Putting is probably the favorite feature of indoor golf, but very few
persons who are practising it have any notion of what they are about.
Statistics, especially those that are known as reliable (as George
Birmingham says), show that of eighty-six longish putts, forty-one go to
the right of the hole and thirty-nine to the left; the remaining six,
by great good fortune, fall into the cup. The fortunate play is always
heartily congratulated.
Champ or dub, pro or amateur, hardly any one putts accurately seven days
in the week. For that reason a great mystery is made about it. It is said
that putting, the simplest and most important part of the game, cannot
be taught, and the statement is true to this extent, that a man cannot
teach something that he hasn’t reasoned out and come to understand.
Professional coachers scoff at “book learning” (that is, those who
haven’t written books on the game); but all of consequence that is known
in this world was learned from books. You don’t really know a thing until
you have taken it apart and linked it together again. You can do this
with any stroke in golf. And your stroke is as strong as its weakest link.
You remember that glorious Thursday (shall you or your friends ever
forget it?) when you were putting in wonderful form; you holed a
number of long ones and laid the others dead. But Friday! If the hole
had been big enough to bury a dog in you would have missed it. Now, a
happy-go-lucky method that embraces such a variation is no method at all.
The difference between your Thursdays and Fridays should be a matter of
inches, not a matter of feet. What you require is a method of taking the
putter back and bringing it forward, that shall, on your bad days, keep
the ball somewhere near the line. Your putt must be as nearly as possible
automatic, not temperamental. If this cannot be taught the fault is with
the instructor.
When you drive from the tee for a distant flag, it doesn’t matter if you
are ten feet off the line, nor need your second shot give you too much
concern. When you come to pitch or run up to the green the margin of
error shrinks. Once on the green it disappears; accuracy is now demanded.
Yet on every green one sees putts of a few inches fluffed, a putt of two
feet is studied with great care, while a six foot putt is gone about as
gravely as an operation for appendicitis, and much less expeditiously.