Golf's Greatest Putters.
TOMMY: Welcome to Tommy Does Golf, the podcast where three old timers give you our opinions on everything golf. I'm Tommy Long, joined by fellow PGA professionals James Morgan and Paul Charman. With over 100 years and counting in the golf industry between us, we are well into our back nines. We'll do our best to stay on topic, but just like our tee shots these days, this podcast could go anywhere.
We're hoping you enjoy the banter, and maybe, just maybe, we'll share a few pearls of wisdom along the way. Let's get into it.This episode, we look back at some of the game's greatest ever putters, the players who didn't buckle under pressure, they embraced it. They grabbed those moments by the throat and turned them into trophies. James, we're gonna get you to kick this off. Give us a legendary putter
JAMES:Well, one thing we do know that the saying drive for show and putt for dough has been around for such a long time. I'm actually gonna start off with a guy called Billy Casper, which a lot of people will never have heard of.
But in the mid-'50s to the mid-'70s, he won 51 PGA Tour events- Wow ... which is a pretty good effort. 'Cause '60s and '70s, Jack would've been around, Player, Arnie, so some great golfers. He was a very quiet-spoken guy, but very widely regarded as one of the best putters of his time.
He won the Masters, two U.S. Opens, the thing is, for us as modern golfers playing on modern golf courses, one thing we don't appreciate is how well-groomed golf courses are. So back in the day, the greens then were a lot, lot slower and a lot bumpier. So the technique that they would've used back then is totally different to what we use now.
So they used to have, more loft on their putters. So for those of you out there that don't realize, your putter actually has between two and five degrees of loft. The standard is about three to four degrees. Your ball will just sink fractionally into the grass, and then you use the loft of the putter to help get it out of that indentation and then get it into rolling as quickly as you possibly can.
That's the idea. Well, back in the day, their greens were so bumpy, so a lot of the strokes you used to see were very flicky. All he used to try and do was, keep the blade square to his intended line and keep his head still. And then he didn't care if he flicked his wrist, whereas nowadays we're all like, "Oh, keep everything solid and just rock backwards and forwards."
So he was actually renowned as the best putter of the '60s and '70s. I looked up on YouTube to go and have a look at his stroke and when you look at it, you think, "Oh my God." the way he used to set himself up, he actually used to have his eyes over the top and slightly in front, 'cause that's how he saw the line. Yeah, and then square the putter face up, bosh.
Yeah. Thanks for coming. And like you say, his record was pretty phenomenal. Yeah. For years, he sat third on the all-time PGA Tour wins, behind Snead and Nicklaus at the time. I think he's still the leading- Ryder Cup point scorer- Okay for America. . I'm gonna have to Google that.
TOMMY:That's a pretty good start, and it is good to have some blasts from the past, because, I've never seen anyone win a tournament putting badly. I'm yet to see that happen. I don't think it ever will do. So there we go. All right, Paul, who have you got for us? Who's first up on your list?
PAUL: Seeing as we've just talked about Billy Casper I'm gonna talk about Bobby Locke.
TOMMY: Ah, yes. Okay
PAUL: The great Bobby Locke. One of the greatest putters, he used a putter which you could basically call it an antique putter.
It was a hickory shafted, rusted club head that looked more like a shaving blade than anything else, you know? It was a proper, proper old style bladed putter. He was actually extremely superstitious, and he wouldn't let anybody touch that putter. He had this particular style. People refer to it as a real sort of jabby little stroke. He never aimed at the hole. When he was putting, . He stood closed. He hooded the face. He always aimed to the right of the hole, and almost tried to sort of draw the ball. I know it's impossible to actually suggest that with a putting stroke you could draw the ball into the hole, but that's the way he played. Yeah. And, it was extremely successful.
TOMMY: When you look at the players of yesteryear, and I'm talking about that era, we got to remember that the putters back then were very, very basic compared to what they are today. Mm. And obviously, that played its part in their style, . I can't remember one off the top of my head that actually stood up and had, like, a modern-day putting stroke. I'm sure there would be one, but generally they all putted in the same sort of vein.
