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 Putting Performance with Dr. Craig Farnsworth: Vision, Alignment, and Mastering Distance Control
Feel free to text me at (831)275-8804
Unlock the secrets to mastering your putt with the legendary "Putt Doctor" himself, Dr. Craig Farnsworth. Join us as we journey through Dr. Farnsworth’s transformation from a sports vision optometrist for the Denver Nuggets to a revered putting coach in the golfing world. Discover his unique methods to enhance your putting skills by harnessing your visual abilities. From target accuracy to alignment and peripheral awareness, learn why vision is the cornerstone to a successful putt and how most golfers overlook this critical aspect before focusing on stroke mechanics or equipment choices.
Ever wondered how eye dominance and ball position could reshape your putting game? We unravel the complexities of these often-overlooked factors, especially for right-handed and cross-dominant players. Misalignment due to neglecting eye dominance can drastically affect your aim and target line perception. Listen in for practical tips on adjusting your ball position, stance, and even neck tilt to align your visual perception perfectly and hit those putts with pinpoint accuracy.
Challenging everything you thought you knew about putting, we shed light on putting myths and the true art of distance control. From stance width to the biomechanics of putter fitting, gain insights on how stance balance impacts your game and why speed control is crucial to avoid those dreaded three-putts. Hear about the techniques of top golfers like Loren Roberts, who mastered lag putting, and learn why proper putter fitting is more about biomechanics than comfort. We also bust common myths in green reading and share modern techniques for better ball roll and distance control, inspired by champions like Canale and Cam Smith. This episode is packed with transformative advice to elevate your putting prowess.
To find out more, go to www.puttdoctor.com
To reach Justin, his email is justin@elitegolfswing.com
To reach Jesse, his email is jesse@flaghuntersgolf.com
A big THANK YOU to TaylorMade and Adidas for their support in bringing you this valuable game enhancing information…
Hello and welcome once again to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. My name is Jesse Perryman and I thank you for tuning in along with my co-host and dear friend, justin Tang. We welcome you to a man who's been around the golf space for a long time. His name is Dr Craig Farnsworth. He is known as the moniker of the putt doctor, an optician by education, former Denver sports professional eye doctor, primarily with the Denver Nuggets for years. He made his way in the golf space 30 plus years ago and has since worked with some of the best players in the world over this time, as well as you and I, who want to get better playing this game. Dr Farnsworth is very, very, very good at getting your eyes to see what is, getting your eyes to see what is coming from neutral. So he's going to go ahead and tune your eyes, get your setup, everything according so that you can see the line better, and he's going to go ahead and tune your eyes, get your setup, everything according so that you can see the line better, and he's going to teach you to do that. We explore that and talk about that at great length in this conversation. Justin primarily takes the lead on this one. I'm just listening and taking it all in. The good doctor has been kind enough to put his information on the pod in the conversation, but I will cc it in the show notes. If you're serious and you want to get to a next level with your putting whatever that next level is for you, see him, check him out, take a lesson from him. He has certification courses to become certified in his methodology. Once again, I can't understate this. The man has helped the best in the world. The man has helped you and I alike and continues to do just that. His passion is obvious and evident when you hear the words coming out of his mouth in this conversation. It's fantastic. If you're in the desert area, especially next winter, feel free to hit him up. Make sure that you tell him that you heard this podcast and I'm sure that he will take good care of you.
Speaker 1:Dr Craig Farnsworth, everyone and Justin Tang, once again from the Tan American Golf Club in Singapore. And I am Jesse Perryman, the host and founder of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, coming at you from Monterey, california. And lastly, before we get into the meat and potatoes of the show, shout out to Scotty Scheffler for playing incredible golf this year, doing it with a courageous heart. He went through some stuff this year uh, wrongfully arrested at his first child in the midst of winning the gold medal, winning a second masters and bevy of the other great golf tournaments on the pga tour and around the world. And a shout out also to my friend, lydia co uh, for winning the the women British and before that, literally the week before that, securing the gold in Paris. Lydia, congrats to Lydia. And a shout out to her and her husband, june. I hold them in very high regard and just shout out to both of those incredible individuals for an incredible year and everyone else who's played well this year for an incredible year, and everyone else who's played well this year. And we look forward to serving you moving into 2025 this winter, and we do have some exciting stuff coming down the pike. I'll go ahead and announce that in the next few weeks. Have a great week, everyone, and cheers.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. My name is Jesse Perryman and I'm having trouble speaking right now because I'm in awe of our esteemed guest and, along with Justin Tang, we thank you for tuning in and today we have a man by the name of the Putt Doctor who's been out there for a long time teaching people how to see the greens a little bit better, how to understand lines a little bit better, and I'm sure I'm generalizing it a little bit, but his name is Dr Craig Farnsworth and we're so thankful and pleased to have you on, doc, thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:I love it. Hey, dr Farnsworth, such an honor to have you on our podcast this morning. You're one of the more unique putting instructors in the United States, let alone the world. You are actually an optometrist by training, correct?
Speaker 3:So could you just Started my niche.
Speaker 2:Could you just give us, our listeners, a little bit of a background and how you got into teaching golf? I'm sure they'll find it very interesting.
Speaker 3:Well, I guess a couple of things to bring up. Number one my dad was a golf pro, so I was introduced to the game pretty early on. And secondly, I was a sports vision doctor, which meant that we took a lot of athletes, brought them in and worked with them on certain visual skills like peripheral awareness, target accuracy, alignment, speed and recognition, eye-hand coordination, eye balance, blah, blah, blah. And I started getting a lot of golfers in saying, hey, I can't aim, I need glasses. And so I of course tested them and said you don't need glasses, you just need to work on your target accuracy. And so we started to come up with ideas to help them with that. And pretty soon I got invited by Jim McLean to leave my practice and go work with him, and that's what started it back in 1997.
Speaker 2:So can you talk a little bit about the importance of vision? You know, when people talk about putting, all they want to know is is it straight back, straight through, is it an arc? Where should I put a ball? What kind of grip should I use? What kind of putter should I use to match my stroke type? But I think before we even get there, we need to make sure you are looking, seeing. Sorry, you are seeing what you are looking at.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, as Leonardo da Vinci said, most of us think our illusions match reality and they do not, and so early on we found out that at 10 feet, less than one out of 10 people aim correctly one time, let alone three times in a row.
Speaker 3:And so it was already known to me that in other sports you didn't have a lot of guys like Steph Curry in the NBA that were visually savant performers. Most of them were athletically gifted in terms of the physical skills, but they were lacking the visual skills, and so it was easy for me to take a look. I was a Denver Nugget eye doctor for eight years. 15 feet for free throw line shooting actually pointed his eyes both eyes in the middle of the two rims. Everybody else was generally short and left short and right or just short, and so it kind of made us realize that even with these elite physical athletes there was some visual handicaps or challenges, and being an eye doctor and doing a lot of visual training, we knew we could improve visual skills, and when we have, we've been astonished at how much better players perform and consistency there than just working with mechanics or how-tos.
Speaker 2:And that's the interesting thing, we talk about putting the cart before the horse. A lot of pros they aim either left or right, so on, on putts. So, for example, if they aim too far to the left, they they instinctively know to push the putt and that what that causes is it raises the angle of attack. But these guys don't understand vision. They start working on the angle of attack. But these guys don't understand vision. They start working on the angle of attack without understanding the true cause of it.
Speaker 1:And they're just wasting a lot of time.
Speaker 2:So in putting there's initially the read, the aim and the alignment. Can we go into the differences between these three skills of putting?
Speaker 3:Well, yes, and basically all of this starts with the eyes, doesn't it? I mean, we've got to locate the target, we've got to then be able to aim at it, which most people don't. You can have your. I don't know if your viewers knew how to find the dominant eye or not, but generally speaking, it's the eye they can not close real easily. They can close the non-dominant eye quickly, but closing the other one isn't so easy. Or if you take a look and you put a range finder up to your eyes, which eye are you using right? So that's usually your dominant eye.
Speaker 3:So a person looked at a target across the room let's say a light switch and had them look at it and then close their eyes and then point with their index finger at that target and then open their dominant eye. Where are they pointing? It's amazing how many people are left, right, below or above or a combination thereof, and that's just showing you that, unless you go touch it thereof, and that's just showing you that, unless you go touch it, your projection of where it is or your visualization perception is incorrect. And that's kind of what we work with. People don't realize that it doesn't have to be. It isn't blurred, it's clear, because accommodations there. But the way you point your eyes at the target is where you locate it and that's where most people aren't like some guy like Steph Curry.
Speaker 2:And then what about aim? I think you probably were credited with drawing lines on the ball.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, what we just did was an aim test, and then what we came up with from studies from 1990 to 1997 was different ways to get players to quickly aim better, and I came up with drawing the line on the ball. For a lot of players it was an immediate improvement in getting them somewhere near their zip code where the target was, as opposed to how they were lining up beforehand. So overall, it became something that no one on tour was talking about or had been doing. And then, all of a sudden, within a short time of a few years, we've got about 85% of the tour players using a line Parker, all of the time, and you gave that line to Tiger, didn't you?
Speaker 3:We gave it to a student who played with Tiger in a third US amateur and Tiger was talking to the guy God, you're putting really well, what's going on? He said I went to this eye doctor and he gave me some ideas of how to aim better because I was off. And Tiger said well, what did he tell you? And my student said you know, I didn't realize this was a team event. You know, I thought this was individual. And Tiger goes come on, you can tell me. He said I'll give you the guy's name and number here. He writes it down uh, go talk to this guy. Tiger watches him for about three more holes as they're playing a practice run and says I know what you're doing. You're aiming that damn line on the ball. Aha, grabs his ball, does the immediate line. Uh, as I, he told me later and actually was uh quoted. He was putting like doo-doo and that made all the difference in the world and and he ended up winning his third straight usm.
