Speaker 1: The guys from Ping.
Speaker 2: They've kind of showed me how much the equipment matters.
Speaker 2: I just love that I can hit any shot.
Speaker 3: I kind of want we're gonna be able to tell
Speaker 3: some fun stories about what goes on here to help
Speaker 3: golfers play better golf.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to the Pink Proving Grounds Podcast. I'm shape
Speaker 4: Bag and that's Marty Jersey. Marty, how we doing today?
Speaker 4: We're gonna talk a little putting. I'm struggled with my putting.
Speaker 4: I can't make anything right now. I need the advice
Speaker 4: for our guests.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot to putting. I think Sashow has
Speaker 3: been doctor Sasha mackenzie has helped us in a number
Speaker 3: of ways as an engineering brand ambassador for US, but
Speaker 3: he's spent going deep on putting. How do you make
Speaker 3: more putts? How do you miss less putts? And what
Speaker 3: is the causal reason? I think that's where we want
Speaker 3: to dive really deep with Sashow today of why you
Speaker 3: miss putts and then tie it together to putter fitting Shane,
Speaker 3: because that's kind of the you know, we want to
Speaker 3: kind of tie all these different pieces together.
Speaker 4: Sasho, I'm not making a lot of putts what am
Speaker 4: I doing wrong? I mean, without looking at me, without
Speaker 4: seeing my stroke, without saying the way I'm hitting it,
Speaker 4: What is what am I most likely doing wrong? To
Speaker 4: where I'm to Marty's point, either missing more pods, putts
Speaker 4: are not making as many as I like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Number one reasons probably green reading. So that's a
Speaker 2: massive chunk. At least fifty percent of miss putts are
Speaker 2: due to green reading errors. Let's assume we're talking about
Speaker 2: makeable putts, you know, like twelve feet and in kind
Speaker 2: of kind of thing. Then it's probably your speed control.
Speaker 2: If you improve that, you're gonna sink some more putts.
Speaker 2: Then probably face angle control, so face angle variability, speed
Speaker 2: club head speed variability, putter it speed variability, and then
Speaker 2: it's then it's a steep drop off to things like
Speaker 2: where the ball is hitting on the face and path,
Speaker 2: but those those top three green reading is the biggest,
Speaker 2: Then speed control and then face angle variability.
Speaker 4: Esasho, how do you practice green reading? I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean obviously we've got green reading books and things
Speaker 4: like that, But how does someone go out and actually
Speaker 4: work on that part of the game. Because it makes
Speaker 4: sense to someone like me to work on path and
Speaker 4: to work on speed and things like that, but to
Speaker 4: go out and actually perfect my ability to read a
Speaker 4: green seems relatively daunting for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, then the number one thing that most people
Speaker 2: can do that they're not doing is and this is
Speaker 2: when I work with players, especially Mini tour players are
Speaker 2: really good college kids. I asked them, how many different
Speaker 2: putts do you see in your putting sessions? So you're
Speaker 2: practically putting for an hour, how many different putts are
Speaker 2: you hitting, like different starting positions to different holes. A
Speaker 2: lot of them don't really know the answer, but a
Speaker 2: lot of times it's like, well six, you know. So
Speaker 2: the more experience you can have hitting different putts, so
Speaker 2: you have to actually assess what are you going to
Speaker 2: do and then consciously thinking about what happened. That's a
Speaker 2: big thing is that most people do not know if
Speaker 2: they've misread the putt or if they've miss executed on
Speaker 2: the putts, so then there's no learning. So you need
Speaker 2: to see a lot of different putts, and especially putts
Speaker 2: where your ability to read the green matters and you
Speaker 2: can discern it based on the outcome. So forty footers
Speaker 2: not so much. But you know, if we're down inside
Speaker 2: twenty feet and definitely if you're missing putts, you know,
Speaker 2: eight to twelve feet, you should be able to say
Speaker 2: did I execute as intended? If you did, then it's
Speaker 2: a misread, and then you can learn. You can start
Speaker 2: to learn. Okay, I'm underreading the speed. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: bad at judging whether the putt is uphill or downhill.
Speaker 2: Because I hit this put as hard as I wanted to,
Speaker 2: and I thought this is going to be close, and
Speaker 2: you're like, whoa, you know that's that's still rolling right?
Speaker 2: That was a misread, sash.
Speaker 3: So this is very anecdotal, but I think we can
Speaker 3: have Shane chime in on this because he was a
Speaker 3: caddy at St. Andrews, done a lot of caddying in
Speaker 3: his career. I feel like I was the best at
Speaker 3: green reading when I was a fore caddy. I was
Speaker 3: a fore caddy at Castle Pines in college and I
Speaker 3: would just watch a ton of putts. I'd have to
Speaker 3: debate Shane. You know, you know how this goes, like
Speaker 3: should I tell the player where to actually hit it
Speaker 3: or on underreading it for him? But I just was
Speaker 3: maximizing the learning. I think, Sasho, Shane, what are your
Speaker 3: thoughts on that from your experience Caddy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean Sasha made a great point about
Speaker 4: the lengthy putts. I mean, Caddy and at St. Andrews,
Speaker 4: you know you'd have a guy having eighty footer. I
Speaker 4: mean it's not I'm not gonna give you a whole
Speaker 4: lot of help in terms of speed. I can maybe
Speaker 4: give you a line, but yeah, I couldn't agree with
Speaker 4: you more Marty in terms of being on the back
Speaker 4: for someone and watching a whole lot of different point
Speaker 4: of putts. I mean sashow bringing up the idea of
Speaker 4: a great player saying I hit six putts on the
Speaker 4: practice screen and a half hour, and then you think
Speaker 4: about going out on the golf course in real time
Speaker 4: and how many puts you might face in around of golf.
Speaker 4: I mean there's a chance you might face eighteen different putts, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, there are a whole lot of different ones
Speaker 4: out there. But Marty, I think you're spot on and
Speaker 4: the idea of when you're watching someone else do it,
Speaker 4: it feels like you learn a lot more than when
Speaker 4: you're actually doing it yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sasha, I think you also brought up something interesting there,
Speaker 3: which is that path is not too big of a
Speaker 3: factor to necessarily practice. So what are those kind of
Speaker 3: like ballflight laws of a putt and why is it
Speaker 3: exactly that a golfer should be focusing way more on
Speaker 3: minimizing their face variability than their path variability?
Speaker 2: Right, So what I look at is you want to
Speaker 2: know from just a straight up physics standpoint. Okay, let's
Speaker 2: say we're hitting a twelve foot putt. Just pick a putt,
Speaker 2: straight flat twelve foot putt to pick one, So we can,
Speaker 2: you know, set up some boundaries here, some understanding. Well,
Speaker 2: you have to have your face angle be plus or
Speaker 2: minus or sorry, your path be plus or minus three
Speaker 2: and a half degrees to miss that twelve footer in
Speaker 2: order to pull the ball far enough off your intended
Speaker 2: start line. So you have to take the physics and
Speaker 2: then say, okay, well what is a golfer's variability and path?
Speaker 2: You need to look at both. So okay, is this
Speaker 2: something that if I improve it will make a difference.
