Welcome to the golf Improvement podcast episode 133 welcome to the podcast for golf lovers and enthusiasts who are looking to take their games to new heights dedicated to custom Club fitting short game improvement and effective practice to improve your golf game this is the golf Improvement podcast with your host Tony Wright
Hello this is Tony Wright from game improvement golf in oakd Tennessee with the golf Improvement podcast dedicated to sharing useful information on true custom Club fitting short game improvement and effective practice techniques I create exceptional golf clubs you shoot lower scores a few months ago I saw a post on
On Twitter that led me to buy a great putting improvement book The Lost Art of putting by Gary nickel and Carl Morris the book is a great read and I particularly love the putting performance principles that the book is based on so I contacted Gary and Carl
And they agreed to do this interview with me they talk about some excellent putting principles that all golfers can use to enjoy their putting more and to make more putts so enjoy this fascinating interview about the Lost Art of putting www.game Improvement Golf.com hello this is Tony Wright with episode 133 of the golf Improvement podcast and today I welcome the authors of a great book The a the Lost Art of putting Gary nickel who’s a 30 plus year golf coach who’s coached Ryder Cup players and golfers of all levels and
Carl Morris who also has a great podcast the brain booster podcast who’s a performance coach and who has coached golf major winners and high performers in many other sports and it’s an interesting time to do this with you guys because I just saw a note that this is uh just about the one-year
Anniversary of when the Lost Art of putting came out which is cool I I just saw an email about that I think two or three days ago so that’s that’s kind of a neat thing to have happened so so for us yeah yeah um so let’s start
A little bit I always like to hear a little bit and I think listeners do too about personal stories Gary a little bit about how you became a golf instructor and Carl how you became a performance coach sure do you want to go first Gary
Yes my uh story as a golf professional I guess started when I became an assistant professional at a place called Royal gy Golf Club in the Channel Island which sits kind of halfway between the S most southern point of England and France um so I I started off my
Professional career there as an assistant and basically back in the day we were an assistant golf professional wasn’t very well paid profession so in order to eat basically we we did a bit of coaching and what we did was we we had we did nine whole Playing Lessons so we
Basically played for our fee so you know we charged whatever it was I can’t remember exactly the number from back then but so if we lost we won nothing but if we if we won we got twice our fee yeah so you you kind of learn pretty
Quickly how how to play but also you know in the whole process of this we were actually giving the guy a golf lesson as well so we giving the guy a golf lesson and tried to beat them at the same time so yeah it was a quite an interesting introduction to professional
Golf and from then I I went through the the PJ training and whatever um and then I I became friend with a couple of guys who had just got there there couple of guys who are a little bit older than me who’d got their tour cards and actually
Did a bit of cading for them for a while as well and then one guy guy called Andrew oldcorn who won three times on the European tour including their kind of Flagship event the the PGA at Wentworth um one year he just asked me
If I could help him out and Yeah it kind of LED on from there I I went to a couple of tournaments with him and he did quite well and as you know a lot of golf pros are very superstitious so he kind of figured that if he played well
Because I was there he better take me more often so I started on a journey on the European tour I guess as a coach in 1995 and then worked with various players for yeah a number of years I spent about 16 years pretty much full time on the European tour traveling the
World so it was quite a quite a journey pretty neat Journey it sounds like too yeah it was an interesting one for sure yeah got to see the world and got to meet lots of interesting people and go to see some exciting places and are living at the same time helping
Goos well Cara how about you then yes similar but different I suppose I mean I I started off like Gary as an assistant Pro and wanted to play the game and uh was was spectacularly unsuccessful at that really because I a classic story of you know being good on the Range and
Being able to take good shots and reasonable technique but never quite being able to transfer it onto the golf course and then I did what a lot of people do who fail at playing I I started to teach other people the same stuff that had got in the way for me and
Um after a period of time thinking you know I’m just seeing the same thing happening with with players that was was happening for me in my career that maybe the technique improved a little bit and and on the practice ground but it wasn’t transferring onto the golf course and I