PAUL: Again, a sign of the times is that nowadays when we're talking about modern putters, it's a certain putter from a manufacturer, and that's the name of the putter. A lot of these putters from yesteryear, their putters had names. Like Bobby Locke's putter was called Old Faithful. Yeah.
TOMMY:Great name ... it was,
PAUL: it was a great name, you know? Yeah. But they had a personality. Yeah, yeah. It was almost as though they had a personality. They loved their putters. You know what I mean? They were brilliant. They were brilliant.
TOMMY: They were brilliant. I've got a couple of things on Bobby Locke that I thought were worth reading out. Ben Hogan called him one of the finest putters he'd ever seen, and so when somebody like Ben Hogan gives him that sort of praise, you know he was good.
Sam Snead famously said Lock could beat you even when you outplayed him from tee to green. Now, I have gone for Inbee Park. Oh. And the reason I've gone for Inbee Park is, to me, the closer you get to the green, the more level the game becomes between the sexes, if you like, and she was an incredible putter. 21 LPGA wins, seven major championships. Routinely mentioned as one of the greatest putters, male or female, to ever play the game. She led the PGA putting average category three times and built her Hall of Fame career around precision, touch and speed control rather than power. Her pace on her long putts was so good that fellow pros often joked she seemed incapable of leaving herself a difficult second putt. We watch these ladies , and their short game, is just absolutely phenomenal. , The power game, you know, they're never gonna be up there with the men, although they do give it a ride, some of the top, top players.
JAMES: Well, I just got a quick stat on her. There was like a six-month period where putts from 10 to 15 feet she holed 49.4%, and the PGA Tour average is 30.5. There you go. Wow. That's amazing, isn't it? 10 to 15 feet- There's some putts that he's- She's holing- Everything ... every other putt.
TOMMY:Yeah, so that's pretty, pretty crazy. Yeah. Pretty crazy. Pretty crazy good. All right, who else you got for us, James?
JAMES:My next one is Brad Faxon. Eight PGA Tour wins. Known as the putting whisperer. You see him on TV and podcasts. He's a, coach to a lot of elite players, including Rory. He helped Rory win the Masters. And then helped him back it up again as well.
So, yeah, that's, pretty big shoes to help really, 'cause Rory was, I'm not saying desperate with his putter- Yeah ... but he was getting to that point where you need to have something really reliable. He hates the term leg putting. Yeah. 'Cause it's as if, he goes, "You're frightened of a long putt, so you've gotta try and get it close."
He just goes, "It's all about get the rhythm and the timing." Quite interesting list of, things that he works on with people he's coaching. Center contact, which comes up quite a lot. I'll talk about that a bit later on about Tiger Woods. Consistent tempo, having a putter that's the right length.
Now, a lot of you amateurs out there, if you buy one off the shelf, it'll be 35 inches. I'm 6'3", or I was. Might be fr- 6'2" now. I'm getting old. But- my putter is 34 inches, and even then I still grip down half an inch. I think the average amateur has a putter way too long, which means your elbows stick out, and then it just makes so many variables.
So he getting the right putter length was important. Grip and stance, start point Again, that comes back to the face and then the last thing with Brad Faxon is the relaxed approach. Yeah. And I think that's where he really helped Rory was, you know, you are trying to win a Masters and it is important, it's not that important.
No. You know, you have got to have soft hands. You've got to relax You've got to let the putter, you've got to let it swing and it's-
TOMMY:It's quite a good time for me to just add a little story I've got about Brad Faxon, that actually goes hand-in-hand with what you've just said about the relaxing. So, I got through to final qualifying for the Open at London Links when it was at St Andrews in 2005. I rocked up for my practice round. I pulled up in the car park half past 6:00 in the morning. This car pulls up alongside me, and this guy gets out, he was pasty as. He was so white. And I realized it was Brad Faxon, , becausehe'd come over to final qualify. So he was obviously exempt into final qualifying, and he happened to be at my course, which wasn't good. Because actually, I look back on this, and there were only three spots available. There was 100 of us pegging it up in that one. Mm-hmm. And he actually got the third spot.
So fair play to him. Brad Faxon came over, gave the Open the respect of coming to final qualifying. And that week, he actually finished 15th, which is pretty good effort. But the interesting thing was, I wasn't gonna pass up an opportunity to speak to someone that was an amazing putter. So even though he must get sick to death of people asking him, I said to him, "Nice to meet you.
