• Dave Pelz Putting Tutor

So I went to a Dave Pelz 3 day short game clinic with my dad the winter before last, and I thought it’d be fun to share a basic overview of the approach to the short game that we learned there. Very interested to hear what others think about these methods. Also happy to answer any questions. The putting tip at the end has been the biggest thing for me:-) Pelz teaches 3 specific short game swings:The Distance WedgeThis is your game from 100 in, or whatever your distance is with your longest wedge when you are NOT trying to hit it for power. When distance control rather than power is the #1 priority, Pelz teaches you to use a very different swing than you normally do. The full swing generates power through the separation of the shoulders and the hips.

The more torque you create by rotating your shoulders back without moving your hips, the more power you unleash when you uncoil your swing.But that toruque also makes the swing more inconsistent than if it wasn’t there. So for distance wedges, Pelz teaches a swing where the hips and the shoulders move in synchrony back and through.

The other fundamental is that he wants a full wrist cock on the way back, and a full wrist cock on the way through, so that the backswing and follow through are mirror images of each other. His approach is that you should practice this swing with different backswing lengths and different wedges to dial in your distance control on your approach shots and give yourself more changes for 1 putts! A good drill for this swing is to take your golf stance while holding a medicine ball, and then swing it to the right and then through as if you were going to try and through it to someone on your left.

The distance wedge swing is basically the motion you naturally make if you are trying to throw something heavy. After the medicine ball drill, he had us do the same thing with sawed off golf clubs with extra heavy weights at the end.ChippingPelz teaches just 1 chipping method. This is the way he says you should set up: Stand close to the ball with your feet together and the ball off your back toe. Rotate both toes 45 degrees to your left so that now the ball is off your back heel. Take your normal grip on the club but choked down just a bit. Now raise the club up so it is resting on your right shoulder. Now tilt your spine to your left about 15 degrees, and now place the club behind the ball.

Your hands should be well ahead of the ball and the club should be resting more on its toe than normal. Now a simple pendulum swing where you hit down on the ball as steeply as you can. They had us practice with a 2x4 right behind the ball to promote the descending blow. You can hit this with almost any club in your bag to adjust the carry/roll ratio, and then control distance with the length of your backswing. Pelz will say 99% of the time you never need to hit a cut lob shot, just play this chip shot with your open faced 60 or 64 degree wedge.PuttingPelz teaches the straight back straight through pure pendulum approach. Some say this is not possible, but Pelz thinks he has a robot names Perfy who proves that it is. After doing the drills at his camp, I am a believer too.

It’s all about the right ball position and posture. Your eyes should be directly above the ball, and your hands and arms should be directly below your shoulders. If you get setup this way it is possible to go straight back straight through. You basically hit the putt with your pectoral muscles.But the most important thing I learned about putting wasn’t about technique, it was about tempo. The Pelz philosophy is that if your stroke always takes the same amount of time, you will be able to control the distance very precisely with the length of your backstroke. So he teaches a 5 count putting ritual to ingrain the tempo.

Dave Pelz Putting Tutor

Practicing this in my basement with a metronome has made a huge difference for me! This is what you do: first get a metronome (plenty of free ones online). Find a tempo that feels comfortable to you. I like 88 beats per minute, but it doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that it is consistent.

Get ready to hit your putt and lift your thumb off the putter. When the metronome ticks –.1) Place thumb back on putter.2) Look at hole.3) Look at ball.4) Take putter back.5) Swing putter thoughThe looking at the hole is not about looking at the hole. At this point, you’ve already lined your ball up and you’ve already rehearsed the length of backswing that you want. The looking at the hole is for rehearsing and establishing the tempo.

The 2-3 of looking up and looking down matches the 4-5 of swinging the putter back and through. When you hear Johnny Miller say someone has a great “1-2” putting stroke, it means they are doing a very good job of hitting their puts with a consistent tempo. It is amazing how much that helps with distance control, and how having a 5 count ritual trigger like this can help with nerves. Our instructor said a trick he likes to pull is on the 2 count he looks away from the hole to his right instead of towards the hole to his left.

Freaks out his playing companions, but doesn't affect his ability to make the putt at all. Nice:-)Once you've got your 5 count ritual ingrained, what Pelz calls 'the 20 foot drill' is one of the best ways to practice and get your distance control dialed in. The drill goes like this:Find a 20 foot putt, ideally slightly uphill. Place a club 3 feet behind the hole. Try and hit 10 putts in a row that make it past the cup but don't hit the club. Doesn't matter if you make them, just try and get them past the hole without hitting the club.

Once you get 10 in a row, go the other side and try and do 10 in a row downhill.This is my favorite warmup drill to do before a round. I usually only do 3 or 4 instead of 10, but it still gets you dialed into the speed of the green extremely well:-). Nice video, thanks for the link:-)Quasi interesting story perhaps: Pelz was not actually at the clinic. He has 6 or 10 of them around the country with instructors he has trained in his methodology.

Our instructor was a guy named Ty who has been teaching the Pelz system for like 20 years. Ty had been a professional grinding it out on the mini tours for several years before he turned to teaching. It was really interesting to listen to him tell the story of how afraid he was of chipping before he met Pelz and learned his chipping method. Before that, even as a pro golfer, Ty was literally terrified of chipping and would putt from off the green almost every chance he had because he was so afraid of hitting it fat and 'laying the sod' over the chip, as he said. But once he focused on implementing the Pelz technique, now Ty is a chipping machine.I have to say, I don't remember being as afraid of chips as Ty said he was but I've certainly hit a few fat in my day, which really is virtually impossible if you do what Pelz is saying in this video. But for me, the bigger thing was how easy it was to aim the chip and get it started online when you use this technique.

Chip-in's definitely went up dramatically when I started doing it this way:-).