It's the Son of Butcher podcast. I'm your host Claude harmon solo episode of the pod this week and wanted to talk about putting. I think it's a very very important part of the game. But I also think it's a part of the game that at times is seen as incredibly complex, and it is. It is a complex skill set. I've had Phil Kenyon on the pod before. If you haven't listened to that one, go check it out. I think fills one of the best in the game and in putting. He works with some of the best players in the game, and he is a master, in my opinion, as an instructor as a coach at making players better at putting. But I just wanted to give a really simple brief observation on Yes, what I know is a complex problem, but I've had some success recently with some players in getting them to think about it differently. And the thought process is, ask yourself when you're putting, are you trying to make putts or are you trying to not miss putts? And I'm talking putts from any distance five feet, ten feet, fifteen, five, thirty thirty five doesn't matter. I asked my dad, Butch Armon. I asked him once what type of putter he was when he played the tour, and he said he felt two things held him back from having a better PJ Tour career. His attitude his temper, which he said got the better of him. He said he struggled to control that like a lot of players do. And he said putting. He didn't feel like he was a great putter and felt like if he could have made more putts, he would have had a better career. That is something that I hear from a lot of players, from the average recreational golfer, two players trying to play at the competitive level. I need to put better. And I asked my dad once. We were talking about putting, and my dad when he worked with Tiger Woods, they used to have this this game that they would play on the night or the late afternoon of every major. So on Wednesday afternoon, wherever they were, they would have a putting contest. Augusta, the US Open, the PGA, the British And this is kind of peak tiger Woods, right two thousand Tiger, you know, the Tiger Slam, all the tournaments he was winning, all the putts that he was making. I think Tiger Woods is probably one of the best pressure putters of all time. In the same vein of Jack Nicholas, it seemed like Tiger and Jack made all the putts they needed to make at the times they needed to make them. The puts for Paul, the puts for birdies, and we've seen that from Tiger's career. So Tiger and my dad would have a putting contest. And my dad has a very very old school kind of risty stroke, you know, tons of weight on his left leg, a lot of forward press. He played on greens growing up in you know, the fifties and the sixties that weren't the greens that we have now, so you had to hit the ball. And his stroke has a lot of hit. It has kind of a lot of what we would call pop to it. We put them on, you know, we put a line on the ball, get him to try and roll the ball straight. He can't do that. I've had him on Sam before. Consistency is off the charts, but the stroke is not something that would be technically perfect. The putter that he uses, he's always used a bullseye type putter, and he had Scottie Cameron make him a bulls eye type putter, so he also likes his putters to be very, very heavy. But he's a very good putter, has been his whole career. And I watched a lot of these putting competitions with Tiger and my dad at Major's, and I watched Tiger beat my dad. Yeah, a lot of times. But I watched my dad beat Tiger in a make him putt game to where the only job was to make it, so if you made it, you were one up. If you didn't make it, you're even. And I'd watch my dad sometimes run the table on Tiger and Tiger but always said, man, I don't know how you're beating me with that shitty putting stroke. And my dad would say, well, you're three down. So I asked him once I was talking to him about putting. I was on putting Green and asking him, you know, what do you think about when you're putting? And he looked at me with a strange look, kind of stations like I don't understand the question. I was like what, and he's like, what do you mean what I think about when I'm putting? And I said, yeah, what do you think about when you're putting? And he said making it. What else are you thinking about? And I was like, yeah, no obviously, and he goes, no, no, no, are you thinking about something else other than making it? So I had a player recently come in plays on the PGA Tour and said he was struggling with his game. You know, he'd missed you know, number of fo in a row, and you know, I said, listen, what are the strengths of your game right now? What are the weaknesses? And he said, well, putting's definitely a weakness. I said, in what way? He said, well, I just don't feel like I can make a lot of pots. We talked about his full swing, We talked about a number of things, and so did some work on us full swing. And I said, well, let's go over to the putting green and I want to sell you what's going on with your stroke And he said, well, I just don't make a lot of pots. And so the natural tendency when someone tells you as an instructor, I don't make a lot of pots, he is, Okay, I've got an indoor putter studio where I can go get him on you know, four cameras and we see how the ball's rolling and hook him up to Sam and you know, we've got the technology, put him on force plates, figure out where his weight's at, is he moving around, is he not moving around, what's the stroke doing, what's the aim doing. You know, we can tear this whole thing apart through technology. But what I wanted to do was to see if he was a bad putter. So I took two balls and I walked four steps away from roughly around twelve fifteen feet to start. I think it was left to right with some downhill in it. And I said, all right, you've got two balls, and the goal is to make the pot. That's it. The only goal is to make the pott. You have two chances, and if you make it, make one of the two, you take another step back, so you'd be five steps away to start out. If you miss, you stay where you are. So first pott I think he hold. Walk back to five feet the next pot, and