Putting is an essential aspect of the game of golf that can often make or break a player’s performance on the green. According to putting genius Geoff Mangum, the pursuit of the perfect putt is evasive because of poor information.

Understanding the Basics

Most golfers believe that when putting, good advice is “never up, never in.” As a result many putts are hit well past the hole. It is these putts that most often result in 3-putts.

Instinctive delivery speed at the hole instead of trying to hit past, the best advice for putters is to try and die the ball into the front of the cup using practical and effective capture speed. Mangum teaches this ball “delivery speed” by teaching how instinctive “touch” is performed.

Geoff tells students “The brain science is that perception and intentionality to the space of the hole invokes the correct size stroke (with a stable tempo and rhythm) so the motion physics matches the putt’s physics on the green.”

The intentionality includes imagining the putt with final ball speed at the hole for the ball having time to drop safely in the cup even on the edge paths but not go too far past in case of a miss. Also, it means that the hole is as big as reasonable when the ball is rolling towards it. The bigger the hole, the more putts go in!

Pelz’s Puzzling Advice

The confusion surrounding go-by distances partly stems from Dave Pelz’s methodology and his claims. It appears that Pelz’s data on capture speed, published in Golf Digest in July 1977, does not consider the stimp or slope and contradicts his claim that 17 inches past the hole is best for all putts.

Optimal Velocity Choices

In practice, players should work on delivering the ball with a consistent speed, both uphill and downhill. According to Mangum, “Even at optimal delivery speed of 2-3 rps, a rare few outliers will be short due to unavoidable human variability. But this also means intending a delivery speed of 1 rps in light of normal variability greatly increases the number of putts that miss short.” And 4 rps can work but is risky for slick downhill putts going too far past.

The faster the ball is traveling at the cup, the less effective size of the cup and the farther the comeback putt. There are many factors, including stimp and slope, but in general, if the ball travels more than 2.5 feet (30 inches) past the hole, it probably would have needed to hit the center to have much of a chance of going in.

Developing Touch

When practicing putting, players need to work on their touch. According to Mangum, the first step is to stabilize a relaxed tempo and a same-same back and through rhythm.

The next step for instinctive touch is to appreciate how stroke size causes distance on the day’s particular green speed. To calibrate, putt “three balls with the same size stroke and the stable tempo-twice swinging rhythm. A typical size for this might be a stroke a little larger than the stance so the backstroke goes a few inches past the rear foot.” These putts will go a certain distance, perhaps 10 feet. This step calibrates green speed to the player’s tempo- rhythm, and using the same “core putt” every time allows comparing different green speeds on different greens or days.

The final step is to test instinctive sizing. Toss a “rabbit” ball around 30 feet away. Then intend for the putted “hound” ball to go the same distance and just “kiss” the rabbit ball. Find out if this process causes the instincts to size the stroke correctly.

With instinctive touch, the player “sizes” the stable tempo-rhythm by intending the delivery speed at the hole.

Over time, the final ball pace at the hole becomes correlated with a stable tempo-rhythm instinctively sized. The player then simply relies on the stable tempo-rhythm and target intentionality for a consistent great delivery pace.

Such “skillful” know-how enables the player to know what flaws in touch cause long or short (too slow or too fast a pace to the hole):

1. Failure of clear intentionality to the target space
2. Second half of rhythm is quicker; tempo and arrives too fast
3. First half of rhythm ends before fully loading the size and is short
4. The second half of the rhythm ends before fully spending the instinctive size and stops short

With this steady feedback from diagnosing errors, touch steadily improves for accuracy and consistency.