I recently had a teaching pro tell me that putting tempo should match your "walking rhythm". I knew where he got this idea, (Dave Pelz). I decided to test this theory, specifically the chart in figure 11.3.1 of Dave Pelz's Putting Bible. Pelz says that taller golfers walk slower than shorter golfers. This makes sense, a shorter golfer has to walk at a faster rate to cover the same ground as a taller golfer with a slower rate. Pelz goes on to say a shorter golfer should also have a faster putting stroke and a taller golfer should have a slower putting stroke. The Pelz chart graphs height vs "measured" putting strokes of PGA Tour golfers. (he doesn't say how he measured the pros' tempo)

To test the chart's validity, I measured a few PGA Tour pros' walking rate and their putting tempo.

Fred Funk is 68" tall and walks at a rate of ~129 steps per minute.
Pelz's chart says Fred should putt at ~111 bpm
Fred Funk's actual putting tempo is 113bpm, error=2%

K.J. Choi is 68" tall and walks at a rate of ~109 steps per minute.
Pelz's chart says K.J. should putt at ~76 bpm.
K.J. Choi's actual putting tempo is 100bpm, error = 32%

Phil Mickelson is 75" tall and walks at a rate of ~104 steps per minute.
Pelz's chart says Phil should putt at ~68 bpm.
Phil's actual putting tempo is 113bpm, error = 66%

Tiger is 73" tall and walks at a rate of 113 steps per minute.
Pelz's chart says Tiger should putt at ~83 bpm.
Tiger's actual putting tempo is 113bpm, error = 36%

What's interesting is that Phil, a tall player, has the same tempo as Fred Funk.
The Pelz Chart yields tempo's that are off as much as 66% for tall players.

There is indeed a strong correlation between walking tempo and putting tempo among many Pros on Tour but not as depicted in Dave Pelz's chart.

Tiger's walking tempo amazingly, is the same as his putting tempo!
As Tiger walks down the fairway, his arms swing back and forth at exactly the same rate as his putting stroke, T = .53 seconds. His downswing to impact time, T/2 (for ALL clubs) is .27 seconds.

By the way, Dave Pelz says his tempo is 80 bpm. However, I measured his stroke at 113 bpm.

Dear dean,

Thanks immensely for this info. I have repeatedly said that Dave Pelz's approach to tempo is bogus and no more a sound "theory" than an old wives tale or a folk remedy from the swamps. This is another instance where Pelz "claims" a scientific background underpinning his supposed "theory" but he doesn't give any real details about his sources or his research (the claim about 17 inches past the hole is another such, where his actual research and personal statements explaining the meaning of his data prove that his oft-repeated claim about 17 inches is in fact false, which is why he never directs golfers to his actual research data report in Golf Digest, July 1977, pages 52-55). In fact there is NO SCIENCE AT ALL connecting a person's walking rhythm or tempo with his optimal putting rhythm or tempo. I have searched for this "science" for nearly twenty years (and candidly, I am a world-class researcher) without unearthing so much as a shred of legitimate science that supports a connection between walking tempo and optimal putting tempo. There isn't any. AND claiming that there IS a connection and persuading golfers to model their putting strokes on their walking rhythm HURTS a golfer's putting!

Nick Price is the "poster boy" for the "theory" that a golfer's swing and putting stroke should "match his personality" (i.e., in Nick's case, fast). The Pelz approach of "walking tempo = putting tempo" is just a dressed up repeating of this basic "swing naturally with your natural personality tempo" lore from the dark corners of unintelligent golf instruction. However, Nick Price putts like a drunken dog whenever he uses a putting tempo that matches his supposed "personality tempo." Just ask his coach David Leadbetter, who said just this in milder words in a recent Golf Digest article, from the benfit of nearly thirty years of observation. Leadbetter has been cautioning Price NOT to "putt his personality tempo" since at least 1986 but to slow down, and when Price actually heeds this advice, he putts marvelously (e.g., when he set the record with a round of 63 at the Masters in 1986 on a Staurday after Leadbetter persuaded him to STOP putting his personality).