I think just burn the edge or lipped out, and they hold the next one. So then we walked back to Now we started at four steps away, we went to five, got to six, he made another one, got to seven steps away from the hole. Hit two really good potts. But missed those. So it took a step back and everything. But he started laughing and he was like, wow, I never see myself make this amount of potts. I said, I thought you told me you were a bad putter, and he laughed and I laughed. And my point behind that is I think a lot of players are just trying to not miss potts. So when I regonally put the balls down for this player and I said, listen, you've get two balls. The object from twelve to fifteen feet is out of these two balls is to make it. So he had a line on the ball. So we had three lines on the ball, you know that a lot of people draw, so that he could kind of get that kind of you know, tire look to where he can see how the ball is rolling. So he went to line that up, started to do his aim point and I said, no, no, no, don't line the putts up. Just stand up to it. No practice strokes. Take one look at the hole, look back at the ball, and put so to try and get him to turn his brain off and to take the time gap and make it much much smaller so that he didn't have a lot of time to think. And I think as soon as we took the time away from him to where he was going to gather all this information, and as soon as we made the outcome, just make the pot, I think it really shifted the focus and the strokes started to look a lot freer. He started to take way less time and his putts, says, my dad has said, great putters, their putts always have the go in look, meaning when you play with a really good putter, like if we go out and we walk around a practice round with Cam Smith, you know, I think it's one of the best pure putters I've ever seen. Cam's putts always look like they're going in. Ricky Fowler h when Ricky was in his prime as one of the best putters on the PGA Tour, his balls always look like they had the go in look. And I remember I was at the Austin Golf Club. I worked there for a year in two thousand and five, and it was Ben Crunchaw's home course, not the Austin Country Club where they've played the WGC, but Austin Country Club. And I was talking to Ben about putting and he said to me, listen, if your putts always have the right speed, how far away from the hole. Are you ever really going to be And he said he feels like most people just fall in love with the line, you know, they fall in love with getting the break, getting the perfect line, and then sometimes forget to hit the pott. So once we got this player kind of turning his brain off and just thinking about putting, he started to make a lot of putts and he said that he rarely thinks about making potts he's And when I asked him, I said, listen, when you do a point, listen. Lucas Glover talked about a point. Colin Marikal talked about this is not a commonversation of the validities of whether am point works or it doesn't. I think for some players it works, and I think it sometimes it does, and if it does, for you use it. I think you can use aim point in a way that doesn't take a long time, that you don't have to be slow. But my point behind all of this is this player who told me he was a really bad putter and who was trying to play golf per a living, wasn't trying to make putts. He was just trying to not three putt. So when I asked him, what are you doing with the aim point, with the line on the ball, with the multiple lines on the ball, with lining it up, with going and going through your whole routine, all the practice strokes, how slow everything is, and then you're not making pots. What are you doing? Why are you going through that process? And he said, well, I want to make sure I get all the information so that I don't miss anything that could help me from not missing it. And I just said, no, I understand all that, but why not shift the focus After you do all that, after you do all your mechanical stroke work, after you do all your you know, green reading, you're in information gathering. Why not then say, okay, I've prepared for the test, let me go take the test. And when you pot, there's two outcomes. The ball's either going to go in or the ball isn't going to go in. And in talking to my dad, when he was like, listen, why would you waste any time on trying to not miss it? Shouldn't your focus be one hundred percent on doing everything you possibly do to make it? And so I just think so many players are struggling with putting, They're struggling with speed, they're struggling with distance control, They're struggling with a lot of things. But I think there are a lot of people listening and a lot of people that I see putting that they're not trying to make putts. They're just trying to not miss putts. And I think the headspace that you get into as a player if all you're trying to do is to not do something, there's no positive feedback you're building with yourself. There's no trust that you're building with yourself. So don't be afraid to yes, work your mechanics. I've always thought that as instructors, we've kind of worked putting backwards, right. You know, even with beginning golfers, we work on trying to build the stroke first, and to try and make the stroke from three feet five feet, t's in the ground, chalk lines, all these you know, putting templates, gates, you know, all of the stuff that we do to try and make sure that we could control how the ball is rolling and to make sure that the ball is rolling the correct way. Right in air quotes, the correct way, there isn't a correct way. So as I said to this player, I said, listen, there are so many different ways you can make putts right. There's so many different speeds that you can make putts. And then we did this drill to where we got on some crazy slopes right, some insane left to right slopes, some insane right to less ups. We had some where we were putting basically as much downhill as we can. And again we started off four steps away from the hole. You had two opportunities to make it. And watching this player go from someone who was