In this October’s issue of Golf Digest, they have 30 pages addressing “Why you can’t putt.”  It was hyped as “the ultimate guide to make you great on the greens.”  I knew it was nonsense, but it got my attention.

I don’t know about golf magazines.  Sure, I subscribe, but do they help my game?  I don’t think it helps me to learn what clubs some pro has in his bag.  I am certain that if all his clubs are TaylorMade, then they are paying him to play with their clubs.  I don’t object to the system.  In fact, I would play with Walmart clubs if they would pay me.

The 30 pages on putting turned out to be a series of articles.  One was an extensive study of the brain.  It included colored pictures of the brains of players putting.  Players with their brains colored red were not doing as well as players with brains colored blue.  Red indicated the player was thinking of missing the putt or concentrating too much on mechanics.  Blue indicated focus on the target or “feel.”  I’ve decided my new mantra on the putting green will be, “think blue, think blue.”

One helpful hint was, if you are standing on your tip toes, your putter may be too long.  Another is, if you are leaving your putts short, you may not be hitting them on the center of the club, which is referred to as the “sweet spot” (or you may not be hitting the ball hard enough).  Their answer is to get a larger putter that has a weighted outside frame.  My answer is to hit the ball on the sweet spot.  I can see the need for more forgiving irons when taking a full swing, but for putting?  You seldom take the putter back 12 inches.

I’m not too swift, so some of this stuff just went over my head.  On reading greens (something I would like to do better), I’m supposed to find the “zero line.”  I think that is something like the green’s Continental Divide.  On one side of the line, everything flows to the Atlantic, and on the other side, the Pacific.  I figured out that if you are on the Pacific side, the ball will break to the left.  Atlantic side – right.  I wish I had known this sooner.  I think this new found knowledge, coupled with a blue brain, may take some of the challenge out of the game.

There’s an article  by Mike Shannon, entitled “How to roll every putt on line.”  No, it’s not the Mike Shannon I knew at Mizzou back in 1958.  He went on to play third base for the St. Louis Cardinals and now broadcasts their games.  The golf-instructing Mike says that 35% of golfers see a straight line when they putt and 65% see a curved line.  I guess my problem is that I don’t know which group I am in.  I think I will go with the curved lines.  That way I have a 65% chance of being right.  OK, are you ready for my system?  I look at the hole and decide if I putt the ball directly at the hole how many inches will I miss on the low side.  Then, I putt that number of inches above the hole.  If I miss, I blame it on the speed of the green.

One of the really helpful bits of information was that if you really want to be a great putter, you need to start before you are ten years old.  And, you need to seriously putt for at least two hours every day.  There goes the piano lessons.  So what comes next?  What do I have to do to be a better than average putter?

There was an article that stated that men were better putters than women.  They threw in a lot of statistics so they wouldn’t sound sexist.  It didn’t work.  But they do have the valid point that men seem to have more competition and are playing for more money.  Then along comes Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist.  He states, and I quote, “Throughout evolutionary history, women have been attracted to winners of competitions.  A man believes that if he wins, he’s going to get laid.”  So this is the reason men play better than women?  Doctor K., how you think and talk.  I am wondering why there is a need for an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics.  I’ll bet Dr K. really felt smug when Tiger was exposed.  “See, see!”

The bottom line is that the articles have made me a better putter.  Not because of anything written, but because I became curious about the other Mike Shannon.  It turns out Mike is quite a putting instructor and has a number of putting videos on golfersmd.com.  His instruction is great and the price is right.  The irony is that if his name had been anything other than Mike Shannon, I wouldn’t have looked him up.  I certainly didn’t look up weird Doctor Kanazawa.