Putting Guru Goes International with his "Mechanics of Instinct"

Geoff Mangum is the next big thing in golf putting instruction. You've probably heard of Dave Pelz before or perhaps Stan Utley or Harold Swash, but the next thirty or so years may well belong exclusively to Mangum.

Mangum teaches the "Mechanics of Instinct" approach to putting that fuses the neuroscience of the brain and body for perceptual and movement control with the best of 200 years of putting lore. This approach goes far beyond teaching a "style" or "technique" for putting, and embraces physics, neuroscience, golf history, putter design and manufacturing, greens agronomy, learning styles and teaching science, anatomy and physiology, biomechanics and kinesiology, golf psychology, and much more -- but the end result is simple, practical and lethally effective.

Mangum has authored over 75 articles in the past three years on putting and on his popular Flatstick Forum has responded to questions online in a series of over 600 detailed articles on everything in putting from the physics of impact to the psychology of stress management and the history of the Rules of Golf on the green.

In June 2004, Mangum visited the Republic of Ireland for two weeks, presenting a series of putting clinics to pros at the top courses and to the Golfing Union of Ireland's team at Carton House. In mid-September 2005, he visited Yorkshire, England, and Hamburg, Germany, to meet with European PGA teachers and establish the first two of his International PuttingZone Academies.

In October 2005, Mangum returned to Munich, Germany, where he was the featured lecturer with Dr Christian Marquardt on putting to over 1,000

Dr Christian Marquardt

European PGA pros at their annual Teaching and Coaching Conference. Mangum also acts as an advisor to the Science and Motion PuttLab headed by Dr Christian Marquardt, one of Germany's top neuroscientists for movement disorders, whose sonic putting monitor and putting training and therapies for yips-afflicted golfers has recently been the focus of three articles in Golf Digest by renowned golf instructor Hank Haney. Find out why people at the top levels in golf are calling him a "genius" in putting instruction.

Mangum spends countless hours teaching juniors and college team golfers for free, but he's fast becoming known as one of a very few top putting instructors in the world. He has a dozen regular clients on the mini-tours, and he's starting to break into the very competitive PGA Tour market since his successes this year. Mangum says, "I love teaching putting to help golfers at any level, but my real passion is pushing the envelope at the highest level of golf. My goal is to be recognized around the world as the top teacher of putting for the next thirty years."

Research

So what's the deal? A Greensboro, NC, resident, Mangum has studied putting like no one ever has before. For over fifteen years now, he has researched, observed, and experimented about the "black art" of putting. Every day for the past 16 years, he has spent from two to five hours on a putting green examining all aspects of putting, and another five to eight hours researching, reading, writing, and communicating with others on putting. He is more focused on putting than any one has ever been in the history of the game.

Mangum says he spent years researching and reading everything there is to read about putting. His resulting 11,000-plus records organized in an electronic database of putting research is used by the World Scientific Congress on Golf in St. Andrews, Scotland, and is over twenty times larger than the biggest bibliography in all of golf. He says he found the existing instruction infected with vagueness, contradiction, and repetition, and set about to organize and improve the lore. This research inspired him to seek answers outside the golf literature, and this in turn led him to study neuroscience of brain-body control.

He is recognized as the top expert in how the brain and eyes works when targeting and making movements in putting. His unique approach combines traditional lore with modern science to examine all aspects of putting. He spends his time designing techniques for reading, aiming, and stroking putts for optimal performance in ways that respect and enhance innate brain-body processes. Over the past two years, he has authored more than 75 formal articles about putting based on this rich combination of brain science and putting traditions.

Player Coach

Mangum's first student on one of golf's mini-tours, Blake Adams, after an evening's lesson, fired a personal best 62 the next morning, set the course record, and won his tournament going away. By comparison, Jack Nicklaus' personal best in competition has been 63. Another of his students, Meadowlands Golf Course young amateur Travis Lethco, fired a 63 there and holds the course record. Lethco on his college team finished 8th in the NCAA Finals

Geoff (L), John Eyre, and Chris Hanson (R)

as a freshman making his first appearance. Mangum's first

Nationwide Tour student, Sean Murphy of Scottsdale, AZ, Monday-qualified for a PGA Tour event and then fired consecutive rounds of 24 total putts, when 29-30 putts is the norm. Yorkshire young professional Chris Hanson followed his lesson the next day with a 64. One of Mangum's top junior students, Ben Parker of Southport, England, cruised to victory in the 2005 Junior Orange Bowl Invitational after stellar opening rounds of 63 and 67.

