Pelz Plays Games

The day before I read Dave Pelz's Putting Games, I played in a scramble where all four members of my team--none with a handicap over ten--missed the same basically straight five-foot birdie putt. As you might imagine, I opened Pelz's book with more than average interest. I wasn't disappointed.

Putting Games is all about developing the skills to make more putts. The first section is diagnostic, the second covers stroke mechanics like aim and face angle, while the third is about developing touch and feel. Pelz painstakingly describes seven games you should play to measure your performance so you can map a route to improvement. They are all played with twelve balls and address nearly every putting circumstance from the dreaded three-footer to sixty-foot lags.

As you would expect given Pelz's background as a NASA scientist and perhaps the most data-driven golf instructor in the business, the "games" rely heavily on measurement and data analysis. they also make extensive us of some of the many training aids Pelz sells. This approach will clearly appeal to analytic golfers, but the games will also help more "feel" players improve their putting performance as well.

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf