Putting

“ The fact is that everything puts you off your putting, but some things more than others, which is another reason for that old saying that putting is the devil. An old golfer has said that the ideal preparation for really fine putting is to lie in bed for twenty-four hours with your wife to feed you with a spoon. ”

“ The great mystery to me, not about golf, but about the work of the greatest golfers, is the attitude which they all adopt with regard to putting. Now, putting may quite properly be said to be the foundation of golf. It really is the first thing which should be taught, but, as a matter of fact, it is generally left until the last. Practically all instructors start the player with the drive. It is beyond question that the drive is the most complex stroke in golf, and it is equally beyond question that the put is the simplest. ”

“ To prove how much nerve is the first, second, and third necessity in putting, you may take a man of thirty years old who has been and perhaps still is a good cricketer, and has a good eye for games generally. Set such a man on a putting-green with a putter and three or four balls, and he will very likely putt as well as the best professional; ask him to drive or play a brassey and he will be nowhere. Experience is nothing in putting; it is everything for the rest in the game. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Often enough they seem to do these things simply [Pg 142] because, as we should say, they know nothing at all about putting, which is perhaps another way of saying that their minds are never embarrassed by an oppressive knowledge of all the difficulties which the ball will meet with in its passage from the club to the hole, and of the necessity of taking steps to counteract them all. They are not afraid of the hole. The fact is that putting is to a far greater extent than most of us suspect purely a matter of confidence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One reads in various books about putting off the heel, putting off the toe, and putting with drag. This is, comparatively speaking, all imbecility and theory. There is no way to put in golf comparable with the put that goes off the centre of the club's face. If we may treat the face of the putter as a rectangle, bisect it by a vertical line and also by a horizontal line, the point where these two lines cross each other will be the portion of the putter which should come into contact with the ball. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of this advanced party the eminent architect is a shining example, for he holds his putting cleek so far down, so near to the ironwork, that the shaft seems useless, and in addition to this he defies all teaching in putting by planting the heel of the club down on the green and holding the hands so low that the toe of the putter is cocked up, and with this toe he hits the ball, and, as it looks, he tops it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He knows that really the putting is easy, but he knows also that he must not miss, that an inch lost here is as much of a loss as two hundred yards in the driving—and he fears his fate. It is consciousness of the stupidity of missing, nerves, fears, imagination, that make this missing of short putts by the cleverest players, champions as much as any others, the most remarkable thing that happens constantly in any game. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a good deal of billiards in putting, and the cut stroke on the green is essentially one which the billiard player will delight to practise. But I warn all those who are not already expert at cutting with the putter, to make themselves masters of the stroke in private practice before they attempt it in a match, because it is by no means easy to acquire. The chief difficulty that the golf student will encounter in attempting it will be to put the cut on as he desires, and at the same time to play the ball with the proper strength and keep on the proper line. ”

“ They deliberately tell the unfortunate golfer, or would-be golfer, that good putters are born and not made, that putting cannot be taught, and that each person must be left to work out his own salvation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nearly every game has some inherent defect; as putting is sixty-five per cent of golf, so pitching is sixty-five per cent of baseball. Moral: Be a good putter, and see that your nine has a good pitcher. ”

“ The philosophy of putting is simple, but is rarely appreciated. The search for the magic putter that will always pop the ball into the hole and leave the player nothing to do will go on for ever.
One other observation that I have to make on clubs in general is, that I think it is a mistake to have the shafts any longer than is absolutely necessary. Some golfers think that an iron or a cleek is just the right length for them when there are still a few inches of stick projecting inwards, towards their bodies, when they have made their grip. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The starter at the head of one of the lines fastens one end of a ball of yarn to a door-knob or chair just behind her and, putting the ball on her pan, tosses it to the player directly opposite, who endeavors to catch it on his pan, and toss it to the person on the other side, who stands next to the starter. ”

“ He believes after all his sorrows that one of the greatest and best secrets of good putting is to keep more absolutely still than [Pg 73] do most golfers, who seem to think it matters less in putting when it matters so much more. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Putt′er, one who throws a stone: one who takes coal along underground roads: a short, stiff golf-club used in putting; Putt′er-on (Shak.) , an instigator; Putt′er-out (obs.) , one who deposited money on going abroad, on condition of receiving a larger sum on his return, the money to be forfeited in case of non-return; Putt′ing, the act of hurling a heavy stone from the hand by a sudden push from the shoulder: the act of striking a golf-ball when near a hole, so as to cause it to fall into it; Putt′ing-green, the prepared ground immediately round a hole in a golf-course ”

“ The general grip is a trifle looser, although the right hand requires to be firm. Mr. Horace Hutchinson, in the Badminton Book on Golf, says as follows: "The principal secret of good putting, as of good driving, is that the club should travel as long as possible on the line—or a production of it—on which the ball is to travel.
"Putting is a stroke made almost exclusively with the wrists. The wrists do not hit the club on to the ball and then check it, but the club is swung by a movement of the wrists... any checking of the club as it meets the ball being fatal to consistent good putting.... ”

“ This, as we all know, is a golfer's first duty. If your ball at any time came to rest in a hole where a divot had not been replaced, you would be extremely annoyed, would say hard things about the other players on the links, and would declare that the course was badly kept.
Never practise swinging on the putting green. It is not good for the green, and the greenkeeper who takes a pride in the results of his work is not usually in the best of tempers when he sees you at this little game. ”

“ The gruff murmur, irregularly broken by the taking out of pipes and the putting in of pipes which had kept on assuring her, though she could not hear what was said (as she sat in the window which opened on the terrace) , that the men were happily talking; this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and had taken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then, “How’s that? How’s that?” of the children playing cricket, had ceased; ”

“ For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now we will consider those putts in which it is not all plain sailing from the place where the ball lies to the hole. The line of the putt may be uphill or it may be downhill, or the green may slope all the way from one side to the other, or first from one and then the other. There is no end to the tricks and difficulties of a good sporting green, and the more of them the merrier. The golfer's powers of calculation are now in great demand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A world where, if you keep your head down, you forget to let the club-head lead: where even if you do happen by a miracle to keep ’em straight with your brassie, you blow up on the green and foozle a six-inch putt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”