Shaun Micheel

Even more impressive, Mangum's first PGA Tour student, Shaun Micheel of Memphis, TN, went on two months after a day's work with Mangum to win his first PGA Tour event -- and a "major" to boot -- the 2003 PGA Championship. Micheel, known as an excellent ball striker but a lackluster putter, contacted Mangum in May during the Wachovia Championship in Charlotte to get help with his putting. Normally ranking around 150th in Tour putting stats, Micheel mastered Oak Hill with his flatstick, finishing 16th in the PGA Championship field in putting. Micheel said, "Everyone remembers my seven iron [final shot to within inches for the win], but my putter won me the PGA Championship." Micheel earned a five-year exemption and invitations to golf's most exclusive events, and his on-course revenue tripled over the previous year.

Team Coach

Mangum regularly volunteers his time to teach high school and collegiate golf teams and provides instruction to junior golfers at half his normal

Steve Conley, Methodist College Coach

rates. He also volunteers to teach junior players in tournament circuits around North Carolina. College teams he has taught include perennial NCAA-III champs Methodist College, Greensboro College (2000 NCAA champs), Manhattan College, UNCG, and East Carolina University. After a day-long session at the beginning of the Fall 2005 season, the ECU Pirates dominated the field at their Bradford Creek Invitational, winning by 9 shots and having two of their players tie for medalist honors in a field that included top players from Duke and Wake Forest.

Teachers' Teacher

Mangum has also impressed the top teaching professionals locally and nationally. His glowing testimonials read like a Who's Who in golf. Rick Murphy, owner of Carolina Golf and a Golf Digest top teacher, describes Mangum as a "genius in putting instruction" and credits two short lessons from him as transforming his putting so that he now putts better than he has in his life. Murphy is a teacher to PGA Tour players John Maginnes and Neal Lancaster. Robert Linville of Precision Golf School at Bryant Park Golf Course, who is a Golf Channel instructor and coach of the Greensboro College golf team, says: "Geoff has more knowledge and expertise about putting than any other person that I know. He is an outstanding teacher and his philosophy is backed with an enormous amount of research. He's definitely at the top of the class." Linville refers all his students to Mangum for putting help.

Jason Carbone

Mangum has also taught some of the top teachers in the world. After meeting Jim McLean at last year's Vantage Classic in Winton-Salem, McLean advised one of his top Master Instructors, Jason Carbone, to see Mangum about a vision problem in putting. Carbone, who is Ohio's top teacher according to Golf Digest and spends his time away from the Jim McLean Golf School in Miami as a pro at Jack Nicklaus' Muirfield Village, visited Mangum for two days to get putting help.

The top junior golf academy in the world is the David Leadbetter Golf Academy in Bradenton, FL. Students and alums include Michele Wie, David Gossett, Ty Tryon, Naree Song Wongluekiet and twin sister Aree, Chanin

Tim Sheredy

(Top) Puntawong, Paula Creamer, Ben Leong, and many others. Mangum was invited there to present a half-day clinic to the entire instructional staff. Tim Sheredy, a Senior Instructor there, says: "Geoff knows more about putting than any one I know. His knowledge and dedication to studying putting are second to none." Sheredy is a featured putting expert on the PuttingZone website.

Stefan Quirmbach, President, European PGA

Following his lecture at the European PGA's TCC in Munich, Mangum was swamped with pros interested in learning more about his researches and innovative teachings. PGA President Stefan Quirmbach said he was especially impressed and learned a lot from the lecture. Rainer Mundt, coach of the German National Team, praised Mangum's ideas as "wonderfully creative." Fellow teachers at the TCC also had good words to say about the talk, including Hank Haney, Randy Smith, Beverly Lewis (Captain of the PGA UK), and Ralph Mann.

Mangum teaching Germany's pros at Adendorf Resort

In days following the TCC presentation, pros from around Germany attended training sessions with Mangum at his Academy's German headquarters in Hamburg. After the session, veteran golf pro Tim Parker of Gut Waldorf GC, said: "Geoff Mangum's putting instruction is absolutely fantastic -- I've been teaching and playing for over 40 years and I've never heard any of it. It's completely different from everything I've ever learned, but it is amazingly simple and effective. Great stuff!"

