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Par for the Course
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The quickest way to cut strokes from your score is to take the short route. So I decided to get help from Dave Pelz, golf’s short-game guru. Three of last year’s top-10 money winners — Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and Stewart Cink — all look him up when their putts stop dropping. They’re not alone. More than 6,000 hackers annually enroll at one of Pelz’s one-day clinics or three-day scoring game schools. I signed up for the three-day option at Cimarron Golf Resort in Cathedral City. There also are schools at Calabasas Country Club, Oak Creek Golf Club in Irvine and Maderas Golf Club in Poway. “Sixty-five percent of golf is played from 100 yards in, yet 95 percent of practice is on the part of the game that has little to do with scoring,” Pelz said. “And if [golfers] do practice, they practice poor technique and, the truth is, with poor technique, practice makes permanent, not perfect.” Pelz’s passion for teaching short-game techniques was obvious as we spoke. In my golfing life I’ve met some of the best teachers, including Jim Flick, Hank Haney and Butch Harmon. But no one has as much enthusiasm as Pelz when it comes to shots on and around the green. The results of his teaching are obvious. Mickelson had the dubious distinction of being the “best golfer never to have won a major” until calling Pelz in 2003. Four months later, Mickelson was fitted for his first green jacket and has won two more majors since that victory at the Masters. Aside from teaching some of the best players in the game, Pelz works with the instructors at his schools and designs many of the facilities, including one of his newest at Calabasas Country Club. “We totally focus on the short game so students hit nothing over 100 yards,” he said. “Eighty percent of shots given up to par are from 100 yards in. I design the facilities to work these very important shots. Forty percent of what we teach deals with putting. Statistically, almost half of all putts are under six feet in length. If we can teach students to lag better, leaving shorter putts, or get better at knocking down those six-footers, they will see dramatic improvement in their scoring very quickly.” Pelz, who’s also a consultant for Golf Magazine, has written nearly 200 articles and six books on the short game and is an adviser for the Golf Channel. His rise to his current status started at Indiana University, where he played golf and was a physics major. Although his dream was to play professionally, Pelz saw the handwriting on the wall when he went 0-22 in Big Ten competition against a guy named Jack Nicklaus from Ohio State. So instead of becoming a star on the golf course he turned his attention to the ones in the sky. “About this time in our history, the U.S. space program was really taking off and I had a chance to join the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the Goddard Space Center,” Pelz said. “Those were truly exciting years. I had a great time.” During his years as a physicist, he continued to tinker with his golf game. But now he was applying a scientist’s mind to putting and delved into the statistical importance of the short game with a three-year analysis using caddies, tour players and amateur golfers to gather data. After crunching the numbers, Pelz discovered that the players with the best short games won the most money and that up to 65 percent of the game is played from 100 yards in. The rest is history, but his most satisfying moment might surprise you. “We had one senior student at our school who is 80 years old and a 12 handicap,” Pelz said. “Although this man shot his age many times there was one tournament at his club he never won. After working with us, on his 43rd attempt, he finally won it. Not only was his third round his best score ever, but the next day he bettered that. That’s the highlight of my teaching career.” At this point I’d be happy to say farewell to scores in the 90s, and, with my head and notebook filled with ideas about how to improve my short game, perhaps I can reach that goal. Now it’s up to me to take my three days of lessons and put them to work. What sets apart Pelz’s three-day schools from other beat-balls-until-your-hands-bleed schools is the amount of classroom work and study time. So much of what Pelz teaches is backed by research, and the numbers don’t lie. Professional golfers who win the most money each year have the best short-game statistics, so it only seems natural to work on that aspect of your game. And if the best players in the world turn to the king of the short game for help, you might want to consider doing the same thing. Eric Tracy is also known as The Mulligan Man. He can be reached at eric@themulliganman.com. |
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