How are you? What's it like driving a right-hand drive vehicle?" All that sort of jazz. And I said to him, "Look, I need to ask you for a putting tip." I said, "Is there anything- Yeah ... you can tell me?" Yeah. And He said, " "You know when you're driving a car," "and you see the center line?" "You're going round the bend." He said, "Do you hold the steering wheel as hard as you can so your knuckles are white and your forearms are tight?" I said, "No." He said, "You let it just glide between your fingers, don't you, as you steer around, and you manage to stay on the exact side of the road that you're supposed to."
And I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, that's how you want to putt. You just need to let it flow." Now, unfortunately, it didn't work for me that week. But the interesting thing was, he played behind me. He was in the group behind me. Every time I turned round, I saw where his golf ball was, he wasn't hitting it stiff. You know, it was like 14, 20 feet. Came off, he shoot 64 in the first round. So he's actually led after the first round. So I went up to his caddy and I said, "Man, he must have putted well."
And he said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, every time I looked back, he wasn't knocking the flag out, you know?" He said, "No, we worked out we wanted an uphill putt on every single green." He said, "We didn't wanna be above the hole at all. So we just aimed for the low spots you know, and I just thought, a different world.
Yeah. So that was, Brad Faxon. It was a great memory. And like you said, James, a lot of the other players have taken him on board now as their kind of go-to guru.
JAMES:Yeah. I think with the best players- They know it all. It's not that they don't know it. Yeah. They just need someone to confirm.
Reassurance, yes. It's reassurance. Yes, yes. That's all it is. That's all it is. Yeah. Paul, over to you. Okay, so I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about Loren Roberts. regarded by his peers as probably one of the top putters if you're gonna have, if you're gonna have a nickname- Yeah ... Boss of the Moss. Um, a little bit about his, technique for you guys out there. He was very much all about shaft swing. He talked a lot about being dead-handed, and sometimes overly firm with the left hand. He talked about natural release and swing of the shaft. he controlled the length of his putts by, altering the length of his backswing rather than accelerating harder through the ball. And again, for a lot of players out there, the backswing, whether you've got a 30-foot putt or a three-foot putt, the backswing tends to stay the same, and everything is then accelerated or decelerated, which is the worst thing you can do when it comes to putting\ he talks a lot about speed over line, and I do genuinely believe that a lot of putts that amateurs miss are not because they've actually chosen the wrong line.
They've actually not hit the ball either hard enough or they've hit it too hard. So most people can stand on a green and go, " I can see, the green slopes from right to left or left to right, and I have to hit it up here," but it's the pace of the putt, and I don't think enough amateurs put enough emphasis on the pace of that putt, you know?
JAMES: You can't choose a line until you know how hard you're gonna hit it. Yeah.
TOMMY: Just quickly, a couple of stats on Loren Roberts. Eight PGA Tour wins, 13 Champions Tour wins, and his highest world ranking was number 11, which he reached in 1996. Okay, moving on. My turn. Annika Sorenstam. Ooh. 72 LPGA wins, 10 major championships. One of the greatest golf careers in history. She became the first woman to shoot 59 in competition. Well, you don't do that if you're not a good putter. I mean- No, you don't ... it's just outrageous. In 2003, when she played at Colonial. she became the first woman since 1945 to compete in a PGA Tour event, yeah, I mean, absolute true legend of the game. Yes. Tiger transformed men's golf, well, Annika transformed women's golf. Mm. 100%.
JAMES:And a lovely person.
TOMMY:Yeah.
JAMES: That's a great pick.
TOMMY:Okay. James, come on, carry on.
JAMES: Now we're moving into some of the greatest. Jack Nicklaus. Individual style. Left eye dominant. That's why he had his head so far behind the ball. Yeah. But his left hand was very, very weak, which means his left hand was wrapped miles underneath, which meant that he then couldn't twist it any further. A short, poppy stroke. Low to high, so he liked to flick it with the wrist, get it up and moving.
He was one of the first people to hover his golf club. So back in the day, the rule used to be on the fairway and on the greens, if you grounded your club behind the ball- Mm ... and it moved, you were assessed a penalty.