self confessed a bad putter, who didn't like his stroke, who said he didn't make any putts, to giving him very very difficult putting tasks, and the goal being all you're trying to do is make it. And I think what I was trying to do is to get the stroke to be a little bit freer, but to also help this player just turn his brain off and just pot react. What you see, if we gave you a ball from thirty feet and told you to roll two balls underhanded on the ground, I mean, and just said, hey, roll them to the hole. I would just roll the first one, and then I'd react to what the first one did, and then I'd ad just off the second one. I wouldn't really think about my arm. I wouldn't really think about the motion of my arm. I wouldn't think about where I was holding the ball, whether it's a lot in my thumb or my index finger. And I wouldn't think about my release point or any of that. I wouldn't think about how I was standing or where my arm position was. I would just roll the balls towards the hole. I would react. And so I think most players when they put poorly, they have a bunch of three putts, have you know, thirty three thirty four pots, and they put poorly, the first thing they do is come back to the putting green and set up drills and work on mechanics. And so I think in the past we've tried to have players have perfect strokes and then work on speed and green reading and feel and touch secondly, and to be honest, a lot of times you don't even work on it because you're spending so much time in mechanics. So this goes back to the constant theme that I'm talking about on the pod is the technique part in the execution part. The three DP tour Iron utilizes three D printing technology to unlock a new realm of performance printed from three to sixteen stainless steel. The three DP Tour delivers the shape and feel of a player's blade with the stability and forgiveness of a game improvement iron, the most forgiving blade shape on the market. This one of a kind iron combines tour level precision with the ultimate consistency that aspirational golfers desire. Yeah, I asked Brad Faxon. We're with the Open Championship one year in the early two thousands, and facts, great putter. That's kind of what he's known for, you know, helps Ry McElroy with his putting. And so I asked him we were out of major. I said, listen, what do you think about? Same question I asked my dad, what do you think about when you're putting? And he said, well, what I try and do is after I gather all the information, right after I do my green reading and kind of figure out what I'm going to do and figure out what the game plan, how the putt is breaking, whether it's uphill downhill. He said, once I get over the pot, if I find myself starting to think about my stroke or my brain starting to turn on, I kind of back off, step out and start over again. Because when I'm standing over a putt, I just kind of want to be blank and not thinking about anything. And so I think if you're struggling with putting, if you're struggling with speed, and you're struggling with three putts, I think this is a really good drill to just get you out of Okay. The object is I'm just trying to make it okay. From you know, you could do this in even numbers ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty twenty five, thirty three five. So start at ten feet, you get two opportunities to make it. If you make it, you go back to fifteen feet. If you miss one of the two at fifteen feet, you go back to ten. And then you just keep trying to see how far away from the hole you can be. And I just am fascinated that all of a sudden, the balls start to get to the hole in putting. And this is going to sound very very basic, but if the ball doesn't get to the hole, it never has a chance to go in. That might sound like an incredibly simplistic, kind of cliche type statement, but if you think about it, if you've got a twenty foot pot and the ball doesn't get past the hole, it doesn't get over the front edge of where the cup is. If you don't have enough speed for that to happen, it's very hard for the ball to go in. So when I was in Singapore a couple of weeks ago and DJ played really well, we were out on the golf course practicing. You know, during the practice round, I was taking an alignment stick on whatever putt that he had and just saying, Okay, I'm going to take the alignments that can place at one step behind the hole. So that's kind of, you know, I'm sure people have heard that's kind of the safe zone, but I said, you've got to get the balls to the hole. So you don't want to be reckless. You don't want to be hitting putts super super hard, but there is a makespeed that putts have when you make them. I always think that most players, you can kind of see how much, especially on tour, you can see how much they stay in their posture putting wise, you can kind of tell if they think they've made it or not. So if Roy mcroy's got a twenty footer and he kind of puts it and he kind of stays crouched over stays in his posture and stuff, he's probably gonna have a pretty good chance to make it if he puts it in halfway, he stands up and out of it, or starts walking he knows he hasn't right. So that again is to me, part of the go in look of what putts look like when they're going in. So I think shifting the focus away from technique. Yeah, work on your technique, work on your stroke, you know, work on all of the things that are available in putting. Right now, there are so many different tools, putting mirrors, gates, you know, template O Kenyon has his that a lot of players use. I think all of that is incredibly important. But I think if you're going to do that type of work, and however much time you're going to put into that type of mechanical work, you should put in the same time and just turn your brain off and just go to a putting grain and say, okay, it's playground and I'm just going to try and play, just going to try and pot as opposed to go and work on one specific task from five feet right. And that definitely has value, But you then have to get out of that and say, okay, let me go test the work that I've done on my stroke and