Just became more and more interested in in other factors really the performance side of thing how did the mind and body interact to either allow you to play good golf or to get in the way and I looked at all kinds of different diff disciplines in a game and you know NLP
CBT uh you name it had had a look at it and studied and kind of went away from the game for a couple of years and then came back and relaunched things and more on the performance side and uh got lucky with a couple of players who who’ been
Struggling and did they did pretty well and then it went from there work with Darren Clark when he won one of his WGC events and other players came on board grey McDow and it sort of escalated from there and Louis usen was a was a client
That that won the open at St Andrews in 2010 with a not just because of a technique that I’d given him but it it became quite famous to when he when he had a red dot on his glove and it got a lot of press and yeah that’s right you
Know it kind of escalated from there really and been fortunate to work in other sports in in cricket and football and one or two others so yeah it’s been a it’s been a an interesting journey and uh we we we keep we keep seeking seeking
The answers so uh um it’s it’s it’s a sort of Winding Road That Never Ends but it’s it’s a Pleasant Road to be on I it sure sounds like it is well you know that there must have been some kind of an initial spark for the two of you in
Terms of creating the the Lost Art of putting book so talk some about that but you know maybe a little bit too about how easy or difficult it was to you know to actually get all this stuff down on paper it was actually relatively easy because uh you know me and Gary had
Known each other probably not as much as we realized we’d been on tour together and I’m sure we’d had conversations but a few years ago we started Ed to do seminars up at uh up at Gary’s Gary’s place up in Scotland a beautiful place called Archer field which for anybody
Listening you should you should put on The Bucket List it really is a spectacular place to be uh just near mfield and we started to do these these um clinics and different parts of the game but it seem specifically with the short game with put him we were getting
Some really really interesting results we’d spend we’d spend three three hours or so with people and never mention a single technical interview vention but we noticed people’s putting Strokes were getting better and they were actually putting better and enjoying holding the putter in the hands in ways that they’
Not done for a while and we we both sort of said we need to get some of these ideas down there must be a book in this somewhere because it was it was almost like a throwaway comment and we put all the ideas together and uh we came up
With six key principles and uh we got a publisher interested and and and it went from there and you know it’s been amazing in the last 12 months it’s it was just at the Scottish open and it launched 12 months ago uh and the response has been phenomenal really we
Keep getting feedback on a on a daily basis from people all over the world that it’s it’s just a different way of approaching approaching the game on the greens but also it filters into other parts of the game as well Gary any extra comments on that
Part yeah I think basically you know as Carl said it really wasn’t that difficult to put our thoughts down I guess the hardest part about writing the book was trying to not to write too much yeah because the whole essence of it was to try to keep it nice and simple nice
And straightforward without cluttering the mind because there’s enough more than enough information and whatever out there that just really tends to mess people’s minds up and that obviously manifests itself in a in a physical state of confusion so neither of which are very helpful so we had all the
Thoughts in our in our mind we both have a very kind of similar outlook on the game cuz we’ve always kind of looked at at the game through the lines of or the eyes of the of the golfer rather than that of a golf coach so as I say that
Yes so all of the ideas were in our heads um and it was really just a case of putting them down on paper or laptop as it is in today’s world um and then structuring it from there we had you know we’d had these performance principles as we’ve called them on
Little cards that we were handing out to to our students during our master classes and golf schools and whatever and as Carl said you know we’re getting some quite remarkable results without really delving into the technicalities of it so really we we had the the basis
There it was just a case of expanding on but not overe expanding if you like well that’s uh I’d like to see one of those cards that sounds good but I’m sure it’s in the book we will send you one this I you know I’m going to
Preference this a little bit you know Carl I I listened to another podcast where you talked about the book redirect and I’m starting to read that it’s a fabulous book but um you know golfers always have stories about their putting and there are so many you know negative
Stories I’ve got a couple really great players right now who are in the midst of that um talk a little bit about why golfers create poor stories um is it easy or difficult for them to change them and and and how much an of an impact this what I’ll call the barrage
