It's the son of a Butch podcast.

I'm your host, Claude Holman solo episode this week.

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So I want to talk this week.

One of the things I mean, I'm incredibly lucky to work with tour players that play golf for a living, and it's trying to figure out how to share that experience of what goes on at the elite tour level and how that can help all of you with your golf game.

So I wanted to talk this week about putting and a couple of things.

I did an outing a couple of weeks ago in Los Angeles, and like a lot of the outings, you stand on a hole and I had to play the tenth hole, which is par three, about one hundred and thirty five yards, nothing fancy.

There were about fifteen groups, so I think there are right around thirty players.

But what I found really interesting was everybody got to the green and you could choose a putt the closest pot.

Everybody get to putt from that one.

I think a lot of people have played outings like this, played scrambles like this.

So the putt that we tended to use it was around a twenty foot pot.

So the idea behind this to keep pace of play going.

We found an uphill pot with a little bit of left to right slope to it, about twenty feet, and if you hit your shot on the par three and nobody got inside of twenty feet, everybody put it from the same place.

So I got to watch thirty golfers of all different levels, some juniors, some senior golfers, some regular golfers, some good players, weekend warriors, just kind of a cross section of regular, non elite professional golf, and the majority of I mean it's par three.

Yeah, some people hit some really good shots and had some butts from you know, six feet, eight feet, ten feet, but the majority of people missed the green or hit it outside of twenty feet.

So the majority of the people I'd say, probably ninety percent of the groups that went through we putted from this twenty foot pott up the hill breaks a little bit from right to left, and watching that process and watching how everybody kind of evaluated that process.

First of all, out of the twenty i'd say, out of pretty much everybody that went through that hole that putted this twenty foot put not one person did a three sixty around the hole.

Everyone tended to look at the putt from the down the line angle, and I'd say the majority of the putts that I saw on that green that day were left sure didn't have enough break.

The speed was wrong.

And so what I'm getting at is people tend to dramatically underread putts and it's important when you've got a putt, you can make that putt at any speed, right, at any speed that you want.

But what I think I see more and more is players they don't play enough break, so the speed is never going to be consistent, and the speed's never really going to be make speed.

Most people, it's up the hill twenty feet breaking from left to right, five feet into the pot.

I'm standing behind the hole.

I can tell that the ball isn't going to go in right.

I can tell that it's never got a chance to go in because the speed's just wrong.

So I think golfers in general are obsessed with I talk about this in the full swing all the time.

Golfers, in my opinion and in my experience, are hyper focused on the curve and the direction of the golf ball he's curving.

They're not focused on the contact when we get to the putting green.

Golfers are obsessed with the line.

They put the line on the ball, they adjust the line on the ball, but I think they don't really think about speed.

And I was lucky enough in two thousand and five to work at the Austin Golf Club, just outside of Austin, Texas.

Ben Crenshaw designed it.

He was a member there.

It was a core Crunchhaw course and Ben was there a lot, and I got to spend a lot of time with him, and he basically just putt it a lot.

He would play a lot, but he would put a lot, obviously as being one of the greatest pure putters of all time.

But he said something to me that's always stuck with me, and he said, if your putts always have the right speed, how far away from the hole are you ever really going to be?

And so, what I think most golfers do is they're hyper hyper focused on the line, on getting the read right, but they don't ever think about the speed of the putt.

And I think when I look back at my teaching and when I look back at working with players on their putting, and I look at it kind of across the broad landscape of instruction, I think we as instructors and golf coaches and teaching pros, we've actually taught golf backwards, right.

We teach the stroke first, we teach the mechanics first, and that's normally from three to five feet, and we work on the line.

Most putter studios when you're putting indoors.

If you ever go to work with someone on your putting and they have an indoor putter studio, you're gonna spend a lot of time working on your stroke, looking at the mechanics, looking at all those things.

And I just I think we're doing it backwards.

I think we were learning putting backwards.

You really should go to the putting green and work on speed first and then work on your stroke, because again, as Ben Crenschall said, putts always have the right speed.

How far away from the hole are you ever going to be?

So I've talked about this on the pod before, but I think most golfers, if they do put poorly, they're going to go immediately to stroke mechanics and putt that way.

And so you got to work on your speed and the last couple of you know, DJ hasn't put a grete this year, and we've been working a lot on a stroke.

But at times his speed control can get a little bit off.

He can leave putts short.

So last week had a chance to win, finish third finished I think one shot out of a playoff.

Speed was really good last week and we worked a lot on that.

So the first day shot sixty two and made one hundred and twenty feet worth of putts.

Had twenty four putts, twelve one putts, sixty two puts no three putts.