Other Top-100 teachers Mangum has taught include Rob Akins in Memphis, Tour pro to David Toms and to the Memphis Mob, including Loren Roberts and Doug Barron; and Ted Sheftic, Pennsylvania's top teacher.

Top Website

The PuttingZone.com is Mangum's website for putting instruction. The website has attracted over 1,250,000 visits and is the most comprehensive and popular site in the world for putting. Over 75,000 industry insiders and elite players visit the site monthly, including over 10,000 monthly visits to the informative Flatstick Forum from 50+ countries around the world. In the "Flatstick Forum," Mangum responds to dozens of questions each month from players and teachers (now with over 600 topics covered in extensive detail, from putter balancing, to training aids, to flaws in sports science, to putter physics). The site includes hundreds of tips from pros and teachers around the world, and also features Mangum's own extensive and entertaining writings on optimal techniques for putting. The site features over 500 (!) current putter manufacturers, as well as hundreds of putting training aids and all the books, videos, DVDs, and audiotapes available.

Street Cred

A few of the people who have praised Mangum's teaching include TJ Tomasi, Harold Swash (Europe's Putting Doctor), Dr Robert Winters of the David Leadbetter Golf Academy at Champions Gate, Pat Jones (Publisher of

Dr Robert Winters, David Leadbetter Golf Academy

Golfdom Magazine), Art Chou (former Titleist science guru and designer of the Pixl putter), Michael Bonneau (inventor of a cardiac stent and designer of the Aserta putter), Chuck Todd (putter designer of American Putters), and many others. Makers of such top putting aids as the Putting Arc, the Zen Oracle, the Balance-Certified back-weighting system, and the Butch Harmon ProAim putting goggles seek out his input and contribute to his website.

Science

Mangum's knowledge of the science of putting gets high marks. Dr. Selwyn Super, an avid golfer from South Africa and National Director of Research for the Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation Association (the top national science group for optometrists), frequently finds his Internet research into visual neuroscience pointing him to Mangum's website for precise information instead of to the traditional academic sites. He was so impressed he sent Mangum a $4,000 piece of diagnostic equipment for assessing golfer's visual processes. Dr. Bob Christina is the Dean Emeritus of the UNCG School of Health and Human Performance and is a national expert in motor skills learning for golf and a leading golf scientist affiliated with the Pinehurst Golf Institute and former USGA equipment science guru Frank Thomas' consultancy, along with Pia Nilsson, Paul Schempp, and Dr Debbie Crews. Christina says flatly that Mangum "knows his stuff" and has lots of useful ideas for teachers and players.

Travel

Mangum's teaching has taken him to Florida's Daytona Beach, Orlando, and Jacksonville areas, to Baltimore and the Washington area, to Cleveland for the annual IMG Golf Show, to Pinehurst, to Charlotte, to the Wilmington - Myrtle Beach area, to Memphis, to Atlanta, and to many other places in the US and abroad. Mangum presently works with junior clinics for disadvantaged children in Charlotte with former PGA Tour player James Black (one of the first African-Americans to play the Tour, along with Charlie Sifford and others) and serves as a Board Member with Claudia Harmon's new golf academy that has a special focus on nurturing young golfers. Mangum personally teaches at top golf courses throughout central North Carolina, including Winston-Salem's Salem Glen GC and Meadowlands GC, Greensboro's Bryan Park GC, Hickory's Hampton Heights GC, Asheboro's Tot Hill Farm GC, and Burlington-Graham's The Challenge GC.

Tour Coaching

Mangum has met and talked with many PGA Tour pros as he enters the ranks of top PGA Tour teachers. He says, "Most pros need to take a more systematic approach to their putting, and not be slaves to changing trends and fashions. So much money is at stake on Tour, that shaving just one putt per round translates annually to well over $1.5 Million more for a player's event winnings every year on top of the lavish sums already being earned. Putting is a matter of slow and steady improvement, and you're never too good to stop getting better, especially on Tour."

Mangum has observed that the almost total emphasis on the full swing in golf has left many players on Tour struggling to master putting. No one doubts that Tour players are far better than amateur golfers; nonetheless, there is a vast difference between being an excellent putter on occasion but merely a very good putter on a day-to-day basis versus those top players who putt with excellence round after round throughout the year. Time and again he sees hot college golfers entering the Tour ranks with the assistance of renowned swing coaches, only to languish among the also-rans with indifferent putting skills.