Of you know poor putting technique information kind of steer them into to bad stories poor stories yeah I think uh the the thing is Anthony that humans are just a bunch of stories whether it’s putting or the rest of our life you know it’s as Tim Wilson said in the book
Redirect with with the stories that we live by the narratives that we create and you know the old phrase that misery loves company is never truer than than when we’re looking at at putting and it you know historically you know when I was when I was playing or trying to play
And then coaching players on the European tour and I still think it’s it’s still relevant today that there almost seems a badge of honor that goes with good ball striking but it’s almost that somebody shouldn’t be allowed to be a really good Putter and and and it’s kind of like
These these you know Hogan talk Mr Hogan talked about how you know putting should be made illegal I know T tongue and cheek but you know it’s it’s almost as though if you’re really good on the greens it’s something that you shouldn’t be doing and I think these stories subconsciously can take
Hold and the Very fact that we create these stories but we’re actually unaware of their effect because as we create these narratives inside of our head as we talk about in the book we’ve got the Thinker and the prover in the sense that inside of our mind there’s a thinker and
The prover and what the Thinker thinks the prover aims to prove so if you’re if you’re constantly regaling the world of stories about how bad you are on the greens that your prover is constantly searching for evidence to back that up so every every three put is a
Confirmation every bad putting round is a confirmation and we’re you know we’re pretty convinced that you you really not change an awful lot about what you do on the greens unless you examine your story and actually start to change that narrative um and and then you can start
To change the narrative with evidence to support the fact that you’re learning something learning something different you’ve got a new approach and you can’t just magically say to yourself I’m a great putter overnight but you can you can begin to look at the old story and choose different one and that new story
Can be along the lines of Discovery and exploration and possibility and uh you know we just find over and over again when people become aware of the stories that’s the key thing and then you can choose to to go in a different direction yeah we’ve we really have seen a
Massive tidle shift if you like in the way that people talk about themselves with regard to their putting and and their performance is directly related to that you know if you you keep telling yourself you’re not very good at something then you’ve kind of set the
Bar pretty low and it’s very hard to improve when you’ve only set a very low bar because the closer you get to Let’s for example let’s say that I always have let’s say I’m golfer a and I always have three three putts in every round of golf
Now if I was standing on the 14th scen and I’ve not had any three putts all day long you know what’s going to happen in three out the next four hes you know because we keep telling ourselves you know go go well every time you play you have three three puts I’ve
Not had any yet go I’ve only got a few hes left then your attention shifts you not one 3T past or four leave it 4T short whatever so there’s one three put in the bag so now you start to feel a little bit more comfortable now you’ve
Only got two more to look forward to rather than three so it’s incredible how as Carl said The Thinker and reprover go to work very very quickly on a a subconscious level and they do definitely have a major impact on performance but as we have seen personally that when we can kind of
Encourage a player to draw the line under their current story and become the author of The the next chapter if you like the shift in performance is incredible and you can actually see the it’s almost like a weight being lifted from their shoulders and and there’s
Actually you know I mean if there’s any just simple reason to buy your book there’s two pages in it basically uh with some guidance on how to write your old story and write it out and uh uh write your new story right and and guessing that’s exactly the process you
Folks use when you’re working with folks people and without getting getting too sort of alarmist about it and is that you know you can you can look at this for something like putting but you could you could take a far bigger picture of of a person’s life you know the way that
They are in business the way they are with other people will be bound together by their stories and you know you can you can almost use golf as a nice laboratory that you could begin on the greens to change your story but don’t be surprised if that can’t then allow you
To start looking at other stories that are holding you back you know as as as Fred Shoemaker said in know podcast that I did with him recently you know that there is a reality out there but it’s for sure that none of us are in it in
The sense that you know we we all create our own reality you know we all create our own interpretation of the world and you know if that interpretation of the world is holding you back and that interpretation is making you miserable that story you know needs first of all
