Putting - Art or Science?

An article by: Bobby Eldridge on 12-18-2007
This article has been read 4460 times.

Is Putting an Art or a Science?

I know you are reading the chapter title and you are trying to figure out where I am going with this one. It is simple. If I take more than a paragraph or two, I will begin to repeat what I have already said.

If you dig too deep with this part of the game it is going to bite you. If you spend hours studying it, spend $500 on a custom putter, make sure your golf balls are perfectly round, and meditate before every putt, oh yea line it up from six different sides, you are going to LOSE. I promise you.

Nobody has ever tried harder on every putt than me. I go through my routine every time, I clear my head, I give myself every chance to make every putt I hit and then I LET IT GO.

My father told me 45 years ago "it's all going to come out in the wash". I can not tell you how many putts I have made with the wrong read or wrong touch. On the other hand I can not tell you how many PERFECT putts I have missed.

PUTTING IS AN ART. IT IS NOT SCIENCE. Webster's defines art as "the products of human creativity". That is exactly what you, me and Tiger has to do every single time we walk onto a putting green.

We have three moving parts to make a putt go where we want it to go. We have to have the correct read, the correct amount of speed and we have to aim it in the right direction.

The ten million dollar question is which one of the three is the most important. If you can not read the putt, how are you going to hit a good putt? If you read it correctly and hit it with the wrong speed, that isn't going to work. And lastly, if you read it correctly and hit it with the correct speed and misaimed the putt would you still hit a poor putt?

I do not believe anyone is any more important than the other two.

To me, that is an art form. Your ability to read a 25 foot hard breaking left to right downhill putt and hit it with the correct amount of speed (for the club championship).

ART not SCIENCE.