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Classic Quotes"The only easy shot on this course is the first one at the 19th hole." -- WC Fields re Riviera "I never pray to God to make a putt. I pray to God to help me react good if I miss a putt." -- Chi Chi Rodriguez "Yeah, after each of my downhill putts." -- Homero Blancas, asked if he had any uphill putts "Find a man with both feet firmly on the ground and you've found a man about to make a difficult putt." -- Fletcher Knebel "Why am I using a new putter? Because the last one didn't float too well." -- Craig Stadler "Happiness is a long walk with a putter." -- Greg Norman "My favorite shots are the practice swing and the conceded putt. The rest can never be mastered." -- Lord Robertson "There are no points for style when it comes to putting. It's getting the ball in the cup that counts." -- Brian Swarbrick "Real pressure in golf is playing for $10 when you've only got $5 in your pocket." -- Lee Trevino "Never break your putter and your driver in the same round or you're dead." -- Tommy Bolt "G is for Green, that's constructed to roll In every direction away from the hole." -- Richard Armour, Golf Is a Four-Letter Word. "Mary had a little putt, she needed it for par. Mary has a second putt...the first one went too far!" -- Margaret Kennard, Rhymes from the Rough (1992) "I sank a long and curling putt, It's like I've seldom seen; It would have helped my scoring but, 'Twas on the practice green." -- Richard Armour, Golf Is a Four-Letter Word "Putting is a fascinating, aggravating, wonderful, terrible and almost incomprehensible part of the game of golf." -- Arnold Palmer "When all is said and done, and whatever the method and whoever the man, successful putting surely must be a matter more of nerve than technique." -- Pat Ward-Thomas " I'm still not as comfortable in them (soft spikes) as I was in metal spikes, but I'm making a few more putts. What people at Riviera are talking about, though, is how much better the greens are since we stopped wearing metal spikes. (Riviera member)." -- Geoff Shackelford "Why didn't I win more? I was the world's worst putter. If I had thought on the putting green the way I did for the rest of the game, none of these guys would have won a tournament. Everybody tried to help me, even some of my enemies. They felt sorry for me. Some of the guys would say they don't know how Mehlhorn could go out and play the next day after the way he putted." -- William 'Wild Bill' Mehlhorn "I was playing a pro-pro event right here in Miami. Earl Holland wasmy partner... put it ten feet from the cup on the next hole, and I told Earl to pick up his ball, I wouldn't need him. Then I took six putts. And I never hit a careless one, except the sixth. After the first putt I was never over eighteen inches from the cup. I walked off the green twice. The sixth putt I just hit with the back of my putter. The only careless putt I hit went in." -- William 'Wild Bill' Mehlhorn "But during the last quarter century, as we all know, greens have become more difficult to putt. The main reason, of course, is related to the solunar tables and the gradual warming of the earth's atmosphere. Then of course, there's the new multi-dimpled golf ball." -- George Peper " If I'm breathing heavy while walking on a green, I'm going uphill. If I trip, I'm going downhill. (On reading greens)." -- Spec Goldman "I was in a zone that the hole looked as large as a garbage can. (On making nine straight birdies)." -- Omar Uresti "Frank, either you have to get better soon or quit telling people I'm your teacher. (To Frank Gifford)." -- Dave Marr "You hear stories about me beating my brains out practising, but the truth is, I was enjoying myself. I couldn't wait to get up in the morning, so I could hit balls. When I'm hitting the ball where I want, hard and crisply, it's a joy that very few people experience." -- Ben Hogan "I miss the putt it's normal. I don't kill anybody so I forget about it." -- Costantino Rocca "The emotion is unbelievable. After my second shot at 18 it blows my head. Then I hole the putt. Give me another chance. The putt, nobody is supposed to hole that putt. (On making a 72nd hole birdie at St Andrews to get into a playoff for the 1995 Open with John Daly)." -- Costantino Rocca "I think he [Walter Hagen] was, without question, the greatest putter of all time. He could putt any kind of green under any conditions." -- Gene Sarazen "I just don't think that the Masters was meant to be a putting contest totally. I don't think Bob Jones wanted it to be a putting contest. He designed the 5th green so you have options to play into it. The 14th, the same thing." -- Jack Nicklaus "You know, the greens here are different than Europe. You've got to learn to putt on faster greens with more break, and that's part of the reason I wanted to learn to putt in the States. You only get these breaks a few times in Europe, really, because of the speed. In Augusta you get major breaks." -- Nick Faldo "Concentration is a fine antidote to anxiety. The busier you can keep yourself with the particulars of shot assessment and execution, the less chance your mind has to dwell on the emotional 'if' and 'but' factors that breed anxiety." -- Jack Nicklaus "But the greens (at Augusta National) were tricked up and it required marvellous concentration and nerves of steel to win, and the greens on this French course (Royal Mougins) are just the same. They may not be as fast as Augusta but they all look as though they had elephants buried every ten feet. I am fed up with it." -- Mark Roe "Hagen played in tournaments as though they were cocktail parties." -- Charles Price "My putts looked like rats going in the hole. (On shooting 61)." -- Charlie Rymer "The way I look at it, there have been three perfectly pure putts in the history of golf. Boston's own Francis Ouimet's 20-footer at the 71st hole to lock up the US Open at Brookline in 1913. Nicklaus's 18-footer at the 17th to take the lead for good in the 1986 Masters. And the brushstroke I put on my little Titliest late that morning on the 8th green at the Mayflower in Dorchester, Massachusetts." -- Raymond Lee Hart "The best-stroked putt in a lifetime does not bring the aesthetic satisfaction of a perfectly hit wood or iron shot. There is nothing to match the whoosh and soar, the almost magical flight of a beautifully hit drive or 5-iron." -- Al Barkow "Making a million or having the return of his laundry delayed by fiscal factors, nothing bothers Hagen. He could relax on a hot stove." -- Tommy Armour "By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you've blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time." -- Richard M Nixon "The trouble with golf is you're only as good as your last putt." -- Doug Sanders "Next to the idiotic, the dull unimaginative mind is the best for golf." - Sir WG Simpson "Golf is at least 50% mental game, and if you recognise that it is the mind that prompts us physically, then we can almost say that golf is entirely a mental game." -- Peter Thomson "I wish to emphasise that there are no secrets to golf." -- Ernest Jones "I had been on Tour just a short time when I first laid eyes on Ivan Gantz. I was walking down one fairway and looking over into another and there was this fellow with blood pouring out of a big gash on his forehead. It was Gantz and he had gone and hit himself in the head with his putter." -- Don January "Maybe it's the one way I can get on a video with David Leadbetter instead of Nick Price and Frosty and Faldo. (On his one-handed putting style)." -- Mike Hulbert "Don't hurry. Don't worry. You're only here in a short visit so don't forget to stop and smell the flowers." -- Walter Hagen "When I have a match to play I begin to relax as soon as I wake up. Everything I do, I do slow and easy. That goes for stroking the razor, getting dressed, and eating my breakfast. I'm practically in slow motion. By the time I'm ready to tee off, I'm so used to taking my time that it's impossible to hurry my swing." -- Walter Hagen "How about a little noise. How do you expect a man to putt? (When the crowd became silent as he lined up a putt)." -- Babe Ruth "I enjoy the oohs and aahs from the gallery when I hit my drives. But I'm getting pretty tired of the awes and uhhs when I miss the putt." -- John Daly "While, on the whole, playing through the green is the part most trying to the temper, putting is that most trying to the nerves. There is always the hope that a bad drive may be redeemed by a fine approach shot, or that a 'foozle' with the brassy may be balanced by some brilliant performance with the iron. But when the stage of putting-out has been reached no further illusions are possible." -- Earl Balfour "Hitting a golf ball and putting have nothing in common. They're two different games. You work all your life to perfect a repeating swing that will get you to the greens, and then you have to try to do something that is totally unrelated. There shouldn't be any cups, just flagsticks. And then the man who hit the most fairways and greens and got closest to the pins would be the tournament winner." -- Ben Hogan "When a putter is waiting his turn to hole out a putt of one or two feet in length, on which the match hangs at the last hole, it is of vital importance that he think of nothing. At this supreme moment he ought to fill his mind with vacancy. He must not even allow himself the consolation of religion." -- Sir Walter Simpson "When the great snooker player Joe Davis saw his first game of golf the putting puzzled him. 