see if I can make any pots, and see if I can control my speed, and see if I can control what I'm seeing. I think a good rule of thumb when you get up to every pot that you have before you market. Okay, let's say you've hit an eight iron to twenty five feet, walk up to the ball, stand behind it. So stand directly behind the line that you're gonna put and ask yourself two questions. The first question is is this uphill or downhill? Do I see it uphill? Does your first impression of this put do you think it's uphill or downhill? And then ask yourself do you think this putt is left to right or right to left? So before you do anything, ask yourself those two questions. Get your first kind of reaction. Your first instinct is it uphill, downhill, right to left, left to right. Then go gather the information if you want to do whatever you want to do aime point, go stand on it whatever, figure out all that stuff. Hopefully you should come back after doing all the information gathering, all the data collection, and you thought it was downhill, and hopefully it's downhill, and you thought it was left to right and it was left right. Now how much downhill and how much left to right or right to left or uphill that's a different question. But I think so many players are losing their instincts and their reaction as a player, as an athlete, as a human being, and they're just waiting to try and gather all of this information, and then once the information tells them something, then they're going to try and make a stroke to where they're just trying to not hit a bad putt. They're just trying not to run it too far past. They're just trying to tritckle it down there, and there's no thought process into trying to make it. I'm not telling you to be reckless, right, There's a big difference between recklessly putting going at crazy speeds. But if you are struggling with putting, shifting the focus to okay, what can I do to try and make this pot as opposed to what can I do to try and make sure I don't miss this pot? I think that is two very very different things. So in DJ's case, DJA at times can struggle to get the ball to the hole. So in practice rounds, you know, we were putting a alignment stick behind the hole and saying, listen, you've got to get the ball to the hole. And there were a couple of times where he made a couple putts that would have gone maybe five feet past, but they didn't. They hit the hole. And so the reaction was, Wow, that would have gone too far past. But my answer to that was, yeah, but it didn't. It went why in the middle of the hole. So if that's putt for Birdie, Yeah, if you missed it, maybe it would have gone five feet past, but you didn't. You made it. And so taking that focus and having the concept of a make speed what am I trying to do to make this putt? Can really help just it can help you play and putt better. It can definitely free your putting stroke up. It can get you a little bit less tentative. And most of the three putts that I see in watching recreational golfers you know that I work with, and watching players that I work with, you know that are trying to play, and watching pro ams and watching you know, great players putt. So many times people just don't get the ball to the hole. So from twenty five feet they come up five feet short. That means it never had a chance to go. In so simple, simple game that you can play. Walk four steps away from the hole, put two balls down, do it uphill, do it downhill, do it right to left, do it left to right, and you're trying to see how many of the two you're trying to make them right. If you make them, take a step back, if you miss, come a step forward. But turning the brain off and getting this idea of trying to make putts can do a lot for your confidence, for your speed control, for your distance control, and it can do a lot for trying to free up your stroke. It's not technique. It's in the execution room. It's in the execution button. If you need your stroke. If you're doing this and you're hitting balls massively offline, you know if they've got a lot of cut spin. If you're not hitting something, then go set up some drills and work on your stroke mechanics. But after you've done that, get out of that and go just try and putt and uphills, downhills, right to left, left to right. But trying to make pots from forty feet Go put some forty footers and the only thing you're trying to do from forty feet is make it. And getting into that mindset I think is hugely powerful. I think it's getting into a really positive mindset. And when you've got a pot for Birdie. I mean, if you look at the stats on the PGA Tour, players make more par putts, it seems like from ten feet sometimes than they do for Bertie. Why because the player doesn't want to make a bogie. So why are people more aggressive on bogie putts than they are on birdie putts. It doesn't make any logical sense, right, You're trying to make both of them, and a birdie putt should be an opportunity for you to take a stroke off your score. But you talk to players, you talk to the reaction. You see guys make a fifteen footer and sometimes they don't even acknowledge it. They make a fifteen footer for bogie, fifteen foot for double, you know, for par or fifteen foot for bogie did not make a double. The reaction is way different. They're much more amped up about making a fifteen foot putt for par than they are missing one from fifteen feet for Bertie. So just something I wanted to talk about listen. As I said earlier, putting is a complex part of the game, right. There are a lot of things that go into it. But one of the things that you can do if you are struggling with putting, get out of your head, just go pot free, the stroke up, just try and make potts. And I'm pretty confident if the goal is to try and make pots, and the drill is to try and make pots, and you're someone that doesn't make a lot of potts, I think it's pretty simple. If you're not making a lot of putts, focus on trying to make a lot of putts. So Butch comes to you almost every week. We will definitely see you next week. Rate review, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