Bringing out into the open and then questioning and then saying okay well what story would you like it to be what direction would you like to go and you know the evidence is pretty strong when you when you actually write things down and it gets down on paper you can see
The old story for what it is and then you get the chance to create a new a new Direction so you become you come become the director of your show rather than just an actor following a script and I don’t think it’s till we actually
Realize it we we see it written in print having written it with our own Fair hand that we start to realize how strong these stories are you know we might carry these stories in our in our heads but it’s not until you commit pen to paper that you sit down and think wow
Actually that is that is me and I could do better than that well another of the things I really liked in the book was what you called the two questions but then there was another Topic in it called um and you talked a lot about attention and it seemed to me these were
Kind of connected you know so talk about the two questions and also you know how they’re connected to creating great attention in your putting Performance Carl do you want to take this one yeah I can I can go with that one well for me the word attention is everything um in in in the mental game of golf or the mental game of life in in the sense that your experience of Life
Your experience on the greens will be in direct relation to what you are paying attention to or what you’re putting your attention on and then we have this simple principle that either your attention is on something useful or useless to the task and you know what we
Often say to people if you’ve if you’ve if you’ve gone down a certain route with your putting and you’ve been going down that route for 10 years probably the 11th year isn’t going to be the one that clinches it um you know so you know whether you
Whether you are holding puts or not on the greens in that moment when you’re out on the golf course will be as a result of what you put your attention on now if you put your attention on how to move the Putter and you put your
Attention on how to move your body and all of those things and you ha a load of puts on a regular basis well that is proving to be useful for you and we were the first to say you should carry on with that but if you find that you’re
Really not performing as you know you could on the greens then we challenge you to actually look at what your attentions on and then we come to questions because you know it’d be easy for me to say now everybody listening to this podcast if you if you could just
Hear what’s going on in the background and we pause for a moment everybody’s attention will leave this podcast and they’ll start tuning into the surroundings because the great thing about questions is questions Focus your attention so if attention is so important and questions Focus your attention then we really reinforce the idea that
That if you can ask a couple of good questions when you walk onto the green you’ll you’ll know that those questions are going to put your attention in in areas that you you deem useful for you you know that that ridiculously simple question of what does this ball need to
Do to go in the hole for everybody listening if you can imagine if you were on a green and you had got a put from 10 15 ft or whatever and you ask that question what does the ball need to do to go in the hall that question draws
Your attention to the task all of a sudden you see the golf ball you see the slope you might see the entry point you make make create images but what you’re doing is you’re creating a map of the task then because that question has drawn you into that present moment so it
It just what is what is an incredibly simple concept We Believe have have really sort of profound implications for the for the game itself and I think the key Point here is we’re asking a question about what does the ball need to do not what do you need
To do what does the pter need to do but what does the ball need to do if you look at most most golf coaching teaching instruction whatever you want to call it it’s generally very much directed at what you need to do what the putter
Needs to do but the poor golf ball gets neglected But ultimately we’re trying to get the ball in the hole not ourselves of the putter so it pay it would make a bit more sense to pay attention to what the ball needs to do so asking the the
First question is it possible this ball could go in the hole is it possible I could hold this putt then obviously the answer is until someone builds a brick wall or a bunker or a a building between your ball and the hole then yes absolutely that that is possible so the
Next question would be what does the ball need to do to go in the hole so again it draws your attention to the task as Carl said and that task is to get the ball into the hole so again the real key behind this is or the keys one
Of the main key points is that it’s directing our attention to what the ball needs to do cuz ultimately that’s what golf’s all about I there are two fabulous questions I mean if everybody could could think about that when they’re walking to the green uh it could have a great impact on