So he used to have his putter hovering in the air, and that also would help him with his grip pressure, because it would stop him from gripping it really, really tight and pushing into the turf, and then sort of getting the, the putter stuck.
So very, very individual style. Piston pump style, that's how he used to refer to- Mm ... memorable putts. The 17th at Augusta. Oh. There's that picture of him following it in- Yeah ... with his putter out- There is ... like a, like a matador. Yes. . But then it comes on to the greatest putt that was never hit. So we go back to, Royal Birkdale Ryder Cup. Yeah. And Tony Jacklin- Tony ... who'd been such suspect putter, he'd won a British Open and a US Open, had a three-footer and Nicklaus gave it to him, which halved the Ryder Cup.
Mm. It was the last match out on the golf course. And they walked off arm in arm, and he turned round and he said, "I don't think you have missed it, but I would never give you the chance
TOMMY: Who's up next? Paul,
PAUL: I'm gonna talk to you about Gentle Ben, Ben Crenshaw. regarded to this day as one of the greatest putters in history, he relied, on a featherlight grip and a metronomic-like tempo through his putting stroke.
He dominated stats on the PGA Tour during his career. 19 PGA Tour wins, including 1984, 1995 Masters. And talking of the 1995, Masters, Crenshaw- memorably went through 72 holes around Augusta without recording a single three putt. And that in itself, I think, is an extraordinary stat. Yeah, extraordinary.
Absolutely. It's very difficult to talk about a single putt, , but I think the most significant putt, for Ben Crenshaw, was the winning putt on the 18th green at the Masters. It wasn't a long putt. It was a very, very short putt.
But it was an emotional week for him, his long-term mentor and coach, Harvey Penick. He'd just died. He'd just passed away. And you could see the emotion on his face when he holed this putt.
As I say, it was only a short putt. He holed the putt, and that particular putt, I think, will stand out in history probably as one of the greatest putts for Ben Crenshaw.
TOMMY: All right. Well, . I'm going Steve Stricker. He had a tremendous period between 2009 and 2012. And during those three years, he won eight of his 12 PGA Tour titles.
He almost made putting look boring, for a time, you know? And that's probably one of the biggest compliments you can pay somebody. He used that White Hot Odyssey, your number two putter.
And I always remember when you'd get a close-up, the heel was always slightly off the ground. Yeah. He was particularly deadly from inside 10 feet. And yeah, he was a phenomenal putter, wasn't he, Steve Stricker, for a while, and he actually got to world number two. Yeah. And for him to actually get to world number two, people, if you said, what was his highest ranking, don't think a lot of people would guess that he got to world number two.
JAMES:I wouldn't put him in the top 10.
TOMMY: No. So I mean, he was just up there every week for a time, wasn't he? 2009, three wins, about 6.3 million in earnings in 2009, 11 top 10 finishes, and he got PGA Tour Player of the Year in 2009. Mm-hmm. , 2010, two wins and nine top 10 finishes. In 2011, two wins and five top 10 finishes. So for that three-year period, he was up there. Yeah. Anyway, go on, James, give me somebody else.
JAMES: my last one's gonna be Tiger Woods. Again, going on the same sort of vein as Jack Nicklaus. If you had someone who had to hold a putt and there was a gun to your head, I'd say Jack or Tiger. Yes. , But again, that comes back to where did he base all of his putting from as a kid sneaking on the golf course in, in the dark? Just practicing feel
TOMMY:I didn't know that.
JAMES: Yeah. They're practicing in the dark, just purely because they could feel the ball on the face. They could just feel the body moving, and they're not worrying about the outcome 'cause they can't see the hole. Tiger, obviously there's so many putts he's holed, but he reckoned his best putt was in the US Open to force a playoff with Bob May.
He had a seven-footer with about a foot and a half of break, super slick-
TOMMY: Remember it well ...
JAMES: and it went straight in the middle of the hole. Yeah. And he still says that's his best putt he's ever had. And Bob May must have been thinking, "Oh, no." Yeah. Well, when he's hit it a seven-foot to start with, it, you're probably going, "Tiger's gonna hole this," but it was a, it's an amazing putt.