Speaker 2:So how thick should the line be? So a lot of people have have a thin line. So thin line means your speed and your aims pretty much like matched up most of the time. But I think most of the golfers that are listening to this podcast are not that precise. So perhaps a thicker line, or perhaps even three lines, like the callaway three line ball, would suggest. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:yeah, I'm one of my better senior amateurs. I could never get to line up the ball and he lined up left of jane fonda and uh. So basically, sorry, it's my only political. So, anyhow, um, we put, um, we tried to get different uh scenarios and then, after uh, about five years of grinding on certain things, he says to me got him planned better than ever. I said, well, what's going on? He said, well, that lesson you gave me last time was just unbelievable on the setup changes you made. But I got this triple line ball and for some reason now I can line it up. I never could line up one line. I said hallelujah, hallelujah, yeah whatever, whatever works.
Speaker 2:You're here and and let's talk a little bit about eye dominance and ball position now before we go into this. Dr Craig, actually how I knew about you was when I first started golf in uh 98. I came across your book. Uh, I believe it was called Seed and Sink it. Very good, yeah, exactly yeah, and I was like I don't need this. Back then I was hitting a lot of beans close enough to the hole. I never, as a young kid, I never thought it was important to understand all these things. And then you fast forward to 2020. I got hooked up with Mr Bruce Rearick and I realized that hey, this is really important and I got really turned on to your teachings big time.
Speaker 3:Good, good. Well, sometimes it takes a little time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unfortunately. So let's talk about eye dominance and ball position, right. So you've got you've got a segment of golfers who are right eye dominant. They play from the correct side of the ball, and then you've got cross dominant guys. So these are guys who are right hand dominant but left eye dominant. Can we talk a little bit about where the ball should be and how these guys, when they don't understand ball position and eye dominance, how they mess themselves up?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's amazing that people didn't realize eye dominance and still kind of don't. When I got into this it was shocking as to how much the tour and amateurs and golfers and instructors realized that eyes were important but couldn't give you much information on it at all. So it gave me a good chance to come in and hopefully make an impact. But it's amazing right now, justin and Jesse, that most of the kids know their dominant eye golfers now and the adults don't. So thank God we're getting into a little bit of an understanding of how important it is to know dominant eye. And then to your question, being able to understand dominance realizes that their dominant eye needs to be above or behind the ball as opposed to in front of the ball when you're referencing the target line. And I find an incredible amount of cross-dominant players play golf more than the average population. So it's amazing how many cross-dominant players I have come in that put the ball in the middle of their stance, like the typical right-handed, same-side dominant which is prevalent. And then they wonder why they have trouble seeing the line or don't aim very well. So one of the first things we do is either get their head rotated back a little bit, but preferably get the ball forward in their stance. And so most of them we end their center, but left of the center, closer to the pant leg if you will crease of the left leg, then we've got a lot better ability to see the line.
Speaker 3:And when I first came up with the line on the ball, truth be known, I could never make it look quite right as I started playing with this. And then one morning I woke up, I think more toward the middle of the night, and I said you idiot, you're left-eyed domino, what are you doing? I couldn't wait to get back out there and start inching the ball closer and closer to my left foot. And I'm going oh my God, this is perfect. And so I found the right position for it to for that line to look good. And all of a sudden I realized, wow, I've got to really pay attention to cross to cross and uh, same side, and uh, cross dominant players. Uh, when I'm starting to teach which I hadn't quite done a lot of teaching at the time, just more experimenting um, and that's made a big difference in a lot of players.
Speaker 2:Great. And then can we segue into the stance Because of your ball position? How does that affect your stance?
Speaker 3:Well, it can, and I try and still get the players to get into a visual situation where their eyes are able to see the line correctly and still have their shoulders parallel to the target line. So not a problem really with the left eye dominant players too much. They really don't open their stance, especially their shoulders, because that doesn't work for them. And yet for the right eye dominant player, we had a player with a ball position that needed to be adjusted a little bit, but he said I can't see the line here. And I had him open his feet a little bit and he goes oh my God, that made all the difference in the world. You want me to open my feet? I said yeah, you're right eye dominant, same side. I got your shoulders square. Now You've been open them 15 degrees and then you wonder why you can't get the putter on plane on the way back and through. And so now, with your shoulders square, you can't see the line. But if you open your feet a little, how's that look? He goes oh my God, that's perfect. I went there, you go. I thought you wanted everything to be square. I said I didn't say that.
Speaker 3:Um, one of the first people that made me aware of that was someone named casey martin. Remember that name? Yes, yes, head coach of oregon. His instructor brought him to me once when I was out on the tour and he goes uh, casey, show him this putt here. It was about a two breaker left to right. And he opens the stance a little and his coach says you see that, doc, and I went yeah. He said okay, let's move over here. So now the putt was breaking about, um, uh, almost a putter length left or right. And here's casey opens these feet even more and his coach says you see that. I said yeah. So then he got a one. Then was pretty hard to find, but it was incredibly breaking foot, probably 50 some inches. And Casey opens his feet even more. He's got his shoulders square, got his left foot way back. Coach says you see that I go, yeah, he said I'm not saying a thing.
Speaker 3:He's not the same setup and his feet aren't square. I said he's opened his feet according to how much he needs to do that to see the line he's got to be right eye dominant and the coach goes. I thought you wanted everything square. I said yeah. When I first started out I thought that sounded good, but I found out the hard way that same side dominant players to see the line prefer a little bit of an open stance with their feet.
Speaker 2:Let's talk a little bit about neck tilts at setup. So if my neck, when viewed from down the line, is too vertical, when I look towards the target, everything would seem too far to the right. Conversely, if my neck tilt is too flat, a bit like Michelle Wee, everything I look at when I gaze towards the target, everything would look too far left. Can we talk a little bit about it and how our listeners can adjust their neck tilts so that their eyes seeing where they are looking?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so most of the players, if you watch someone on tour and then their face is angled up a little bit, so their primary gaze if you put something right straight, perpendicular to their face, their primary gaze would be out there, about three feet to the head of the ball, above the ball, I should say. And so if they then turn their head to look down the target line, in that position most of the eyes turn and start facing a little to the left, so that messes up with the sight line that we want, or the target line. And so we've recommended, especially for the same side, that's, right eye, right handed, to get them to tuck their chin, as I call it. In fact I even have it written down and typed out for them and I circle that. So I want their neck to be flatter and I want their face to be parallel to Earth. Beam me up, scotty, so that when their face is parallel to Earth, then me up, scotty, so that when their face is parallel to Earth, then they rotate their head. Okay, their both eyes go down the target line.
Speaker 3:If their face is angled too far up and not in the faces and parallel to Earth, then their tendency is to not be on the target line with both eyes or on the target line at all. So I'm big on getting the eyes looking down either at the middle of the ball or we've got, I'd say, probably on tour. Most players have their eyes on the inside edge of the ball. That's where they see the line the best. Hideki actually has his eyes even inside of that. That's where he sees the line the best, a true target line we're talking about, and that is an individual thing. So when someone says your eyes got to be over the ball, that's not necessarily true. So here's the Japanese kid, hideki, that's got his eyes more inside the ball. The most I've ever had is someone named Isao Aoki.
Speaker 2:You remember Isao With his toe right up in the air, the toe straight up in the air. One of the best, one of the best putters, you know, doc. Let's talk a little bit about this ball position thing. Justin Leonard, one of the best putters, has his eye line way inside the ball line. Mm-hmm, let's destroy that myth right there. Do we need the ball position below the eye or not, and why?
Speaker 3:You don't need your eyes in one position because it sounds good. You need to find where your eyes need to be so that a line, like a line on the ball, which is aimed properly at the target, looks correct at address, and your eye position needs to be at a point where that line looks good at address. And so two things happen with the line on the ball. One, we tend to be a little better aimer, if not really good. And then number two if our setup is correct, visually especially, then that line looks good at address. If it doesn't, your eyes are not in the right spot or the ball isn't either.
Speaker 2:Here, here, straight from an eye doctor. There are too many myths floating around in the world of golf, to the detriment of golfers, who spend their hard-earned money and whatever little time they have practicing all these destructive myths.
Speaker 3:Yep, yep, way too many myths for putting green reading and other things.
Speaker 2:Almost everything else in golf.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, doc, you talked about Isao Aoki how his toe hangs up in the air. And then, decades later, steve Stricker comes along, one of the best putters in the world. He's got his heel off the ground.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah comes along. One of the best putters in the world.
Speaker 2:he's got his heel off the ground, yeah. And then you've got people selling putters saying the sole has to be flat on the ground. I think the point is this that we're trying to make is that because of the loft of the putter, whether the toe is up or not, the face is still pointing straight at the target. It's a bit different if it's a sandwich, because of a lot more face-plane tilt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, basically the lie angle can make a difference, but it's amazing how many players on tour have the toe slightly up. Hideki is an example of one that's overdone it, I think, Got his hands too low, but he can putt well. And then you've got DeChambeau, who's got the toe down. Some of my players that tend to pull the ball, like DJ. We gave him an idea of how about getting the handle higher and the toe down a little bit, and he goes okay, I'll try that. And he goes God, I'm not pulling the putts anymore. I think that's going to work. So that's his setup. So why didn't he change the lie angle? He didn't want to. He said hey, I, this gives me an idea where I need to have my hands and, um, that's, uh, the feedback I need to you later.