The range of putting skills on the PGA Tour runs from about 1,800 putts per 1,000 greens hit in regulation for the year (100 rounds in 25 events) at the bottom of the rankings to about 1,700 putts for the same number of greens. In other words, the difference between earning $650,000 and finishing 125th on the money list and keeping a Tour card versus winning and earning over $2 Million plus heavy endorsement and other off-course revenue is razor thin -- a single putt per round, day in and day out.

Part of Mangum's teaching is to go far beyond the typical approach of presenting isolated lessons on technique and to engage the player in a long-term program of putting improvement, starting from a diagnostic baseline and progressing through a curriculum of fundamentals skills to attain benchmark goals in terms of personal putting performance, scoring, and earnings. He's so confident that his approach is effective that he is willing to forego any fee unless and until the program proves itself for the player with substantially improved putting performance and increased earnings over past history, and then to look for his fee solely from a share of the EXTRA revenue his program helps generate.

New Paradigm

Mangum claims that his teaching conveys "the mechanics of instinct" so that the player is able to tap into his best athletic instincts on a daily basis. This new paradigm goes beyond the limitations of the past "robotics" or "engineering" approach to putting of the 1980s and 1990s, that too often talked "about" putting without getting down to "how" the golfer uses his body to putt his best. His teaching is fundamental, with focus on how the golfer's brain and body work in excellent putting, and builds on the player's existing skill level to enhance and optimize performance. Mangum says that truly excellent putters are not streaky, and that streaky putters are not truly excellent. He teaches elite players how to become consistently excellent putters, making the most of their innate abilities.

Innovations

Mangum teaches innovative techniques for putting that are not known or taught in the existing golf lore. He has unique and effective techniques for precision reading and target selection that integrate the physics of ball roll with green contour and green speed; a reliable physical procedure for aiming the putter face and then accurately judging where it has been aimed; numerous deeply informed techniques for management of the putting stroke for peak effectiveness in a reliable and accurate yet simple, minimalist style; and perhaps the best understanding of how the human body controls the distance of putts with targeting and tempo ever taught. In short, he teaches the best techniques in golf for reading putts, aiming the putter, making a straight stroke, and getting the distance just right -- techniques not otherwise known in the golfing community. Some of Mangum's special teaching innovations that combine the neuroscience of targeting and stroke control with the traditional lore of putting include:

• The gravity-based fundamental tempo for the putting stroke that is the same every time regardless of the player -- a technique that Ben Crenshaw has said took him decades to learn;

• The "core putt" for gaining accurate and useable translations of green speed into personal stroke patterns for calibration of touch with the player's personal stroke tempo -- no more "hunting" to try to get the speed of different courses down;

• The "vertical stroke plane" biomechanics that makes the straight stroke stupidly simple and repeating -- versus complexities and inconsistencies in the "screen door" and "armsy" styles of strokes that force many players to abandon this style in favor of something simple that works reliably with a generous margin of error;

• The "dead eye" aiming technique for sighting the line of the putt from behind the ball -- building on Dave Stockton Jr's teaching with the neuroscience of dominant-eye sighting and proprioceptive spatial awareness;

• The "straight gaze" aiming technique for checking putter face aim from beside the ball -- reconciling the partially-correct and partially-incorrect advice of those who advise golfers to put their eyes directly above the ball with those like Scotty Cameron who advise golfers to put their eyes slightly inside the ball;

• The "dead eye" visual control during the stroke that enhances instinctive movement and feedforward controls for accurate putts -- more fundamental and important than the so-called "quiet eye" taught by academic researchers unfamiliar with true putting skills;

• The "cerebellar timing" approach to distance control with proprioceptive cues that make touch instinctive and thoughtless -- a simple technique of looking from ball to hole in a certain way that feeds the brain what it needs to know to generate an appropriately sized backstroke for the length of putt;

• Perception and breathing techniques that reclaim control from pressure-induced anxiety and that keep the golfer in the moment -- combining the neuroscience of cardiopulmonary neurophysiology with meditative practices of yoga and zen;

• Targeting and stroke focus techniques that block out distractions -- using only the 1% of the brain that should be used, while keeping the other irrelevant 99% quiet and out of the way (as in Jack Nicklaus' famous "what train?" putt);

• The "spider" technique for seeing the true fall line through a cup location and for integrating surface tilt and green speed to accurately visualize an aiming target along the fall line for any breaking putt -- combining the physics and perceptual studies and experiments of HA Templeton's Vector Putting with a refining perceptual process of reverse "movie" visualization for reading break;