His birdie conversion rate was sixty seven percent.

And just to kind of put that into some sort of context, the week before when didn't necessarily have that grade of a week, putting wasn't anything special.

And so when I'm looking at the stats and I'm looking at, you know, what player's doing.

So we look at the final round on Sunday in Chicago, DJ shoot seventy two.

Bertie conversion rate was seventeen percent, twenty five putts, nine to one pots, eight two putts, fifty five feet of puts that he made.

Now, yes, there's ball striking that goes in there, but my point behind that is DJ at time, he likes to dye his putts in the hole.

That's just kind of the way he sees everything.

He likes to kind of if it's a right to left pot, if it's the left to right putt, he wants it kind of dying into the hole.

And at times his speed can get off.

At times I think he can underread.

So last week, what I did was just set up a very very basic putting drill, one that I think can be really really helpful regardless of what level of putter you're at.

But stood at the hole, took three steps away from the hole, put a tee down, and then put five te's down.

So three steps, four steps, five steps, six steps, seven steps.

He doesn't like to work on his distance control on flat pots.

He likes to have them break.

So found a pot that had a little bit of break to it and just said, listen, Okay, you start at the first t If you make it, you go back, and then if you miss, you get one step forward.

Okay, so you go back to the tee that you started on, and if you miss at the first tee, you stay there until you make it.

And what it does is I think it gets him out of thinking about his stroke and thinking about his mechanics.

He thinks like most golfers, they think about their stroke mechanics a lot, which are hugely, hugely important.

Right, But again, this is that battle between technique and execution, So there is going to be a struggle involved because you're trying to match the speed to the line.

But it is a make drill and so DJ, we spend a lot of time on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday.

We did this drill every single day and there were sometimes he got through this drill in half hours, sometimes took in forty minutes.

Sometimes it took them longer.

And then we also did it in the warm ups Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

So yeah, he hit it good on the first day last week in Indianapolis.

Yeah, I mean, you can't shoot nine under and hit it bad.

But he putted probably had one of his best putting performances top five putting performances of this year, of this season, and twenty four putts.

And to me, it's the amount of feet of putts that he made, one hundred and twenty whereas the week before on Sunday, I mean, he's in the fifties, he's not making a lot of putts.

So the speed control got better, and the putts, my dad always says, the great putters have their putts have the go in look.

And so what I started to notice when we started to do this drill was one DJ's speed was better.

He was getting the ball to the whole more consistently.

His potts started to have the go in.

Look.

But because it was a make drill, the focus was again out of thinking about technique, out of thinking about soaked mechanics.

You know what his putter was doing, it was making it.

So he started the he started three steps away from the hole, missed one, made it, went back, then missed and had to come back.

So it's that moving back, moving forward.

But the shorter the potts on this drill.

So you've got a three your three steps away from the hole, four steps away from the hole, five steps away from the hole.

Six.

But once you start to get further away from the hole and you miss, you're then getting closer to the hole.

But the closer he got to the hole, the longer this drill took.

You could see he's like, okay, now I'm all the way back at the beginning of the drill, I just got to kind of the fourth you know, the fourth pot.

Then I missed, and I missed the third one, and then I went back.

So now going back, you could see that he felt like, Okay, now I've got to really zone in and start to just try and make these pots.

So that three step put away from the hole, you could see that when he got all the way back to the beginning of the drill because he missed from further out.

He was like, Okay, let me just go ahead and knock this one in.

And what I noticed was his stroke got a little bit freer.

He just started to putt better because he's putting, he's not doing one specific task.

He's not just working on technique, stroke mechanics from three feet and so on.

The golf course.

Once the tournament started, I mean really really did improve, and we saw some really good improvements in you know what was going on when we got away from the hole and the longer potts, which that's what you want to try and do.

You want to try and hut better from longer range because you're not going to hit it super super close all the time.

And even the best players in the world don't hit it perfect right.

They're going to have issues from speed, from the variety of slope on the green, from the imperfections of the green.

Right, there's spike marks, there's footprints, there's indentations in the green.

But again, if you're only trying to make it, if you're only trying to focus on that, I think that's a great way to I would like to see players start that way what everybody does.

It's a generalization, but the majority of the people that I see, and I see this on the PGA Tour, I see this on live.

I see this DP Asia, LPGA, college golf, high level, junior golf, high school golf.

If people go to the putting green, they start putting short putts first, and switch it up.

If you're not putting great, and if you feel like you're leaving strokes out on the golf course because the putting's not great, start with longer putts.

Just don't go set up that three foot drill, that five foot drill.

You know, a bunch of balls around the hole.

