Putting pioneers still need rub of the green

The Open's set-up favours conservative golf. But, as Mark Jones discovered, it is Lytham's greens that have captured the players' main attentions

WAYS of skinning a cat. Ways of getting the ball in the hole. Different and various - the practice putting green at Lytham is proof.

From the eccentricities of Chris DiMarco, the classical poise of Tiger Woods, to the cack-handed preference of Padraig Harrington, the methods may be idiosyncratic, but the objective is the same.

It's not as if this practice green at the back of the clubhouse is any more of a hub than at most major championships.

However, with Lytham's putting surfaces creating much less knee- trembling than usual, the players soon realised that if the course's 196 bunkers were avoided, there were plenty of opportunities to be had with the putter.

"The challenge has been different this week," said Butch Harmon, coach to Woods and Darren Clarke. "These greens have no great slopes, they're not that fast, so this is clearly not Augusta or the US Open. Obviously, you have to play conservatively because the course is so difficult, but there's definitely the chance to make a few putts."

Few being the operative word. With no horror stories so far; no short, fast-breaking putts gathering pace and rolling away into a bunker, Colin Montgomerie established a pattern with his opening 65 that included just 24 stabs.

Little wonder that the players have been practising thousands and thousands of putts not much longer than an average trademark Clarke cigar.

For all the toil in between rounds, luck plays its part. While Lytham's greens are flat in the Harmon vernacular, the traditional links' subtleties that nudge a ball off course for no apparent reason are alive and well here. One day they drop, the next they shave the edge of the hole.

David Duval, who has had his share of problems with the putter this season, has been rationalising the luck factor.

"I haven't won the putting contests, I haven't even been a part of them. You walk away from an event and say, 'I putted really well but nothing went in.' It happens again the next week, and now you're p***** off."

How often have you heard Montgomerie or Clarke pleading the same case? By the start of the tournament, Duval had decided to move the argument on.

"If you start it where you want, on the line you want, the speed you want and it doesn't go in, there's not much you can do about it.

"I've done that a lot, now I don't want to putt well any more, I just want the ball to go in."

Duval could have been speaking for DiMarco whose struggle to make a putt culminated in the professional game's most unorthodox method.

There's nothing unconventional about the left hand, but the right hand at the top of the putter creates the impression for a second that the American has lost his marbles and is facing the wrong way.

Appreciating his little piece of technical heresy, DiMarco calls it the "psycho grip".

Ranked 40th in the world and putting like a dream here, his method might just catch on. When DiMarco's compatriot, Rocco Mediate, became the first player to win on the US Tour with a long putter back in 1991, experimentation with new techniques was already rife.

Of the high-profile players whose gainful employment was threatened by the yips, Bernhard Langer, Vijay Singh and Ian Woosnam were three who made the move to new weaponry.

Singh had tried almost 50 different putters before he settled on the 46" intermediate broomhandle, using it to win the 2000 US Masters.

Significantly, that remains the only major success from the ranks of the digitally challenged. When Singh triumphed at the USPGA two years earlier it was with a conventional putter, as were the Masters' wins of both Langer and Woosnam.

However, Tom Watson was toeing the traditionalist line and berating the spread of the long putter, and Sandy Lyle's caddie, Dave Musgrove, once angrily informed his out-of-form boss that if the broomhandle didn't go, he would.

"Clearly, the broomhandle helps players who've had one hand fighting the other," says Paul McGinley's coach, Pete Cowen. "The long putter is good for shorter putts, but it's hard to get leverage from longer distance and it's hard to remain stable if there's any wind."

Back on the practice green, DiMarco, Woods and Harrington are all within three-putt distance of on another.

While the contrast between the two Americans is extreme, Harrington is orthodox in the main. Except for the left hand below right he has been using to good effect for a couple of seasons. Even Montgomerie went that route on some holes during the recent US Open.

However, according to Harmon, most of the players' time is spent concentrating on pace.

"Naturally, this is not the time for major technical adjustments, that work has been done. For example, Darren Clarke had a lot of head movement in his stroke, we took that out of there and he's really improved his putting.

"You don't go at a lot of the flags here, so most opportunities for the leading players are going to be from the middle of the green and those 20 footers are ones that they can make.

"In the final round, it's the mental approach, and while the best putter won't necessarily win, everyone knows you've got to make some putts to be the champion.

"And whoever hits the middle of the fairway and the middle of the green most often should win. Easy to say, hard to do."

If Jesper Parnevik's putter resembles a miniature Stealth bomber, then his customary strong performance has been offset by the more conventional progress of Brad Faxon and Loren Roberts. Two of the game's finest exponents, their velvet touch on the greens has been evident.

With most of the pre-championship analysis focusing on the number of bunkers and the length of the rough, there was little reference to Lytham's greens - softer and slower than usual, running at between 9.5 and 10 on the stimpmetre. Relatively easy compared to last year when Gary Player critcised St Andrews' uneven putting surfaces.

"It's still all about feel," says mind coach Jos Vanstiphout, whose British Open shuttle service this week includes Retief Goosen, Michael Campbell, Paul Lawrie, Clarke and McGinley. "Technique is not my job, I'm trying to get the sub-conscious to take over because that's the most powerful tool. The player must try to remember what it felt like when he putted well.

"It's part focus, part confidence. It's possible one day that a player will birdie every hole, if the mind is right, that can happen."

Belief in the method is a monumental part of the mind game.

While players like DiMarco, Singh and Mark Calcavecchia, who now uses a "paintbrush" grip with the right hand, have found solutions, even someone apparently conventional such as Justin Leonard breaks the 'rules'.

If most wisdom has the eye directly over the ball, Leonard, whose putting exhibition won him the title at Troon four years ago, is off the radar with his address position.

All the available technical wisdom and good putting alone won't win the championship later today, but with the almost constant rolling of balls on Lytham's practice green this week, you could not fail to notice that it will go a long way towards it.

Copyright 2001
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