What they do uh well let me put a little perspective on the next question and talking about speed control and and that is I uh I help a middle school team play golf okay okay particularly and you know it’s really occurred to me in the last
Six or eight months that when I’ve been out there with him I probably paid too much attention ha attention helping them where think about line and not speed and and just you know getting a feel for what their speed control ought to be and that it would be they would be so much
More you know they’re not going to be the world beater kids but they would be so much further along in their putting performance and fun if they focused much more on practicing speed control so I know you to believe that that creating great speed control is job one and being
A great putter so talk some about that yeah absolutely well you know if you if you think about it logically again going back to kind of traditional golf coaching golf teaching it’s all about all the gadgets all the the instruction in magazines and on YouTube it’s generally all about
Lying you know all the training AIDS are directed about line start line get your eyes over the ball line line line but if you think about it the line doesn’t really exist or cannot exist without Pace because the pace determines the line so we have this this image that we
Use to great effect of if you’ve got say you got a left to right breaking P if you can imagine there’s actually enough room for three golf balls to fall into the hole on different lines at different Paces so Pace gives you options online where line kind of limits you to the the
Perfect Pace if you like so Pace definitely if pace and L and Pace were brothers then Pace would definitely be the bigger brother with a bigger bigger influence I still REM I still remember too oh gosh who was it uh Lee Westwood my my biggest image ever about
You know gosh he hope he doesn’t listen to this but he was the the year the year that Tom Watson almost won Lee Westwood came to the last hole and had I think a 30 foot Putt and he hit it five feet past and three puted and he would
Have tied for the lead tied had he had great speed control I don’t know if you folks remember that but it that’s just indelible in my mind forever in ter we we firmly believe that um you know for most people probably listening to the podcast I would guess are probably don’t
Know 10 to 24 handicapped players and if they’re really serious about trying to improve the scoring if that’s the goal probably the quickest way that they could do that would be to reduce the amount of three puts that they have and we we have overwhelmingly found over the
Last few years that that golfers are much better at line than they think and much worse at PACE than they think because you know all as Gary said all the attention goes online we’re not we’re not saying is not important it’s it’s obviously it’s a huge part of
Putting but we one one radical drill that we get from ranging from Club place the tall place to do is to just go on to the green and these guys if they’ve been obsessed with getting everything perfect we say just go up to a bunch of random
Puts and you’re not allowed to even read the put you can’t look at the terrain you can’t you can’t do anything all you’re got to do is just settle in behind the ball and you going to get the pace right and overwhelmingly we find that when people are just focusing on on
Pace hey Presto the line is always pretty good and and as Gary said when when your pace is pretty good you’ve got that three ball Highway into into the hole so you could be a little bit out on your line but if your pace is good
You’ll still hold a bunch of puts but at the very very least if your pace gets better you’ll reduce the amount of three puts that you have and obviously that’s going to have a massive bearing on the on the scoring that you do uh it’s terrific guidance I think for sure now
You know another thing another one of your principles you talk about is reading putts from the low side and yes I had to read that a few times to think about it but it makes a lot of sense so talk some about that and the value of that in terms of really
Understanding how to to to find the line in puts well I guess it kind of connects very much into the the less topic we’ve just discussed line and Pace if you don’t know how long the putt is how’ you know how hard to hit it now if
We just look down the line of a pet any given P it TS to force shorten the distance you know we’ve all hit a shot in the golf course where you’ve hit it right down the flag and you think oh that’s close that’s really close and
Then you get up there and it’s like 20 ft short and you’re devastated because that depth perception has kind of skewed things a little bit it looks like the ball’s really close but because we’re looking Right Down the Line it for and shortens everything well exactly the
Same thing happens in cutting so if you’re only looking down the line to try to read a part again your attention is going to be pretty much online at the expensive pace and it’s not until we go down to the low side that we can actually see the the length of the P