'Why', he asked his golfing friend, 'don't they knock the ball into the hole the first time?'" -- Anonymous " Excessive golfing dwarfs the intellect. Nor is this to be wondered at when you consider that the more fatuously vacant the mind is, the better for play. It has been observed that absolute idiots play the steadiest." -- Sir WG Simpson "Golf is golf. You hit the ball, you go find it. Then you hit it again." -- Lon Hinkle "Where I play, the greens always break toward the bar." -- George Gobel "A man who can putt is a match for anyone." -- Willie Park, Jr. "To be a successful Tour golfer you have to hate everybody - your mom and dad, your wife, your children, your brothers and sisters, your friends - everybody. It takes total concentration, and I mean, total." -- Dave Hill "I think all that rain shrunk the cups. (On a poor putting round)." -- Juli Inkster "A good golf course makes you want to play so badly that you hardly have the time to change your shoes." -- Ben Crenshaw "The rule says something about intent when you do that. I intended to hit it. (Calling a penalty on himself when he missed a two-inch putt in the 1983 Open Championship and fell a stroke short of a playoff)." -- Hale Irwin "That's a bag full of indecisions. (On seeing eight putters in Arnold Palmer's bag)." -- Jackie Burke "It's that you lose nerves, not nerve. You can shoot lions in the dark and yet you can quiver like a leaf and fall flat over a two-foot putt." -- Johnny Farrell "The strange thing is that I am actually left-handed. In any two-handed game I bat left-handed. But when we started playing golf we had but one left-handed club. And later, when it was time to get our second set of clubs, the bug had really got hold of both of us, Tim [his brother] talked me into playing right-handed. Mainly because he knew that my mum would probably split up a set of clubs." -- Nick Price "It's the stupidest rule in golf. (On Rule 16-1c, which concerns when the line of the putt can be touched)." -- Payne Stewart "The thing is, you see all the money that's available out there. (On leaving college and turning pro)." -- Tiger Woods "That's what I did, same way as last year. We have tapes going back to 84. You know, we have tapes of all of the Majors just for review's sake. It's also fun looking at the fashions back in those days, you know, all of the frills and bell bottoms." -- Tiger Woods "I made that putt, it just didn't go in. Honest to God. I made it so many times in the practice rounds seven or eight times and it never broke left once. (After missing a putt on the 72nd hole that would have tied Nicklaus in the 1986 Masters)." -- Tom Kite "I open the driving range and I close it. I thought you ought to know that I work hard. I like practising. I enjoy it. If I did not enjoy it I would not do it. What is the point of going back to the hotel, having a drink and talking a load of bull?" -- Vijay Singh "Miss a putt for $2,000? Not likely!" -- Walter Hagen "When five up, express (as is polite) regret at laying a stymie, but rejoice in your heart." -- Sir Walter Simpson "The next time you see a good player stalking backward and forwards on the green, do not be led away by the idea that he is especially painstaking, but rather pity him for a nervous individual who is putting off the evil moment as long as he possibly can." -- Ted Ray "You see the practice ground out there? It is an evil place. It's full of so-called coaches waiting to pounce on young guys or players who have lost their form. They just hope they can make money out of them. You can see them waiting to dish their mumbo-jumbo. I feel very sorry for those who are taken in because it can destroy everything that has brought them this far. To hell with coaches." -- Ernie Els "Generally speaking, if you find a teacher who talks about the golf swing, you'd better get away from him, quickly. On the other hand, pay close attention to the fellow who talks about a golf swing. I would be suspicious of anyone who claims there is one way to swing a golf club, because I know it simply is not true." -- Gardner Dickinson "It consists in putting little balls into little holes with instruments ill adapted to the purpose. (Said 50 years before Churchill was credited for the same quote)." -- Horace Hutchinson "Dividing the swing into its parts is like dissecting a cat. You'll have blood and guts and bones all over the place. But you won't have a cat." -- Ernest Jones "The better you putt, the bolder you play." -- Don January "N o golfer ever gets so consistently good that he can't use some constructive advice. No matter how many trophies he may win, he can't analyze and remedy his own faults." -- Byron Nelson "Considered objectively, it is quite obviously a very simple matter to propel a ball with a stick across some specially prepared ground and into a hole which is of sufficient size to accomodate it by a good margin. Simple that is, provided there is no limit upon the time or the number of strokes required." -- Bobby Jones "Golf, more than most games, has a number of cliches, often successfully disguised as tips." -- Kathy Whitworth "As far as swing and techniques are concerned, I don't know diddly squat. When I'm playing well, I don't even take aim." -- Fred Couples " Prayer never works for me on the golf course. That may have something to do with my being a terrible putter." -- Rev Billy Graham "Some times you send the message down to the hands and it stops at the elbows. (On putting)." -- Sam Torrance "I am embarrassed to get before people and putt. Hell, I'm embarrassed to putt when I'm alone, but the only way to beat this thing is to play. I hear children and ladies saying: 'For God's sake, why doesn't he hit it faster?' So I say to myself: 'You idiot. You heard them. Why don't you hit it faster?'" -- Ben Hogan "There are many ways of performing the operations successfully. I can claim, however, to be in a position to explain how not to putt. I think I know as well as anybody how not to do it." -- Harry Vardon "If you can get the ball in the hole regularly by standing on your head, then keep right on and don't ever listen to advice from anyone." -- John Jacobs "If I could have putted like this years ago, I'd own a jet instead of a Toyota. (On joining the Senior Tour)." -- Chi Chi Rodriguez "I read the greens in Spanish, but putt in English." -- Chi Chi Rodriguez "I never really dreamed of making many putts. Maybe that's why I haven't made many." -- Calvin Peete "Never putt until the cup stops moving." -- Bruce Lansky " There's no such thing as natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls. You think Ballesteros or Jack Nickluas had all that talent naturally? Hell no. They worked." -- Lee Trevino "When I'm in this state, this cocoon of concentration, I'm living fully in the present, not moving out of it. I'm aware of every half inch of my swing. I'm absolutely engaged, involved in what I'm doing at that particular moment. That's the important thing. That's the difficult state to arrive at. It comes and it goes, and the pure fact that you go out on the first tee of a tournament and say: 'I must concentrate today,' is no good. It won't work. It has to already be there." -- Tony Jacklin "I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. It's like a colour movie. First I 'see' where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes and I 'see' the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behaviour on landing. Then there is this sort of fadeout, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images to reality." -- Jack Nicklaus "We always considered it quite a feat to get down our six-to-eight footers. But now, if a fellow misses from 40 feet he grimaces and agonizes like a cowboy struck in the heart by an indian's arrow." -- Ben Hogan "Six years are needed to make a golfer - three years to learn the game, then another three to unlearn all you have learned in the first three years. You might be a golfer when you arrive at this stage, more likely you're just starting." -- Walter Hagen "Designing, engineering and constructing an atomic bomb is simple compared to trying to teach a fellow how to stop shanking." -- Tommy Armour "Golf got complicated when I had to wear shoes and begin thinking about what I was doing." -- Sam Snead "Those who cannot drive suppose themselves to be good putters" -- Sir Walter Simpson "Putting is not golf but croquet." -- AA Milne "Miss 'em quick (his philosophy on putting)." -- MacDonald Smith "Talking turkey to a businessman, you must look squarely at him during the entire conversation. It's the same with putting. When you're talking turkey on the green, the face of your putter must look squarely at the hole." -- Gene Sarazen "Golf is really two games. One is the game in the air. The golfer can lick that part of the game. (on putting)" -- Claude Harmon "Reading a green is like reading the small type in a contract. If you don't read it with painstaking care, you are likely to be in trouble." -- Claude Harmon "Even when times were good, I realised that my earning power as a golf professional depended on too many ifs and putts." -- Gene Sarazen "The yips are that ghastly time when, with the first movement of the putter, the golfer blacks out, loses sight of the ball and hasn't the remotest idea of what to do with the putter, or occasionally that he is holding a putter at all." -- Tommy Armour "I had a long putt for an eleven. (On being asked why he took 12 on a hole)" -- Clayton Heafner C"onfidence builds with successive putts. The putter, then, is a club designed to get the ball part way to the hole." -- Rex Lardner "I putted like Joe Schmoe - and I'm not even sure Joe would appreciate that." -- Arnold Palmer "Hell, I'd putt sitting up in a coffin if I thought I could hole something. (On his unorthodox putting style)." -- Gardner Dickinson "Everyone wants to be known as a great striker of the ball. Nobody wants to be called a lucky, one-putting SOB, and nobody thinks he is." -- Gary Player "But the bitter, inescapable truth remains - once you've had 'em, you've got 'em. (On the yips)." -- Henry Longhurst "Usually my putting touch deserts me under pressure. From five feet in to the hole you're in the throw-up zone." -- Dave Hill " Putting from 90 feet is a little like trying to touch a girl sitting on the far side of the couch. You can reach her, but you're not likely to accomplish much." -- Charles Price "When our putting is sour, then we are in honest, interminable, miserable trouble." -- Arnold Palmer "That putt was so good I could feel the baby applauding. (while pregnant)." -- Donna White "Putting isn't golf. Greens should be treated almost the same as water hazards. You land on them and add two strokes to your score." -- Chi Chi Rodriguez "If God had wanted you to putt cross-handed, he would have made your left arm longer." -- Lee Trevino "I've gotten rid of the yips four times but they hang in there. You know those two-foot downhill putts with a break? I'd rather see a rattlesnake." -- Sam Snead "I don't have any big secret about putting - just hit at it. It's either going to miss or go in." -- Ben Crenshaw "Golf is a game of such monumental stupidity that anyone with a brain more active than a cantaloupe has difficulty gearing down to its demands." -- Peter Andrews "Never since the days of Caesar has the British nation been subjected to such humiliation (at the presentation ceremonies after Walter Travis became the first American to win the British Amateur in 1904)." -- Lord Northbourne "Putts get real difficult the day they hand out the money." -- Lee Trevino "That son of a bitch was able to hole a putt over 60 feet of peanut brittle." -- Lloyd Mangrum, about Bobby Locke "The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green." -- Ernest Hemingway "It's so bad I could putt off a tabletop and still leave the ball halfway down the leg." -- J.C. Snead, on his putting "These greens are so fast I have to hold my putter over the ball and hit it with the shadow." -- Sam Snead "Putting: It's not how, but how many. My sidesaddle style wasn't pretty to look at, but I would have putted standing on my head if it would have helped." Sam Snead, Golf Digest, Apr 2002 "I've had the yips off and on for the last 55 years. I'm convinced they come from putting on different kinds of surfaces over a long period of time. You get to the point where your mind can't figure out how hard to hit the ball." Sam Snead, Golf Digest, Apr 2002 "Jackie Burke Jr. said, "The only club in the bag specifically designed to get the ball in the cup is the putter. Why not learn it first?" -- NewburyportNews.com, 12 Apr 2007 "Rhythm and timing are the two things which we all must have, yet no one knows how to teach either." -- Bobby Jones