Speaker 2: The worst putters that come through my lab do not
Speaker 2: have have path variabilities that get plus or minus three
Speaker 2: point five. Tour players are within plus or minus one.
Speaker 2: So grinding on on nailing your path improving your path
Speaker 2: is not going to move the needle and sinking more putts.
Speaker 2: So I look at just since you brought a path,
Speaker 2: but there are really four things that are predominantly under
Speaker 2: the control the golfer. You've got path variability, face angle variability,
Speaker 2: impact spot variability in the face of whether you're hitting
Speaker 2: it off the toe the heel out of the center
Speaker 2: high or low. And speed variability. And so you look at, okay, well,
Speaker 2: how far let's take impact spot variability out of this
Speaker 2: away from the center of the face. Do I need
Speaker 2: to be before I miss that twelve foot putt? And
Speaker 2: it is like plus or minus half an inch? Okay,
Speaker 2: before you're going to start to miss a twelve inch putt.
Speaker 2: And then you say, well, where am I at? How
Speaker 2: many if I hit one hundred and twelve foot putts,
Speaker 2: how many of those impact spots are going to be
Speaker 2: outside plus or minus half an inch? And the answer
Speaker 2: is zero. Right, Your directional miss is going to be
Speaker 2: two percent of put length for every one centimeter outside
Speaker 2: the impact spot. So you know, twelve foot pot one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty four inches, you go, what's two percent
Speaker 2: of that that? You know? If you go to the
Speaker 2: extreme of how terribly you can miss a pot on
Speaker 2: the putter face. It's it's accounting for virtually nothing left
Speaker 2: or right of the hole, and it's only one percent
Speaker 2: of rollout distance, so one hundred and forty four inches,
Speaker 2: well one percent of that. I mean, the impact spot
Speaker 2: variability gets completely washed out by face angle variability and
Speaker 2: putter head speed variability. So that's when I say, what
Speaker 2: should a person work on? Green reading is really important
Speaker 2: seeing as many potts as you possibly can with different
Speaker 2: slopes and brakes, and quantifying whether you misread it. But
Speaker 2: then that same type of practice will benefit your speed control. Right,
Speaker 2: you want to hone in your speed control. Okay, let's
Speaker 2: hit a downhill pott. That's you know left right now
Speaker 2: we're going uphill from fifteen feet now we're going side hill.
Speaker 2: You start to that's the best way to get a
Speaker 2: better sense of your speed controls to hit lots of
Speaker 2: different putts to see it. You know, can you judge
Speaker 2: those those speeds. Don't do drills are going to work
Speaker 2: to reduce your very building path, to reduce your very
Speaker 2: the impact spot. There's just not going to be any
Speaker 2: gains to be had from improving those things.
Speaker 1: Sasho.
Speaker 4: How did you get into this world? I mean, I
Speaker 4: mean listening to you talk has already opened up my
Speaker 4: brain a bit. I mean the fact that you're telling
Speaker 4: me I can hit a bad putt and still make
Speaker 4: it if I've read the putt correctly makes me the
Speaker 4: weight is lifted off my shoulders. Hearing you talk about
Speaker 4: putting is amazing already. How did you get into this world?
Speaker 2: I think I'm really drawn to it for two reasons. One,
Speaker 2: there's not a put out there and any green that
Speaker 2: any golfer can't sink. There are a million different shots
Speaker 2: that only the best players in the world can hit.
Speaker 2: You know you're going to try to carry a bunker
Speaker 2: at three twenty, Well, that's eliminated just about everybody in
Speaker 2: the planet. But everybody has the ability to sink every putts,
Speaker 2: So that that's very attractive to me from like, hey, like,
Speaker 2: let's see what we can ofpud. The other thing is
Speaker 2: that it seems like there is a ton of room
Speaker 2: for improvement. So if you took someone who's not into
Speaker 2: golf and you watch them, you said, let's let's watch
Speaker 2: Scotty Scheffler here hit this drive. You know, a hero
Speaker 2: world challenge, and you said, are you impressed by that?
Speaker 2: Everybody like holy smokes, like they'd be so impressed by
Speaker 2: how far the ball goes. And then if you took
Speaker 2: him on a putting green and you said, okay, here's
Speaker 2: an eight foot putt. What percentage of these do you
Speaker 2: think Scotty Scheffler's sinking? And they'd say, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just watched, like I hit probably like ninety nine percent.
Speaker 2: Like you know, this this hole is like barely any
Speaker 2: distance away, and you're like, well, he'd be doing good
Speaker 2: to make half of his putts from here. So it's
Speaker 2: like what you know, and if you go into a
Speaker 2: lab situation, you can get players sinking nearly one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of his eight footers. So there's a massive you know,
Speaker 2: there's a massive potential there, I think to improve in
Speaker 2: the putting green. And maybe I'm being a bit naive,
Speaker 2: but I think that someone could come along and separate
Speaker 2: themselves with putting to the same degree that say, you know,
Speaker 2: Bryson did a few years ago with driving, or Rory's
Speaker 2: you know kind of does with driving. But you know,
Speaker 2: we haven't quite seen that with putting on a consistent basis.
Speaker 2: So those are the two reasons. Is that it seems
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of potential and everybody can do it.
Speaker 4: Marty, it's so interesting to think about. I've never thought
Speaker 4: about that before. Where you know, if you and I
Speaker 4: go to the Masters and we go stand where Bobba
Speaker 4: hit the shot on ten, I mean there's seven people
Speaker 4: on the planet. They're going to hit up ye pull
Speaker 4: you know, a pull hook gap wedge to twenty five feet.
Speaker 4: But if you go stand on the back of the
Speaker 4: eighteenth of Tory in theory A. Sasha's point, everybody can
Speaker 4: make the putt raw mate. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 4: get it on the right line with the right speed,
Speaker 4: it's going to go in. I mean, I've never I've
Speaker 4: never thought about that before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is fun to think about, and I like that, Sasha.
Speaker 3: What he brings to us is an engineering ambassador. Is
Speaker 3: this first principles thinking right. It's just like some of
Speaker 3: the the concepts are obvious in hindsight, Sasho, now that
Speaker 3: we've established the importance of face angle and delivered face angle,
Speaker 3: let's talk about how we can affect that with the
Speaker 3: putter right. Sure, and I think a big thing our
Speaker 3: founder and a ping we've always known is that hey,
Speaker 3: you know, if you have more arc in your stroke,
Speaker 3: you generally do better with the more toe down putter,
Speaker 3: less arc, more face balanced putter. Can you dive into
Speaker 3: a little bit of why that is and the kinetics
Speaker 3: and kinematics that connection and expand upon that a little bit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, so. I think there's there's two ways you
Speaker 2: can you can measure or what you can look at
Speaker 2: in terms of a of an outcome of what the
Speaker 2: putter is doing to decide whether a putter is going
Speaker 2: to be better fit a better fit for you. You've
Speaker 2: got reducing the variability yep, so being more consistent with it,
Speaker 2: and that's I think predominantly when we're fitting for a
Speaker 2: stroke type. That's what we're trying to do. So this
Speaker 2: is a little bit theoretical, This is kind of a
Speaker 2: getting a bit into my opinion, but I you know,
Speaker 2: I still think it's a pretty cool way to think
Speaker 2: of it. You have folks that tend to put a
Speaker 2: little bit more straight back, straight through, and they tend
Speaker 2: to putt better with a face balanced style putter, where
Speaker 2: you know, if you balance on your finger, the face
Speaker 2: is pointing to the sky. These putters inherently give very
Speaker 2: little feedback if you rotate them in your hands, because
Speaker 2: the center of mass is very close to the shaft.