Whether it’s a 3ot putt or 33t putt that the length of that partt actually grows in front of your very eyes it’s not until you go back down the line again that it shrinks so you would never hit a shot from the middle of the Fairway if
You didn’t know how far you had but when was the last time anyone hit a put when they didn’t know how long it was when they really when they didn’t really know how long it was that’s right yeah yeah exactly yeah I mean you wouldn’t hit a
Seven iron if you didn’t know how far you had to go but you would hit a put because you think you getting a good idea of the distance but in reality we only see I don’t know you may miss 10 15% of the the total distance and we’re firm
Relievers in the fact that that’s largely why a lot of golfers leave most of their putt short because they don’t actually have a full understanding of just how long the put is if you go to the low side and stand far enough back so you’ve got ball
And hole in peripheral vision if you triangulate if you like it’s like watching or looking at the part in in wides screen in 3D in HD you know basically what we’re trying to do is to read greens basically we’re looking for Clues but if you’ve only got one clue by
Looking down the line you’re not exactly giving yourself the best opportunity to to solve the puzzle if you like but by going to the low side you start to see the undulation you start to see just how far it is and if you don’t again if you
Don’t know how how far the the putt is you don’t know how hard to hit it if you don’t know how hard to hit it how can you choose a line and you also see so many people that if they hit a putt that’s big breaking putt you know they
And and and they tend to underere it and then the ball ends up what 3 4T to the right of it yeah because they didn’t really right I I think that’s relates some to what you’re out here too absolutely yeah because they they think oh I didn’t get the line right but they
Didn’t get the line right because it didn’t get the pace right if you trace it back to the root cause of that you know was it a bad part May well have been but the chances are it was a bad read so they’ve Mis interpreted the distance which in turn leads to choosing
The wrong line so pace is essential and in order to understand Pace green reading is really really important and reading every part from the low side now whether it’s again whether it’s 2 or 3 feet or 32 ft it doesn’t really matter one other thing that we’ve noticed is
When you when you crouch down to look down the line of a p our eyes tend to skim over the first two or three feet and don’t actually make contact with the ground until about two feet into the putt now if you think about it yeah if
The first two or three feet of that part are uphill or downhill that’s going to have a massive influence on how hard we hit it and how hard we hit it’s going have a massive influence on the on the line so if we’re missing out in that
Vital piece of information it’s going to be a real struggle any more from you car I think Carl on this one yeah yeah I think just to to reinforce where we’ve been been already that what we tend to find when people are trying to imp prove their
Pace control is that if if all of their attention is at their end of things on perfect alignment and and technique and what the wrists of shoulders hands whatever are doing that can very often be the compromise of being able to judge uh feel judge your feel for Pace because you know most
Other activities if you if you stand on a green and you throw a ball from one person to another most people are pretty good at that they’ve instinctively got an ability to judge judge distance but there there’s no way that their attention is on on the release point of
The right wrist or the angle of their elbow or anything like that you know they just they look at the task the person stood in front of them and they instinctively feel that distance so again we see people question when we get them to question what their attentions
On and we explain the importance of of of pace uh and get them a little bit more at the whole end of things we we find you know that that’s that becomes a revelation and again the Paradox is when people free up and they’re not so Bound
By trying to be perfect the Paradox is the technique tends to improve anyway so we actually start to he we actually start to hear better puts we actually see the putter moving on a better line not because you’re trying to do that because of what you’re attentions on so
I guess they’re kind of letting their subconscious really control what’s going on and and and you know the subconscious is pretty smart isn’t it it can make adjustments if you allow it to well you know the fact that we’re still here after a few bill ion years we’ve worked
We’ve worked out a few more complex things than rolling a ball on a green exactly yeah well I’m going to let each of you now talk about maybe one or two of you know your favorite exercises or Improvement exercises that that are in the book so uh whoever wants to go first
Go ahead yeah M mine would be so stupidly simple but even even with to Pros we’ve had some pretty profound results with it that you know if you look at your Behavior just before you play golf most people will hit a few puts but then if you if you if you look