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Putting Quotes"Colin Montgomerie is leaving no stone unturned in his efforts to cure the putting ills he believes were responsible for missing the cut at Loch Lomond and Carnoustie. "I've had my eyes tested. I wanted to find out if there was a problem because I'm 44 and that's the time when people get contacts or have laser treatment. Unfortunately, my eyes are OK! Not holing putts is a problem. I've always been able to hit the ball down the fairway and on the green; but over the last six years I've had more difficulties on the greens than most." Despite breaking a 19-month winless streak at The K Club, Monty is still unhappy with the putter, and will swap back from belly putter to a small stick for the USPGA later this month. "I'll go back to a short putter for the PGA: 38 of all my 40 worldwide successes have been with a short putter, only two won with the belly." - Colin ("Clueless in Gaza") Montgomery, 29 July 2007 "Henrik Stenson's hopes of regaining first place on the European money list ended with disqualification in the Players Championship second round at Gut Kaden on Friday. Stenson, needing at least second place on Sunday to take top spot from British Open winner Padraig Harrington, admitted losing count of how many putts he took on the 17th and scrapped his card. The Swede had already taken 40 shots going out, though, and would have been well over that figure coming home -- if he had signed a card. "I ran out of putts," Stenson told reporters. "I managed to double-hit a couple of times. I don't know how many putts I'd actually taken, that was the problem, so I couldn't sign a card." - Henrik Stenson, Players Championship Germany, 27 July 2007 "Simon Khan achieved the unenviable and rare feat of leading a tournament in the first round and then missing the cut as he plummeted to one-over-par 145 in the Players Championship on Friday. Khan's second round 80 was 15 shots worse than his first, which had earned him a one-shot lead on seven-under on Thursday. The Londoner repeated the feat of Australian Rod Pampling, the only man to lead a British Open and then miss the cut. Pampling's misery came in the 1999 major at Carnoustie when he followed a 71 with an 86. Swiss Julien Clement was the last to lead and miss the cut on the European Tour, although his demise in the 2005 St Omer Open came in a joint main and Challenge Tour event. After his opening 65 Khan revealed he had changed his putting fortunes by adopting a "finger down the shaft" method favoured by British Open champion Padraig Harrington. Khan took only 26 putts on the first day. On Friday he took 36 putts in a round that ended triple-bogey, bogey, bogey as he dropped six shots in his last five holes." - Simon Kahn, Players Championship Germany, 27 July 2007 "Let's be honest: When it comes to ruggedly masculine sports words or phrases like tackled, dunked, knocked the snot plumb out of, crushed, pummeled or standing eight count, "belly putter" sounds about as effeminate as you can get. Even for golf. The belly putter is like the underhanded free throw. Potentially effective, yet not worth the derision. Men who use belly putters are basically announcing to the world that they have the yips and shop at the Body Shop or Bath and Body Works or Lush. Basically open up any belly putter's locker on the PGA Tour and I guarantee you there is moisturizer inside." - Clay Travis, CBSSportsline.com, 23 July 2007 "A mere one foot was the difference between SA's Tim Clark possibly winning for the first time on the US PGA Tour and coming second. Clark gave up a four-stroke lead with five holes to play at the John Deere Classic in Illinois recently with bogeys on the 15th and 17th holes. Eventual winner Jonathan Byrd made three birdies in the last five holes to claim his third tour victory and a place at the British Open. But the real killer for Clark was on the par-five 17th. He missed a seven-footer for par that would have been enough for a playoff. At the time of that putt, Clark ranked 174th on the US Tour for holing putts from seven-feet. He must have wished the putt was from six feet because from that distance he ranked No1. What a difference a foot makes." -- Tim Clark, John Deere Classic, 26 July 2007 "Rather than guessing at mental baggage, I'm more interested in the hot putter Andres Romero will be taking to Germany. He holed just about everything on Sunday, was fifth in putting on the final stats and had topped that category at the K Club a couple of weeks earlier. That will stand him in good stead on one of the easier courses on Tour and, significantly, he topped the Putts Per GIR stats when tied fourth on his course debut here last year. " Dave Tinadall, Golf365 Blog, 25 July 2007 "Couldn't start the ball on line all day," Stricker said. "Don't know why. Nerves might have been part of it." Steve Stricker, British Open, 25 July 2007 "I had great pace this week. Anytime -- I had no fear standing over 25-yard, 30-yard, 40-yard putts from off the green. I had no fear. I rolled them up stone dead. Like I had a great week of rolling putts up like on 16 up that bank. I was confident I was going to put that in. Actual fact, the only putt that probably did something that I didn't expect this week was my putt on the fourth hole of the playoff. I couldn't believe I hit it three feet -- I thought I hit that stone dead. I actually thought I had a chance of rolling it across there. Because I thought it was going to just get to the hole and die into it. And then it was a foot by -- I couldn't believe I hit it three feet by. But if there's a putt I don't like it's a right-to-left -- I really didn't like that putt (laughter). It was two feet too long, probably three feet too long. The beauty of it is I got to see it going into the hole, which is always a joy to watch a putt drop. " - Padraig Harrington, British Open Champion, 22 July 2007 "Steve Stricker is known as one of the better putters on the PGA Tour. Playing in the final group of a major for the first time, his favorite club let him down. Big time. Three shots off the lead and paired with front-running Sergio Garcia, Stricker never mounted a serious challenge at the British Open on Sunday. The American might have if not for three short misses on the front side Ð a 2-footer for birdie at No. 3, a 4-footer for birdie at No. 6, and a 5-footer to save par at the ninth. "I hit it fine, but I didn't get it in the hole," Stricker said. "I was a little hesitant with the putting and it showed. I would've liked to have see what would've happened if I'd made a couple of birdie putts early on." -- Steve Stricker, British Open, 22 july 2007 "I putted beautifully all week but I could never get the ball close enough. When I did, I made them. But I wasn't getting them close enough and consequently I was on the periphery of winning the championship." -- Tiger Woods, British Open, 22 july 2007 "I thought I was playing a lot better than this," said the 37-year-old. "I started to play some pretty good golf last week and I don't know why I've putted these greens so poorly. They are very good, with a very good texture, and I've seen a lot of guys make putts but I just haven't been one of them." -- Phil Mickelson, British Open, 20 July 2007 "The 77 on Friday was the ninth consecutive round at a major that Mickelson failed to break par, his longest stretch since he played par or worse the final nine rounds of the 1999 season, which included a missed cut at Carnoustie. Mickelson no longer blames the left wrist he supposedly injured at Oakmont, rather his putting. "I was just never on line," he said. It was evident on the 15th hole, where Mickelson three-putted from about 60 feet to fall to 4 over par. First, he had caddie Jim "Bones" Mackay stand over the ball to make sure the line was the same as Mickelson had in mind. Lefty grazed the left edge of the cup, then missed the 4-foot comeback putt. He held the putter at both ends, looking as though he wanted to snap it in half." Phil Mickelson, British Open (missed cut), 20 July 2007 "If Tiger has one part of his game that's not strong it's putting on slow and bumpy surfaces. That was the case at Congressional, where the greens were slower than we were used to on the tour and a few of the greens at the Open are not that fast either. The greens at Congressional were slow and bumpy, which is a bad combination. If greens are slow and true you can hit your putts with authority, but when they're slow and bumpy you don't hit them with the same authority, or he doesn't anyway." - Steve Williams, Tiger Woods' caddy, adding lead tape to Scotty Cameron putter for Carnoustie's slow, bumpy greens, 15 July 2007 "Garcia's putting troubles are such that one half-expects Bob Geldof to emerge from the rough to instigate some sort of international aid of behalf of the Spaniard. Birdies at the sixth and seventh, after feeble putting had betrayed iron shots of unimpeachable class at the opening holes, could not disguise the frailty of Garcia's work on the greens. He finished with a bogey four and a double bogey six for a 71 and a six under total. These figures said it all. Garcia had briefly forced himself into contention before falling away. His shot-making is still splendid. He is bold in thought and action. A ripping drive at the 11th found the fringe of the green. He took three putts, however, to get down in par. His failings in the final stretch may have been caused in part by the frustration of having an A game that produced XXXX results on the greens." -- London Herald, Sergio Garcia, Loch Lomond, 14 July 2007 "We've heard this "on the verge of my old self" stuff for a while from Ernie, particularly just before the Masters when word swept around about a glorious practice round which suggested his mojo had returned. "And then I missed the cut," he grinned. "The difference is now my putting has come on leaps and bounds and I'm happy with the equipment and the ball I'm using, that took time to get right." -- Ernie Els, Scotland, 13 July 2007 "Didn't putt well," said Woods, who hosted the inaugural $US6 ($7 million) tournament in suburban Washington, DC. "Yesterday I hit good putts and they didn't go in and today I hit bad putts. Left a lot of putts short. I had a lot of trouble getting the ball to the hole this week, and I needed to putt well and they were just not going to go in. Just never could get a putt to the hole, and when I did, it usually seemed to kind of fall by the wayside." -- Tiger Woods, Congressional, 7 July 2007 "Watson put his tee shot in a fairway bunker on the par-5 11th hole and missed a 6-foot putt for bogey, tapping in for a double-bogey. He missed another short putt on the 12th hole and made