Putting Greens

My son John and I spent an hour on the practice putting green at a local club during this past week. John's putting experience is limited to artificial surfaces with a tendency to feature windmills and clowns. I figured it was time to give him a taste of the real thing.

At one point, he made two consecutive twenty footers. He also missed his fair share of easy ones. By the end of the session he was intimately acquainted with the frustrating nature of putting. He also owed his father a quarter.

In the days that followed our excursion I thought a lot about putting greens. They are taken for granted by most golfers. Good players invariably spend a good deal of time there. Bad players avoid them like the plague and then whine about missing putts. As a rule, it is a place for golfers to kill a little time while that ridiculously slow foursome of hackers playing in front of you gets their act together and clears the first tee.

I look at practice putting greens a bit differently. I see them as playgrounds. This is the direct result of having spent so much time at golf courses while I was a kid. The practice green at Tomoka Oaks was the center of activity for the band of juniors who were always there. We practiced our short games and we gambled. When it rained, we would retreat to the pro shop and bet on who could throw range balls closer to the hole. Not much money changed hands, but we learned how to deal with pressure and we learned how to needle one another. All I know about psychological warfare in golf was learned on that putting green.

By the way, if Mark Matthews is reading this, you still owe me $18 from 1972.

When I was in the teaching end of the golf business, those of us on the staff would inevitably encounter slow periods during the week. We actually had our own practice putting green at the golf school. It was here that I learned about all the bizarre ways you can make putting even more intellectually traumatic than it already is. Playing "draw back" and "worst ball" against good putters will make you honestly assess your putting stroke.

There are several vital questions you can answer for yourself if you invest time practicing your putting. Do I strike all putts solidly? Putts that bounce toward the hole are not solidly struck. The ones that hug the ground are. Do I notice a pattern on longer putts? Are you usually long or short? Which short putts scare me? Why? The list goes on and on.

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