Speaker 2: And I think there are a lot of folks who
Speaker 2: don't want to feel the face opening and closing or
Speaker 2: get any sensation of that. They set up an address
Speaker 2: and they think, Okay, I've got this putter face pointing
Speaker 2: where I want. I want to make my stroke. I
Speaker 2: just want to know that if I don't do anything,
Speaker 2: the putter doesn't do anything, this thing's going to be
Speaker 2: delivered square. And those folks tend to do better with
Speaker 2: a face balanced putter. Then you have people who inherently
Speaker 2: like to feel the face opening closing. They want to
Speaker 2: feel that that mass moving or so they have some
Speaker 2: natural arcs, natural opening and closing of the face, and
Speaker 2: you can enhance that feel with a putter that is
Speaker 2: toe hang so. And that's where you'll see if you
Speaker 2: go through like the putting sizes I've done in my lab,
Speaker 2: and you know it happened at ping for a number
Speaker 2: of years. Those putters that like to have some arc
Speaker 2: in their stroke or tend to smark on the stroke,
Speaker 2: they like little more feel. They do better with a
Speaker 2: toe hang face balance better for the straight back straight through.
Speaker 2: So that's that's one way to look at it. But
Speaker 2: then I think some really low hanging fruit is addressing biases.
Speaker 2: So a lot of people don't realize, but as you
Speaker 2: go through the course of a round of golf or
Speaker 2: a practice session, you might miss sixty five percent of
Speaker 2: your putts to the right, and that's enough to make
Speaker 2: a difference. You want to be fifty to fifty right.
Speaker 2: You want to be in have that middle of the
Speaker 2: bell curve of your misses be centered on the whole.
Speaker 2: But you know, if it's sixty five thirty five, that's
Speaker 2: not enough for us to remember right as we go
Speaker 2: we're focusing on other things. It's tough to mentally if
Speaker 2: you miss one hundred percent. Yeah, you're like, okay, I've
Speaker 2: missed every put to the right, but it's tough to track.
Speaker 2: So those systematic biases can kind of go on notice.
Speaker 2: But hopefully you've done something where you pick up on
Speaker 2: that right. Hey, i'm a right handed putter. I'm missing
Speaker 2: everything out to the right. So we've done some really
Speaker 2: neat studies showing that you can address those biases with
Speaker 2: your putter type, and it seems like, well, we know
Speaker 2: that toe hang putters, so uh, putters that have the
Speaker 2: center mass off the shaft right, you're gonna tend to
Speaker 2: leave the face a little bit more open at impact.
Speaker 2: And that goes right across the board for pretty much everybody.
Speaker 2: So if you tend to pull your putts, you're your
Speaker 2: missing putts to the left. Hey, let's move you into
Speaker 2: a toe hang we can address that bias. Your stroke
Speaker 2: feels good, you don't want to start changing your stroke. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's just go to a toe hang putter. Similarly, if
Speaker 2: you tend to be you know, missing your putts the
Speaker 2: other way, you tend to be pulling your putts, go
Speaker 2: to a toe hang putter that's going to tend to
Speaker 2: leave the face a little bit more open. I think
Speaker 2: I've said those correct.
Speaker 3: So, Sasha, is just a wrap a bow on these
Speaker 3: two concepts. Here one would be and we've seen this
Speaker 3: with iping. We have our consistency score that incentivized as
Speaker 3: being more repeatable, and we can measure do a b
Speaker 3: testing with different putters. We've seen it time and time again.
Speaker 3: Like you said, if a player wants to feel less
Speaker 3: resistance or the putter kind of feeling like it's going
Speaker 3: to stay more square through the stroke. They have generally
Speaker 3: a higher repeatability score. We can measure that, we can
Speaker 3: we can improve the repeatability. That's number one, trying to
Speaker 3: match the balance of the putter to what they're kind
Speaker 3: of innately like the feel of. And then number two,
Speaker 3: we can we can adjust the delivered face angle, which
Speaker 3: will affect the face delivery. And because we know face
Speaker 3: angle is is the primary thing we want to influence there.
Speaker 3: We can eliminate a pull by playing a more toe
Speaker 3: down putter, eliminate pushes, reduced pushes by playing more face
Speaker 3: balanced putter.
Speaker 1: You got it?
Speaker 3: And why is that? Why is it that the face
Speaker 3: is delivered more open? Uh, if you play more toe
Speaker 3: down putter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this this comes down to the kinetics, so
Speaker 2: that the forces and torques that the golfers applying to
Speaker 2: the club. So I'll try my best to do this
Speaker 2: on a podcast, but there is a natural tendency of
Speaker 2: you the center of mass off the shaft. When you
Speaker 2: start your stroke, you're applying a force on the grip
Speaker 2: away from the target that's actually going to tend to
Speaker 2: close the face. So if your toe hang, the face
Speaker 2: is going to start to close more in the backstroke
Speaker 2: than the face balanced. And then what's interesting is then
Speaker 2: from there on it's gonna be lagging the face balanced,
Speaker 2: and it's going to get even more exaggerate. So as
Speaker 2: you transition into your forward stroke, now you're applying a
Speaker 2: force towards the target, and that starts to swing the
Speaker 2: putter more open. So the towinguter is going to start
Speaker 2: to open up more than the face balance. Okay, and
Speaker 2: so now it's lagging in this open position. What's very
Speaker 2: interesting is that that's going to be maintained all the
Speaker 2: way up to impact so that it never catches up
Speaker 2: to the face bounce. It's actually going to remain more open.
Speaker 2: But what's interesting is that the rate that it's closing.
Speaker 2: And so, I mean, I don't know whether this is
Speaker 2: like a subconscious thing where folks realize who you know,
Speaker 2: they're not perceiving it, but they're trying to close it faster,
Speaker 2: or it's just just a reaction that you know, they're
Speaker 2: not even controlling themselves. But the rate of face clothing
Speaker 2: is faster at impact with the toe hang, so's it's open,
Speaker 2: but it's trying to catch up. So that's the cause
Speaker 2: for that face to be a little bit more open
Speaker 2: with the toe hang hutter, and it's important to point
Speaker 2: out that that's not a bad thing. You might actually
Speaker 2: overclose with the face balance, so you need that little
Speaker 2: bit of open bias.
