Putting guru Dave Stockton reveals his secrets on the green. Transcript
(triumphant music)
Hi, I'm Dave Stockton.
I'm a good putter,
because every putt I see I expect to make.
It doesn't make any difference what distance it is,
and I want the ball to roll.
I want the ball to roll the correct distance,
and it's all about feel.
The first thing I look at in reading a green
is which way it breaks.
In this case, it's gonna move slightly to my right,
slightly downhill.
If that's what happens, I will automatically go
to the low side.
It's very important that as you look at this putt,
you see the ball coming toward you.
If you in fact circle the hole,
what happens then is it's gonna look totally different
from the high side than it will the low.
I'd rather have the wrong read
but think I had the right one
instead of circling the entire hole,
taking a whole bunch of time
and then getting confused.
If the putt's straight, then I might go back
on the other side, looking from the camera angle,
to see if a different angle,
but most of the time, once I know the break
I only look from behind the ball,
or go to the low side.
You stand up, you've already bent down,
you look at your line,
and now since you're probably gonna take a practice stroke,
you're gonna do this.
You'll walk off your line,
you'll now come into the ball.
And you'll get set to take your one or two practice strokes.
Then you gotta get to the ball,
so you'll set the putter down behind it,
look at the ball when you set your feet,
and then eventually look out here
to see what your line is.
Whether you're lined up or not,
is a guess.
Now I'm gonna do it the correct way,
the way I hope you'll learn to do it.
This is a little bit like shooting pool.
When we shoot pool, you don't step up beside it
and practice it a couple of times,
you just get in behind it.
Nor do you keep the cue stick still.
You just let it move.
In my routine,
basically what I'm gonna do is stand up,
I'm on my line and I never leave this line.
I'll have a couple practice strokes just with my hand.
I set my right foot without even thinking about it,
about where it's gonna end up.
And I set, in my case, the putter ahead of the ball.
The reason I do that, is I'm gonna use my feel
to lift it back over.
Putter on the ground, now I take my stance.
Looking directly at the hole,
come back over, look one more time,
roll the ball over my spot,
and by the time I look up,
the ball's gonna be right in the hole.
Now in golf, I wanna have a slightly open stance,
so that's gonna make my left hand
have to go out to the hole.
If I was to set square, or god forbid closed,
now I'm gonna shut down,
and it's gonna make it an all right-handed stroke.
So there's a lot of different things to make it simple.
I wanna make it simple.
I wanna see, if I couldn't improve someone,
or the boys improve someone
within or minutes, I'd be totally shocked.
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