There is a relationship between a person's height or stature and his walking tempo (I've studied locomotion and gait in the human for purposes of "the neuroscience of oscillating rhythms and timing processes in the brain and movement" for years), but it is not a 1-to-1 correlation -- just a factor influencing walking tempo. The factor is obviously how a human interacts with gravity as a pendular system -- taller / longer pendula move on earth more slowly than shorter pendula. And you are partially correct about "covering the same ground" requiring shorter people to take more steps in the same time in order to "keep up" with the usual human herding instinct (try walking slowly on a New York sidewalk around 8-9 am when folks are headed to their offices). But there are also other influences, including climate, culture, personal developmental history, physical fitness, characteristic home terrain, and others. Although these factors should be taken into account by an instructor for movement, none of these influences have much of anything to do with OPTIMAL putting movement.

Pointing to pros as evidence of optimal is a tricky business. Your information underlines this dramatically again! Hardly ANY pros usually putt in an optimal fashion or have a style or technique that indicates optimal putting, and pros especially cannot be regarded as an homogeneous group sharing the same basic common features in their putting.

What is more fundamental, which is what I teach and apparently am the ONLY golf instructor who does, is to teach the relationship between TEMPO and TOUCH first and then explore optimal tempo for a specific golfer. I also am apparently the ONLY golf instructor who teaches the connection between TEMPO and STROKE FORM for putting straight consistently and accurately. This is based upon over 17 years of hard-core neuroscience research into the timing processes of the human brain for perception and movement. Many of the supporting sources are posted on my website, if anyone wants to check.

What I have been teaching about the connection between TEMPO and TOUCH (distance control in movement) is not restricted to golf putting, but is in fact FUNDAMENTAL to all human movement. NASA in 1999 paid a neuroscience researcher from France (Dr Alain Berthoz, see his The Brain's Sense of Movement (Harvard Univ. Press, 2000)) to test these ideas in space microgravity and he "discovered" what I have been teaching since 1991, having read this neuroscientist's earlier works and personally having earlier made the connection that NASA didn't find until 1999.

This precise of Berthoz' work captures the essence of how his approach differs from standard "motor control" approaches to human movement in neuroscience to be sure, and in so-called "sports science" in academia in extremis!

"Without detailed knowledge about how vertebrates perceive their environment, further ideas would be futile. Consequently, Berthoz explains the neurophysiological machinery in great detail when it is necessary to do so. His book starts by describing how nervous systems explore the world and how animals control their movements. In the beginning is the idea that perception is not just an interpretation of sensory messages but an internal simulation of action, which means that perception and action are strongly intertwined. And as every moving body must ultimately follow the laws of mechanics, the brain had to invent strategies to solve complex mechanical calculations in an economical way. However, according to the author, neurobiology and neuropsychology have widely neglected this fact and have rather focused on the connectivities within the brain. Berthoz claims that a new neuroethology of natural movement is needed—an approach that would also have to include the emotions, which movements express or arouse."

Jürgen Tautz (Lehrstuhl für Verhaltens-physiologie und Soziobiologie of the University of Würzburg, Germany), A new view on moving: a Review of The brain's sense of movement, by Alain Berthoz (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, July 2000), 352 pp, US$ 45.00, UK£ 30.95 [ISBN 0-674-80109-1], European Molecular Biology Organization, EMBO reports 2, 4, 270 (2001), doi:10.1093/embo-reports/kve082.

Personally, I have NOT neglected this fundamental reality of the gravity-brain connection in my approach to the neuroethology of natural movement, and was "there" years before NASA in 1999. Sports science folks don't even know about this research to this very day! They are mercilessly pinned to the rusty old barbed wire of "the brain calculates 'time to impact' or 'tau'" as the basis for movement precision in space like some small prey staked out to rot by a shrike. And VERY FEW (perhaps 20 worldwide) golf instructors are even aware of this outdated sports science for movement.

The basic reality is that all normal human brains (and all animal brains as well) have an embedded "representation" in the neural patterns of the brain of what gravity is, how it works on objects, and how specifically it influences the human body and body segments during motion on earth, and this gravity timing in the brain underlies all instinctive movement. My elaboration is the "theory" that respecting and enhancing this feature of the moving brain is a good idea, and I've spent nearly twenty years exploring this notion and uncovering what to tell golfers about it in vastly elaborate detail.

As to "optimal" tempo, the basic realities that matter are 1) gravity as it affects human movement, 2) physics forces that accompany specific timing patterns in the movement based on the chosen tempo, 3) the golfer specifically in terms of his body in space (size and masses and shapes) and his movement patterns or habits, and 4) the environment and equipment. If you want to learn about a specific golfer's "optimal" tempo for BOTH stroke and touch, I would humbly suggest you leave "simple" but wrongheaded golf lore behind and get serious about these issues that really matter.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
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