Learn to Rule the Greens (Golf Tips Magazine, June 2019)

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By Tom Patri, Top 25 Instructor, with Bob Walton | Photos By Russell Kirk

I have known Bob Walton for over 25 years. We were introduced by our mutual friend Bob Ford, head PGA Professional at Seminole and past head professional at Oakmont.

Bob Walton is as passionate a golfer as any living and breathing human being I have ever met on this planet. So when he called me this past winter season in Naples and said he wanted to travel down from his home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, to show me a put- ting training aid he had invented, I was all ears. This much I know about Bob Walton: he wouldn’t waste my time with something he didn’t feel had real merit.

I have always believed putting was simply five learned skills.
1. Reading the putt
2. Aiming the putter face
3. Squaring the face to the starting line at impact
4. Controlling within reason the path the head travels
5. Controlling the speed the ball travels

Bob came to see me at 4 p.m. on December 7, 2018 at Esplanade in Naples, where I teach each winter. I will never forget that date or time because Bob changed my approach to teaching and coaching putting forever. By 4:30 I was 100 percent sold that Bob had invented far and away the simplest yet most efficient putting aid ever, that would help any student trying to develop all five above mentioned skills simultaneously. I had carried multiple putting aids all over this country during my 39-year teaching and coaching journey. Now I carry one to every utting lesson I give: The Putt Ruler.

After you read this article and wisely pur-chase a Putt Ruler, come see me — I would be happy to show you any number of ways I have come to use it in developing a practice routine that will make you putt your ball like you never dreamed possible.

Let me now turn this article over to Bob. I’m off to the practice green.
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PUTTING, THE LINE ON THE BALL, AND THE PUTT RULER

Most golfers have seen tour players use a line on their ball for putting. They make a decision on the speed and line of each putt, then replace their ball by pointing the line on the ball down the start line of their putt. They are then able take the same address position and make the same stroking action on each putt according to the line on the ball. So when it comes time to stroke the ball, they need only to focus on speed.

Two skills are needed to putt consistently well. First and foremost is skillful green reading or the ability to accurately identify the speed of a putt, and the accurate start line for that speed. Second is the ability to skillfully stroke the ball down the start line at a speed which will stop the ball in the immediate vicinity of, or into, the hole. Learning one of these skills, if the other is not already in place, is a bit like chasing one’s tail. Being deficient in either skill will tend to change the other, resulting in con-stant practice and inconsistent results.

Traditional putting instruction teaches stroke. Green reading is largely neglected; other than years of practice, there has been no good method, or adequate training device, to enable accurate green reading, let alone teach both accurate green reading and stroking skills at the same time. So I determined to find an efficient way to teach both accurate green reading and stroking skills, without having to spend a lifetime practicing with inconsistent results.

In the game of pool or billiards, when the cue ball and the object ball are at rest and touching, due to having only one point of contact—regardless of how the cue ball is struck—the object ball cannot be propelled in any direction except on the line where the two balls are pointed. This is a law of physics, and the design of The Putt Ruler uses this phenomenon to eliminate stroke error.

The Putt Ruler accommodates two balls. Stroking the “stroke ball” sends the “play ball” down the chosen start line re-gardless of whether the stroke was pushed, pulled or otherwise imperfect, thus eliminating stroke error. Eliminating stroke error leaves only the pairing of speed and line to be deter-mined, so after a few attempts any putt can be accurately read. Therefore, with a bit of practice on The Putt Ruler, good green reading skills can be easily and quickly learned.

Regardless of stroke error, the play ball will always begin wherever the The Putt Ruler is pointed. The stroke ball will begin to follow the play ball if the stroke was perfect; other-wise the stroke ball will immediately veer off to the right or left depending on the stroke error. At the moment of impact the weight of two balls increases feel in the grip, making it much easier to feel “perfect” impact. It doesn’t matter how the putter moves in the back swing or follow through, but the singular moment of impact is all-important to the outcome of a putt. Teaching perfect impact allows each player to find his or her natural stroke that will consistently produce perfect impact. There is no one perfect stroke — perfect impact is perfect stroke.

The ability to take green reading and stroking skills to the golf course is made easy by using a line on the ball in place of what The Putt Ruler does in practice — and you can make the transi-tion from practice to play even more comfortable by occasional-ly taking The Putt Ruler out for some on course practice. GT

Tom Patri is the President and Founder of TPGOLF. He is a former Met PGA Teacher of the Year as well as a former South Florida PGA Teacher of the Year and a Golf Tips Magazine Top 25 Instructor in America. He teaches at Esplanade in Naples, Florida, November-April and is The Director of Instruction at The Hawthorns Golf and Country Club in Fishers, Indiana, May-October. Reach Tom at tpatri@mindspring.com or (239) 404-7790.

Bob Walton is the inventor of The Putt Ruler. He is also a Golf Course Architect who has done over 50 projects world wide including Gray Bear, the first course ever built in Slovakia, and Dead Man Mountain in Aguascalientes, Mexico. In the states his work includes the highly acclaimed Secession Golf Club in Beaufort, South Carolina.