Take this tea drill, walk three steps out, put a tea down a three, four, five, six, seven.

You could do this however long the putting green is right, and it's a make drill.

So if you make it, you go back.

You miss, you go back to where you just were, and I think you'll be surprised at the stroke will get freer because you're trying to make putts as opposed.

The goal of this drill is to make the putt.

And I think a lot of putters and I think tour players can get into this as well.

They're trying to not miss it right.

They're trying to make sure that they do everything in the read and the aame point and walking around and making sure the line's pointing the right way whatever.

All of that is about trying, in my opinion, to try and make sure you don't miss it, try and make sure that you don't do something or don't miss something in the reed or look at it from a different angle, but making sure that you've got the read correct.

So I think most golfers are trying to become great technical putters.

They're trying to have a good putting stroke, and they never really think about speed at all, and if they do, it's kind of bs right.

They just they hit a couple of long ones, but they don't really spend a lot of time in focusing on what it's doing, you know, going out on the golf course and watching DJ.

Last week on Friday, nine under the first day.

The putting got a little bit worse as the week got on, So sixty four on Saturday, and what was it, eighty feet of putt from one hundred twenty, so forty four percent of thirty chances he made so his birdie conversion rate sixty seven when he shot sixty two and forty four percent when he shut sixty four, twenty seven potts nine to one pots, nine two pots, no three pots.

So that's progress, right, you can see that progress.

And then Sunday the last round with a chance to win again the encouraging thing for me, and looking at the stats for DJ last week, no three pots for the week, right, twenty seven pots.

That's good, I mean, that's solid.

And then Sunday thirty eight percent, So sixty seven percent of his birdi conversion rate when he shut sixty two thirty eight percent, but thirty puts on Sunday sixty two feet of putt, sixty one potts, twelve two pots, no three putts.

So the positives are no three pots because a lot of times DJ's three pots come from leaving his first pot short.

You know, he's got a putt from thirty feet and he leaves it five feet short because he doesn't want to run it past.

He's worried about running it too far.

But what his brother and I aj Is Caddy are always saying, listen, if the ball doesn't get to the hole, it never really has a chance to go in.

But a lot of times it's funny.

He'll he'll make a pot on the putting green from twenty feet.

He'll be putting from a twenty foot pott.

He'll be leaving it short.

He'll be leaving it short, and then it'll hit one that goes in, and it's funny.

He'll say, Man, see what that How hard that went in?

If that misses the hole, I've got six feet coming back.

But AJ and I are saying, but you didn't miss it, right, it went in the hole.

And I think it's getting into the mindset of trying to make potts, and I think any of these drills.

Chris Ventura, who plays on the PGA Tour, went to Okahoma State University, was on the national championship team with Victor Hovelin and Matt Wolf.

I did some work with Vic helped him get to the PGA Tour.

But I mean, Chris vent Tura, he's one of them.

I mean, he's got a great stroke, right, I mean, he's a really really good putter, and he's got a drill that he does where he starts at the hole and he goes one foot away from the hole and he's got two pots to make the one footer, he makes it, he goes to two feet, makes goes to three feet.

So the idea behind that is you've got two pots and you're going to start one foot, two foot, three foot, four foot, five foot.

I mean again, you could go as far back away from the hole as your putting green could allow you to do right space wise.

But he does a very similar drill to where you've got two chances from each spot, right.

So you can do this with t's, you can do this with coins, you can just do this with steps, whatever, But the two ball drills where you've got two chances to make it, I think it's a really good kind of learning exercise for you because obviously you're you've got two chances to make the pot, so you're going to learn from the first pot if you miss it right, did you hit it hard enough?

Did you not hit it hard enough?

Did you play enough break?

Did you play too much break?

Right?

So that's another really really good one.

But it's very easy to just focus on the line and not really focus on the speed at all.

So maybe change up your routine.

Maybe start with long pots from twenty to forty feet and walk them out and go online and figure out, you know how many steps away from the hole, but you know, start by walking out ten paces away from the hole rather than throwing down balls right around the green.

One of the things that's going to give you a good gauge on is the speed of the greens.

Most horses hutting green might be a little bit slower than the actual greens, but I do think that you can kind of get a good idea of, you know, how the greens are running that day, and you want to try and get that before you get out on the golf coast because what normally tends to happen with golfers when they play is if they do go to the putting green, they're putting short putts, short butt short spots in their warm ups and then they go out on the golf course and unless you hit it.

So let's say your warm up is doing kind of a three to five foot drill around the hole where you kind of, you know, make that circle around the hole with the golf balls and you've got to make them all and you kind of go around and stuff, and if you do that, you feel pretty good about your putting.