bogey, then lost another stroke on 13 when a 6-foot par putt circled the hole and rimmed out. Watson later put his tee shot behind a shrub on the par-4 15th hole. His club brushed the bush on his follow-through and his ball trickled forward about 20 yards into more long grass. He would chip on and three-putt for another double-bogey. "He played so good through the stretch to get to 9 under, and then the double bogey at 11 just absolutely killed him," Loren Roberts said of Watson. "Tom had some struggles. He hit a couple loose tee shots, and putted poorly." -- Tom Watson, final round US Senior Open blowing 3-shot lead with 78, 9 July 2007 "[Tom] Watson (70-66) needed just 26 putts Friday and 55 for two rounds, an average of 1.53 per hole. That was tied for seventh in the field of 156. "He still hits it as well as he ever did," [Loren] Roberts said. "For him it's a matter of making putts and obviously he made some putts today. And he's going to be tough to catch." -- Tom Watson, US Senior Open,. Whistling Straits on rain-softened greens, 7 July 2007. "For Woods (66 2nd round), the turnaround from a miserable 73 on Thursday was stark. He made only two bogeys instead of seven. He needed only 25 putts instead of 34. He didn't have a single three-putt. He made six putts longer than 8 feet -- including a 22-footer at No. 12 -- after missing everything from 8 feet and beyond the day before. His secret? He put some lead tape on his putter, forcing him to put more oomph in his stroke after leaving so many putts short well short of the hole in his first round. "Made it a little bit heavier," Woods said, "because the greens were a touch on the slow side." -- Tiger Woods, Congressional, 6 July 2007 "I never got the speed right," said Woods, who used 34 putts and ranked 109th in that category. "All of my putts I missed were short -- way short, actually. It was a struggle. Towards the end there I tried to actually place some iron shots above the holes to at least make it a little bit easier because I just struggled. I just struggled hitting the putts hard enough." -- Tiger Woods, Congressional, 5 July 2007 "By the time his [1st] round was over, he had missed a 2-foot tap-in, hit a man in the face with a drive, and tossed his putter in frustration at his bag several times. His scorecard yesterday at the inaugural AT&T National in Bethesda, Md., included seven bogeys in a round of 3-over-par 73, tied for 77th place and seven shots behind leaders Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk, K.J. Choi, Joe Ogilvie, and Stuart Appleby. Woods putted 34 times, including three three-putts, and he missed every attempt longer than 8 feet. "It's one of the worst putting rounds I have had in years," Woods said. "I'm going to have to figure out something for [Friday] because evidently what I'm doing is not even close to being right." -- Tiger Woods, Congressional, 5 July 2007 "I just needed to make one more putt. My pace on the greens, I thought, was really good, and I just had one three-putt all week." -- Tiger Woods, US Open, Cold putter costs Woods 13th major, CNN.com, 17 June 2007 "The story of my week was my putter," said Riley, who averaged 28.25 putts per round. "It's the first week I've used this putter in over a year. I wasn't making many putts so I went into my closet and pulled out my old Ping Answer. I made everything I had to this week, so that guy will stay with me for a while." -- Chris Riley, Nationwide Tour, 18 June 2007 "My students are great players. They're just trying to find ways to get out their own way. When a player is comfortable out there and isn't worried about the outcome, he can be consistent. I believe that overtrying is the number one reason good players don't play well in tournaments." -- Lanny (Rifleman) Bassham, 23 May 2007 "I don't know. I've read a lot of Bob Rotella's books, and they leave me underwhelmed, like I'm being told the sky is blue. Gio Valente gives me the shivers. I've had a number of conversations with Dick Coop. I like Coop. I also sometimes wonder why athletes need someone to tell them what they already should know. But what do I know about the mind of an athlete? I do have a degree in psychology, but I was in psych school long before sports psychology was even a subject, not to mention a specialty. Still, I'd give the rifleman a chance." -- Kevin Robbins, Backspin Blog, Austin Statesman, 24 May 2007 "It's like that great old analogy Dr. Bob Rotella once used to describe the difference between hitting a 10 foot putt alone compared to hitting a 10 foot putt in front of 1,000 people. It's like laying a board on the floor and walking across it, and then taking that same board and raising it 40 feet in the air. The simple task of "walking across it" just became a lot harder." The Reluctant Jam Boy, 22 May 2007 ("I'm a caddie. This means I drink, play cards, and go on rants from time to time. Enjoy.") "Woods, a three-time winner of the Memorial, continued to have problems with his putter and followed his opening 70 with a 72. He need 31 putts on Friday; Scott needed 25. "These greens are perfect," Woods said. "I mean, you put a putt on line, it should be in. I'm just not putting a putt on line. My speed is decent. I'm just not rolling the ball on line consistently and I'm not hitting my lines that I'm choosing." -- Tiger Woods, The Memorial, 2 Jun 2007 "I think the only times I did something wrong was on those couple of putts where I thought about the outcome. That's what you can't do." -- Adam Scott (62), The Memorial, 2 Jun 2007 "My students are great players. They're just trying to find ways to get out their own way. When a player is comfortable out there and isn't worried about the outcome, he can be consistent. I believe that overtrying is the number one reason good players don't play well in tournaments." -- Lanny (Rifleman) Bassham, 23 May 2007 (Dallas Morning News) "I don't know. I've read a lot of Bob Rotella's books, and they leave me underwhelmed, like I'm being told the sky is blue. Gio Valente gives me the shivers. I've had a number of conversations with Dick Coop. I like Coop. I also sometimes wonder why athletes need someone to tell them what they already should know. But what do I know about the mind of an athlete? I do have a degree in psychology, but I was in psych school long before sports psychology was even a subject, not to mention a specialty. Still, I'd give the rifleman a chance." -- Kevin Robbins, Backspin Blog, Austin Statesman, 24 May 2007 "My chipping and putting in the past month has been horrific, but today I chipped and putted OK and made a good score," said Lonard, who has been working as hard as Vijay Singh, not only on the driving range, but also in the gym, to bring his game around. Lonard has been playing almost every week for the past two months to find form on the course. "Two weeks ago, I thought I'd never play golf again the way I was putting," he said. "But I just put in a lot of hard work and today it paid off." The key was throwing out the old "Mrs Lonard" broomstick. "I've got a mistress in," Lonard joked about the putter he found only the day before the first round at Sawgrass. "I don't know. I just picked it up and thought it's got to be better than the Mrs Lonard I've got." The result? A better-than-useful 29 putts on top of a stellar 14 greens in regulation in the tough conditions." -- Peter Lonard at the Players, 11 May 2007 "Leader(Matthew) Zions is one of just six players to have earned his card by coming through all three stages of the qualifying school last year, and is based in Denver, Colorado where he attended university. "It was a fun putting day," said the 28-year-old. "It's been a cause of frustration in the last few events, I've been spending a lot of time over my putts, thinking too much about it. "But today I felt comfortable, didn't take too long and the putts were going in. For the last three years I tried to get my card on the US Tour but never made it past stage two of the qualifying, so thought I'd come over here and give it a go. "I needed to two-putt from about 100ft on the final hole at St Annes Old Links to make it through the first stage. The green is about 48 yards long and I won't forget that hole in a hurry." The 28-year-old rookie, who bases himself in Colorado where he went to university, needed only 24 putts on his way to an eight-birdie 65. Zions, born in Cosford, Australia, but a resident of Denver for nine years, found a new mantra to change his fortunes on the greens, suggested by mental coach Bob Rotella. "Bob's given me the tools to help my putting and I managed to do the job today," Zions told reporters. "I've been spending far too much time over my putts, being too technical, instead of getting on with it." -- Matthew Zions, Open de Andalucia, 11 May 2007 "The course is ridiculous," said Henrik Stenson, who began yesterday's final round well down the field on nine over. "It feels like I'm walking around for five hours and someone is whipping me on the back. The only way to have fun on Augusta National is to play with your buddies and have a few beers." -- Henrik Stenson, 8 Apr 2007 "This place does not give you any breaks on the putting greens. If you don't have your speed and line right, you're gonna have three three-puts a round," he said. "I really liked it, it reminded me a lot of Australia. Royal Melbourne and that sort of stuff, firm fast greens feeding the ball to the hole. There were some memories there as a pro starting out." Stuart Appleby. 8 Apr 2007 "This course, with the amount of break you have to play and the creativity you have to use when you read putts, is different from anything else we play," Woods said. "You may try to practise at home and you may try to do other things. But until you get here, you don't see slopes with this speed. Nothing really prepares you, especially when it's dry like this, for how much the ball rolls out. You hit what you think is a good putt, you think it's going to be a foot past the hole and then it rolls out to three, four, five feet , then it's ... wait a minute. If you hit it in the wrong spots, it's an automatic three putt unless you make that first 20 footer. Sometimes that's the best you can do." -- Tiger Woods, 3 Apr 2007 "A tournament that not that long ago could be won by Ben Crenshaw and Mark O'Meara is now limited to a dozen or so players who have the strength to still reach the elongated 15th in two or can hit their drives far enough to have a decent iron over the pond to the 11th green. The field is small to begin with, but the changes favor so few players that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have now won five of the last six Masters." -- Tim Dahlberg, AP, 5 Apr 2007 "Woods is tied for first in proximity to the hole on the PGA Tour. But he ranks No. 171 in avoiding three-putts, averaging slightly less than three per tournament. Woods is No. 1 in greens hit in regulation, but 159th in average putts per round." -- Hank Haney on Tiger Woods' 2006 stats, Mar 25, 2007 "I think I am mentally tough," said Johnson, who won $1.305-million. "I don't hit it very far. I can't overpower a golf course. But I think I'm a decent putter, and at Augusta National putting is at a premium." -- Zach Johnson, Masters Champ 2007, 8 Apr 2007 "I can pigeonhole myself a little bit with putting, I think it's all in your setup. I think if you have a fundamentally sound setup you are going to have a stroke that's not only correct but repeats. If you're misaligned, if your posture's bad, any one of many different variables, your putter's not going to go where it should, and then you've got to make compensations. With Vaughn, for example, we really changed his setup, because he was clearly opening his shoulders and aimed left, and was having to hook everything to make anything. So we spent a lot of time working on that, changed his grip a little bit." -- Pat O'Brien, Zach Johnson putting coach, The Practice Tee, Richardson TX "I hit the ball from tee to green pretty well but my putter let me down most of the week." -- Ernie Els, BMW Asia Open, Shanghai, 22 Apr 2007 "Word continues to circulate that Phil Mickelson and swing coach Rick Smith are on the verge of parting. Mickelson, according to some reports, would put his game in the hands of Butch Harmon, formerly Tiger Woods' coach. It would be a huge change for Mickelson, who has given Smith and Dave Pelz credit for his success." -- Charlotte.com, 12 Apr 2007 "Being Easter, my faith is very important to me. I felt Jesus, I felt my grandfather, my family, everybody," he said, his voice shaking. "So it was awesome." -- Zach Johnson, Masters Champ 2007, "The Easter Masters", 8 Apr 2007 "Sabbatini briefly snatched the outright lead on Sunday with an astonishing long-range eagle putt at the eighth that broke 20 feet and 90 degrees to the left. Some 65-feet from the cup, the South African putted toward the fringe and talked to his ball as it rolled slowly toward the hole. As it dropped, he threw his arms skyward sending the grandstand into a frenzy. "I practised that putt a lot on Monday to get a sense of how it fed down toward the green so I had a good idea of where I needed to put it in order to control the speed on the green," said Sabbatini." -- Rory Sabbatini, Masters, 12 Apr 2007 "Augusta's greens start affecting you right off the tee," said Nick Faldo, a three-time champion who has declined his 2007 invitation to play so he can be part of the CBS telecast team. "Every pin location has one right way and many wrong ways to be approached. For some of them, if you want to have a comfortable putt, you have to hit it to an area that might be as small as six feet by six feet." -- Nick Faldo, 3 Apr 2007 "Well, I hit a lot of good putts. Some of them didn't go in. The greens were very difficult out there. They were a little bit bumpy and you know, my whole deal was just to get the pace right, just make sure that I don't run any putt past the hole. It doesn't go four or five feet where you have any kind of testers coming back because basically 50/50 whether you're going to get a good lie sometimes. Some of the guys end up in hole prints and it was hard, it was really hard. I made sure every putt was dying at the hole and I didn't take a run at any putts and it worked out." -- Tiger Woods, Buick Invitational 2006 "I cleaned up my putting to the point where I felt like I could release the blade time and time again," he said. "All of a sudden, my ball started hugging the ground and wasn't sliding all over the place, as it was in the first round." -- Tiger Woods, Doral, Mar 24, 2007 "In his final tuneup before the Masters, Woods had reason to be concerned with his putting after taking 32 putts in his opening round of 71. He spent 45 minutes with his caddie, Steve Williams, on the practice green Thursday evening, and finally got the result he wanted. "I told Stevie what I was feeling and he told me what he saw, and we just kind of worked through it and finally got to the position where I could release the blade again. Yesterday I felt like I just could not release the putter head. I was dragging it quite a bit and I don't putt well that way." -- Tiger Woods, Doral, Mar 23, 2007 "I can't putt any worse than I did today. It was absolutely pathetic." -- Tiger Woods, Doral, Mar 22, 2007 "It was pathetic. I didn't drive it well at all and I had no touch on the greens. It was so frustrating out there." -- Tiger Woods, Bay Hill Invitational, Sat., 17 Mar 2007 "For a young player with the rare ability and burning desire to be one of the best players in the world, my advice would be to skip college. " -- Hank Haney, Golf Digest, March 2007 "The putter is very important. That's half the game in professional golf." -- Mark O'Meara, Feb. 26, 2007 "We're not here to teach putting, to be sure," says TaylorMade's Tom Olsavsky. "We fit the club to the swing, not the other way around. But a lot of times when we make a change in a player's equipment specs, we'll also eliminate some of the excess body motion." -- Tom Olsavsky, Taylormade adidas, June 2002 "Trying for a "threepeat," Tiger Woods shot a 1-under 71 and is in a 10th-place tie. Woods birdied his first, 10th and 11th holes and signed for bogeys on his third and final holes. He needed 32 putts to get around. "Pathetic," Woods said about his putting. "It's just weird out there in the sense that I putt a lot by memory and what I've done here over the years. A couple of the putts did the exact opposite than what they used to do." -- Tiger Woods, WGC-CA, Doral, Mar 22, 2007 "Disgusted by missing yet another short putt, the 27-year-old Spaniard tapped in for a three-putt bogey and then spit into the cup. Garcia didn't deny this lapse in etiquette, only its effect on the guys playing behind him. "I just missed the putt and I wasn't too happy,'' Garcia told NBC Sports. "Don't worry. It did go in the middle (of the cup) and wasn't going to affect anyone else. If it did, I would have wiped it off.'' -- Sergio Garcia, Doral, Mar 24, 2007 "Any time you make big par putts, I think it's more important to make those than birdie putts," Woods said. "You don't ever want to drop a shot. The psychological difference between dropping a shot and making a birdie, I just think it's bigger to make a par putt. And I was able to make those." -- Tiger Woods, Doral, Mar 23, 2007 "I made the putts I was supposed to make and three or four that I wasn't supposed to make. I just kept making birdies all day." -- Brendan Pappas, Louisiana Open, 60 with 16 of 18 GIRs and 24 putts, Mar 23, 2007 "I can't explain missing short putts. I just missed short putts all day," Ogilvy, the 2006 US Open champion, said. "If I had putted well, I don't think I would have lost, to be honest. I can think of three putts this morning that were embarrassing and this afternoon there were two or three that were just not good enough." During the match's first 18 holes, Ogilvy three-putted the 11th hole and missed a 1.5-metre birdie putt on No. 12. "That's just another stupid thing to do," he said. "You just don't miss that putt. I didn't play very well this morning. This afternoon I started out fine and then lost the plot. (It's) a hard and tiring week, this one, it just wears you down." -- Geoff Ogilvy, February 27, 2007 "In a shocking end to a PGA Tour streak that began in July, Tiger Woods failed to notice a ball mark in the line of his 4-foot birdie putt that would have won his third-round match against Nick O'Hern. Woods missed, then lost in 20 holes when the Australian saved par with a 12-foot putt Friday at the Accenture Match Play Championship in Marana, Ariz. That finished off the second-longest streak in tour history." -- Tiger Woods at WGC Match Play, February 25, 2007 "Mickelson was seemingly in control. But he missed a 2-foot par putt on the 13th and was errant on a 4-foot birdie putt on the 16th to fall into a share of the lead. Lefty finished with a 68 and was tied with Howell at 16-under-par 268. The only two players left standing each parred the first two holes in overtime before Howell sank the clincher on the third hole. Ironically, it was just the sort of putt Mickelson missed earlier that would have prevented a playoff. His bogey on the final hole of regulation also didn't help." Phil Mickelson at the Nissan Open, 2-18-07 "It's not the start that I want to the year," American Mickelson told reporters at the TPC Scottsdale. "I need to get the putter working. I saw improvement, I drove the ball well and hit some good iron shots, but what I did''t do well is putt," the left-hander added, referring to his opening scores of 72 and 69 at the Phoenix. "I felt awful stroking it, and it doesn't get any easier over at Pebble. The greens at the TPC Scottsdale are very good. You can make a lot of putts, I just didn't do it. I just struggled on the greens. Hopefully, I can get that straightened out for this week." -- Phil Mickelson, finishing outside top 40 in 1st 3 events of 2007, 2-7-07 "That's one of the worst putting weeks I've had in a long time," said Woods, who shot a 3-under-par 69 to finish at 17-under 271. "I'm going to go home and just kind of figure it out. Hopefully get my putting organized before I compete again. It's frustrating because normally I don't really putt well on poor greens, like I did last week," Woods said, referring to the Buick Invitational. "And I come over here to the best greens we've seen in a long time and I miss a bunch." -- Tiger Woods at Dubai, 2-4-07 '"Steve Williams on Woods' putting struggles in the first half of '06: "No doubt, he putted much better in 2000. It's pretty close [which year was better]. I keep very comprehensive details of Tiger's statistics. No question, the difference between his winning and not winning comes down to putting. My statistics tell you that if he plays 72 holes without a three-putt, his chances of a victory are about 80 percent. In 2000 he had several stretches of more than 100 straight holes without a three-putt -- I believe he got to 258 at one point. He had only one stretch longer than 100 holes this year." It's almost obscene to think Woods won eight times (10 if you count Dubai and last week's Target World Challenge) despite a relatively sloppy year on the greens, which is one reason why I see unprecedented dominance from him in 2007. He won't throw away a chance to win the Masters with his putter, as he did in '06." -- Steve Williams, 28 Dec 2006 "If there's a key to being a good putter it's having a deep understanding of how to hit the ball squarely." -- Paul Runyan "You're either going to miss it or make it. Go ahead and give it a stroke." -- Jackie Burke Jr. "All you have to do is think about hitting a solid putt." -- Greg Norman "When you make a decision on how you're going to putt, go ahead and do it. Even if it misses the hole, you win, because you've succeeded in doing what you decided to do." -- Chris Hoy "On approach putts, I'll try to bring the ball in high and soft so it won't get away from the hole that much." -- Ben Crenshaw "It isn't golf that is such