A couple questions were asked regarding the Paul Runyan technique - I studied under Paul as a child and still teach many of his methods. I'm not sure if the technique smaug mentioned was the actual "technique" or his philosophy. His philosophy was to get the ball on the ground as soon as possible -- "Minimum air time, maximum ground time" he used to say all the time. By using a less lofted club (like a 7 iron) with basically a putting technique - putting grip & stance, heel of club off the ground, you can loft the ball enough to carry the fringe, and let it roll to the hole. This is has a much bigger margin of error as opposed to using a wedge and trying to fly it and spin it close to the hole. His "technique" is a little different, and to avoid going into a 30 page description, I'll give you the cliff notes - elbows against rib cage, forearms are rotated at 45 degrees inward and upward so both palms will be facing equal degrees opposite each other and 45 degrees skyward. This eliminates wrist action in the stroke. He recommended this technique for chipping and putting, for pitching a more neutral grip to allow for a little more wrist action. While this technique and philosophy are very sound, you don't see many PGA Tour players use it because of the conditions on tour. Paul introduced the first belly putter as well - when he was inside 4 feet he would attach his standard putter (33 inches if I remember correctly) into his belly and split his hands - many years later the putters were extended and called belly putters before the ban. His book is legendary and if you can find one on amazon or ebay, buy it. It is still very relevant, and I use it every day in my teaching. Paul was very fond of getting "down" to the ball - getting very close to it, not standing tall or far from it, and in some of our last conversations, he was very excited about face balanced putters, though he'd used bullseye putters his entire life, he felt the face balanced putters were superior and a must for amateurs. I could go on & on about him, as he was truly a legend, and I'm blessed to have learned so much from him - he honestly changed my life and generated my huge interest in the short game. I'll always be happy to answer questions about Paul!

I'm glad so many of you are finding value in the UPR - there are some new things in the works, and I'll keep everyone posted on new developments and ways to help you improve!

Thanks,
RS

I'd suggest googling jim furyk chipping on youtube. His description is basically identical to what runyan suggested in his book. You select the club that will just barely land it on the green/go the distance you want, choke down on it and get into a putting stance. The shaft should be straight up and down and the heel of the club should be off the ground. From there make a putting stroke. I haven't done this with clubs other than a 7 iron /sand wedge due to lack of practice time. I believe runyan would take the exact same stroke (not altering amount of force in it much) for various distances but am not 100% on it. Can anyone confirm/deny the last portion?

A tip on bunker play to help you til your lesson is to open your stance quite a bit, open your clubface a ton and hit just behind the ball. It will take a decent amount of force don't be scared to swing fairly hard.

I played a round yesterday and had the weirdest thing happen. My ball striking on the first 3 holes completely fell apart. I topped every tee shot, duffed iron shots, pitch shots and hit several balls into the water. I don't believe I managed to make mediocre contact with a ball on those 3 holes. Luckily my putting/chipping were much better. By the 4th hole I managed to get back on track but not after carding a triple bogey and two 10's. :O I've got 2 days before I leave on vacation so hopefully I can get in a couple practice sessions before then.

That's pretty much correct - he altered clubs as opposed to altering the stroke length to carry the ball to the landing spot and let it roll the remaining distance. He would also alter his suspension point based on the lie of the ball to change trajectory and insure solid contact.

From Tom Watson's Getting Up and Down:



/edit For me this image alone was probably worth the price of the book.

Dagolfdoc, great to have you back! Was worried I might have jumped in here too late but really happy you are still around. Looking forward to hearing about the new things in the works.

I have been using UPR as mentioned but focusing mainly on the putting steps so far. I'm actually about to have a bunker play lesson with my local pro next weekend as the final lesson in a package.

While I love the UPR as a routine, I want to try and find a technique methodology as well to work on when I get to the chipping/pitching part. At the moment I really just use my own technique without reference to any "system". Thanks dagolfdoc for the Runyan run down. I've also heard people refer to Utley, Pelz and also the Watson book mentioned above.

The one thing I don't want to do is read 4 or 5 different approaches and get confused by all the info, but it's hard to work out which is the best for my swing obviously without knowing at least the basics of the different schools of thought.

One thing I have been trying to do is come up with two swings ... lets call it a 1/4 swing, and a 1/2 swing, and then just varying the clubs. I figure if I can play just these two swings well then use SW, PW, 9iron then I've basically got six chips/pitches that should have well defined distances. My biggest shot drain at the moment is not trusting my short game ... I have a 30m shot and think this is 1/2 swing SW, then I lose confidence over the ball, deccelerate on the swing and leave it short, wasting a shot. So I want to really drill these two swings and learn to trust them ... but I want to lock in a solid technique as well.

I had an interesting experience like Smaug on the New Years Day comp. In warmup in the nets I had a terrible problem of leaving the clubface open again, radically so. Most of my shots were hitting the side net! Needless to say I was panicking on the 1st tee that it would be replicated on the course, but got my first drive away ok and then I clicked back into gear. Shot 90 off 21 handicap for 39 stableford, so was stoked to open 2014 with a sub handicap round and lose a stroke to go back to 20. My next goal is 18, I have never played off less than 19 and feel that this is in reach.

