Putter

“ Given an opponent who is a really fine putter—Mr. Lassen or some other inhuman fiend—and till he has played two more while our ball lies stone dead we can never feel quite happy; the truly-struck putt comes on and on over that wonderfully smooth turf and flops into the hole with a sickening little thud, and there are we left gasping and robbed of our prey. ”

“ Often enough no consideration is given to this point; it is not imagined that the shaft above the grip can serve any useful purpose. Yet it is constantly found that a putter cut down is not the same putter as it was before, not so good, and has not the same balance; and, again, many players must have been surprised sometimes, when doing some half-serious putting practice with a cleek, iron, or driving mashie, each club with its long shaft, to find out what wonderfully accurate work could be done in this way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 sure and certain way is to begin with the putter, which is easy and also valuable, because the experience of the best players is that the overlapping grip improves one's putting at least as much as it does one's driving. You may become accustomed enough to this way of gripping the putter on the first day to try it in the most important match or competition. ”

“ To be sure of the exact spot on the putter face which is invariably to come in contact with the ball, is, of course, essential to the acquirement of accuracy. If you play to hit clean, your putter must pass above the ground at varying heights, as it is impossible to note how much air there is between it and the turf. In the other way you feel your road. ”

“ I do not think that any putter should be built whose face is so narrow that at the moment of striking the ball properly with the putter the top edge of the putter is below the top of the ball. I am firmly of opinion that a putter which is so built that it delivers the main portion of its force below the centre of the ball's mass is absolutely defective. ”

“ While I am on the question of the construction of putters, I may say that I am inclined to think that all these putters which are made with heads such as the Schenectady, the ordinary wooden putter, or those putters with aluminium heads, are a mistake. The sole of the club is too broad, and to use such clubs as these is simply providing a greater chance of error. There is nothing which can be done with one of these large-headed putters which cannot be done as well, or better, by an ordinary metal putter. ”

“ He was, no doubt, an immensely strong man. He was so strong and big that he seemed unable to swing round his body, as it were. He was the shortest driver for a player of his ability I ever met; but he was also the longest putter. Time and again, when I thought I had the hole, having arrived on the green a stroke before him, he upset calculations by holing a gigantic putt. He smoked all the time, a long meerschaum pipe, and had all the air of a man playing the game for pleasure—which is not at all a common aspect for a man to wear when he is playing a championship heat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The names of the chief sticks and implements employed in the sport are: driver, brassie, spoon, cleek, iron, mashie, niblick and putter. The driver, brassie and spoon are wooden-headed clubs, but the others have always iron heads. The driver is the club used for striking to the greatest distance when the ball is on the "tee," that is, on the little mound of sand on which it is placed at the commencement of each hole, so that more facility may be had in striking it. The putter is used on the putting—green, for short strokes round about the holes. ”

“ But of late years, steel and gun metal have come much more into vogue. Park's patent putter with the twisted socket or neck, is a universal favourite, the fact of looking straight down the shaft on to the ball appearing to make the line of transition somewhat more easy for the eye to take in. The mode of holding the putter is similar to that of the iron, only that the thumbs are both placed downwards and the fingers are called more into play, as shown in Figure 10. ”

“ For no part of this or any other game have so many different kinds of instruments been invented, though the little child could do the putts with the head of a walking-stick or a common poker. Scarcely a week goes by in the season but some new kind of putter is introduced to the expectant multitude of harassed players, and now and then a thrill runs through the world as they receive a clear assurance that at last some special device has been discovered which will make their putting ever afterwards easy and certain. There is a thrill as if a secret of long life had been found. ”

“ Some people like putting with very upright putters. For the purpose of experiment I had a perfectly upright putter made, but upright putters are, I think, open to this objection—one's body hangs too far over them, so that at the moment of striking the ball one is looking inwards towards the ball, for one's head projects beyond the line of run to the hole for a considerable distance. ”

“ There are many fearful and wonderful putters on the market at the present time. Lately there has been produced a putter with a very shallow face, which is now being largely used because a man who has won the open championship frequently is using it. ”