Speaker 4: Sasha, how important is it for people to maybe give
Speaker 4: multiple putters a try, I mean to I mean, obviously
Speaker 4: going through fitting is important and use an iping, but
Speaker 4: to get those feels that you're talking about, to kind
Speaker 4: of see throughout the options that maybe ping has available
Speaker 4: to see maybe what you're describing on the pod.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I think that, you know, Pink does an
Speaker 2: awesome job with the putter fitting. It pushes you very
Speaker 2: strongly in a direction, but when it comes right down
Speaker 2: to you, you do really want to try a couple
Speaker 2: of putters, you know. Yeah, I firmly believe in that.
Speaker 2: So there's there's always going to be someone who, you know,
Speaker 2: if if you're not comfortable with it, it's probably not
Speaker 2: going to work in the long term. It's tough to
Speaker 2: really start to love a putter over time if you
Speaker 2: don't like it, you know, within the first few days.
Speaker 2: So I think that especially if you have you know,
Speaker 2: you're like, I could use either of these, Hey, great
Speaker 2: reason to go with the fitting, and the fitting is
Speaker 2: certainly going to give you an excellent head start. But
Speaker 2: I think I think testing out one or the other
Speaker 2: is you know, we're both is obviously the best way
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: Sasha. We've had fun doing studies in our lab and
Speaker 3: then you duplicate them in your lab and we don't
Speaker 3: share results until until we both kind of completed them,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of like two factor confirmation on our
Speaker 3: our findings. One of them we did was on putter offset.
Speaker 3: I know that's something you know a lot of the
Speaker 3: golf world and you know, folks who followed the Proving
Speaker 3: Grounds podcast probably curious about. So give us a little
Speaker 3: overview and that that study we did a few years
Speaker 3: back on a putter with more and less offset and
Speaker 3: what we saw and maybe some of the again the
Speaker 3: kinetics reasons for the findings there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the offset is a really interesting one where
Speaker 2: the first study of ping was done mostly with iping,
Speaker 2: and I use a motion capture camera, so I get
Speaker 2: a little bit different data, some of the little bit
Speaker 2: we'd say even extra data in terms of what's happening
Speaker 2: it's set up, and with the iping data, it was
Speaker 2: pretty clear that if you play with more offset, you
Speaker 2: are more likely to start the ball to the left.
Speaker 2: You're right handed, part of your start line, your facing,
Speaker 2: the impact, everything's going to be a little bit left bias.
Speaker 2: And the question was, okay, well this is showing up
Speaker 2: an iping is it's something that's happening in the stroke
Speaker 2: that would be my flinch. What was interesting is that
Speaker 2: when I repeated this study in my lab, I saw
Speaker 2: the same thing. It was actually and I will add,
Speaker 2: you deliver more loft and you start the putt more left.
Speaker 2: But what's interesting is that those biases are pre set
Speaker 2: at address, and it's not something that the golfer is
Speaker 2: obviously conscious of. So when I run tests, I'll have
Speaker 2: participant number one will come in and they will hit
Speaker 2: five putts with a putter that has offset, and then
Speaker 2: they'll hit five putts with no offset, and they'll go
Speaker 2: back and forth in these blocks. Participant number two will
Speaker 2: start with a different condition first and they alternate throughout
Speaker 2: the So we try to remove biases. We try to
Speaker 2: have a nice balance study design, and this effect shows up.
Speaker 2: But it's actually unlike predominantly unlike the toe hang versus
Speaker 2: face balance, which is a thing that happens during the
Speaker 2: stroke and interacts with the kinetics. The offset is more
Speaker 2: of a visual thing that the player tends to adjust
Speaker 2: to an address and then it stays in the stroke,
Speaker 2: which is very interesting. That seems to be the dominant effect, Sawsho.
Speaker 4: I've got a dumb question that I figured you'd be
Speaker 4: a perfect person to ask, Why is it that? And
Speaker 4: I don't do this anymore because it just doesn't work
Speaker 4: for me in my putting. Why is it that when
Speaker 4: I put a line on my ball, I line the
Speaker 4: ball up perfectly where I think the break's going to
Speaker 4: be In all that, when I stand over the ball
Speaker 4: with the putter, why does it at times not feel
Speaker 4: like it's directed where it should be directed. Because I've
Speaker 4: talked about this with a lot of my buddies, especially
Speaker 4: my good playing buddies, and you know, it's a real debate.
Speaker 1: Do you use the line? Do you not use the line?
Speaker 4: Why is that something that happens to us golfers when
Speaker 4: you get over the putt and you feel like the
Speaker 4: line's not not accurate.
Speaker 2: Well, the reason is how we've evolved to use vision
Speaker 2: and when our eyes are over the ball and we're
Speaker 2: looking down at a line to sum it up. You know,
Speaker 2: it is not a great way to line something up
Speaker 2: with you with your eyes exactly exactly, no one would
Speaker 2: ever shoot a gun point being, you know, holding the
Speaker 2: gun below them, you know, the way you have your
Speaker 2: line on the ball and be like, right, I am
Speaker 2: going I definitely like snipers aren't like you know you're
Speaker 2: featuring me.
Speaker 1: That you would be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have very limited ability, so that I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the short answer. Why is that we have not
Speaker 2: evolved to try in if you know we're chasing down
Speaker 2: prey or trying to you know, things over time, get
Speaker 2: away from something you know, we want to be behind it,
Speaker 2: lining it up, whether we're throwing a projectile or lining
Speaker 2: up a gun, you know, without getting into the reasons
Speaker 2: behind how our vision works.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so trust it. It's it's trust the
Speaker 4: line you put on the ball when you set it down.
Speaker 4: Don't trust in theory your eyes that are seeing something
Speaker 4: that's not not accurate or it's like you said, your
Speaker 4: vision is telling you something different.
Speaker 2: Right, And I think you can if you work hard
Speaker 2: and have some trust, you can calibrate yourself to believe
Speaker 2: that that is straight. You know, That's one thing that
Speaker 2: our vision is potentially good at is we can adapt.
Speaker 2: You know, our vision will will start to adjust. It's
Speaker 2: also sometimes you know, your alignment can drift over time
Speaker 2: as well, because you know you can get these biases
Speaker 2: can work in, and that's that's why we end up,
Speaker 2: you know, having alignment rods to prevent that bias from
Speaker 2: drifting in, so you can you can recalibrate. So you know,
Speaker 2: if you work hard hard enough out of chain, I
Speaker 2: think you can start to make that line on the ball.
Speaker 2: Look right as you're standing over it, Marty.
Speaker 4: This came up so much with the Jordan speedth phenomenon
Speaker 4: early in his career when you would, you know, look
Speaker 4: at the hole right, and it was you know, Steph
Speaker 4: Curry's not you know, he's looking at the bass right,
Speaker 4: He's not looking in theory at the ball.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that was a debate.
Speaker 4: And of course I know Jordan's bounced back and forth
Speaker 4: with that, but I mean you're thinking that's six foot circle, right,
Speaker 4: I mean five foot circle scoring circle, and almost Jordan's
Speaker 4: theory or you know what he used to win golf
Speaker 4: tournaments was such a different idea, yet it was something
Speaker 4: that works in almost every other sport or every other
Speaker 4: you know, athletic feet out there right.