Speaker 2:Doc, I know you've got a preference for the Jack Nicklaus setup and stroke. Can we talk a little bit about stance width in that regard?
Speaker 3:About what now.
Speaker 2:Stance width. I know you have a preference. Oh, stance width. Yeah, jack Nicklaus had a pretty narrow stance. He and Arnold Palmer had their knees fairly close to each other.
Speaker 3:You know that's an individual thing. Biomechanically the distance between your two insteps should be the length of your foot plus the width of your foot, which is generally around 16 to 17 inches for most players, most guys. Generally around 16 to 17 inches for most players, most guys and I've had some 6'2", 6'3", 6'4" guys meet at about 17 1⁄2 to 19 inches and none of them like that. They go. You know I'm not really happy with that. So biomechanically that's supposed to be ideal. But the key for me is are they moving? And if they're not moving then it's not putting too much strain on their balance system, especially for longer putts. So it's an individual thing. If someone's moving a little bit on longer putts, yeah, I wouldn't mind them moving their feet out away from each other a little bit to see if that helps. That's okay, but most of the time individual preference.
Speaker 2:Got you. So can we talk a little bit about speed or distance control, and do you have any insights or tips for our listeners to eliminate the dreaded three-putt?
Speaker 3:Well, what are the big challenges we have out there in golf? Think about it. Obviously, green reading is, uh at probably number one, from the tour all the way down to the neophyte. Uh no putts, ever the same right, it's a little up, a little down, it's a little longer, a little shorter, or the same distance but different slopes. So speed control is number one for especially juniors, but can be for a lot of players, and so we give them options for speed to see which works the best, one being tempo. Is their tempo consistent or different distances? So that's something that the instructor can help them with. Is their backstroke long enough or too long? So we work with that as an option.
Speaker 3:We had someone that is on the Epson tour who had extremely slow tempo and extremely long backstroke and after seeing her once and then realizing that, looking at her stats and everything, that the second time she came back we may want to do a little adjustment. So I said I'm going to go out on a limb, give you something to work on, not this week, because you're playing in the Epson Tour deal over at Morongo, but I'm going to have you go from tick-tock to tick-tock, tick first, one backstroke, tock backstroke to impact and he says, wow, that's a lot different than what I'm doing. I said, yeah, it is, but just practice to play with a little bit. You are a practicer, so I want you to play with and see, and let's do it a couple of times. So we did it a few times and she goes. I could probably do that. And I said, all right, not this week, all right, but put it into your practice and when you're ready to play with it, see if it helps you some. Well, I call her on Saturday after her round and I said how's it going? She goes God, I'm loving this new tempo. This is so cool. I went. I thought we were going to wait on that until you practiced a little bit. So no, I just felt, after leaving you and working on this a little bit, this was the answer I'm not taking the putter back too long, I'm taking it back much shorter. My tempo feels better and consistent and, by the way, she ended up moving from like 32nd to 12th, I think, in the next two tournaments. Of course, this is earlier in the year when this happened, but uh, she's doing well, we love it. So, tempo, backstroke, length and then um, um, basically, where are they looking?
Speaker 3:So most people like, uh, one of my players goes, see on the. He puts a 30 footer. He's about six to seven feet short. He said, said, that's my problem, I can't get the ball to the cup. And I said, well, I think it may be perception, so let's have you take a look at the cup, close your eyes, point out to the cup, open your dominant eye. Where are you pointing? He goes oh my God, I'm putting off it close to the ball. And I said, well, nice putt. So he goes. You mean to tell me that's where I perceived the cup? I said, yes, I do. So I said you would be a guy that I would have putt more downhill putts. But uphill putts, you're going to have a hard time getting the ball to the cup. He says, god, tell me about it. So, indeed, visual perception.
Speaker 3:And good old Leonardo da Vinci's comment holds true that most players don't have good perception and need to find out what their perception is chipping and putting. And one of my chapters in that book See it and Sink it was the hole is seldom the target ie. Hole is seldom the target. Ie should be longer, should be shorter. Downhill should be more right, if it's a right to left putt Instead of looking at the cut before they putt one. That's a need to be started a foot out, not look at your aim point and putt to that, not to the cut. So that's been some of the things we work with them on and we give them options to see what helps and sometimes we even have them change their tempo. It's an extremely slow seven stint, uh, three percent uphill.