It's the Son of Butcher podcast. I'm your host Claude harmon solo episode of the pod this week and wanted to talk about putting. I think it's a very very important part of the game. But I also think it's a part of the game that at times is seen as incredibly complex, and it is. It is a complex skill set. I've had Phil Kenyon on the pod before. If you haven't listened to that one, go check it out. I think fills one of the best in the game and in putting. He works with some of the best players in the game, and he is a master, in my opinion, as an instructor as a coach at making players better at putting. But I just wanted to give a really simple brief observation on Yes, what I know is a complex problem, but I've had some success recently with some players in getting them to think about it differently. And the thought process is, ask yourself when you're putting, are you trying to make putts or are you trying to not miss putts? And I'm talking putts from any distance five feet, ten feet, fifteen, five, thirty thirty five doesn't matter. I asked my dad, Butch Armon. I asked him once what type of putter he was when he played the tour, and he said he felt two things held him back from having a better PJ Tour career. His attitude his temper, which he said got the better of him. He said he struggled to control that like a lot of players do. And he said putting. He didn't feel like he was a great putter and felt like if he could have made more putts, he would have had a better career. That is something that I hear from a lot of players, from the average recreational golfer, two players trying to play at the competitive level. I need to put better. And I asked my dad once. We were talking about putting, and my dad when he worked with Tiger Woods, they used to have this this game that they would play on the night or the late afternoon of every major. So on Wednesday afternoon, wherever they were, they would have a putting contest. Augusta, the US Open, the PGA, the British And this is kind of peak tiger Woods, right two thousand Tiger, you know, the Tiger Slam, all the tournaments he was winning, all the putts that he was making. I think Tiger Woods is probably one of the best pressure putters of all time. In the same vein of Jack Nicholas, it seemed like Tiger and Jack made all the putts they needed to make at the times they needed to make them. The puts for Paul, the puts for birdies, and we've seen that from Tiger's career. So Tiger and my dad would have a putting contest. And my dad has a very very old school kind of risty stroke, you know, tons of weight on his left leg, a lot of forward press. He played on greens growing up in you know, the fifties and the sixties that weren't the greens that we have now, so you had to hit the ball. And his stroke has a lot of hit. It has kind of a lot of what we would call pop to it. We put them on, you know, we put a line on the ball, get him to try and roll the ball straight. He can't do that. I've had him on Sam before. Consistency is off the charts, but the stroke is not something that would be technically perfect. The putter that he uses, he's always used a bullseye type putter, and he had Scottie Cameron make him a bulls eye type putter, so he also likes his putters to be very, very heavy. But he's a very good putter, has been his whole career. And I watched a lot of these putting competitions with Tiger and my dad at Major's, and I watched Tiger beat my dad. Yeah, a lot of times. But I watched my dad beat Tiger in a make him putt game to where the only job was to make it, so if you made it, you were one up. If you didn't make it, you're even. And I'd watch my dad sometimes run the table on Tiger and Tiger but always said, man, I don't know how you're beating me with that shitty putting stroke. And my dad would say, well, you're three down. So I asked him once I was talking to him about putting. I was on putting Green and asking him, you know, what do you think about when you're putting? And he looked at me with a strange look, kind of stations like I don't understand the question. I was like what, and he's like, what do you mean what I think about when I'm putting? And I said, yeah, what do you think about when you're putting? And he said making it. What else are you thinking about? And I was like, yeah, no obviously, and he goes, no, no, no, are you thinking about something else other than making it? So I had a player recently come in plays on the PGA Tour and said he was struggling with his game. You know, he'd missed you know, number of fo in a row, and you know, I said, listen, what are the strengths of your game right now? What are the weaknesses? And he said, well, putting's definitely a weakness. I said, in what way? He said, well, I just don't feel like I can make a lot of pots. We talked about his full swing, We talked about a number of things, and so did some work on us full swing. And I said, well, let's go over to the putting green and I want to sell you what's going on with your stroke And he said, well, I just don't make a lot of pots. And so the natural tendency when someone tells you as an instructor, I don't make a lot of pots, he is, Okay, I've got an indoor putter studio where I can go get him on you know, four cameras and we see how the ball's rolling and hook him up to Sam and you know, we've got the technology, put him on force plates, figure out where his weight's at, is he moving around, is he not moving around, what's the stroke doing, what's the aim doing. You know, we can tear this whole thing apart through technology. But what I wanted to do was to see if he was a bad putter. So I took two balls and I walked four steps away from roughly around twelve fifteen feet to start. I think it was left to right with some downhill in it. And I said, all right, you've got two balls, and the goal is to make the pot. That's it. The only goal is to make the pott. You have two chances, and if you make it, make one of the two, you take another step back, so you'd be five steps away to start out. If you miss, you stay where you are. So first pott I think he hold. Walk back to five feet the next pot, and I think just burn the edge or lipped out, and they hold the next one. So then we walked back to Now we started at four steps away, we went to five, got to six, he made another one, got to seven steps away from the hole. Hit two really good potts. But missed those. So it took a step back and everything. But he started laughing and he was like, wow, I never see myself make this amount of potts. I said, I thought you told me you were a bad putter, and he laughed and I laughed. And my point behind that is I think a lot of players are just trying to not miss potts. So when I regonally put the balls down for this player and I said, listen, you've get two balls. The object from twelve to fifteen feet is out of these two balls is to make it. So he had a line on the ball. So we had three lines on the ball, you know that a lot of people draw, so that he could kind of get that kind of you know, tire look to where he can see how the ball is rolling. So he went to line that up, started to do his aim point and I said, no, no, no, don't line the putts up. Just stand up to it. No practice strokes. Take one look at the hole, look back at the ball, and put so to try and get him to turn his brain off and to take the time gap and make it much much smaller so that he didn't have a lot of time to think. And I think as soon as we took the time away from him to where he was going to gather all this information, and as soon as we made the outcome, just make the pot, I think it really shifted the focus and the strokes started to look a lot freer. He started to take way less time and his putts, says, my dad has said, great putters, their putts always have the go in look, meaning when you play with a really good putter, like if we go out and we walk around a practice round with Cam Smith, you know, I think it's one of the best pure putters I've ever seen. Cam's putts always look like they're going in. Ricky Fowler h when Ricky was in his prime as one of the best putters on the PGA Tour, his balls always look like they had the go in look. And I remember I was at the Austin Golf Club. I worked there for a year in two thousand and five, and it was Ben Crunchaw's home course, not the Austin Country Club where they've played the WGC, but Austin Country Club. And I was talking to Ben about putting and he said to me, listen, if your putts always have the right speed, how far away from the hole. Are you ever really going to be And he said he feels like most people just fall in love with the line, you know, they fall in love with getting the break, getting the perfect line, and then sometimes forget to hit the pott. So once we got this player kind of turning his brain off and just thinking about putting, he started to make a lot of putts and he said that he rarely thinks about making potts he's And when I asked him, I said, listen, when you do a point, listen. Lucas Glover talked about a point. Colin Marikal talked about this is not a commonversation of the validities of whether am point works or it doesn't. I think for some players it works, and I think it sometimes it does, and if it does, for you use it. I think you can use aim point in a way that doesn't take a long time, that you don't have to be slow. But my point behind all of this is this player who told me he was a really bad putter and who was trying to play golf per a living, wasn't trying to make putts. He was just trying to not three putt. So when I asked him, what are you doing with the aim point, with the line on the ball, with the multiple lines on the ball, with lining it up, with going and going through your whole routine, all the practice strokes, how slow everything is, and then you're not making pots. What are you doing? Why are you going through that process? And he said, well, I want to make sure I get all the information so that I don't miss anything that could help me from not missing it. And I just said, no, I understand all that, but why not shift the focus After you do all that, after you do all your mechanical stroke work, after you do all your you know, green reading, you're in information gathering. Why not then say, okay, I've prepared for the test, let me go take the test. And when you pot, there's two outcomes. The ball's either going to go in or the ball isn't going to go in. And in talking to my dad, when he was like, listen, why would you waste any time on trying to not miss it? Shouldn't your focus be one hundred percent on doing everything you possibly do to make it? And so I just think so many players are struggling with putting, They're struggling with speed, they're struggling with distance control, They're struggling with a lot of things. But I think there are a lot of people listening and a lot of people that I see putting that they're not trying to make putts. They're just trying to not miss putts. And I think the headspace that you get into as a player if all you're trying to do is to not do something, there's no positive feedback you're building with yourself. There's no trust that you're building with yourself. So don't be afraid to yes, work your mechanics. I've always thought that as instructors, we've kind of worked putting backwards, right. You know, even with beginning golfers, we work on trying to build the stroke first, and to try and make the stroke from three feet five feet, t's in the ground, chalk lines, all these you know, putting templates, gates, you know, all of the stuff that we do to try and make sure that we could control how the ball is rolling and to make sure that the ball is rolling the correct way. Right in air quotes, the correct way, there isn't a correct way. So as I said to this player, I said, listen, there are so many different ways you can make putts right. There's so many different speeds that you can make putts. And then we did this drill to where we got on some crazy slopes right, some insane left to right slopes, some insane right to less ups. We had some where we were putting basically as much downhill as we can. And again we started off four steps away from the hole. You had two opportunities to make it. And watching this player go from someone who was self confessed a bad putter, who didn't like his stroke, who said he didn't make any putts, to giving him very very difficult putting tasks, and the goal being all you're trying to do is make it. And I think what I was trying to do is to get the stroke to be a little bit freer, but to also help this player just turn his brain off and just pot react. What you see, if we gave you a ball from thirty feet and told you to roll two balls underhanded on the ground, I mean, and just said, hey, roll them to the hole. I would just roll the first one, and then I'd react to what the first one did, and then I'd ad just off the second one. I wouldn't really think about my arm. I wouldn't really think about the motion of my arm. I wouldn't think about where I was holding the ball, whether it's a lot in my thumb or my index finger. And I wouldn't think about my release point or any of that. I wouldn't think about how I was standing or where my arm position was. I would just roll the balls towards the hole. I would react. And so I think most players when they put poorly, they have a bunch of three putts, have you know, thirty three thirty four pots, and they put poorly, the first thing they do is come back to the putting green and set up drills and work on mechanics. And so I think in the past we've tried to have players have perfect strokes and then work on speed and green reading and feel and touch secondly, and to be honest, a lot of times you don't even work on it because you're spending so much time in mechanics. So this goes back to the constant theme that I'm talking about on the pod is the technique part in the execution part. The three DP tour Iron utilizes three D printing technology to unlock a new realm of performance printed from three to sixteen stainless steel. The three DP Tour delivers the shape and feel of a player's blade with the stability and forgiveness of a game improvement iron, the most forgiving blade shape on the market. This one of a kind iron combines tour level precision with the ultimate consistency that aspirational golfers desire. Yeah, I asked Brad Faxon. We're with the Open Championship one year in the early two thousands, and facts, great putter. That's kind of what he's known for, you know, helps Ry McElroy with his putting. And so I asked him we were out of major. I said, listen, what do you think about? Same question I asked my dad, what do you think about when you're putting? And he said, well, what I try and do is after I gather all the information, right after I do my green reading and kind of figure out what I'm going to do and figure out what the game plan, how the putt is breaking, whether it's uphill downhill. He said, once I get over the pot, if I find myself starting to think about my stroke or my brain starting to turn on, I kind of back off, step out and start over again. Because when I'm standing over a putt, I just kind of want to be blank and not thinking about anything. And so I think if you're struggling with putting, if you're struggling with speed, and you're struggling with three putts, I think this is a really good drill to just get you out of Okay. The object is I'm just trying to make it okay. From you know, you could do this in even numbers ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty twenty five, thirty three five. So start at ten feet, you get two opportunities to make it. If you make it, you go back to fifteen feet. If you miss one of the two at fifteen feet, you go back to ten. And then you just keep trying to see how far away from the hole you can be. And I just am fascinated that all of a sudden, the balls start to get to the hole in putting. And this is going to sound very very basic, but if the ball doesn't get to the hole, it never has a chance to go in. That might sound like an incredibly simplistic, kind of cliche type statement, but if you think about it, if you've got a twenty foot pot and the ball doesn't get past the hole, it doesn't get over the front edge of where the cup is. If you don't have enough speed for that to happen, it's very hard for the ball to go in. So when I was in Singapore a couple of weeks ago and DJ played really well, we were out on the golf course practicing. You know, during the practice round, I was taking an alignment stick on whatever putt that he had and just saying, Okay, I'm going to take the alignments that can place at one step behind the hole. So that's kind of, you know, I'm sure people have heard that's kind of the safe zone, but I said, you've got to get the balls to the hole. So you don't want to be reckless. You don't want to be hitting putts super super hard, but there is a makespeed that putts have when you make them. I always think that most players, you can kind of see how much, especially on tour, you can see how much they stay in their posture putting wise, you can kind of tell if they think they've made it or not. So if Roy mcroy's got a twenty footer and he kind of puts it and he kind of stays crouched over stays in his posture and stuff, he's probably gonna have a pretty good chance to make it if he puts it in halfway, he stands up and out of it, or starts walking he knows he hasn't right. So that again is to me, part of the go in look of what putts look like when they're going in. So I think shifting the focus away from technique. Yeah, work on your technique, work on your stroke, you know, work on all of the things that are available in putting. Right now, there are so many different tools, putting mirrors, gates, you know, template O Kenyon has his that a lot of players use. I think all of that is incredibly important. But I think if you're going to do that type of work, and however much time you're going to put into that type of mechanical work, you should put in the same time and just turn your brain off and just go to a putting grain and say, okay, it's playground and I'm just going to try and play, just going to try and pot as opposed to go and work on one specific task from five feet right. And that definitely has value, But you then have to get out of that and say, okay, let me go test the work that I've done on my stroke and