I Miss, I Miss...

Yogi Berra once moaned of his balky touch on the greens at Pinehurst, “I got a touch like a blacksmith.”

Seve Ballesteros was once asked how he four-putted: “I miss, I miss, I miss, I make,” he answered.

Ben Hogan thought putts should count less than a full shot, given that in his mind putting and hitting shots were two totally different endeavors. “Frankly, most of the best golfers I know legitimately hate putting,” the Wee Ice Mon said.

I could identify with all three of them as the spring of 2021 evolved and my putting denigrated into more than the occasional three-jack and my dominant thought over a four-footer was that old dagger you get from an opponent before a big putt: Get it close.

Life is too short to be ham-handed around the greens, so I took two steps to hopefully remedy my misery: I visited old friend David Orr at Pine Needles in Southern Pines for a putting tune-up and sent off for a practice device to use at home called the Perfect Putting Mat.

Orr is a long-time golf instructor (he just turned 53 in June) whose clients have included major championship winners Justin Rose and Suzann Pettersen. He’s evolved in recent times into a putting specialist and is on GOLF Magazine’s list of top 100 instructors in the nation. Orr worked under Pine Needles matriarch Peggy Kirk Bell from 2000 to 2004 and returned to resort in 2017 to set up his putting instruction practice under the Flatstick Academy umbrella.

David Orr looks at the data on my stroke during my first putting overhaul in late 2017.

I had gone under the Orr microscope three and a half years earlier, and he corrected a long-standing tendency of mine to accelerate too quickly through impact. I would take a short backstroke and then try to pop the ball to the hole (that’s what they preached in all the magazines, right?). We talked then about making an “unhurried“ stroke, and the good news now is that I hadn’t relapsed into popping the ball. This time, though, Orr thought my backstroke was a little too leisurely and counseled me to think of accelerating a hair quicker going back. He also made an adjustment with my hands to a slightly higher position at address.

From there, Orr set me up in his putting studio amid some high-tech apparatus to govern my stroke length, speed and direction.

He uses a custom-designed portion of a hula hoop that is color-coded and placed on the ground to measure stroke length—back and through.

He also has a prototype of a metronome-type “tempo stick” for stroke speed; it emits a series of sounds to direct the golfer when to look at the hole, look back at the ball, take the putter back and then connect with the ball—all with no wasted thought.  The sounds are sort of like a “ping-ping” followed by a “whoosh-whoosh.”

And 30 feet away, he sets a laser with a green light to run between the hole and the ball to check if the ball leaves the putter on the correct line.

“They say you can’t teach feel. But I’m doing it all day long,” says Orr, whose appointment book on this mid-June day is filled two months out.

I strike putt after putt on the green carpet calibrated to roll at about a 12 on a Stimpmeter. The “putter-nome,” as it’s called, helps me establish a cadence that is repeatable and reliable.

“This gets you in the right length of stroke with the proper timing,” he says. “It’s making you accelerate on the backswing. Plus, you’re starting the ball on-line.”

He smiles.

“An old dog can learn to putt.”

I take what I learn from Orr back home to Chapel Hill, where I have the Perfect Putting Mat set up in my home workout/golf studio. The mat was recommended by a couple of friends who used theirs regularly, and it’s a major upgrade from a rudimentary putting mat I once had that was ruined by a yet-to-be-housebroken puppy.

The Perfect Putting Mat allows golfers to practice putts from two to eight feet; the surfaces runs about 13 on the Stimpmeter when placed on hardwood flooring.

The Perfect Putting Mat was conceived by a Florida golfer named Oren Kantor, who was driven to improve his putting with bad memories of four-putting the eighteenth hole in a high school match a few years back. Using his studies in entrepreneurship and marketing at the University of Florida, Kantor and business partner Ed Mileto have conceived and manufactured a better mousetrap than the bumpy mats that Kantor found on the market several years ago.

The secret sauce is crystal velvet, a soft-handle polyester often used in women’s wear and bedding. The inclined ball return mat measures around 13 on the Stimpmeter when set on hardwood flooring, and it has notches at two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight feet. PGA Tour standout Dustin Johnson discovered the mat during the Covid-19 shutdown in 2020, ordered one, used it and now endorses the product.

“Always our putting is one of the first things that’s neglected,” says PGA pro Zach Allen in an introductory and how-to video that comes with the mat. Indeed, give me a half hour and I’ll hit balls anytime rather than work on my putting.

Included is a small mirror that you place facing upward on the mat to insure your eyes are directly over the ball at address. Allen recommends installing a metronome app on your phone and setting it at 70 beats per second—similar to the protocol Orr employs to help golfers establish a routine.

I’ve established a ladder drill I try to practice daily—five putts at five different distances, beginning at two feet and ending at seven. And after seeing an Instagram post of LPGA star Nelly Korda stroking putts right-handed only, I am reminded of the counsel I got years ago from Rod Myers, the golf coach at Duke University, to let your right hand power the stroke, the left just being along for the ride.

Now standing over a six-footer, I have some technical and mental adjustments working in my favor and the positive reinforcement of all those short putts drilled on my mat.

Hands a little higher. Eyes over the ball. Accelerate back. And the metronome clicks away in my mind: Eyes to the hole, eyes to the ball, club back, club through.

No one’s confusing me with Ben Crenshaw, mind you, but that rattle of ball into hole is some sweet music I’m hearing a bit more often these days.

To learn more about David Orr and his teaching services at Pine Needles in Southern Pines, view his website at https://flatstickacademy.com/ or call him at 910/740-9616. The Perfect Putting Mat is available by clicking https://www.perfectpractice.golf.