Dear Jimmy,
Great, simple questions!
How long does it take to be a decent putter?
If you start out fresh, with no golf experience, decent putting takes about a year to learn, so long as you are taught well along the way and practice some and play more. You need experiences that are received after and along with good instruction so you can interpret the experiences to good effect and learn from them -- especially distance control and reading putts at first, and then later aiming and stroking straight.
How much practice is needed to imprint the putting stroke into oneself?
Probably at least two months of steady practice, and probably more like 4-6 months for most people due to their limited time. If you use an indoor practice mat and work an hour or two three or four times each week, it would probably take about 2-3 months, depending on whether your instruction helps you see what is supposed to be happening and how to do it and how it should look and feel.
How much practice is needed to maintain the good putting stroke?
There is a big diference between good putting and a good stroke. Just maintaining the stroke itself -- the movement, the timing, the feelings -- is not really that difficult. The problem is "reassembling" your stroke on a particular day. This means getting back in tune with a number of aspects of the stroke, such as how to start the takeaway (what moves where and how it feels), how the backstroke sets itself with good timing, how the transition occurs coming down, how not to hurry the stroke, how the hands drop swinging beneath the neck line, how the timing of the stroke reaches the bottom with assured patience, how to avoid guiding the stroke or manipulating the putter face, etc.
Good putting is a larger enterprise than the stroke. Good putting requires good putt reading, good aiming, good mental controls, good timing, and a stable, effective routine. This is harder to develop and harder to maintain.
Why do the pros practice their putting so much? Can't they just learn it and that's all?
Right! This shows the flaw in the usual concept of "muscle memory," doesn't it? The pros (most of them, not all) practice putting "so much" (not nearly as much as they practice on the range) for a number of reasons, not all of which are really that helpful. Without implying a popularity of the reasons, here are the main ones:
First, they practice out of fear of not practicing. The Tour is very, very competitive, and it is tough enough getting on Tour in the first place and then staying on Tour, let alone winning. The difference between playing on the PGA Tour and any other pro tour is about ten times -- it's the difference between wading in the kiddie pool and surfing off Diamondhead. Some players fight for fifteen or twenty years just to get a card. The difference between the top putters and the worst putters in the 200 or so Tour players is only 2 putts a round. If he can save 1 putt a day, a player at the bottom of the money list can move from about $600,000 a year in earnings and perpetual fear of losing his card to winning over $1.5 million or nearly $2 million and feeling secure year after year. All players know how close thay have come to a big finish or a win, only to miss a few putts and see themselves fall back deep into the field at the end.
Second, pros practice out of determination to get sharper and possibly to win. All pros like money, but they like notching a win a lot better! A win separates the player from the pack in the eyes of all the other players on Tour, and also in the eyes of the public. Indeed, it changes the way the golfer thinks about himself. And the money with a win is a lot more than the money for finishing in the top 20. The difference between first and second in a Tour event is nealy twice the money. If you blow a four-foot putt on the final hole to get into a playoff, and let the other guy win, that four-footer might cost as much as you've ever earned before in a year. Vijay Singh missed a two-footer last year that cost him about $500,000. John Daly did the same. If you're not sharp enough to make no mistakes when it comes down to crunch time like that, you just won't win.
Third, pros practice to withstand pressure. Part of this is trying to make the stroke so "routine" and such a matter of mindless "habit" that pressure won't upset it. The belief is that if you have simply sank a large enough number of three- to five-footers, facing such a putt under pressure can be treated as "just another practice putt -- no big deal. Just rely on your habitual way of putting and let 'er go." The other part of this is trying to get settled in mind whether you are a confident putter or not. The belief is that confidence makes the ball go in the hole. Personally, I don't really subscribe to that, because I think "confidence" is really "the absence of doubt" rather than a positive contributor on the team. I find "equipoise" or "steady sure-footedness" on the putting green a more faithful companion, and this really comes from "knowing how putting works and how to perfrm it the best way and knowing that you can do this without a lot of guesssing or doubting about what you are doing." As Jane Crafter on the LPGA says, "Competence makes its own confidence."
Fourth, pros practice to try to maintain their feelings and their routine. The less a pro actually understands about putting and how the brain and body work during putting, the more the pro is forced to rely upon "feel." The mindful putter also uses "feel" to stay in touch with the stroke, but his knowledge of "competence" helps him get the right feelings more reliably and efficiently and without streakiness. "Feel" is such a subtle, mysterious, elusive thing that a) it is hard to appreciate differences, b) it is hard to remember past feelings, c) it is hard to associate causes with feeling effects to sort out what generates good feel from what generates bad feel, d) there are different "feels" associated with different aspects of putting, such as the "feel" for distance or the "feel" for solid impact, and not just a single unified "feel" for the stroke, so that e) "reassembling" the "feel" that you want or think you remember is not really straightforward and easy. That's why "feel" golfers are streaky putters. Nearly all pros believe far too much in "feel" and know too little about what techniques really work best or how to perform them consistently and accurately. The reason for this is probably mostly due to the dominance of teaching by tips and drills rather than by understanding cause and effect. Golfers are taught to "just sink a hundred 3-footers in a row every day" and you're good. That's a poor way to learn. The end result is those golfers don't really know cause and effect and are forced to chase "feel" all the time, and chasing "feel" is like trying to catch a sparrow with your hands. Takes a lot of practice!
If you chase "feel" long and hard enough, it eventually teaches you some important things about cause and effect that you could have learned (along with lots more like it) with good teaching. The relationship between "feel" and "tempo" is a good example of this. The relationship between a "sound stroke" and "tempo" is one very few ever get to.
Fifth, pros practice because they have nothing else to do. They live on the road, traveling from town to town, staying in hotels and eating out and calling their wives and children on the phone. Not that fun! So they practice. Especially if the weather is nice and there is no ball game on tv. If you believe that practice makes perfect, and there's nothing else in a strange town for you to do, you might as well practice.
Sixth, pros practice to hang out with their friends. Their friends are on the putting green, so they are too.
Seventh, pros practice to work on specific issues, such as aiming and alignment or routine or psychology. This sort of practice may be either problem-solving or simply experimental or due to some assignment for practice (either the pro assigns himself the practice work, or a teacher does, or the pro has heard or read something he wants to work on to see whether it will help).
Finally, some pros practice because that's their job. And they aren't lazy and they take care of business in a professional sense.
Incidentally, I've watched pros on the practice greens for days on end, and I rarely see pros using training aids. What nearly all pros do is practice 20-40 footers with 3 balls (often from the same spot -- too many others on the green to have a lot of room for moving from hole to hole) or practice 6-8 footers, especially with some break. Jim Furyk usually practices from about 8 feet. A few, like Jesper Parnevik, use a training aid for short putts. Padraig Harrington uses a string line and Harold Swash's rail from about 10-15 feet, and periodically steps off to the side to putt from about the same distance without the aids. Don Pooley sets two tees slightly apart facing the hole from about 8 feet and backs a ball against the two pegs and putts by striking both pegs with the putter face at the same time (square impact) and repeats this a number of times and then putts the same putt without the tee pegs. Other golfers use a "tee gate" to putt thru or into. But in general, pros don't bring training aids onto the practice green. They probably use them in the hotel or at home or when working with a teacher.
Can you get a good putting stroke from a putter?
No.
Thanks for these fantastic questions!
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
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