Lessons From A Vintage Golf Magazine
Judging Distance
Welcome to the third installment in my series Lessons From A Vintage Golf Magazine.
For those who are new here, the goal of the series is pretty simple: we dig up golf instruction from an old school magazine and hold it up against the game today. There are untapped gold mines of golf knowledge sitting in older writing. All you have to do is go digging.
For this installment, we’ll be looking at a Golf Digest series from 1975 called The Art of Putting. This was part two in their three-part series. This article was focused on “Judging Distance”.
It was written by Larry Dennis, drawing on insights from Golf Digest's Professional Teaching Panel — a legendary lineup that included major champions Bobby Jones and Cary Middlecoff, tour winners Paul Runyan and Bob Toski, alongside legendary instructors Eddie Merrins, John Jacobs, and Gary Wiren.
It has a few great conceptual tips that I think will really help a lot of you on the greens. Distance control and proper pace are vital to scoring as I'm sure many of you know. Without it, greens in regulation become useless, and scoring opportunities pass you by.
Let’s get into it.
Distance Vs Direction
The article begins with their position:
Of the two dimensions in putting — distance and direction — I think the golfer should spend far more time concerning himself with making the ball go the required distance.
I don’t think this claim is shocking to the modern golfer. However they would be pleased to know that almost 50+ years later, their claim holds undeniably true now that we have modern ShotLink data and GPS-tracked amateur rounds to prove it.
Shot Scope’s data now puts a number on their original claim:
84% of missed putts over five feet finish short of the hole.
Not necessarily offline. Short.
The miss pattern on these shorter to mid length putts isn’t a circle. It’s more of an oval, stretched along the line of the putt. A slightly wrong line can still catch an edge and drop. Wrong pace has no mercy.
Here is the second useful Shot Scope stat for you:
83% of three-putts begin with the first putt from beyond 32 feet.
Three-putts are not because you missed the second putt. They are from a terribly paced first putt.
So we know that terrible speed control leads to terrible putting. Kind of obvious. But how can we actually improve our pace without grinding over 1000 putts on the practice green?
Let’s look at a few of the strategies they give to help golfers conceptualize speed and distance more effectively.
