Geoff, I tried to respond to one of your posts under the thread, "How good a putter are you?"...but there was a small padlock on the thread and I couldn't respond within that thread directly. In any case, you had made the comment...

"By the way, Len Mattiace blew a Masters playoff against Mike Weir with an atrocious approach putt. He needed a two-putt to stay alive but blew his approach putt 15-20 feet by the hole and three-putted to lose. This was the 109th time in a week he had putted the greens of Augusta National, with something like his 180th-200th putt. I use this example nearly every day to teach people how important it is to understand how touch actually works, since one benefit of this is learning how it is physically impossible to go too long when you appreciate green speed and stick to your timing. I'm very confident that if Len Mattiace had asked me to teach him that, he would not have blown that putt, and I certainly would not."

In a pressure putting situation such as between Mattiace and Weir, I don't think any putting lesson would relieve the presssure of a putt Mattiace was faced with. Also, in defense of Len Mattiace, back in '96 Dave Pelz and Compaq held the World Putting Championships and Mattiace was the "World's Putting Champion," $250,000 winner over thousands of the world's best putters including both professionals and amateurs. During that competition, he had everything going for him, including "touch." The guy can putt, but on that particular day against Weir, he just came up short...well, actually long because he putted past the hole...just wasn't his day. Pressure does strange things no matter how good you are.

Regards,
Larry Stanley
The Putting Edge

Dear larry,

I certainly disagree with your statement that "Pressure does strange things no matter how good you are." What a golfer KNOWS about HOW TO PUTT affects how the golfer responds under pressure. My point was that Len Mattiace did not KNOW how to avoid going long on that putt, even if it was under pressure. I'm very confident that he does not KNOW this skill today. Had Mattiace known how to avoid going long, I think his chances of avoiding the bad effects of pressure would have been many times higher than in fact they were that day. Mattiace lost the 2003 Masters by bogeying the 72nd hole to let Weir into the playoff and then double-bogeying the same hole with his putting in the playoff when Weir won with a playoff bogey.

I know you are impressed with winners of the old putting contest, as you yourself did well in the California phase of the same contest, but that's all beside the point. I don't and haven't ever argued that certain players aren't great putters on occasion. Instead, I have argued and maintained that real KNOWLEDGE of how the skills of putting work makes a tremendous difference in consistency from week to week, month to month, and year to year, and that this KNOWLEDGE in specific situations can save the golfer strokes that he could not otherwise save regardless of his implicit "talent" (as opposed to knowledge of skills), and that this knowledge has a very strong influence in shielding a golfer from the deleterious effects of pressure and indeed converting what is pressure for other players into a source of positive energy for the knowledgeable golfer because pressure makes him resort for security to "what he knows works best" instead of allowing the pressure to change the way he executes a given putt.

So, I think your point of view accepting pressure as inevitably bad for everyone is not the best way to approach playing golf, and will certainly not elevate your game to the level of players like Tiger Woods, and players' surrendering to this "inevitability" of performance failures under pressure will cost them any number of victories and much better average performance over the long haul.

Incidentally, Mattiace's stats for 2007 weren't too good: 189th on Tour in putts per GIR (very nearly last of all players) and has not been an exempt member of the PGA Tour since 2004, when he banked only $212,000 for the season when the cutoff on the money list at 125th was $623,000 (making 12 cuts and missing 13 cuts); he banked $209,000 in 2005 (made 9 cuts, missed 25 cuts), only $66,000 in 2006 (made 6 cuts, missed 16 cuts), and nothing in 2007 (missed 10 of 10 cuts). he has never ranked higher than 66th on Tour in Putts per GIR. Len had a little run from 2002 to 2003, but that's pretty much been it.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist

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