Putt

“ There are plenty of little ripples and ridges and hollows in the greens, though few bold slopes, and there is therefore scope for considerable nicety of putting; above all, there is the cheering knowledge that a putt has but to make a good start in life to ensure its turning neither to the right nor to the left and ending a blameless career at the bottom of the hole. ”

“ Anybody can hole a putt of four or five feet when it doesn’t matter, and when there is no particular credit in doing it. It is when it does matter that you cannot do it. The hole is 41⁄4 in. wide, and the ball is about 11⁄2 in. in diameter. You may use anything from an umbrella to a lawn-roller in order to putt that little ball into that huge pit, and yet at that distance of three or four feet you cannot do it—that is, as often as you ought to do. Training and practice are no use. Do not beginners always do these putts well? That is because they do not know how difficult they are. ”

“ Then, is it the putt from the corner of the green across many miniature hills and dales with a winding course over which the ball must travel, often far away from the direct line, but which carries it at last delightfully to the opening into which it sinks just as its strength is ebbing away? We all know the thrilling ecstasy that comes from such a stroke as this, but it has always been helped by a little good luck, and I would not call it the master stroke. There are inferior players who are good putters. ”

“ In the backward swing, the length of which, as in all other strokes in golf, is regulated by the distance it is desired to make the ball travel, the head of the putter should be kept exactly in the line of the putt. Accuracy will be impossible if it is brought round at all. There should be a short follow-through after impact, varying, of course, according to the length of the putt. In the case of a long one, the club will go through much further, and then the arms would naturally be more extended. ”

“ But the fact is, as I have already indicated, that you can putt with anything if you hit the ball properly. Everything depends on that—hitting the ball properly—and no putter that was ever made will help you to hole out if you do not strike the ball exactly as it ought to be struck, while if you do so strike it, any putter will hole out for you. ”

“ Hilton did in the Amateur Championship of 1912 at Prestwick, in picking his places for putting, as it were, always, whenever possible, running up so that he would have to putt uphill instead of down, the former being far the easier kind of putting. Nowadays there are inclines on every green and round about the hole, and a flat putt is a comparative rarity. But the average man never thinks of these inclines until he has to play along them. The time for most thinking about them is when making the stroke before, so that the putt may be along the easiest line to the hole. ”

“ It is very nearly true, as Willie Park has so often said, that the man who can putt need fear nobody. Certainly a player can never be really great until he is nearly always certain to hole out in two putts on the green, and to get down a few in one. The approach stroke has been well played when the ball comes to rest within four or five feet of the pin, but what is the use of that unless the ball is to be putted out more often than not in one more stroke? ”

“ In playing what we may call an ordinary putt, that is to say, one presenting no difficulties in the way of stymies, slopes of the green, or anything of that kind, I think it pays best in the long run to make a point of always hitting the [Pg 148] ball with the middle of the face of the club, although, I believe, Willie Park, one of the greatest of putters, always hits the ball off the toe of the club and comes in to the hole from the right-hand side of it. Other players consistently and by design half top the ball when they are putting. ”

“ But on far too many greens the man with the putter has nothing to do but gauge the strength of his stroke and aim dead straight at the hole. He derives infinitely less satisfaction from getting down a fifteen-yards putt of this sort than does the man who has holed out at ten feet, and has estimated the rise and fall and the sideway slope of an intervening hillock to begin with and a winding valley to follow, his ball first of all running far away to the right, then trickling across to the left, and finally wheeling round again and rolling into the tin. ”

“ I never watched him jab at a putt without feeling certain that the ball was hit too hard to stay in the hole; but stay it does. Waddles actually putts with an overspin, and his ball burrows like a mole, dropping into the cup as if made of lead.
His brassy shots are just pusillanimous—there is no other word which describes them accurately—but somehow they keep on bouncing toward the pin. His irons run half-way and creep the rest of the distance. He always gets better results than his shots deserve, and complains that he should have had more. ”

“ Then for years past it has been recommended that one of the best ways of managing the putting with these speedy balls is to have much loft on the putter, and so in that way do something to create the drag; but lately a change of opinion began to be made, and I am finding some of the best players using putters that are perfectly straight in the face, believing that by their agency they can putt more delicately and with a surer judgment of strength. ”

“ The player must stand open, half facing the hole, the weight on the right leg, the right arm close to the side, the ball nearly opposite the right foot. To putt standing square, the arms reached out, is as difficult as to write without laying a finger on the desk." Had he lived on to these more modern days he would not have been nearly so dogmatic as that. Some of the very best putters do not play with the open stance, but putt entirely from the left leg, that leg thrown forward and in front and bearing all the weight, the right being merely hanging on behind. ”

“ If he has only one putter he will generally make some sort of a success of it if he can putt at all, and my private belief is that the putter itself has very little to do with the way in which a golfer putts. ”

“ A man can play short of the hole or past it, or to the right or left, and there will be one point from which the putting will be easier than the other. It may often happen that it would pay better to be four yards past the hole than two short of it, for you will not only have had the chance of holing, but the putt back may be an uphill one. ”

“ Willy Park, always a man of some practical ingenuity, as well as a magnificent golfer, had lately invented and patented a peculiar type of putter. He had also invented, by way of an advertisement of this crooked-necked club of his, the dictum that "the man who can putt is a match for anybody." ”

“ Similarly, when on the putting green, and there is a long distance between your ball and the hole, bring your mind to realise that it is really of less importance that you should hole out in one stroke than that you should do so in not more than two, and therefore concentrate your whole energies on placing yourself dead for the second putt. ”