Speaker 3:They, some players, just can't take it back far enough. So I had bob charles, one of the premier speed control players ever in the pga tour, from new zealand, so he wanted me to help him with his alignment. This is in his later years on the Champions Tour. And so I said I'm going to ask you a question. Your speed is unbelievable. What do you do on a 10-foot putt? I take the putter back this far. I said, okay, what do you do on a 20-foot putt? I take the putter back this much further. How about 30 feet? Well, I take the putter this much further. Okay, how about 40 feet? He said, aha, I can't take the putter back any further than at 30 feet. My brain won't let me. So what do you do? Then he says I change my tempo. Wow, I thought. Here's out of the mouth of one of the best. Okay, he doesn't use the same tempo every time, so this is another option you need to maybe give players so that they find what works the best for them.
Speaker 2:I guess it's the same for pitch shots, isn't it? 15-yard pitch shot. The tempo's a bit slower Once you get to call it the 45 range, it's going to be a bit more brisk. Sure, it's not going to be one-to-one, it's probably one-to-one and a half.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well it's. You know it's the load. You're letting the load do the work Pipping, pitching and putting. So you bet Getting the putter back not enough means you've got to use different scenarios, like your hands too much to fire the putter or the blade through and you're rushing it, and then you want to write your timing is off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also I think I think Bob Charles probably had that issue because he really had 40 foot putts, because he what he really had 40 foot putts.
Speaker 3:You don't need to practice that that's probably true, because you look at the PGA Tour and where do their three putts avoidance become worse? They're almost triple A, three times more, potentially three putting at 40 feet and beyond. And so, yeah, they don't practice a lot of that because they don't normally have them. But guess what? This takes one shot to make a difference in a million bucks for the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I think you need to practice it and hope you don't use it. Have to use it.
Speaker 3:Right, but at least I think it's good to practice. I try and get my players to give themselves as stupid as possible, because but at least I think it's good to practice I try and get my players to give themselves the stupidest putts possible because, if nothing else, it improves their imagination and some guy like Napoleon actually said that imagination rules the world. Aha, love that comment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always get my players, whether you're on tour or otherwise, I say practice the 50-60 footers because that's going to develop your touch and feel how you see the line, how you stroke the ball and just a general sense of speed. I said I've never seen a guy who was good from 60 feet mess up from 12 feet. But I've seen the opposite.
Speaker 1:Right, well said and I like that, yeah, and I have to make. I gotta make a comment on that real quick. Gents, I remember hearing lauren roberts talk. Somebody asked lauren how he developed his touch in his field, particularly for his lag putts, and when he was a young assistant at san luis obispo country club. Uh, I mean, I know that that putting green, the practice green in front of the pro shops, changed a little bit, but it's still pretty wicked, wicked slopes, wicked fast, wicked speeds. And Loren would go out in between his duties there when he was manning the golf shop and he'd go out and putt there for quite a long time. He did this for a few years and he says putting on that green because it was so sloped to the extreme that he would find next to impossible 50, 60 footers and just try to just keep figuring them out. And, uh, you know, to this day he's the best putter I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 2:Boss of the month boss of the month yep, he's amazing with.
Speaker 3:You know him and Aaron Baddeley wouldn't be on the tour without their magic wand. That makes up for a lot of ills, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, I mean we could talk about the mount rushmore putters and uh yeah, I got a fun question for you and for the listeners to think about if you're playing. If you're playing in a match play event, would you rather play against somebody who beats it 30 or 40 by you, or would you rather play against a wicked putter?
Speaker 3:um, I would not care about it, anybody hitting it 30 to 40 yards by me, because that's typical, and so my only, my only way of getting uh even is my short game and my putting. So, uh, you know you hate that when people, yeah, are hitting first into the green, they're even. You know, I played this uh lpga young lady not young anymore, she's almost 70 some years of age. I'm out driving her by 40 to 50 yards, right, just too closer to the pen on their second shot I'm hitting irons in and she's hitting four woods, four hybrids, whatever, and knocking it closer than me. And then, obviously, her chances of making that putt is a lot more at 10 feet than mine at 20 feet. So, yeah, okay, number one, get it close and number two, make the putt you should make, and then some.
Speaker 2:Hey Doc, let's get your thoughts on putter fitting.
Speaker 3:Oh my God. Well, my thoughts on putter fitting are if you ever go to someone that tells you okay, we're going to fit you with a putter, now get comfortable, walk away. Yeah, exactly, get comfortable has nothing to do with it. It has to be an efficient hip flex setup. Everything has to be in order eyes in relationship to the ball ball in relationship to the feet, and that way, when the arms hang comfortably, then you give them a putter and then you measure the length. But other than that, I'd say probably 90 plus percent of my students have putter too long because they get comfortable, they stand up too much. It looks like they're going to the bathroom instead of putting, and most of it's because they grab a putter off the shelf that's a 34, 35 inch, and then the adjuster set up for that, when we know that the 34, 35 inch is only produced because it fits better in the bag. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. I did not know that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And really, what do beginners know about being comfortable? They've got no idea, right they?