“ The putter stands in the back part of the square or circle with his weight entirely upon his right leg, which is bent. The body is inclined slightly backward, the left arm stretched out in front as a balance, and the right hand, the shot resting in the palm, is, held against, or an inch or two from, the neck below and behind the right ear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Putters are not born. They are made and shaped and polished to just as great an extent as any metal putter that ever was forged. Putting is the simplest and easiest thing in golf to learn and to teach, and it is positively wrong for men of the eminence in their profession which these players enjoy to append their names to statements which cannot but have a deleterious effect on the game generally, and particularly on the play of those who are affected by reading such absolutely false doctrine. ”

“ The difference it made in his game was nearer a third than four strokes, as I reckon it. From a really bad putter he became all at once a very good putter indeed. I knew all about it, for I had been playing him and beating him comfortably in several matches at St. Andrews, in course of a little party which Lord Dudley took up there. I met him again in an international match at Hoylake only a little later, when he had exchanged the tinkling cleek for the aluminium putter, and he beat me—not by length of driving, but by length of putting. ”

“ The man of thirty in a few years will very likely develop into a really bad putter, not because he has not the skill—for he proved his skill when a beginner—but because he has learnt the terrors of putting, and his skill is overpowered by his nerves.
Nerves appear to be absent one day and painfully present another: so there are red-letter days when even a nervous man can putt, but the more nervous a man is the worse will he putt, and in no other part of the game will he find nerves play such demoniacal tricks. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shallow faces and broad soles in putters have nothing whatever to recommend them, and there is very little doubt that golfers will, in due course, find this out, and will use a putter so made that it will carry the weight where it is most wanted, and that certainly is not at the base of the ball, for, unnecessary as it may seem to mention the fact, the put is the one stroke in golf which we always desire to keep as close to the green as possible. ”

“ The return shot must be made by the weakest club on the opposing side, viz., the putter. The idea is that the players shall all strike in regular rotation, but the order of the sides is exactly opposite. In other words, one side strikes in succession with driver, brassey, cleek, lofter, niblick, and putter, their opponents answering with putter, niblick, lofter, cleek, brassey, and driver. It is evident that if A leads off their attack will grow weaker as the less powerful clubs come into play, while B, the defence, will grow stronger in the same proportion. ”

“ But the greatest gain from treating putting as a sclaffing process is the less delicate manipulation required when short putts are in question. At a foot and a half from the hole the clean putter often fails, from incapacity to graduate inches of weakness, whilst the sclaffer succeeds because he is dealing with coarser weight sensitiveness. ”

“ The older player frequently finds that it is possible to improve with the irons and putter if he deteriorates with the driver and brassey. Nothing appears to me to be more true than that to win a match the short game must be good. I have watched several great matches and read about them also, and in nine cases out of ten the man who putts well is the man who wins. ”

“ Hitting the ball truly is simply a question of bringing the putter on to it when making the stroke to exactly the same point as when the final address was made, and of swinging the putter through from the back swing to the finish in a straight line. ”

“ If ever there was an illustration of a fine putter made out of a bad putter, James Braid is the outstanding example, and James Braid is the answer to Taylor's question as to whether a professional can improve his putting or not. Any professional whose putting is bad can improve it by using his brains, because when a professional puts badly it is rarely a question of his hands, his eye, or his wrist being wrong. ”

“ That this is really the case is proved by the fact that many of the leading players of the day, professionals and amateurs alike, are very frequently weaker when playing with the putter than when performing with any other of their clubs. ”

“ While I am not prepared to endorse the opinion that is commonly expressed, that a golfer is born and not made, I am convinced that no amount of teaching will make a golfer hole out long putts with any frequency, nor will it even make him at all certain of getting the short ones down. But it will certainly put him in the right way of hitting the ball, which after all will be a considerable gain. Experience counts for very much, and it will convert a man who was originally a bad putter into one who will generally hold his own on the greens, or even be superior to the majority of his fellows. ”