“ The short putt largely explains the game, and it is testimony to the soundness of this view, and the rightful selection of this as a permanent wonder, that the general public would never believe the truth as we know it, that it is possible for the greatest players with what is to them, for the time being, almost as much as their lives depending on it, to miss putts so little that no walking baby properly fed would miss. ”

“ The ball is more or less poked along. When a man putts in this way he is putting largely by instinct, and even though he may generally putt well, his work on the greens cannot be thoroughly reliable. No putting is so good and consistently effective as is that which is done with a gentle even swing, which can be regulated to a nicety, and such putting is only possible when there is enough shaft left below the grip to swing with. ”

“ And her iron-shot bumps past the head of an octogenarian who is trying to hole out a long putt on the distant green.
To look at her now you would never guess that she was once a shrinking débutante, a hewer of turf, and a drawer of water from the eyes of the green-keeper. Her putting is still erratic, and she is rather helpless in heavy sand; but, given a clean lie and a fair stance, she will handle her light clubs to some purpose, and her swing is a "sicht for sair een." If you are at all off your game she will beat you ”

“ And never once have I trembled until I came to a short putt." Yet with such facts as these before us, some people still wonder wherein lies the fascination of golf. How often does it happen that an inch on the putting green is worth more than a hundred yards in the drive, and that the best of players are confounded by this circumstance? ”

“ It may need only an exceedingly delicate stroke to putt a ball properly, yet if you take the clumsiest, horniest-handed labouring man—say a road-mender or a railway navvy, who had never either seen or heard of golf before—he would never miss those three to five feet putts. ”

“ Absolutely everything depends on hitting the ball truly, and the man who always does so has mastered one of the greatest difficulties of the art of putting. A long putt can never be run down except by a fluke when the ball has not been hit truly, however exactly all the calculations of line and strength have been made. ”

“ There is nothing very hard in hitting a good long drive or brassey shot, but when it comes to pitching the ball perfectly accurately on to the green, so that it may be within a putt's length of the hole, or at the outside within two such strokes, then it is that we seem to be "all over the place." ”

“ Carwell fell so heavily on the putting green, having completed the last stroke that sent the white ball into the cup and made him club champion, there was not a stir among the other players grouped about him; nor did the gallery, grouped some distance back, rush up. The most natural thought, and one that was in the minds of the majority, was that the clubman had overbalanced himself in making his stance for the putt shot, and had fallen. ”

“ For the most part the professionals, although adopting widely different stances, hold themselves fairly well up when doing their work on the green, and putt with an easy following-through stroke as is recommended by the old masters. Strange that we should realise that quite the most impressive, stylish, and beautiful putter of the erect school is M'Dermott, the brilliant young American champion, who stands straight up with his legs and heels touching, grips his putter at the very end, and moving nothing but his club and hands, makes the most delightfully smooth swing. ”

“ These are instances of what I call absurd and pettifogging low-attorney sort of rules. It would be far better that the rule about brushing the green lightly with the hand on the line of the putt were abolished altogether. If there are players who take a mean advantage and flatten down a lump when they should only be brushing away loose bits of dust or stones, such players had better be provided for if such a thing can be brought about without hardship to the sportsmanlike golfers. The benefit to the putter of brushing away dust or small stones is, in my opinion, infinitesimal. ”

“ If for the purposes of their score they give themselves the two-feet putt which they would have holed but for the stymie, then surely there can be no objection to giving themselves a thirty-inch putt, and if that, then one also at a yard, and a yard and a half—two yards, three yards, four. ”

“ But oftentimes, when the slope of the green is really considerable, and one experiences a sense of great risk and danger in using the putter at all, I strongly advise the use of the iron or mashie; indeed, I think most golfers chain themselves down too much to the idea that the putter, being the proper thing to putt with, no other club should be used on the green. There is no law to enforce the use of the putter, but even when the idea sometimes occurs to a player that it would be best to use his mashie on the green in particular circumstances, he usually rejects it as improper. ”

“ We can, however, make the shot more or less difficult, according as we drive well or ill. If we can hold the ball well to the left—close, but not too close under the wall—we shall have more room to pitch, and may hope for a putt for three; but a drive pushed far out to the right makes it almost impossible to stop at all near the hole next time. ”

“ There is no rule, and there is no best way. Sometimes you see a player bend down and hold the putter right out in front of him with both wrists behind the shaft. This is an eccentricity, but if the player in question believes that he can putt better in this way than in any other, he is quite justified in adopting it, and I would be the last to tell him that he is wrong. ”

“ The home putting green, although level itself, is situated on a hill-side, and so the man who is reckless or over-energetic with his putting-iron is liable to make a long putt—and see his ball roll all the way down the hill. At the bottom of this hill are a fence and bushes, where many a game has been lost through the carelessness or misfortune of the players who have allowed their balls to get into this hazard at the last moment.
This St. Paul's links is situated in a very pretty part of the country, and there are enough natural hazards to make it interesting even for a first-class player. ”

“ If a shot be at all crooked a three is still well within the bounds of possibility, but the approach putt, instead of being easy, has to be made over a series of most perplexing curves. The straight player’s ball, on the other hand, is lying close to the hole, for the hills, which are the enemies of the crooked, are as a rule the allies of the accurate, and have rewarded his virtuous ball with a kick from their friendly slopes. ”