Speaker 3: Sasha has done a little bit of research on this, Sastra,
Speaker 3: I heard. I don't know if it's true, but over
Speaker 3: half your town putts heads up putting up there. But
Speaker 3: tell us about your your research and heads up putting,
Speaker 3: your find your your kind of academic findings behind it,
Speaker 3: and uh and where you where you stand currently on
Speaker 3: on uh this this technique heads up putting versus not?
Speaker 1: Do you putt heads up? Sasha?
Speaker 2: I absolutely putt heads up? Okay, and it feels so
Speaker 2: wrong to putt heads down. Now. I have a million
Speaker 2: anecdotes and thoughts on this, but let me start with
Speaker 2: a stat that eighty percent of the golfers that come
Speaker 2: through my lab end up putting meaningfully better heads up.
Speaker 2: And these are golfers, you know, they could been playing
Speaker 2: golf for thirty years, they could be scratch handicaps, and
Speaker 2: they think I'm crazy to even have them attempt this.
Speaker 2: So what's the motivation. I've done three three really solid
Speaker 2: studies looking at heads up putting? Now, what was the
Speaker 2: motivation for that? Well, it comes from, as Mary would say,
Speaker 2: first principles it's like, well what matters? What what can
Speaker 2: I do to sink more putts? What are we under
Speaker 2: the control of putter? Head? Speed variability is massive? Right,
Speaker 2: so what can we do to improve our speed control?
Speaker 2: And what are currently people doing that are really hindering that.
Speaker 2: So if anybody who's listening to this, ball up a
Speaker 2: piece of paper, grab a pan, a set of keys,
Speaker 2: wherever you got in the desk, find the garbage can
Speaker 2: and go, okay, I'm gonna fire something in the garbage
Speaker 2: can over here. But then look down. And there's been
Speaker 2: research that is shown outside of golf, but as soon
Speaker 2: as you stop looking at a at a target, our
Speaker 2: memory of how far that target is begins to exponentially decay.
Speaker 2: So that's why even if you see some of the
Speaker 2: best golfers like Aaron Baddeley, when he hits a putt
Speaker 2: I remember trying to film him at Whisper Rock once
Speaker 2: he wasn't. I was just on the side of the green,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of covertly filming, and I missed the
Speaker 2: first two attempts because he starts his stroke as his
Speaker 2: head's coming back to the ball, so he's minimizing that
Speaker 2: decay time. Now some golfers probably have a really good
Speaker 2: ability to do that. Vast majority of us do not.
Speaker 2: So in the research, I would look at not just
Speaker 2: the number of putts that were made, but I looked at, Okay,
Speaker 2: when you're putting heads up versus head down, what happens
Speaker 2: to your variability and impact spot path, face angle and
Speaker 2: speed and what you see as a reduction in speed
Speaker 2: control variability, a little bit of increase in impact spot variability,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't matter. It gets completely washed out by
Speaker 2: speed control going up. And you know, there's lots of
Speaker 2: clues in other sports. A hockey player, where there's way
Speaker 2: more going on, you know, in terms of the pucks
Speaker 2: moving around on the blade. Ninety percent of the things
Speaker 2: they do when they're shooting passing, their head is up.
Speaker 2: Basketball shooting you would never look down. And some people
Speaker 2: say was shooting a basketball? Yeah, but that's because I'm
Speaker 2: holding the ball. You know, I'm not trying to impact it.
Speaker 2: But then you look at billiards. The best billiards players
Speaker 2: they don't look at the cue ball. They look at
Speaker 2: where they want the cueball to go. And that's you know,
Speaker 2: so you have two targets. In golf, you're trying to
Speaker 2: hit the golf ball, but you're also trying to project
Speaker 2: it to a second target. And everybody should really try
Speaker 2: heads up hutting, and so quickly, if I was going
Speaker 2: to give somebody, you know, okay, what do I do
Speaker 2: to heads up hutt your routine doesn't change. Everything's exactly
Speaker 2: the same. And let's both of you caddied. So if
Speaker 2: I was like asking a caddy, hey, you know, where
Speaker 2: should I start this putt, you'd be like a cup
Speaker 2: outside left and universally that is understood that that is
Speaker 2: your start line. Right, that is the line I want
Speaker 2: to start the ball on. So what I say is, okay,
Speaker 2: nothing changes your routine, get up over the ball. When
Speaker 2: you bring your head down for the final time, you
Speaker 2: don't start your stroke. Then you look. You imagine a
Speaker 2: laser line coming out of that putter face, and you
Speaker 2: just follow it to the hole. And where that laser
Speaker 2: line would pass closest to the hole, that's what you
Speaker 2: stare at and you think, I'm just going to roll
Speaker 2: the ball over that spot. That's how your heads up putt.
Speaker 2: So you know, if you think, okay, this is a
Speaker 2: foot of right edge stair at the right edge and
Speaker 2: go I'm gonna roll this putt over the right edge,
Speaker 2: and people put better, and then even starting to look
Speaker 2: at things like head movement. So head movement there's it's
Speaker 2: called alo centric heven. So the best putters tend to
Speaker 2: move their head ace like in the opposite direction to
Speaker 2: the putter. And it's small movements, but still that's that's
Speaker 2: correlated with better putting. There's a motor control researcher from
Speaker 2: Canon and Timothy Lee that's showing that you putt heads up,
Speaker 2: you tend to have you're more in line with that
Speaker 2: that style head move and the magnitude of your head
Speaker 2: movement is also smaller. So two things, your head moves less,
Speaker 2: the movement it does have is more in line with
Speaker 2: the better putter. And there's all sorts of other cool
Speaker 2: things that you know, for people that struggle with putting,
Speaker 2: it takes your mind off of mechanical thoughts. It becomes
Speaker 2: more of a feel. You're you're less concerned about what
Speaker 2: exactly the putter's doing.
Speaker 4: Sasho, I did it for I did it for six
Speaker 4: months a few years back. I noticed the thing I
Speaker 4: noticed the most with it was I would hit the
Speaker 4: five six foot putts right kind of the scoring putts.
Speaker 4: I felt like I hit them with a lot of speed,
Speaker 4: Like I hit them and I made them.
Speaker 1: With a lot of speed versus to your point.
Speaker 4: If you're standing over the putt, you're looking down at it,
Speaker 4: you know it's a quick potter, it's moving away from
Speaker 4: I'm a left handed putter, maybe it's poop into my
Speaker 4: left and you're kind of trying to drip it on
Speaker 4: the right side. I noticed that when I was putting
Speaker 4: well face up, I was hitting those putts in the
Speaker 4: hole and they were going in with like serious make speed,
Speaker 4: the kind of make speed that you want to hit
Speaker 4: putts with in the first place.
Speaker 2: Nice one point seven to four miles per hour.
Speaker 1: Is that the perfect make speed? Yeah.
Speaker 3: The question on this is would an alternative be to
Speaker 3: do something a little bit more Let's say I don't
Speaker 3: not comfortable going one hundred percent heads up? Would a
Speaker 3: more air and badley approach where you try to reduce
Speaker 3: that time? I feel like I've done good with that
Speaker 3: in terms of my routine. Would that Would that be
Speaker 3: a viable kind of alternative? Maybe next best?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yep. If you're not comfortable with the heads up,
Speaker 2: then that's the way to go is that? Okay, I've decided,
Speaker 2: you know, this is the putt I want to execute
Speaker 2: heads down? Where you go?
Speaker 3: Gotcha? Gotcha?
Speaker 1: Are you putting every put heads up? Sasha?
Speaker 4: Are you doing I mean thirty footers everything like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Ok.
Speaker 2: And it gets very different when you are executing a
Speaker 2: pitch shot or a chip shot, because then impact spot
Speaker 2: becomes very, you know, a lot more important, and your
Speaker 2: lies change a lot, your stance changes a lot. On
Speaker 2: the putting green, the ball is never stopping anywhere that
Speaker 2: has more than a you know, a four percent slow
Speaker 2: four percent is probably even getting extreme. So your setup
Speaker 2: is always the same. The ball is always in the
Speaker 2: same spot, your feet are always you know, feeling the
Speaker 2: same weight distribution. And it's interesting me that we're looking down,
Speaker 2: but that information is always the same in every put
Speaker 2: The information from the putt to the hole is what
Speaker 2: we want to react to, you know. That's that's the information,
Speaker 2: and that's why most of our practice strokes are taken
Speaker 2: looking up. We're trying to, you know, get a sense
Speaker 2: for what that is, and then we look down. So
Speaker 2: when I putt heads down, now, it's just it's like
Speaker 2: it feels the same as everybody that's listening. When you
Speaker 2: go to throw something in the garbage, can you look?
Speaker 2: That's what it feels like to me. You know. I
Speaker 2: was just talking to P and M from uh Vision
Speaker 2: fifty four and they said, Anica tried it a long
Speaker 2: time ago and she made eighty four in a row
Speaker 2: from twelve feet whoa, And they said, so, yeah, so
Speaker 2: were you gonna Are you gonna take this to the course.
Speaker 2: He's like, no, everybody's gonna be looking at me. Funny,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, so she didn't. But it's like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's that's a lot of putts in a row before,
Speaker 2: you know, got some confidence, Marty.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm doing after this podcast?
Speaker 3: Oh, I know, we go back back.
Speaker 4: I'm going to like the next hour and a half
Speaker 4: just faced up pudding every pot.
Speaker 1: I've got all the putting grid. It's happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sasha, what about uh what about the topic of
Speaker 3: uphillers versus downhillers? What would you rather have? You know, uh,
Speaker 3: downhill eight footer versus uphill eight footer? What are some
Speaker 3: of the considerations there? You know, maybe talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about some of exploring that both theoretically and then
Speaker 3: maybe with some some measured empirical data.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've got two fantastic data sets to look
Speaker 2: at this so when I do putter testing. So actually
Speaker 2: with I did a combined heads up versus heads down
Speaker 2: and toe hang versus face balanced study. It was over
Speaker 2: two days. Golfers hit ninety six putch eats various combinations
Speaker 2: of conditions, and two of the holes were straight uphill
Speaker 2: eight footer in a straight downhill eight footer, and everything
Speaker 2: was using motion capture so we would make sure the
Speaker 2: green is perfectly calibrated. We hit the ball, we tracked
Speaker 2: the ball, and we'd just agreed to make sure that
Speaker 2: these two putts, the eight foot uphill and the dela
Speaker 2: are absolutely dead straight, no question. Significantly more putts were
Speaker 2: made on the eight foot downhiller compared to the eight
Speaker 2: foot upliatter wasn't close meaningful difference in percentage of make putts.
Speaker 2: Then fast forward to now with stack putting, where we
Speaker 2: have you know, I think we're probably getting close to
Speaker 2: a million potts and we can look at Okay, we're
Speaker 2: telling people to go hit a straight uphill eight footer,
Speaker 2: a straight downhill eight footer, and it's reversed uphill potts
Speaker 2: are easier than downhill putts. You're more likely to make
Speaker 2: an uphill putt in reality, and there's a subtle difference
Speaker 2: here in the lab. I've got a dot on the
Speaker 2: green saying this is where you're gonna hit your putt from,
Speaker 2: and you're hitting it to this hole, and you know
Speaker 2: that it is dead downhill. You know that it is
Speaker 2: perfectly uphill, okay, Whereas in stack putting and in reality
Speaker 2: on the golf course, you go, I think this is
Speaker 2: straight uphill or I think this is straight downhill. And
Speaker 2: that's the subtle difference. If you if you go, okay,
Speaker 2: this is uphill, you have to hit this a little firmer,
Speaker 2: so it is it's traveling for less time, you're going
Speaker 2: to be more aggressive with it, and there's a chance
Speaker 2: that it's not perfectly uphill okay, So that versus downhill. Again,
Speaker 2: you don't really know if this is exactly downhill. And
Speaker 2: you also have to hit it with a little bit
Speaker 2: less speed, so that takes a little more of the
Speaker 2: very building in the green is going to come into
Speaker 2: the ball kind of meandering left or right. So it's
Speaker 2: interesting to see how those two things flip in practice
Speaker 2: give me the uphill eight footer.
Speaker 3: What would you rather have to win your club championship?
Speaker 3: A six foot or straight up hill or a six
Speaker 3: foot slider downhill left or right? And why and why.
Speaker 2: They're both the same distance? Six feet?
Speaker 3: Yeah, six feet.
Speaker 2: Give me the up Yeah, the straight uphill putt. Just
Speaker 2: based on all of that data, you know, people are
Speaker 2: making more uphill putts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, quick to answer that one. It's like, I'll take
Speaker 4: the I could be I can maybe let go a
Speaker 4: little bit more now.
Speaker 2: If someone told me, now, that's interesting. If someone told me,
Speaker 2: also knowing what I know, they said this is one
Speaker 2: hundred percent straight down the hill, then I take the
Speaker 2: downhill putt.
Speaker 3: Well, if it's a slider downhill left or right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm avoiding the slider. Okay, I'm avoiding the
Speaker 2: slider unless it's at least two feet closer. If it's
Speaker 2: you know, if it's closer, I'm taking the slider. Distance
Speaker 2: is still king. I'm taking the five foot slider over
Speaker 2: the seven foot that I think is straight up hill.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's a pretty fun inside and putting
Speaker 3: is uh yeah, just being closer to the hole. It
Speaker 3: means everything, right, Sosha.
Speaker 4: Absolutely that's been proven throughout the bag, right. I mean
Speaker 4: that was the whole kind of flip in the way
Speaker 4: even professional golf was twenty five years ago versus now
Speaker 4: where Now I'll tell you this, Marty playing in the
Speaker 4: amateur this past year and playing those practice rounds with
Speaker 4: the players and diving into the data there and how
Speaker 4: they go about their business. It's simply it's driver here
Speaker 4: because this data tells us it's driving right. And rarely
Speaker 4: are you seeing those level of players hitting anything less
Speaker 4: than driver off of tea unless it just tightens up
Speaker 4: up there. I mean, it has sinned it all day,
Speaker 4: every day. And I mean same thing in terms of putting.
Speaker 4: It sounds like saus show is it's as long as
Speaker 4: you're closer, no matter how much movement's involved, take the
Speaker 4: closer putt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the more important point there is that you
Speaker 2: do not have enough control to guarantee you're If you're
Speaker 2: guaranteeing the uphill putt, then you're also guaranteeing it's going
Speaker 2: to be further away.
Speaker 4: You know, why why do we not see more pros
Speaker 4: do face up? I mean, I know the Onica story
Speaker 4: and we talked about Jordan speed, but why does it like,
Speaker 4: it seems like someone would take this on and the
Speaker 4: fact that we haven't really seen a single modern player
Speaker 4: kind of subscribe to what you're saying. You've got half
Speaker 4: a talent doing, you know, kind of following along with
Speaker 4: your data and your philosophies. Why is this not kind
Speaker 4: of bled into the pro game?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that on a reason is the number
Speaker 2: one reason embarrassment.
Speaker 1: Embarrassment is really a thing.
Speaker 2: So it would take it would take someone with the
Speaker 2: open mindedness of Fitzpatrick. You know. So Fitzpatrick's a good
Speaker 2: example of Hey, I'm gonna do this this crosshanded drill
Speaker 2: with my with my you know, pitching to kind of
Speaker 2: you know, help get a feel of my swing. And
Speaker 2: because he tracks everything, he's like, huh, this is this
Speaker 2: is pretty good done. It's in play now. He's a
Speaker 2: great putter, so he has absolutely no reason to to
Speaker 2: really switch. But it would take someone who both performed
Speaker 2: better heads up to actually go and try it, and
Speaker 2: then also to have that open mindedness of like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go full throttle with this, and and to
Speaker 2: a certain extent that that's kind of speeth. You know,
Speaker 2: he did that a bit. But if I was to
Speaker 2: give a practical reason, you know, to to play Devil's
Speaker 2: Advocate is that, you know, I don't want to give
Speaker 2: tour players and out here, but there could be a
Speaker 2: little bit more movement on the green, you know. So
Speaker 2: when I put heads up, there'll be a lot of
Speaker 2: people who when they see you start your stroke, they'll
Speaker 2: like move to go to their ball as you're starting
Speaker 2: their stroke. And it's if it's constant movement, so maybe
Speaker 2: it's fine. On tour, there was constant bustling around, you know,
Speaker 2: like if you're like shooting basketball, you know, it's like fine.
Speaker 2: But if it's like perfect stillness and then something moves,
Speaker 2: you know, then that could throw you off a little bit.
Speaker 2: And I notice that with my own heads up putting,
Speaker 2: but most people are moving around that much. It's usually
Speaker 2: just and I'll say to them, hey, you know, just
Speaker 2: kind of be still, just still I hit the ball.
Speaker 2: That's to give tour players now, But I really think
Speaker 2: the number one reason is just it's almost like admitting
Speaker 2: that they're putting is so bad or something that you
Speaker 2: know that they've got to go to this extreme technique.
Speaker 2: But I think it's worth trying, especially for folks who
Speaker 2: are struggling. You know, the strokes gains not that great.
Speaker 2: It can't hurt the test it out well.
Speaker 4: I mean you think about some of the stats that
Speaker 4: Scotty was producing in twenty twenty three, I mean with
Speaker 4: the ball striking, and just to throw anything out there.
Speaker 4: I mean, Marty, I say this all the time. I'm
Speaker 4: very impressed with the professional golfer's ability to tinker. I
Speaker 4: mean Sascho's point about you know, Matt Fitzpatrick and chipping
Speaker 4: crosshand that I heard a story years ago that Fred
Speaker 4: Couples was talked about how he was a better one
Speaker 4: handed chipper yep, than he was with both hands on
Speaker 4: the golf club, but he just didn't want to put
Speaker 4: it out there because he didn't want people in the
Speaker 4: crowds and galleries to.
Speaker 1: Talk about it.
Speaker 4: But there is it feels like the tinkering almost stops
Speaker 4: on the greens, right. I Mean, you might go long putter,
Speaker 4: you might go with Green Reading's books, you might go
Speaker 4: with a different grip, but in terms of just the analytics,
Speaker 4: in terms of what could happen on the greens, it
Speaker 4: feels like it almost stops there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of our best senior players in the section
Speaker 3: here he chips one hand and puts his left hand
Speaker 3: in his pocket. Boom, and he chips amazing. Yes, he
Speaker 3: puts it in the pocket.
Speaker 1: Hownbelievable.
Speaker 3: Next level.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's interesting because most of the precision
Speaker 2: things we do in other sports, they're all done with
Speaker 2: one hand. Never throw darts with two hands. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: you imagine you. You know, we write with a single hand,
Speaker 2: everything with you know, with badminton because it's a little
Speaker 2: bit lighter. Always a single hand, you know, most of
Speaker 2: tennis and unless strength becomes an issue as a single
Speaker 2: single hand. So it seems reasonable, but people struggle with
Speaker 2: trying to do it, you know, like cause I think
Speaker 2: I'm doing something funny.
Speaker 3: I just saw a video some college team football team
Speaker 3: where the center did a two handed snap and the
Speaker 3: whole internet was going crazy over that. You know, it's
Speaker 3: got the opposite, right example.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like it's like a long it's like a
Speaker 4: long snapper, but doing it for your quarterback, right. I mean,
Speaker 4: I mean it's only weird until it works, and then
Speaker 4: it's not weird anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sasha, what about headweight? What have you found in
Speaker 3: putting headweight? I mean we've seen we've seen again pretty
Speaker 3: reliable folks with a faster tempo backswing to ford stroke
Speaker 3: time ratio generally do better with a lighter headweight putter
Speaker 3: slower tempo generally with the heavier headweight putter. What are
Speaker 3: your findings there on putter, headweight and performance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and that's another one that's lined up
Speaker 2: very closely in my lab with what Ping's been doing.
Speaker 2: And I think that that that is also getting at
Speaker 2: the kinetics. Those faster tempos are indicative of higher the
Speaker 2: force is changing at a higher rate, and your preference
Speaker 2: for what you want your stroke to do, and it's
Speaker 2: nice to have the implement that you're using kind of
Speaker 2: match that. So and this is a good example of
Speaker 2: something that it can be tough to exactly tease out
Speaker 2: the why, and you're kind of left with the hypothesis.
Speaker 2: But it's more important to have good experimental data in
Speaker 2: the end than a good theoretical reason. You know, it's
Speaker 2: really nice if you can figure out the theory, and
Speaker 2: that's probably going to help you to design better clubs,
Speaker 2: but in the end, it's better to have the data.
Speaker 2: You know, to have the experimental data that says this,
Speaker 2: this works better for this type of player.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my thought on that sawsho is that if it
Speaker 3: has a lot to do and even as you mentioned
Speaker 3: with the stroke type, it has a lot to do
Speaker 3: with the backstroke. You know what happens right when you
Speaker 3: try to start, you know, accelerating the object or accelerating
Speaker 3: the putter. If you do it very quickly and the
Speaker 3: putter's too heavy, it doesn't you know, it's not moving
Speaker 3: at the rate that I think your brain and your
Speaker 3: nervous system might want it to do. What are your
Speaker 3: thoughts on the That is kind of like a you know,
Speaker 3: a theory or way to think about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like that absolutely. It's very much in tune
Speaker 2: with what I would call perception action coupling. You know,
Speaker 2: what you're doing, the feedback you're getting from what's actually happening.
Speaker 2: You want those two things to line.
Speaker 3: Up, gotcha. Yeah.
Speaker 4: What is the text messages like between you guys? I mean,
Speaker 4: is it like, is it disadvanced? I mean if you
Speaker 4: dive this deep on the back and forth or do
Speaker 4: you guys just shoot the you know what every now
Speaker 4: and again.
Speaker 2: Marty and I are ninety nine percent all business in
Speaker 2: terms of like hardcore science, like.
Speaker 4: I want to dive into the text exchanges and see
Speaker 4: if it looks like this.
Speaker 3: It's all about perception in action coupling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, new T shirts.
Speaker 4: We're gonna have to make uh sashow for you putting.
Speaker 4: When you're diving into all this data and you're you're
Speaker 4: you're going over thousands and thousands of you know, I
Speaker 4: mean tasks and everything you do. How do you simplify
Speaker 4: it in your own brain when you go play golf?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's it's all feel for me. You know, you
Speaker 2: you think about it, you understand it, but then you're
Speaker 2: on your putting green. It's it's just it's just reacting,
Speaker 2: you know, like and I think that's why it can be.
Speaker 2: It can be so tough to to teach some of
Speaker 2: these things, like like green reading, especially when you're trying
Speaker 2: to factor in all of these variables. Like if you
Speaker 2: have a perfectly rectangular green with a set slope and
Speaker 2: the stimp doesn't change from the ball to the hole,
Speaker 2: you know that you gotta you can make some serious
Speaker 2: headway with with aim point great, but if you you
Speaker 2: if you start to have you know, putts flattening out
Speaker 2: towards the end, you know you're like, all right, it's
Speaker 2: kind of left to right, but then it straightens out
Speaker 2: all of a sudden. It's like, okay, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: endpoint can help. But then if you go okay, but
Speaker 2: then I got some stamp, there's also a bit of
Speaker 2: do you know, there's a bit of wind. I think
Speaker 2: that's where it's you know what you really high like
Speaker 2: heads up putting, because you take all of that information
Speaker 2: in and you just react to it with your stroke,
Speaker 2: you know. And I think that's where some of the
Speaker 2: best putters, like a Battely, when you add, okay, we're
Speaker 2: exactly you're aiming here, and he's like, well, like over there,
Speaker 2: you know, Like I'm like, is it here? You know,
Speaker 2: you put a tea down. He's like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's over there because he's his subconscious has a very
Speaker 2: specific thing it's executing. But it's like taking in all
Speaker 2: this information, so, you know, I often think that some
Speaker 2: savant will come along, like Rainman. You've ever seen ray Man,
Speaker 2: you know, where the toothpicks get knocked off the table
Speaker 2: and he's like, oh, it's two hundred and seventy four
Speaker 2: tooth picks, and literally there's going to be somebody who
Speaker 2: has the skill set that's pretty decent in all the
Speaker 2: other aspects of golf. But what you know, the three
Speaker 2: of us might consider a green irregularity, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 2: we've we've put our level down on the green. We
Speaker 2: know how long the putt is, we know what should
Speaker 2: happen here, and we set up a perfect putter and
Speaker 2: we roll the ball and it, oh, it ends up short,
Speaker 2: you know, or it kind of stays out straight. Oh
Speaker 2: because we didn't see, you know, there's a little wormhole
Speaker 2: or some ant or a leaf or a pump in
Speaker 2: the green. But that's really just green rading, you know.
Speaker 2: So rain Man comes up there and he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: all that information goes in and it comes out in
Speaker 2: the execution of his stroke, you know, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, instead of in the lab going from ninety
Speaker 2: percent eight footers down to fifty percent, he's at like
Speaker 2: seventy five percent and just like leaves everybody in his dust.
Speaker 3: Sasha to me, that's watching Tiger's putt last putt on
Speaker 3: eighteen at Torrey Pines. I mean watching the worm cam
Speaker 3: of that. I mean, I don't know if that's Luck
Speaker 3: or if he was rain Man and he figured that
Speaker 3: out well.
Speaker 2: And he's done it so many times. Does he be
Speaker 2: like bay Hill, like, how many of those those are
Speaker 2: not easy putts and greens that have been trampled on
Speaker 2: back in the day with metal spikes, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm with you like, And he's so late late, he
Speaker 2: was so late. He still is laser focus, he'd see it.
Speaker 2: I guess he did put that one in the hero
Speaker 2: into the bunker, so he could have used a bit
Speaker 2: more focus then.
Speaker 5: But he's rusty, you know, he just you could see
Speaker 5: he was he was like surveying every square inch of
Speaker 5: that putt, and you know, maybe subconsciously that was going
Speaker 5: in there, you know, I don't.
Speaker 4: Know, maybe maybe the closest we have seen to this
Speaker 4: point in terms of what Sasha thinks will be coming
Speaker 4: eventually in pro golf. Sasha, we have really appreciate the time.
Speaker 4: Very fascinating I have. We've had a lot of guests
Speaker 4: on this podcast. I think you might be a top
Speaker 4: the list of people I want to play golf with
Speaker 4: now because I just weave and I want to ride
Speaker 4: in the cart with you because I just want to
Speaker 4: just I just want to hear you talk about this
Speaker 4: over and over again, and like I said, the moment
Speaker 4: we're done recording, I'm going straight to the putting green
Speaker 4: because I am I've gotten a'm twenty twenty four is
Speaker 4: going to be heads up putting for me.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know if it's appropriate to plug
Speaker 2: stack putting. You're not even doing this, but you you
Speaker 2: get on stack putting and tag your sessions. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: like this isn't a plug. This is like, this is
Speaker 2: this is why Marty and I built it into stack putting.
Speaker 2: So it's like, hey, you have this question, go test
Speaker 2: it out. Do a few sessions heads up, few sessions
Speaker 2: heads up. My twelve year old we were prototyping, you know,
Speaker 2: like debugging the app. I was like, okay, I need
Speaker 2: somebody to put in a variable to decide, you know,
Speaker 2: our statistic comparisons working. I was like, well, I don't
Speaker 2: know the putter, and I'm like, just this week, do
Speaker 2: a session heads up, do a session heads down? And
Speaker 2: he gained three strokes putting heads up. And I didn't
Speaker 2: you know, I wasn't gonna push, but he's like, well
Speaker 2: I gotta put heads up.
Speaker 1: You know, he's.
Speaker 2: Analytical like me, I'm like I can't argue with that.
Speaker 1: You should.
Speaker 2: There is the data.
Speaker 4: The numbers are telling you this, Sasha, thanks so much
Speaker 4: for the time.
Speaker 1: Man, this has been great. Uh, Marty smile and I'm smiling.
Speaker 4: We're fired up about the putting. Conversation has been really good.
Speaker 4: This is the Ping proven Grounds podcast.
Speaker 3: H