Putting has become too easy. Since the advent of green-reading books, 1-putt percentage has skyrocketed, 3-putts have virtually been eliminated, and players and their caddies have no homework around the greens. There is no judgement, skill, technique or feel involved anymore. Players simply plot green numbers into an equation and the ball always goes in the hole. Remember Al Czervik’s putter? The one made by his friend, Albert Einstein (“Nice man, nice man. Made a fortune in physics”) with the sights and lasers? Using a green-reading book is kind of like that …
Except none of that is true.
But green-reading books are going away for tournament use on the PGA Tour on January 1, so let’s examine what’s going to happen, how it came about, how it will be enforced, and what’s allowed and not allowed.
Deep breath …
This decision to ban green-reading material from the PGA Tour is completely player driven. It is going to be a Local Rule, as allowed by the USGA and R&A. From everyone I’ve talked to, the reasoning is, they (not sure who “they” are) feel that green-reading books have taken away from the skill of reading a green by sight and feel. That should be a skill necessary to be a successful putter. It doesn’t have anything to do with pace of play. It has to do with the optics of players and caddies staring in their books like it’s a high-school geometry final they just can’t get through.
Do they make putting easier? Sometimes. More difficult? Sometimes. There is a skill to using a greens book correctly. It is a different skill than using your eyes and the feel in your feet to read a putt, but it is a skill. When I caddied, I saw as many putts made by using a greens book correctly as were missed by using one incorrectly. I won’t go down a rabbit hole of statistics to support this, but here are two basic stats that represent the comparison. From 1996-2007, in the decade-plus before greens books, 3-putt avoidance on the PGA Tour averaged 3.14%….
Source : yahoo