a difficult game, it's how it is taught that makes it quite impossible." -- Chuck Hogan "There is no such thing as 'muscle memory.'" -- Carey Mumford "The important thing about teaching is not "what you ought to do" but "how to do it."" -- Carey Mumford "Play according to your 'personality'? Personality has absolutely nothing to do with playing golf." -- Carey Mumford "You can have the best swing, the best putting stroke, the best chipping. But you've got to play the game." -- Juli Inkster, 20 Oct 2006 "Aiming in putting is a challenge. If you don't believe it, stand behind people on the practice green sometime and see how few aim the face accurately to their target." -- Gary Wiren Q. "With putting, though, don't you sort of see the ball going in?" A. "I just putt. I learned to play golf at such a young age that my dad basically had to find ways to explain things to a dummy. I'm two years old - how do you make me understand visual imagery? My dad did it the only way he knew and when I stand over a putt now, every look I take is a picture. I stand up to the ball, I take my practice strokes and I take a picture. Then all I do is putt to the picture. It frees me from all mechanical thoughts. I just putt." -- Tiger Woods, 29 Oct 2006 [in response to a kid's question] Champions Tour 2006 Putting Average: Loren Roberts at 1.726 putts per green in regulation. Roberts' average was the best on the Tour since Rodger Davis in 2003 (1.726). He was the PGA Tour's leading putter in 1994 (1.737). Roberts had 439 one-putts and only three-putted 19 times in 21 Champions Tour events in 2006. "Trust the line you've picked, commit yourself to that line, and just make a stroke." -- Butch Harmon "The way to make money on the PGA Tour is not to three-putt. Lag it close, protect your position, cash a big check. There are almost no players, besides Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, who have the guts to try to make the big putt or take a chance on hitting the spectacular shot that can make the difference between winning and another top-10 finish. Today's Tour players are the greatest in the world at playing safe. They are in love with the middle of the green. They don't try to win anything except money." -- Mike Purkey, NBC Sports, 31 Dec 2007 ESPN "Toughest Sport" Ranking: Boxing #1, Fishing #60 ... Golf near the bottom (51) just ahead of "Cheerleading" but well behind Surfing (23), Badminton (30), Skateboarding (37) and Ping Pong (47). "You've got to always keep pushing yourself to get better. Getting better comes from within. This is a game that is fluid, it's always changing and evolving and every facet of the game can improve. As good as I hit it this week, I did hit some bad shots. I didn't putt well on the weekend so there you go. As far as my putting is concerned it is still kind of streaky. I have weeks when I putt well but I know I can improve on that." -- Tiger Woods, The Grove, London, Day 4, 1 Oct 2006 "When you inject the word "try" into golf, you'll start to feel like you're brushing your teeth left-handed. It's been said a thousand times, and it's true: There is no place for conscious effort in golf." -- Dave Stockton Jr., Sep 2006 "I am often asked which professional golfer has the best technique. A very sincere, honest answer is "not many."" -- Harold Swash "Smooth greens do wonders for disguising imperfect putting techniques. There is no question the advantage held by golfers with better technique has been diminished by the superior quality of putting surfaces." -- Harold Swash "You have to make a lot of putts when you shoot a low number," said Kuchar, who recorded his third eagle of the tournament with a 30-footer on the par-5 fifth hole that was downwind, downhill and down grain. "That's basically how good rounds go." -- Matt Kuchar [67], Nationwide Tour Championship R3, 11 Nov 2006 "I make as many birdies as the winner every week, but for some reason I'm not winning because I make too many bogeys." -- Adam Scott, Tour Championship winner, 6 Nov 2006 [GIRs 12th, Driving Distance 16th, [putts per GIR 64th, total putts 113th] "Durant, who is tied for the lead with Adam Scott through 36 holes, has shot par or better in 17 of his last 18 rounds, including his last 15 in a row. What's been the secret? "I'd say putting," Durant said. "The four-to-10-foot range has been my nemesis and I just made a lot of those distance putts -- like on 18 today. I made a good save thereÉYou don't feel like you've got to hit it at every stick. And if you miss the green you feel like you can chip it within that range and make a bunch of them, you're going to shoot good scores." -- Joe Durant, Tour Championship, 3 Nov 2006 "I've always been a less than good putter, for the most part. I've been a streaky putter. I guess the trick for someone like myself is just to have faith that you're going to have a good streak, and when you do, you can run the tables with it. But when you get farther and farther between streaks, you start to try everything, you'll do anything. The week before Flint in Milwaukee, I decided I'm going to go back to my old style of putting, which is stand a little more open, feet closer together, just try to be more natural. I felt I was so mechanical I lost any type of intuition I had in putting. I had to go back. I had to get away from the mechanics of it and just roll the ball. Since then I've putted very well." -- Joe Durant [Funai Classic winner], 22 Oct 2006 Oahu Golf a "mixed bag" -- Ko'olau's "Paspalum greens putted with the consistency of a Brillo pad" while Luana Hills' "thatchy bent-grass greens hold shots exceedingly well and putt OK." -- Ron Whitten, Golf Digest, Oct 2006 "Garcia had threatened to make things interesting when he made birdie at the 13th to close to within two shots but the world No10 missed for birdie from six feet at the next and his chance had gone. "I feel like I played really, really well and gave myself so many chances," said Garc’a, who has had 10 top-10 finishes this season but no victories. "I don't know how some of the putts I hit didn't go in. It's a shame I couldn't have gone one better but I'm looking forward to next season." -- Sergio Garcia, Mallorca Classic, 23 Oct 2006 "I like bent Po-anna greens. I think they're the best greens in the world when they're rolling smoothly. To me, when you read a putt breaking left, nine times out of 10 it's going left. You don't get any surprises." -- Jim Thorpe [66, 23 putts], Sonoma Golf Club, Charles Schwab Championship Day 1, 26 Oct 2006 Needing a 2-putt last hole for first pro win: "The hardest thing in the world is trying to two-putt. It just is, especially when you know you have to. It was nice to see that thing roll up there to about 4 inches." -- Bryce Molder, Miccosukee Championship, Nationwide Tour, 29 Oct 2006 "Year-long Schwab Cup race between Jay Haas and Loren Roberts comes down to final green: Roberts needs a two-putt to win but leaves himself 4.5 feet second putt and misses: "I ran out of gas today, and the putter let me down. That's what's so disappointing." -- Loren Roberts, 29 Oct 2006 "I've never seen greens as good as these." -- Jay Haas [66], Sonoma Golf Club, Charles Schwab Championship Day 2, 27 Oct 2006 "If you don't think that putting is a crucial part of a player's success, check out Chris Smith. The veteran leads the TOUR in Total Driving, is ninth in Greens In Regulation and first in Ball-Striking. He's also 194th on the money list. Why? He's 170th in Putts per Green in Regulation, 200th (out of 203) in Total Putts and 190th in Scrambling." -- Golfweb, 17 Oct. 2006 "They're becoming very tentative on their putting. We've lost a lot of shots on the putts." -- Enver Hassen, Team South Africa, WATC, 26 Oct 2006 "I'm fairly pleased with how I played, but I feel like I could have shot 68 opposed to 72. It was just one of those days," said Quinn, who finished with 33 putts, including a trio of three-putts." -- Ryan Quinn [T-23], Q-School 1st Stage Day 1, 26 Oct 2006 "I thought I left that putt short [on the finakl hole, tied with leader in the clubhouse]" said Funk, who shot a 69. "If it wasn't in the center (of the cup), it wouldn't have gone in. I guess that proves that sometimes short putts do go in." -- Fred Funk, winner by one putt, AT&T Championship, 22 Oct 2006 "The only time he looked his age yesterday was on the final hole. Needing a two-foot uphill par putt to finish off a two-stroke victory over Kevin Shimomura, Tadd Fujikawa yanked it wide. He won by one, throwing a 3-under-par 68 at the field to finish at 4-under 209. "I pulled it. I don't know what happened. I took my putter back and my mind just went blank," Fujikawa said of the wayward putt. "I was like, 'What was I supposed to do again [on the second try]'' and I just went ... yank. It was only a few inches or it would have been scary." -- Tadd Fujikawa [age 15], Oahu Country Club Men's Invitational, 21 Oct 2006 "I felt like I was playing hockey on a putting green. When you are putting like I did today, it definitely doesn't get the job done." -- Brad Valois [69 with bogey-bogey finish], St Augustine Open, 21 Oct 2006 "Matteson sank a 25-footer for birdie on No. 17. "That's where you steal one from the field," he said. -- Troy Matteson [65], Funai Classic Day 3, 21 Oct 2006 "Justin Rose almost holed his second shot at the par-four 18th on the Palm course [Walt Disney Funai Classic], his ball landing barely six inches from the hole, before stopping some 14 feet away. The former Daily Telegraph boys' champion had a golden chance to become just the fourth man to shoot 59 on the US PGA Tour, but hit a poor birdie putt, pulling it well left of the hole, an effort that prompted him to emit a frustrated laugh." -- Daily Telegraph, 20 Oct 2006 "I've always felt like I've been a pretty good ball striker and when I putt well like anything else, when anybody putts well they seem to climb the leaderboard. Me, especially, I've been more of a streaky putter. I think this year I've stuck to a system and stuck to a routine, and I've become more consistent. I think that's really helped me out a lot." -- JJ Henry, 18 Oct 2006 "The putts weren't going in. They kept shaving the holes on four or five occasions and it was pretty frustrating," -- Michael Campbell, China Masters, Day 3, 15 Oct 2006 "I started putting with the claw grip and I have started to make more putts from 15-20 feet." -- Will MacKenzie, Reno-Tahoe Open winner, 13 Oct. 2006 "A single birdie on the back nine was good enough to get the American [DJ Trahan] into the playoff [with Joe Durant], where he duly made three birdies in a row, a feat that Durant couldn't match. "Nothing really changed to be honest with you," Trahan said. "I was stroking the ball the same. I made the putts on 17 and I made the putts in the playoffs. I didn't feel like I was stroking it any different or my mentality with the putter was any different. But fortunately for me those putts were going in, unlike the ones earlier in the day." -- DJ Trahan, Farm Bureau Classic, 1 Oct 