see if I can make any pots, and see if I can control my speed, and see if I can control what I'm seeing. I think a good rule of thumb when you get up to every pot that you have before you market. Okay, let's say you've hit an eight iron to twenty five feet, walk up to the ball, stand behind it. So stand directly behind the line that you're gonna put and ask yourself two questions. The first question is is this uphill or downhill? Do I see it uphill? Does your first impression of this put do you think it's uphill or downhill? And then ask yourself do you think this putt is left to right or right to left? So before you do anything, ask yourself those two questions. Get your first kind of reaction. Your first instinct is it uphill, downhill, right to left, left to right. Then go gather the information if you want to do whatever you want to do aime point, go stand on it whatever, figure out all that stuff. Hopefully you should come back after doing all the information gathering, all the data collection, and you thought it was downhill, and hopefully it's downhill, and you thought it was left to right and it was left right. Now how much downhill and how much left to right or right to left or uphill that's a different question. But I think so many players are losing their instincts and their reaction as a player, as an athlete, as a human being, and they're just waiting to try and gather all of this information, and then once the information tells them something, then they're going to try and make a stroke to where they're just trying to not hit a bad putt. They're just trying not to run it too far past. They're just trying to tritckle it down there, and there's no thought process into trying to make it. I'm not telling you to be reckless, right, There's a big difference between recklessly putting going at crazy speeds. But if you are struggling with putting, shifting the focus to okay, what can I do to try and make this pot as opposed to what can I do to try and make sure I don't miss this pot? I think that is two very very different things. So in DJ's case, DJA at times can struggle to get the ball to the hole. So in practice rounds, you know, we were putting a alignment stick behind the hole and saying, listen, you've got to get the ball to the hole. And there were a couple of times where he made a couple putts that would have gone maybe five feet past, but they didn't. They hit the hole. And so the reaction was, Wow, that would have gone too far past. But my answer to that was, yeah, but it didn't. It went why in the middle of the hole. So if that's putt for Birdie, Yeah, if you missed it, maybe it would have gone five feet past, but you didn't. You made it. And so taking that focus and having the concept of a make speed what am I trying to do to make this putt? Can really help just it can help you play and putt better. It can definitely free your putting stroke up. It can get you a little bit less tentative. And most of the three putts that I see in watching recreational golfers you know that I work with, and watching players that I work with, you know that are trying to play, and watching pro ams and watching you know, great players putt. So many times people just don't get the ball to the hole. So from twenty five feet they come up five feet short. That means it never had a chance to go. In so simple, simple game that you can play. Walk four steps away from the hole, put two balls down, do it uphill, do it downhill, do it right to left, do it left to right, and you're trying to see how many of the two you're trying to make them right. If you make them, take a step back, if you miss, come a step forward. But turning the brain off and getting this idea of trying to make putts can do a lot for your confidence, for your speed control, for your distance control, and it can do a lot for trying to free up your stroke. It's not technique. It's in the execution room. It's in the execution button. If you need your stroke. If you're doing this and you're hitting balls massively offline, you know if they've got a lot of cut spin. If you're not hitting something, then go set up some drills and work on your stroke mechanics. But after you've done that, get out of that and go just try and putt and uphills, downhills, right to left, left to right. But trying to make pots from forty feet Go put some forty footers and the only thing you're trying to do from forty feet is make it. And getting into that mindset I think is hugely powerful. I think it's getting into a really positive mindset. And when you've got a pot for Birdie. I mean, if you look at the stats on the PGA Tour, players make more par putts, it seems like from ten feet sometimes than they do for Bertie. Why because the player doesn't want to make a bogie. So why are people more aggressive on bogie putts than they are on birdie putts. It doesn't make any logical sense, right, You're trying to make both of them, and a birdie putt should be an opportunity for you to take a stroke off your score. But you talk to players, you talk to the reaction. You see guys make a fifteen footer and sometimes they don't even acknowledge it. They make a fifteen footer for bogie, fifteen foot for double, you know, for par or fifteen foot for bogie did not make a double. The reaction is way different. They're much more amped up about making a fifteen foot putt for par than they are missing one from fifteen feet for Bertie. So just something I wanted to talk about listen. As I said earlier, putting is a complex part of the game, right. There are a lot of things that go into it. But one of the things that you can do if you are struggling with putting, get out of your head, just go pot free, the stroke up, just try and make potts. And I'm pretty confident if the goal is to try and make pots, and the drill is to try and make pots, and you're someone that doesn't make a lot of potts, I think it's pretty simple. If you're not making a lot of putts, focus on trying to make a lot of putts. So Butch comes to you almost every week. We will definitely see you next week. Rate review, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.