Golf Review - The Art of Putting (3 stars)

Golf can be split into Power Game, Short Game (Pitching & Chiping), Putting and Mental Games (incl Course management). Unlike other sports, the weirdest thing about golf is that performing well in one aspect doesn't automatically make you a better player in other categories. To the majority of us, sometimes it's quite the opposite - i.e. a long hitter may be a poor putter... a perfect short game game doesn't immune from a outrageous slice at next tee  if a golfer has a reasonable game on all 4 aspects, the odds are he/she would have been shooting 80s...

Of course I'm kind of special .......as I perform equally bad on all four categories!

Alright back to business. If I have to pick an area of the game whereby the beginner can quickly shave a few shots off the score card, putting got to be the one. Afterall it's not easy to develop a good swing in no time, but you'll see the results of short game quite soon....yet if you ask around not too many golfers bother to spend any time on the 'boring' part of the game in their practice...

After numerous 3-putts and sometimes disastraous 4-putts in my golfing game (40+ in a round), I've finally decided to take the medicine to spend a few quids on putting - invest in new putters, buying putting mats, books and dvds....

This book is one of the putting books I bought last year. Stan Utley used to be a tour pro and his short game/ putting skill was well known among his peers. He once scored 6 putts for a 9-hole competition (yes for the other 3 holes he simply chipped in) - in other words, this guy knows what he's talking about.

The book is an easy read and quite conversational. Stan covers equipment selecdtion, grip, mechanics, green reading and mental part of putting, etc. He also includes one chapter on how he fixes the faults of his professional students.

Compared with my other putting book (written by Dave Pelz which I'll cover if I get a chance later) this one appears a bit light in content, but certainly less daunting to typical readers.

The one aspect I don't like is that Stan advocates an inside-square-inside stroke mechanic (i.e. treat the putting stroke as a miniature of normal golf swing), as opposed to another school of thought, which is a straight-to-the-target-line, pendulum typed of stroke.  He feels that such mechanic is more natural but frankly i find it more difficult to grasp.

Have I turned into a putting expert right after reading this book?No, no magic happens overnight - but my putting does improve gradually (not just by extracting tips from this book but also others)....down from a whopping 40+ to 36-38 (i know it's still a ridiculously high score for a lot of you but give me some more time, ok? )

Overall rating: 3 stars