2006 "I've been fortunate enough in my amateur career to have won a fair bit of golf tournaments. I know how to play when I'm in the lead or near the lead. But I just struggled with the putter last year here on Sunday. When you lose that confidence in your putter, it really makes it difficult to do anything and obviously I shot 75 that day and I mean I felt like I had a hundred putts. I think the number was right around 36 or maybe even 37." -- DJ Trahan [had Sunday morning lead in Chrysler Classic of Greensboro 2005, but dropped to 13th with bad putting and blew $750,000, including missing a 2-footer on 72nd hole worth $23,000], 5 Oct 2006 "Twenty-one putts is not bad. I made everything today. I've been putting well but nothing has been going in. They all went in today." Bryce Molder [64], Nationwide Tour Utah, 7 Sep 2006 "The mechanics of my swing were such that it required no thought. It's like eating. You don't think to feed yourself. If you have to think about your swing it takes that much away from your scoring concentration." -- Byron Nelson "The hole was big and the ball was going in the right spot." -- Ryan Palmer, Chrysler Classic of Greensboro, Day 2 [65, with 5 birtdies on back nine], 7 Oct 2006 "Tiger Woods was alone on the far end of the practice green at The Grove as this small village north of London lost the last of its light Saturday, his competition already gone in more ways than one. He rapped three putts at a time, exasperated as each one slid by the cup, listening to coach Hank Haney offer quiet instruction as some 500 fans stood six-deep behind the railing to watch Woods try to fix a balky putting stroke. Despite missing a half-dozen putts inside 12 feet, Woods holed a 35-foot eagle putt on the 18th hole for a 4-under 67 that demoralized the 60-man field at this World Golf Championship and left him one round away from his sixth consecutive PGA Tour victory. Woods finished at 19-under 194, putting him six shots clear of Adam Scott, who had a bogey-free 65. "I hit it far better than I did the first two days and made absolutely nothing," Woods said. "It was a struggle on the greens all day." -- Tiger Woods [67], The Grove, London, Day 3, 30 Sep 2006 "When the greens are this perfect, you hit good putts and they go in. The faster the greens, the better I putt." -- Tiger Woods [64], The Grove, London, Day 2, 29 Sep 2006 "I hit the ball really well today and after a birdie at the second I was in position to make a few more birdies, and got it close enough on greens this good so if you hit good putts they are going in," said Woods, who recorded just 27 putts. -- Tiger Woods [63], The Gove, London, Day 1, 28 Sep 2006 "I just had a hard time with my pace. And if you have a hard time with your pace, it's hard to read greens." -- Tiger Woods, Sep 14, 2006 On lag putts: "Take the maximum break possible. I want to have some head and leg movement. Just a slight weight shift or transfer is necessary because it is such a big swing. Don't be afraid of some movement." -- Brad Faxon "Greens are excellent here," said Harrington, who missed two 6-footers or he would have gone even lower [than 64]. "You want to be holing putts on these greens. They really are superb. I think that's why you see a lot of good scoring. The golf course is quite tight. Especially if you hit it in the rough you're in trouble. But when you have greens of this quality, guys are going to make birdies and hole putts." -- Padraig Harrington [64], The Grove, AMEX Championship, Day 1, London, Sep 28, 2006 "We hit about the same, but they holed so many more putts. Time and again we were in position to make momentum-building putts and we didn't. If you can't change momentum, it fuels the other side. Those greens weren't really that hard to learn. They actually were very simple. They just outputted us. I had numerous opportunities to make putts and I didn't. Unfortunately, the rest of the team didn't as well." -- Tiger Woods on Ryder Cup fiasco, 28 Sep 2006 "A wise teacher once told me that if you can swing the putter straight back and straight through, you'll make a lot of putts. I fight a tendency, which many of you share, to take the putter back on an inside path. Then I have to manipulate it to make good contact. Left-to-right putts especially can give me fits." -- Tom Watson "I've always been an aggressive putter. During my junior golf and amateur days, I would knock it four or five feet past and drill it coming back. However, the greens on tour are faster and more undulating. Most of the time on tour you have to be "passively aggressive. I've learned to love tap-ins." -- Tiger Woods, Sep 2000 "The best way to handle pressure is to establish a preputt routine and never deviate from it. It should be automatic, freeing your mind so you can focus on the task at hand. A preputt routine also helps you stay nice and relaxed so you can make the best stroke possible." -- Tiger Woods, Apr 2000 "The mechanics of my swing were such that it required no thought. It's like eating. You don't think to feed yourself. If you have to think about your swing it takes that much away from your scoring concentration." -- Byron Nelson "I really tip my hat to how well they (Europe) are playing, they are very, very tough competitors with a lot of great putting. I'm very much in admiration for the short-game of the European team." -- Tom Lehman, Sep 23, 2006 "Obviously, there were a lot of tight matches. We didn't make a lot of putts That would be the one thing that I would say was the difference in the day between the two teams. I felt like our team hit a lot of good putts, but didn't make many. The European team definitely made the putts they needed to when they had to ... and at the end of the day, it's 5-3." -- Tom Lehman, Sep 22, 2006 "BEN CURTIS: Obviously I still need to improve on the putting. This week was a good week for putting, but overall I still need to work on getting more consistent with that, so I'm just going to work hard on doing it. Q.: I believe your two victories have been your only two top tens of the year. What have you done these two weeks specifically with your game that you haven't been able to do the rest of the year? BEN CURTIS: Putting, just making long putts, making those 20 , 30 footers when you least expect it, like the putt on 16 just went in. That's what it takes to win. You get a little bit lucky, as well. There's a lot of things involved. But it boils down to putting out here, and if you're hitting the ball decent and you putt really good, you have a chance to win" -- Ben Curtis, Sep 17, 2006. "You do not focus your eyes on the ball when you putt. You pick a spot one inch in front of the ball that you want the ball to roll over, and that's where you look. My whole career, I knew whether the ball was going into the hole within a split second after it left the face of the putter, because if it went over that spot an inch in front of the ball, it was going in the hole." -- Dave Stockton Jr., Sep 2006 "I just had a hard time with my pace. And if you have a hard time with your pace, it's hard to read greens." -- Tiger Woods, Sep 14, 2006 On lag putts: "Take the maximum break possible. I want to have some head and leg movement. Just a slight weight shift or transfer is necessary because it is such a big swing. Don't be afraid of some movement." -- Brad Faxon "You can't keep your putter on line if you move your head." -- Paul Trittler, Golf Digest Aug 2006 "Balance equals path. Anything that alters balance will alter the path of your club, putter through driver." -- David Wright "You do not focus your eyes on the ball when you putt. You pick a spot one inch in front of the ball that you want the ball to roll over, and that's where you look. My whole career, I knew whether the ball was going into the hole within a split second after it left the face of the putter, because if it went over that spot an inch in front of the ball, it was going in the hole." -- Dave Stockton Jr., Sep 2006 "A wise teacher once told me that if you can swing the putter straight back and straight through, you'll make a lot of putts. I fight a tendency, which many of you share, to take the putter back on an inside path. Then I have to manipulate it to make good contact. Left-to-right putts especially can give me fits." -- Tom Watson "I've always been an aggressive putter. During my junior golf and amateur days, I would knock it four or five feet past and drill it coming back. However, the greens on tour are faster and more undulating. Most of the time on tour you have to be "passively aggressive. I've learned to love tap-ins." -- Tiger Woods, Sep 2000 "The best way to handle pressure is to establish a preputt routine and never deviate from it. It should be automatic, freeing your mind so you can focus on the task at hand. A preputt routine also helps you stay nice and relaxed so you can make the best stroke possible." -- Tiger Woods, Apr 2000 "Smooth greens do wonders for disguising imperfect putting techniques. There is no question the advantage held by golfers with better technique has been diminished by the superior quality of putting surfaces." -- Harold Swash |
Quotes
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Quotes"Putting is where it's at. You can drive it a mile, hook it on purpose, pitch it over a phone booth from 2 feet away, but if you can't roll it you aren't going to beat many people." -- Don Law, PGA Nteacher, Boca Dunes CC, 8-23-06 "He told me Saturday afternoon, 'Hank, you've never seen me putt good,'' Haney said Monday night from his home in Dallas. 'And I told him after he got done, 'I've seen you putt good now.'' The one club Woods singled out in his five-shot victory at Medinah was his putter. 'Truthfully, he hasn't putted well [this year],'" Haney said. -- Hank Haney on Tiger Woods, 8-23-06 "There is no faster way to lower scores and raise confidence in golf than to become a better putter. " -- Doug Pike, Houston Chronicle, 8-23-06 "I wouldn't say I saw a 60 coming, but I saw something low because I have been putting a lot better and my short game has been good. Shooting 60 was a shock to me." -- U Florida soph Billy Horschel at US Am (11-under 60 at Chaska MN, new USGA Championship record), 8-21-06 "I felt like I could make anything. I kept saying all day, 'Just putt to the picture.' That's the way I first learned to putt. Dad actually knew what he was talking about." -- Tiger Woods (68 with 27 putts, 5-stroke win) , 8-20-06 "It was one of those magical days on the greens. Whenever I was on the green, I felt I could make it. It's not often you get days like that, and I happened to have it in the final round of a major championship. That was just my mind-set, to keep hitting fairways and greens and lag putt out there. If it happened to fall in, great. If it didn't, just tap it in, then move on to the next hole and do the same thing." -- Tiger Woods, 8-20-06 "Q.: When you won at St. Andrews last year, you mentioned
your warmup, how crisply you hit the ball, kind of led into the round.