And another thing Tiger is, renowned for, he puts two tees down and his putter head just fits inside those two tees. Puts a ball in there and he hits it with his right hand. Hits 20 or 30 putts. So for him, it's right-sided, releasing the putter head through.
And swinging that putter so that he gets the putter head back to square, once he's done 20 or 30 with one hand, he'll then put two hands on. But put a couple of tees in, put your putter head just in between the two tees, and see if you can swing it without hitting the tees, and that'll improve your putting.
TOMMY: Sounds easy, but we know it's not.
JAMES: It's not.
TOMMY: couple of things I've got on Tiger. I think it's worth sharing a couple of stats, right? So from 2002 to 2005, he made 1,537 out of 1,540 putts from inside three feet.
JAMES: He missed three.
TOMMY: He missed three.
PAUL: Wow..
JAMES: Wow ...
TOMMY: now his ability to hole crucial putts under pressure was legendary.
JAMES: Yeah.
TOMMY: He won 11 of his 12 PGA Tour playoffs, so you've got to be a good putter 'cause that means that when you are under the pump and you need to make it happen, you do.
It was about holing putts when it mattered most. And we've talked about Tiger before when we've said when he was on the charge, if he was having a bad hole, he would hole a 10-footer for a bogey just so that the momentum kept going. He was unbelievable Tiger Woods putter. Yeah. Unbelievable.
JAMES: In, in the heat of the moment
TOMMY: In the heat of the moment.
JAMES: Incredible But then you then you just, you go back through each era, you look at Seve.
TOMMY: Mm.
JAMES: Unbelievable putter under pressure.
TOMMY: Yes.
JAMES: Someone who's not really mentioned much, Luke Donald, he led the putting stats three years in a row
TOMMY: And became world number one
JAMES: World number one, and the first player to win the PGA Order of Merit and the European Order of Merit in the same year. And he's not long. He's a short- No ... he's a shorter t- it's really, if you've got a half-decent short game and you can putt- Yeah ... that's where you need to spend your time practicing.
TOMMY:It's funny you just mentioned a certain Spaniard, because I'm gonna go to Paul you've got one more for us. Who have you got, Paul?
PAUL: Look, I'm gonna talk to you about Seve. Yeah, Seve, as far as I'm concerned, I think r- right up there, top of the list. Tiger, you mentioned the greatest players in the world. Of course, when it comes to putting, you've got to have Seve right up there as well.
Interestingly enough, just going back to what you were saying earlier on, one thing again that I've noticed about so many great putters is that they all used the same putter style for a lot of their career and Seve, of course, he was, famous for using a PING Anser, for the majority of his career. But interestingly enough, the one thing about this putter, which was quite unique, was that Seve had asked if he could have a sound slot . So this was cut into the face. And this allowed a, slightly crisper, higher-pitched sound upon impact, which Seve wanted. That's what he wanted. But again, the style, the putter head itself was a, PING Anser. James, you might know a little bit more about this, but the story of the gold putter-
JAMES: Yeah
PAUL: Have you got any information about that, that you know? 100%.
JAMES: It's so weird, because I was watching something today on something completely different, and the PING Vault came up.
PAUL: That's exactly right, the PING Vault.
JAMES: The PING Vault. So at PING's headquarters, anyone that wins a professional tournament anywhere in the world, they make a gold-headed version of that putter, stamp it with the player, the score, , and they send the player a gold replica as well.
So it's a gold head, and this vault has got, it's over 1,000 putter in there. It's- Yeah ... it's unbelievable. Yeah. It's at PING headquarters.
PAUL: I think Seve to this day still has the most, and it might be very close with Lee Westwood.
Wins with- Wins this particular putter-
JAMES: - Yeah ... the Anser putter has won over 500 tournaments worldwide. Yeah,
PAUL: amazing. Wow.
JAMES: 19 majors. And Seve won 47 wins with a Ping putter.
TOMMY: Amazing. Wow.
PAUL: His putting average typically hovered around 1.714 putts per green. Mm-hmm. Okay? So that in itself is right up there when you look at that, particular statistic.
He was without doubt a wizard on the green. He had an incredible feel. And again, a slightly unorthodox technique. He had a particular style. He used a reverse overlap grip with his trail finger, his index finger extended, down the shaft to give him a little bit more support. And he frequently employed a somewhat open stance and played the toe very high in the air. That was the way he putted.