Speaker 3:slouch.
Speaker 2:They get a club, they slouch into into a position and like go, oh, that's comfortable, but they've got no, they've got no benchmark.
Speaker 3:Essentially, yeah, they're right, and it's amazing how many of them hunch their shoulders to get into that position too sometimes. So yeah, going to a, a person that understands the biomechanics and does some definite work with putting and setup posture, stance et cetera, is going to give that person a lot better chance of getting fit correctly with a lie, even loft, but lie especially at length, let alone the head design for better aim.
Speaker 2:One of the reasons okay, what do you think about lines or dots and offset on the head itself?
Speaker 3:well, I think that all that is, uh, the fun part of fitting is what works the best. Is it, uh, mid slant, is it plumber neck, is it long, is it short? Is it center shafted, et cetera. So that has a lot to do with with your aim, as well as lines. So I've got some players that don't like lines.
Speaker 3:I had one player that came to me and said Doc, I want to work with you, but I'm going to tell you, I know you're a line guy, I am not going to put a line on you, but I'm going to tell you, I know you're a line guy, I am not going to put a line on the ball, I'm not aiming a ball, I hate lines and so I don't want to even have you tell me about it. Now work with me. So I said okay, and so we? I said so you're a face. And he goes yeah. I said well, how's that working for you? I can't aim outside of six feet. He wasn't kidding. So we worked with him and, believe it or not, he's one of the first people these are years ago that I realized that with his blade putter that he aimed at up to 15 feet, perfectly aiming the back edge. He could only aim perfectly at six feet or inside aiming the front edge.
Speaker 3:So he went out and made about $250,000 to $300,000 more the next year on Champion Stewart. So he comes to me the next year and says I want you to check me again. I think I'm even better than that 12 feet. He said I'm not paying you for this because I just checked me. I'm going, I've got to be kidding. So I did a quick check on him before he went out to play. He was a guest at our club the next year or two and by God he aimed. He had a tee with our laser up to 18 feet A tee, not just a cup but a tee. And so he winks at me and goes we got it, doc, see you Bye. Later years on the tour for him. But he made some darn good money the last two or three years and that was mainly because he could aim the dag gun putter correctly.
Speaker 2:Can we talk a little bit about the most destructive myths in golf, in putting especially?
Speaker 3:Well, I kind of keep hearing about accelerating through the ball, I keep hearing about mechanical things, and our job generally is to get players to ditch the mechanics and trust the stroke, just like we try and get players to trust the swing. So, overall, the quicker we can get off of mechanics and into tempo and into visual pictures and to hitting over a spot, the better off we are. And I think some of the biggest myths on green reading are that the grain bottles are setting sun and that everything slopes away, from the mountains, for example, and so we have the Salton Sea out by us here, which is the lowest inland point in the United States. So everyone that plays here knows where Indio is. Everything breaks toward Indio. Well, our golf course is only a few miles from Indio, one of the closest. We have 20 greens, two obviously practice greens. Five of them break toward the Salton Sea. Significantly. The rest of them are all over the place. So why is that? Well, because, as Larry Bohannon from the Desert Sun says, ABD. I said what's ABD? He goes after bulldozers were invented, we can move the damn dirt. So on the seventh hole you know just the adjustment we have a pond. It's the only real big water feature on the course. Guess where the greens flow Away from the pond oh my God, you've got to be kidding and toward the Salton Sea. Well, that makes sense. Everything breaks toward Salton Sea, all right. On the eighth hole, the very next one, there's a water on the left-hand side. Everything breaks toward the water on the green Well. That's because everything breaks toward the low point, the water. So well, wait a minute, it didn't break on the seventh hole toward the water. It broke toward the Salton Sea, which is miles away. And now it breaks away from the Salton Sea. Oh boy, now they're confused. Okay well, I thought that everything broke toward the Salton Sea. Oh boy, now they're confused. Okay, well, I thought that everything broke towards the Salton Sea. I said well, look at this. Okay, 50% of them don't, and even more on this golf course because we move the dirt. So I think players need to realize that some of the myths they hear, they need to go to proper instruction and get some of this out of their system.
Speaker 3:Another thing about to accelerate through the ball. Yeah, you had guys named Ben Crenshaw. Ben said why don't you let the putter drop on the ball? That's what I try and do Better roll. What the heck did that mean?