Into what that activity currently is I would guess there’ll probably be 90% plus people who listening to this show probably go onto the onto the green with three balls and you know you you roll the first one and it’s a bit short and then you roll the next one and it goes a
Bit past and then like the genius that you are you managed to get the third one in the hole well you know when you look at it what what is the requirement for go what is the requirement the fundamental requirement for putting is that you get good at predicting the
Behavior of the ball based on one attempt that’s all you get on the golf course so if you only get one attempt to predict the behavior of the ball surely that’s what we should be practicing so I really like the idea of switching with your putting practice that you get out
There just simply with with one ball create a bunch of random puts you know medium range long range I I quite like a drill I call it 18 uh 18 green in regulation where you imagine You’ got the perfect ball striking round and you give yourself 18 different puts short
Medium long and you see what see what sort of score you would make um just with that one ball you’re much more likely to go through your process and one one big point on this is that when you’re out on the golf course you have
To create each put in a unique moment in time you’ve never had it before and you’ll never get it again and most of put in practice removes that that that process of creating puts in the mind because you’re stationary in one position repeating the same thing over
And over again so as as stupidly simple as it sounds I I would suggest for for everybody to consider the behavior on the greens before they play and maybe consider coming over to the one ball side of things and just recreate the demands of the game
Itself great I like that 18 balls in regulation I’ve got some people I’m going to be out in the green with today and it I think they’re going to hear that one but it’s a fun game and and also you know based over a period of
Time you can get some good statistics on it you know you can see what the patterns are for somebody who’s really into the golf and maybe at the higher level you know you can see where do they match up is it is it short range that there’s a problem medium long range is
It left to right right to left but but based on this principle of one attempt not numerous attempts well very good well I guess we’re over to you Gary right yeah I’m gonna wholeheartedly agree with Carl there um I think you if you’re go to work in your putting you
Take what you’re allowed on the golf course which is generally a ball on a putter you don’t have a second serve you don’t have a third serve so you know as Carl said you you part of the skill of putting is predicting how the goals the
Ball’s going to behave so if you’re not you know you’re not predicting on the second one you’re learning from the if you’re taking feedback from the first from the first one on your second part and again on the third part you you have the the benefit of feedback
From the first two packs so yeah you know most people will be able to figure out what to do with the third one but unfortunately we don’t we do not have that luxury on the golf course one drill that we we use to great effect is what
We call the little ladder drill um and we’re actually in the process of kind of putting together a video version of the book If you like with lots of exercises in it and one of the exercises we use is we we use the the putter grip to create
A semicircle of te’s around the hole it’s about a foot beyond the hole or around the hole it should say from the center of the hole we create a semicircle of T’s and then we take a pace two paces three Paces four Paces so the object of the exercise is to add
From from certainly first of all from One Piece you got to get the ball either into the hole or keep it within that 1 foot radius around the hole if you hold the part or it stays within that sem circle of Tas you’re allowed to move on
To two Paces so it sounds like a really simple drill but again you don’t get a second chance to set it from the same place if you hold the first one you’re allowed to move on to level two if you like and then if you hold that one or
You keep it in the semicircle you’re allowed to move on to level three so you get further and further away or you can randomize it you can go from 3 ft away to 12T then back to 6 feet then to 9 ft so you can mix it up a little bit so you
Know again training how you’re going to play on the golf course CU not every put’s going to be in sec was 3T 6t 9 ft 12T so we mix it up a little bit and it sounds like such a simple task to get your ball within a foot of the hole it’s
Got to be at least up to the hole and if you can keep it within a foot past the hole then guess what you’ve become very good at at PACE if you become good at PACE as we suggested earlier you’re virtually going to eliminate three putting so it’s a fantastic drill and
It’s if you’ve got a training partner a practice partner it can become extremely competitive and extremely addictive so be careful when you use this to well that’s good well it would be good to be addicted to a great putting Improvement drill right I mean absolutely how could how could anything