• The necessary coupling of tempo during visualization and putt reading with tempo during stroke execution -- to avoid lip-outs and to simplify reads;

• A simple "one potato ... two" counting technique that makes touch precise and that avoids running a long lag putt past the hole on even slick downhill putts -- more advanced than what Ernie Els recently taught Michele Wie to enable her to sink several monster putts in LPGA competition;

• Techniques of setup and body-putter relationships to optimize stroke and to avoid problems in breaking putts when the ball is above or below the feet -- a lot more than Jackie Burke's valuable "carpenter's square" teaching;

• "Additive" approaches to simplifying distance control on long putts or up or down greens tiers -- modeled after Zeno's Paradox of movement from ancient Greek philosophy;

• A "delivery speed at the lip" approach to touch that optimizes the geometry of ball-hole capture with a same-every-time stopping pattern of the ball's roll at the cup regardless of distance -- combining modern greens agronomy with putting physics;

• A "house-to-house" approach to sequencing the routine so that each separate stage in the putting process is performed well and then left behind to move on to the next step, so the mind remains uncluttered and free to focus fully on the immediate task at hand without worry or doubt -- more advanced than the so-called "decision line" teaching of folks like Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson.;

• How the breaking putt's path relates to the apex of the putt so that the visualized apex assists the golfer in establishing a start line that is not too low -- using the geometry of curved path to find the correct starting line for the visualized breaking curve;

• Special uses of the visual system for generating accurate and vivid perceptions of distance, contour, path, intended roll, line, squareness of putter face and body, and stroke motion -- visual dominance, binocular vision, gaze control, motion parallax, monocular depth or distance cues, proprioceptive and kinetic cues to surface contour, human orientation and spatial awareness parameters; neuronal population vector system for translating perception into accurate movement; cerebellum-based timing controls for mental visualization of simulated putts, much more;

• Use of the permanent features of the player's skull in setting the gaze, head, shoulders, hips, and feet square to the putter face as aimed down the putt line -- similar to cheating, but legal, and always the same;

• A "head turn" from beside the ball that generates an accurate sense of pace and stroke motion in the shoulders for every putt -- using the neck as a "clutch plate" between the head and shoulders to integrate targeting with stroke movement;

• Special body-control techniques for maintaining a steady head and pivot during the stroke -- using visual cues as the handmaid to proprioceptive body control;

• The "magic move" in the putting stroke for accuracy that is common in the diverse styles of Billy Casper, Bobby Locke, Ben Crenshaw, Loren Roberts, Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington, and nearly all the truly great putters -- and the common denominator in different stroke styles when the focus narrows to what happens right near impact and how to make it happen;

• A left-hand level "two pistoleros" grip form that functions to monitor stroke movement for pace and path while simplifying the biomechanics of a sound stroke -- to neutralize the adverse influence of dominant-hand control in favor of a "dead hands" approach to accuracy and consistency, to enhance the sense of level shoulders and symmetric body position exactly at the bottom of the stroke for pivot management and accuracy of impact, and to enhance same-hemisphere control for targeting spatial awareness and stroke movement control;

• Dozens of innovative "drills for skills" designed to inculcate specific perceptual or movement skills required for putting excellence.

Andy Taylor, the head professional at Adendorf Golf Resort and Spa outside Hamburg, Germany, has commented, "Not only are Geoff Mangum's putting

Andy Taylor, Head Pro, Adendorf Resort

techniques the best in golf -- no one else has ever even heard of them or teaches anything like them." Mangum says: "Today's Tour golfers cannot afford to keep letting the years slide by with "pretty good" putting -- that's a loser's contentment with just hanging around that is no longer good enough for the intensity of competition in the field. Players who want to win, and who are not satisfied with finding a comfortable niche in the pack, have to improve every year, and frankly putting is where the great majority of Tour players have the most room for improvement. I don't teach "what" needs to happen in putting; I teach "how" so the golfer can just do it. You can't fake it in golf -- so bring the skeptics on!"

Mangum teaches individuals and groups worldwide, and offers playing pros a free no-commitment introductory session. For further information: contact Geoff Mangum at 336.790-8176 (work) or 336.340.9079 (cell), visit the PuttingZone.com at http://puttingzone.com, or email him at geoff@puttingzone.com.