Speaker 3:Well, now, a little bit pre-COVID, we've got some instrumentation that shows us that actually increasing acceleration into the ball creates too much sight spin and being able to let the putter drop on the ball and not have it accelerate more as it approaches the ball. It's going through miles per hour, but the miles per hour not accelerating, wow. The ball stays on the putter less and the ball tumbles better. So now we've had to change from short back and long through to longer back and shorter through. Yeah, a little deceleration. Even though I tell my players not to let anyone talk to them about decel, they say, hey, you look like you're deceling. You tell them I'm just working on my acceleration. Thank you for that. But yeah, it's a slight decel with that new technique. But take a look at Canale, cam Smith, all the guys out there they really understand that ratio right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the ball has a weight, and when the putter head collides with the ball, there should be decelerations. But if you buy into this acceleration myth, then you're going to guess what. You're going to increase speed through impact. Yeah, the distance control is going to be very inconsistent.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, you're going to decrease the putting miles per hour slightly before impact too. That's because of the shorter follow-through scenario, and if a player cannot stop their putter and it goes much longer through than back, you can bet the backstroke's not long enough. So it's part of the practice. So if you believe DeChambeau, it's that dimples make a difference, so if you believe DeChambeau is that dimples make a difference, so okay, getting the putter off the ball off the putter faster has less dimple effect. How's that, bryson? That's perfect. That's why I go back longer and through shorter. He's right, because he was on this concept faster than anybody.
Speaker 2:Okay, Don, I wanted to ask you a little bit about being a putt doctor associate. Can you talk a little bit about your putt doctor certification?
Speaker 3:Yes, we basically have two ways to be certified one, being on site and going through the key areas of putting, from fitting to speed, to setup, to aim, alignment, etc. We even talk a lot about how you can help the player with chipping and on the range as well, understanding that vision and aim and alignment should be worked on for all of that, but not starting at the range. It should be starting on the putting green so they can come in and work. Or we have an online program which says, hey, we've got videos to watch and after watching let's say, two or three, we're going to go on a zoom call. Or we're going to go on a FaceTime and we're going to work with any questions you have and we're going to add a little to it and we're going to challenge you and at the end I'm going to send you a questionnaire and you've got to answer it correctly.
Speaker 3:If not, we're going to go back to it again because I want my associates to understand, especially like it's an arm of me or part of me, and so that way we're getting good, good lesson, uh, that are repeatable for the instructor and obviously making a big difference in the player's skills, gotcha. So we got 21 videos that we've produced and, uh, then along with that, obviously, since we did that, there's a few with that. Obviously, since we did that, there's a few things that are maybe a little more upgraded and updated. So we definitely hit those. And then they get a manual that's 265 pages and they get a bunch of training aids and off they go.
Speaker 2:What training aids do they get for? This and how much does it cost?
Speaker 3:Well, it's basically being relooked at, so I'm not going to give you a price right now. It is on the website, but that's going to be changed somewhat. I am getting ready to do some very interesting things with some companies franchise-wise, so I have to be careful on some of that. The training aids are the putting mat showing the arc and the face being perpendicular to the arc. There's a checker ball. We have that's two balls put together for a practice. There's the putting horse which I've developed, which looks like a tall horse.
Speaker 3:It shows that players actually take the putter shaft straight back, but the head doesn't go straight back and the face doesn't go square because of the lie angle and the fact that the putter comes off the ground a little, which is another myth that people should be straight back or they should be arced. It's the same darn thing. If they let the putter work, let the putter head work, and they just push the shaft straight back and straight through and aim aids for string and needles and and beads on it for stroke length and calibrating the aim as well as. Uh, am I getting the ball online? So those are type of things also. They get, uh, the putting prescription. Uh, let alone my manual interesting, jesse.
Speaker 2:Any closing questions for our esteemed guests?
Speaker 1:no, I think the good doc answered everything that I was thinking about. I just, doc, I can't thank you enough. I think that becoming a good putter is a road that is absolutely worth being traveled.
Speaker 3:Yeah, agreed, agreed. You and Justin got a lot out of me. So I'm telling you, people listening to your podcast ought to be able to go out and be better putters pretty much right away Now. Whatever else, to get into a much better setup and things like that, I need to see a qualified putting instructor and setup, setup, setup, set up, set up, set up. That's a biggie for me. I spent probably the hour and a half the 90 minutes I used to start up First initial lesson. I should say I'd say easily a third of that, if not more, is set up. Wow.
Speaker 2:Doc. Where can our?
Speaker 3:listeners at puttdoctor P-U-T-T-D-O-C-T-O-R. One word puttdoctor. At MSN Microsoftnetworkcom. They can text me at 303-810-3478. That's 303-810 7 8. I generally am slowing down a little from just anybody getting ahold of me, so we've been a little more selective. So hopefully they can recommend something like your podcast We'll accept. Otherwise it's got to be from a student or a golf pro or a golf pro himself. So just FYI. There you have it.
Speaker 2:Sounds great, the putt doctor. A doctor himself. So just FYI.
Speaker 1:And there you have it, that sounds great, the putt doctor, putt doctor himself Doc, thanks again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Jesse, thanks, Justin, thanks All the best guys, thank you, thank you so much, thank you for your questions Cheers. Thank you, cheers, thank you.