I'm curious if you had a similar revelation this morning with your putting,
on the putting green? "Oak Hill was very similar to this because if you didn't hit the fairway and you chipped it out, you could actually make a putt for par. You weren't having to putt over ranges like you might find at the U.S. Open or even The Masters. So the greens were very fair. I played about the same as I did at Oak Hill. 'If Tiger wouldn't have been in the field, I would have won this week. But my play was very similar. I didn't drive it all that well on Sunday, but I hit a lot of great iron shots and a lot of great putts. I made every single putt that I needed to make all week. I'm not sure I missed one putt inside of about eight feet. It was very similar to how I played back then.'" -- Shaun Micheel (69, 2006 runner-up, 2003 PGA Champ), 8-20-06 |
Quotes"I really just couldn't get those putts to drop. Too many putts were just missing the hole. Even though I shot 74, I felt like I played a lot better. I just needed a few breaks, a few putts to go in and that might have been the difference to keep me going. I'm hopefully going to come back with encouragement and know that if I get in that position again, I'm not going to hit bad shots. I'm going to hit good, solid shots, and hopefully a few more putts will drop." -- Luke Donald (74, T3), 8-20-06 "I struggled with the putter didn't make very many putts." -- Phil Mickelson (74), 8-20-06 "Mike Weir is one of dozens of PGA guys who exhibit as much emotion as aluminum siding." -- Toronto Star, 8-21-06 "Such a freak." -- CBS Sports Gary McCord on Tiger Woods, 8-20-06 "Tiger Woods is the greatest individual athlete of our time. OK, of all time." Gene Wojciechowski, ESPN, 8-21-06 |
QuotesJustin Rose stumbled with a 3-over 75 on Sunday, but he exits the PGA Championship feeling pretty good about his game and the progress he's made since hiring Barefoot Resort instructor Nick Bradley in May. "I think I'm playing every bit as good as I ever have," Rose said. "I just have to get that confidence level and a little bit of luck and good momentum really, and I'll have some good results." Rose won two European Tour events in 2002 and has three third-place finishes in about three full years on the PGA Tour, but has just two top-10 finishes in 20 PGA Tour events this year. He made a double bogey on the first hole Sunday, and after making four birdies through the 10th hole to reach 4 under for the tournament, he made four bogeys on the back nine, including the final three holes, to fall into a tie for 41st at even par for the tournament.Content with his long game, Rose is now concentrating on his putting, which frustrated him enough Thursday to lead to a change in his grip and putter. "I think we can maybe expand on the putting now since I'm beginning to realize what works for me," Rose said. "The swing has been good for some time now. I've been hitting the ball solid. And once you get the long game going well then you can devote a lot more time to the short game." -- 8-20-06 "I feel like I played pretty solidly considering this was my first real time in contention, playing the last group on Sunday," he said. "Even though I shot 74, I felt like I played a lot better. I'm hopefully going to come back with encouragement and know that if I get in that position again, I'm not going to hit bad shots. "I'm going to hit good, solid shots, and hopefully a few more putts will drop." -- Luke Donald (74, T3), 8-20-06 "Chris DiMarco couldn't figure out why his putting game was off the previous two weeks. Turns out the problem was the equipment, not the golfer. DiMarco noticed during a practice round that his putter's grip was bent about 30 degrees. He straightened that out, and was 8 under after three rounds. "I was just out here, trying to figure out what was going on," he said after shooting 67 on Saturday. "I looked down at my grip and saw it was bent." DiMarco thinks the putter got bent on the way back from the British Open. After finishing second at Hoylake, he missed the cut at the Buick Open and International. "The last two weeks, I missed a lot of putts to the right." -- Golfweek, Chris DiMarco, 8-19-06 "I made even more putts today than yesterday. I made five or six fairly short birdie putts, inside of 10 feet. Today, I made them from all over the place. I got a new putter this week and it's working pretty darn good. I hit the ball very well today and made a whole bunch of putts. That was a very good putting day. You can be aggressive out there with the slow greens." -- Don Pooley (65), 8-19-06 "It was fun, a lot of fun. That was the best round I ever shot. It didn't seem that hard, because I just kept hitting a lot of good shots. I putted much better today too. I haven't putted well recently." -- Scott Simpson (61), on shooting 61 with 17 of 18 GIRs, 25 putts, and 11 birdies, 8-19-06 Tom Kite had this explanation for all the low scores in Seattle: "Wide fairways, soft greens, good putters." Kite said a fungus that has damaged some greens has prevented the placement of pins in some of the most difficult locations, such as the back of the 11th green. He said the greens staff has had to water greens to keep them healthy, and as a result they are soft and hold shots. Soft greens also permit aggressive putting. -- Seattle Times, Tom Kite (64 with 21 putts), 8-19-06 |
Quotes"Well, if you enter a tournament, your goal is to win." -- Tiger Woods (65) , 8-19-06 "If the ball is plugging on the greens and the greens don't have that roll-out speed on them, you're really not afraid of any putt out there," Woods said. "You can be pretty aggressive." Woods was definitely that on Saturday. He hit 11 fairways and 94.4 percent of greens in regulation. He had 30 putts. -- Kansas City Star, Tiger Woods, 8-19-06 "I'm obviously looking forward to it, playing with Tiger Woods in the last round of a major, especially in Chicago, where I've been living for the last nine years. This is where I want to be. This is what I need to do if I want to realize that dream and try to become the best player in the world." -- Luke Donald, 8-19-06 After second round: Mickelson and his instructor, Rick Smith, looked at videotape of the reigning Masters champion when he was at the top of his game. Together, they compared it to the first two rounds of the PGA Championship where Mickelson had struggled. The 90-minute skull session produced immediate results on the range Saturday morning. Then another part of Mickelson's game decided to betray him. ÒWe noticed a couple of glaring differences," he said. "I was able to get it ironed out today. I hit a lot of good shots. Unfortunately, I just didn't get the putts to go in after those shots. I've just got to make the putts." -- Phil Mickelson, (6 shots off lead) 8-19-06 Chris DiMarco couldn't figure out why his putting game was off the previous two weeks. Turns out the problem was the equipment, not the golfer. DiMarco noticed during a practice round that his putter's grip was bent about 30 degrees. He straightened that out, and was 8 under after three rounds. "I was just out here, trying to figure out what was going on," he said after shooting 67 on Saturday. "I looked down at my grip and saw it was bent." DiMarco thinks the putter got bent on the way back from the British Open. After finishing second at Hoylake, he missed the cut at the Buick Open and International. "The last two weeks, I missed a lot of putts to the right." -- Golfweek, Chris DiMarco, 8-19-06 "I've been striking the ball fairly similar all year. Whether I get some of the putts to go is kind of the question of the week." -- Steve Stricker, 8-18-06 "The only thing I can complain about is the last three holes. I missed three putts inside seven feet (two metres)," Allenby said. "I played well all day. This is probably the first event I've really made a full swing. I'm happy with four under, although I know I should have had three (shots) better, because I was putting great." -- Robert Allenby, 8-17-06 "I didn't putt very well at all, in fact I putted terrible," Allenby said after his round. "I started well, I birdied 10 and 11, I only had foot and a half putts, both were tap-ins. "I hit a lot of good shots on the back nine - which was my front nine - and the putter felt terrible in my hands, I just struggled big time, (it was) just disgusting. "I missed a foot and a half putt at four, caused another bogey at the next, but what do you do? I'm getting used to putting like crap in majors." Allenby said he has not putted well in almost a year, and believes not having a coach may be the reason behind it. "I just haven't putted consistent for a long time, the best I've ever putted was last Christmas and I just haven't found that touch," he said. "It just doesn't feel right. It's tough when you don't have a coach or anything, you just try and feel for yourself, and I've got a lot of things that just aren't right with the stroke and it pays the penalty." -- Robert Allenby, 8-18-06 "Golf just isn't my No. 1 priority anymore. When you're in your 20s out here and you're not married, life's great. You get in the courtesy car, you get a nice check and head off to the next week. Now I've got a family. I just look at it different. The last year, I have kind of been going through the motions. Well, my back's against the wall now, and it's time to play golf." -- Chris Riley, 8-17-06 "All it takes is a putt here or there," Andrade said after his bogey-free 66. "Earlier in the year, I wasn't scoring. But I was hitting the ball well. Now my putting has kind of caught up a little bit and it's been better." -- Billy Andrade, 8-17-06 "I've found something with my putting that's working really well and I feel as if I'm rolling it as well as I have in a long time." -- Mike Weir, 8-16-06 "Coming in here I felt I was hitting the ball well and putting well, too, but both those left me on Thursday. The biggest difficulty for me was just no feel on the greens. I really didn't putt well all day and on these greens, which were running quite smooth this morning, I should have made more than I did." -- Mike Weir, 8-17-06 "I haven't been making many long putts of late, but this week, despite greens that are pretty rough with spike marks late in the day, I've been able to roll quite a few in. Even when I wasn't sinking putts, I was getting them close. I came really close to making long bombs on both 16, 17 and almost dropped a par-saver on 18 after missing the fairway and getting a horrible lie." -- Mike Weir (65), 8-19-06 "At the end of the day, the Ryder Cup is always about putting and chipping. The Europeans seem to make a lot of putts and chips." -- Tom Lehman, 8-14-06 |
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