Be better than that exactly well I really appreciate the two of you taking the time today to talk with me and and so let’s kind of and and and any key conclusions and takeaways uh that each of you wants to talk about for a minute or two that that you want
To either remind people of or um uh amplify that that that you have not said before um we we have said it but i’ just reinforced become become very interested in attention um what what is your attention on before the put what is your attention on when you’re actually over
The ball how do you react afterwards what do you what do you pay attention to when when the ball has either gone gone in the whole or not and you know the more you become aware of you your unique uh attention DNA as a as as a as a
Unique human being the more you kind of put the pieces of the jigsaw together and find out what is it that you need to pay attention to to to release your capability not just on the greens but in the in in the rest of the game and then
It becomes it becomes really fascinating that you that you personalizing what you need to do as opposed to just always working on a bunch of positions that maybe somebody else has suggested to you so you you eventually get to the point where you own your own game rather than
Constantly relying on somebody else to to point out where you’re going wrong the best players do own their own games don’t they absolutely they always have done absolutely right yeah well then Gary you get the final word I guess huh what a pleasure yeah for me it would be
As simple as pay more attention to what the ball has to do whether it’s on the pudding green on the tea from the Fairway in a bunker whatever it is because as we suggested earlier pretty much all golf coaching teaching instruction whatever you want to call it is very much about what you
Need to do what the club needs to do but very much at the expense of what the ball needs to do so if nothing else pay more attention to what the ball has to do and pay attention to what you want to do with the golf ball what you want to be
Creative with the golf ball yeah neat way to end and I’m going to put a little um you know sort of a mini plug in here too I think it’s midt that your next book is out right at least I looked on the website is that true it is yeah yeah
The I think the third week in September is the release date that’s uh that’s really exciting I’m sure the start of playing golf right yeah we’re just going through the final edit as speak so um yeah my mind’s kind of fried trying to read through that again for the I don’t
Know how many times I’ve read it so far but you want if you want an outside person to look at it I know somebody that could do that but I’m gonna read it when it I’m G to read it when it comes out I promise just take you up on that
Well I’m certain that if you guys are interested um and hopefully we can keep Skype working that I’d love to have you back in you know in a few months and talk about that I’m sure it’s going to be as good as this as this book um I put
I’m going to put links in show notes to your website and where people can get in touch with you and um you’ve done something pretty neat here and and you know it too you know you know it too it’s it’s something that’s really valuable for golfers and and help them
Have more fun you know and become detached from that sometimes don’t we yeah yeah well very good Gary and Carl thanks I’m going to sign off in a minute let you hang in for just a second but uh this has been a great interview and I know golfers are going to really enjoy
It thanks thank than you Tony it’s been an Absol pleasure game improvement golf I create exceptional golf clubs you shoot lower scores the Lost Art of putting is a book that all golfers who want to make more putts should have in their libraries a very easy read But it includes some
Profound information in it I put links in the show notes for the Lost Art of putting website and also how you can directly contact Gary and Carl at their individual websites and watch for their new book the third week of September the Lost Art of playing golf I know it’s going to be
A great resource for golfers well my shout out today is for my friend Chris Griffin the golf coach for the Ron State Community College golf team last year was The Rebirth of the Rome State golf team I think it came back from 1982 was the last time there
Was a team at rone State and I continue to be excited that I get to help the team with putting coaching and custom Club fitting thanks Chris for your dedication to Ron State Golf and for letting me assist the team well one more thing before we kind
Of sign off your favorite true custom Club fitter and putting coach shot 75 last week this was the actually the third round that I’ve played since my surgery in miday I have to say that this was an unexpected result but I wonder if that contributed to the fact that I just
Played freely and easily and hit a lot of great shots something to ponder well that’s it for today in two weeks a great interview with Mike romatowski developer of the Mach 3 Golf speed training process and program almost all of us can benefit from being able to swing faster and Mike will share
Some of his knowledge about how to do just that see you in two Weeks game improvement golf your source of information and inspiration to become an exceptional golfer now www.game Improvement golf.com
