and friction doesn't really have an impact. Can you talk a little bit about that? So I tried good case in, so I tried to get cute with your app and then I went to a 2% 3% slope and then realized that the read somehow wasn't as accurate as it was for a 15 footer.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. You're probably hitting it harder. I think a lot of us instinctively hit our three footers harder. But yeah, I definitely don't think you should try to take. You should try to take the take the breakout. I think you know it. It works.
Speaker 2:The the physics is the physics, you know. I, I know it's airborne. It's not airborne for much. And the other thing too is, if you've got a three footer, it's really not. You're hitting it so lightly, like the ball's only starting at one mile an hour, so it's not going to get airborne much at all. To be honest with you, like when we talk about a putter, a ball being airborne for a foot, that's more on like a 30 footer, does that make sense? So on the three footer it only be airborne for, you know, an inch, inch and a half. It's not going to be, you know, airborne much.
Speaker 2:So I always get people just use the exact same system on a three footer. You know the physics is physics, it doesn't matter the length of it. And I think that you know if we're tapping into one footer, yeah, we might tap it in, you know, aggressively. But I feel like on a three footer if you watch door, I mean if you watch the best in the world they're hitting. They're hitting all their putts with the same speed, or at least that's their intention. I think. I don't think we should get start getting into a thing where, okay, this length I'll hit the harder, this length I'll hit softer, like we want to have a good visual of how we want the ball to go in the hole.
Speaker 3:And then you, you know, just do that every part we had. Okay gotcha. Can you talk a little bit about your app, what our, where our listeners can find out about it, as well as the certification program?
Speaker 2:so the app is in the app store, right it?
Speaker 2:hopefully it's in it whenever this go ahead no android yet, yeah we're hopefully with hopefully, but by by september 1st, so hopefully, very quickly. We had a lot of uh, a lot more testing with android. There's a lot more um, different, you know, just a lot more testing involved in android. But, uh, but it's in the app store right now. It's uh, you know it. What I wanted to do is I want to have a entire system to teach people how to putt. So I've got a video library in there that I'm very proud of. I've got, you know, the entire system's in there and, like I said, the average user is going to save two shots within the first month. Got a seven-day trial in it. You know, I do get a lot of questions about hey, my phone's not level. There's a calibration process. You just have to put it on a flat table. It calibrates, spin it around and the app will look for what kind of camera case you have. You don't need to recalibrate your phone every time. You'll need to recalibrate your phone if you get a new case, or yeah, that's basically it if you get a new case, like I. I just got a new case a couple weeks ago. Other than that, I hadn't calibrated my phone for a year and I used on two. I used it, obviously, every day and it was great, right, but it does look for um different cases in the app store coming to android soon.
Speaker 2:And we've got a certification program as well for coaches, and I'm super proud of this. Like I'm a golf coach myself, I'm a golf pro. I want something that people can, you know, learn like learn what I know about putting right and then can teach this to their students right. And you know it's very cost effective. It's all on our website, you know, tourreadgolfcom. You can go there, learn all about it and, like I said, we had essentially everybody that gets certified gets. You know. We've had, you know, crazy good feedback from people on how much it's helped their teaching right and giving them some like an extra tool in their toolbox to help their students and, and I mentioned this earlier, I've taught this to 1200 people.
Speaker 3:It's it's a fun thing to teach people, for sure yeah, it's so easy that even my juniors uh, he's 12 years old, he's, uh, he's, he's breaking par already. He never was a great, but but now he does the formulas in his head. You wouldn't even know he's calculating something. He just walks up to the the hole, walks back, boom, ready to put. That's how easy the system is. Yeah, it's awesome. So, uh, do you entertain, uh, inquiries from listeners? Do you? Do you have a instagram socials? How?
Speaker 2:does it work for you guys?
Speaker 2:yeah, you guys are on the road every week yeah, so I teach a lot of tour players right and which is which is fun and um, you know I've just done that for so long. It's it's, it's just's just a. You know it's a fun job. But I'm on Instagram. I got a personal account, ralph Bauer. Ralph Bauer and I'm also going for tour read. You know, if people have questions, you know feel free to shoot. I try to put out content that actually people that would actually help people, right? So you know, I like wow, wow, this will really help somebody. That's my first instinct, as opposed to wow, this will go viral, but you know, sometimes it does. But I do like putting out content that would actually help people.
Speaker 3:Jesse, any last questions for Ralph?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hope. Well, I've got a statement and then, boy, I'll tell you I I'm so encouraged, ralph, that you're out there and that this, this system, is available to all because it bears repeating again. It's like Justin and I have talked about so many times, where a lot of times it's not somebody's golf swing and in this case, a lot of times it's not somebody's putting stroke. They simply are misreading putts, and I see it so much that it's actually kind of a subconscious acceptance. And I mean, like, like Justin, like Justin said earlier and I think this is the case, and I've been telling people this for a long time that becoming a good putter is.
Speaker 1:It's not hard, but you have to learn how to read grades Well. If you read greens well, you're going to put pretty well. You're going to put pretty well. You're going to have your subconscious working for you instead of damage control, you know. So, um, I'm looking forward to, to uh getting this started and adopting the, the app and this uh methodology for my own game too. So applause and cheers to you, ralph, for for bringing this to all of us well.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me on. It's been a lot of fun. I just love helping people enjoy the game more, play better and it's fun to get the feedback from so many people around the world how much better they're putting.
Speaker 3:Hey Ralph, can't thank you enough for your time, man.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah thanks, ralph Ralph. You enough for your time, man. Well, thank you. Yeah thanks, ralph Ralph Bauer of Tour Read everyone.