TOMMY: I think you guys will agree with this, 'cause we all love Seve in this room.He's one of our all-time favorites obviously. But when he appeared on the TV, you knew instantly that it was Seve.
JAMES: Yes.
PAUL: Yeah. '
TOMMY: Cause of the way he was standing to the ball. Yeah. But there was something different about him when he putted. It was like the putter became part of him.
PAUL: When Seve had a putter in his hand, it didn't matter whether that putt was 2 foot, 20 foot, or 60 foot.
He believed- he was gonna hole it. Yeah. And when it missed, seve was genuinely annoyed-. that he hadn't holed-
Many of those putts, you know? The most iconic putt, the winning putt at the 1984 Open, at the Old Course, of course, St. Andrews, 12-foot putt right to left, and, this is a quote, from Seve. "The putt had a clear right to left borrow.
I rolled it sweetly towards the hole. At first, I thought I might have overdone it. I hadn't. It seemed to hover on the edge of the cup before finally dropping in- Sh- ... almost like slow motion. Almost as though I had willed it in with my mental capacity."
JAMES: Yes.
PAUL: And that's the thing with him, wasn't it? You knew you could see him.
JAMES:If you were the ball, you'd be frightened to lip out.
PAUL: You jumped in the hole because you were terrified.
TOMMY: Do you know what, though? That putt, we all have our memories of that putt, but the thing for me and the reason it went in wasn't just that the crowd were willing it in, and everybody on the planet that I know is willing it in, including Seve himself, but the pace was perfect.
JAMES: Yes, to fall. Yeah.
PAUL: It was almost as though as he started that fist pump, the ball was actually still just about rolling into the hole. Yeah. It was just dropping into the hole. It wasn't after the event. No. When it got to that point, he was like, "Yes."
JAMES: I was living in London later in 1984, and who used to wear that Slazenger jersey, the- Yes ... the navy jersey, with that big wide grin on his face, and he's giving it the pump, and their slogan was, "Wouldn't you be happy if you were given one to wear?"
Yeah. Now, this is on the London Tube- ... where 99% of them aren't golfers, they wouldn't give a monkeys. But they knew Seve Ballesteros,
TOMMY: he was like the unofficial king of Spain, wasn't he?
JAMES: Yeah.
TOMMY: You know, he was just cool, dude.
PAUL: Yeah.
TOMMY: What I was gonna ask you boys for very quickly in reverse order is your top three putters, come on, give me your reverse order top three. Who are you going for, James?
JAMES: I can't.
TOMMY: Can't do it ?
JAMES: I can't ...
TOMMY: Paul can you do it?
PAUL: I couldn't, uh, It's difficult
JAMES: one, one quick question. If you had a putt-off between Tiger and Jack- Who would win?
PAUL: When?
JAMES: At their best, who would win? I think it'd be a tie. It'd be pitch black- Yeah ... and they'd still be holing out. Yeah,
PAUL: probably. Yeah.
TOMMY: yeah They were both exceptional.
JAMES: They were exceptional. Just exceptional.
TOMMY: I'm glad you did that. I'm glad you said no, because it is impossible- Yeah ... to separate them, isn't it? Yeah. It really is. Last thing, Paul.
PAUL: Last thing. I would just like to say that this has been an absolutely amazing topic to cover. But I also think that it is probably the one area that a lot of amateurs do not pay enough attention to, and if they did, they would see their handicaps drop. They would see their scores start to come down.
It's probably, one of the most boring parts of the game of golf practice-wise, but these guys spent more time practicing this part of the game than any other part of their game because they did realize that this is where it all matters.
TOMMY: thanks for listening, everybody. That's a wrap. Well done, boys.
JAMES: Cheer Tommy Great fun
PAUL: Cheers Tommy
TOMMY: If you've made it this far, we hope it's because you've enjoyed listening to Tommy Does Golf. To make sure you never miss our podcast, please hit follow. For more of our content or to get in touch, head to tommydoesgolf.com. So until next time, no matter how you're playing, smile, laugh, and most important of all, enjoy the walk.