Right you'd say, okay, yeah, you know, I'm putting pretty good.

You know, I just made you know, a bunch of three footers or five footers and stuff like that.

But unless you on the first hole hit it to three feet or five feet, you're probably going to have a putt from long range on the first hole unless you knock the flag down.

Proximity of the hole is a stat that they keep on tour, and you know, the best players in the world who win that are kind of in that thirty to thirty three foot range, right So the best ball strikers in the world, the best golfers in the world, the person who's the best at proximity of the whole with their iron shots cumulative for the years right around always kind of right around that thirty one thirty two, thirty three feet range.

So you're going to have a lot of mid to long range putts.

And if you can go to the putting green before you go out and say, Okay, I'm going to start from twenty feet or thirty feet or forty feet and I'm going to put some putts from that distance and kind of figure out what my speed's like that day, how the greens are rolling as opposed to going technique.

Stroke mechanics.

First, yeah, you need to work on your stroke right, and how you're stroking the ball with your putter right, what your stroke looks like, whether you're taking it too much on the inside, too much outside, dcel whatever, That will have a dramatic effect on how you put and becoming a better putter.

But if you can focus, I mean, in an ideal world, I think speed should be sixty percent of your putting and your and forty percent should be mechanics.

Now, if your mechanics are really really bad, you can switch that ego, sixty percent mechanics seventy percent mechanics because your stroke isn't great.

But you do need to put the work in distance.

And you just got off the golf course here in Indiana.

In India, I'm here in Detroit this week.

I can't even keep track of This is week three of the last three live events, so my brain's kind of fried.

We're in Detroit this week and DJ came out.

We had some balls today, short game stuff, and then we went over and did some mere work.

Wanted to make sure that his eyeline was really good, and I set up a drill and I was like, all right, we got five potts started three feet away.

It probably took him today about almost forty five fifty minutes, almost an hour, and I was blown away at how many good potts that he was hitting that weren't going in that we're lipping out, that were just burning the edge, that looked really really good.

And you could see that it was a struggle.

It's a drill that he doesn't like.

Right, he got out to the fourth pot and he was like, if I make this one, I'm done with the drill.

I'm like, no, we're we're doing this until you make the fifth pot, right, And he would get out to the fourth and then he would go back to the third and then he'd hit a really good shot and miss, and then go back to the second tea and then miss there and then have to start the drill over.

The amount of times, you know, in that almost fifty minutes that he had to start, you know, the drill over from the beginning were a lot.

But again, he's learning how to pot.

And what I saw was halfway through the drill, he hit a couple of really really good pots, you know, kind of at the second tea and the third te which got him to the fourth tea, and he said, you know, I just kind of lighten my grip pressure, kind of relaxed my forearms a little and let the putter flow a little bit more.

And it's funny that he mentioned that because I could see that in his stroke.

So it's a basic drill, but it's definitely one that I think can help.

And focusing on speed.

Yes, stroke mechanics hugely important, just like having a good golf swing is hugely important to lowering your score.

So having a good golf swing, having a better putting stroke will definitely help your scores improve.

But you have to be able to go out and execute.

And if your putting stroke is really really good technically, if your technique and the way that you use the putter is good, what's going to happen the further you get away from the hole.

And I definitely think that is something that I think for everyone listening, the majority of you, if your speed improved, and again using that and crunch all line, if your putt always has the right speed, how far away from the hole is it ever really going to be?

And I think because players don't practice speed, they have a hard time on putts that break a lot on slopey greens, on fast greens, on slow greens, on putts that you have to have really really good speed on getting the ball to the hole.

That's the one thing I noticed in doing this drill with DJ last week and this week is the amount of putts that he's leaving short.

He's not leaving putts short anymore.

Right we're on the golf course from twenty feet, from thirty feet, sometimes he'll leave it short, it won't get to the hole.

But by doing this drill, you know, we go sixty two on the first day, sixty four on the second day, and then sixty seven in the last round, and made one hundred and twenty feet of putts first day and on the last day he's right around that kind of fifty to sixty mark.

So the score reflects that.

But encouraged by the fact that because we worked on speed control, because we worked on distance control, no three putts for the week.

That's a win for us.

And if you can three put less, your scores are going to improve.

You're going to make more putts.

And by practicing more putts from distance, I think you're also going to make more fifteen to twenty footers for par when you need to.

So just something to think about and something that I think can help you improve your scores.

Thanks everyone for listening.

The Live season is about to end, the PGA Tour season is about to end, and I am looking forward to the off season and I can get back to my real job, which is giving golf lessons to normal people.

Son of It, which comes to you almost every week.

Thanks everyone for listening.