Really looking forward to seeing how I manage to progress with this practice routine tomorrow. I'm an 18 handicap but give up so many shots around the green so hope that this will lead to big improvements in my scoring.

Had 30 minutes on the green, first time in about 2 years so thought I would have a little go at this

Best I got was 11 in a row on the 3footers, got a lot of 8-9s etc

Will go down over the next few days and have a real crack at it, I was a little under prepared this time and had just come back from gym so was fairly slogged

Did another 30 minutes today on a much quicker green

Went 7, 14, 11, 8, then went in to a little strange 10 minute patch where I couldnt get 5 in a row

I was noticably missing all of my puts to the left of the cup (right handed) so I was dragging them across somehow

I attempted a little self tudoring and noticed sometimes I was bringing the putter back on a slight arc so I tried to correct that, but in return I ended up driving the putter head too fast and overhitting some

Finished with a 16 with a very unlucky rim tickler that went 180degrees around but staying up

The most frustrating thing for me so far is the patches where I cant get 5+ in a row, I dont mind missing a put after stringing 10+ together because its good getting in a rythm and getting points up, but when I'm stuck with the feeling I'm certainly going to miss one of the next 3 or 4, its very frustrating

On a slopey green, from 5 different points, finally nailed 25 in a row from 3 feet after about 4 hours divided over two days.

Is the goal to get this all done in one session? Do I start tomorrow with the lag putts? Or start over on the 3-footers?

Based on my reading, the goal is to get as far as you can in two weeks, and then start over after your two weeks are up.

i think i'm going to go back to this type of practice. really works. forces you to really address how you should be hitting each shot as opposed to band-aids that sometimes work, sometimes not.

is dagolfdoc still answering questions here?? i know i have him on my FB list anyway.

I made the 25 in a row 3ft putts in around 15-20 attempts. Best putting tip I've heard is to not watch putt after hitting it. Keep head looking at spot where ball was and just listen to hear whether ball goes in! Not turning head to look can be difficult but makes a big difference.

Had another go yesterday and had a shocker, I guess I just wasnt switched on. I was on a very tricky slope that looked straight but went right at the very last minute, was constantly sending them either side of the cup to compensate

My putting overall his improved greatly though. I freed myself of the 'routine' and just aimed to 2 put everything from a long distance and was succesful for 20 balls, which wouldnt be the case a while ago.

Will be back out there tomorrow and will put in a good hour+ at getting the 25/25

got out today only for about 40 minutes and conitnued my horror stretch of not being able to string 5+ together, had no idea what was going on

I loosened my grip which I really liked and main some footing adjustments, then was able to string some 8s+ together

I noticed though on 99% of my misses I notice it in the backswing, I should be pulling out of these puts but every time I go through with them, I miss. I just get a little wobble as I begin my backlift, and it throws everything off.

On top of this, I sometimes have an issue where the butter gets stuck to the ground for a moment, creating a bit of a 'sling shot' backswing, but I manage to pull out of these.

Anyway, after sorting a lot of these issues out I got an 18 streak putting uphill with no real break.

Had a few from 15ft and got them all close, holed a few, then went back and had one shot from 20ft as a teaser for me to finish the 3ft challange and holed it right off the bat, so I'm very keen to get through this 3ft challange

Hi all,
Been a while since I have posted, but God bless the doc.

Finally broke 80 - (78)

Stats were

6 fairways
6 GIR
8 up & downs for par / birdie
26 putts.

Short game based off doc's routines.

Every practice session is started by 20 3 foot putts in a row before anything thing else.
Every session is finished by 6 up & downs in a row to mixed targets

This works
Cheers
Steve

steveh,
well done!

IIRC Runyans technique also had a formula based on the number 12; He would take the number of the club and subtract that from the number 12 to determine how much the shot would roll out in relation to the distance carried.

Example: take a 7 iron, subtract 7 from 12 (12-7=5*) with (5 x X = total distance) being the amount the ball will roll after it has been carried X distance (X being the amount of carry over fringe to get to the putting surface)

So if you have a 5 foot carry over fringe and chip it on to the green with a 7 iron it should roll another approx. 25 feet on a level surface.

Pw/10 Iron will roll 2x as far as you carry
9I = 3x
8I = 4x
7I = 5x
6I = 6x
and so on etc.

Hi,

Last season I started off shooting an 87 (lowest score ever, second time I've gone under 90, first time a decade before). Finished the season with a round of 117 and 103. Never had a solid practice routine, now I'm set. So, thank you.

I'm currently a 24 handicap, wanting to cut that in half this season. I'm going to find time to work on this every week. I'm good off the tee, it's 150 yards and in that's killing my game. Especially around the green and putting.

Looking forward to posting results as the season goes.

hey, i like that runyan rule... had forgotten about it.

i bought runyan's expensive used book recently but not sure where it is

another runyan thing is standing in such a way so that alot of bend is eliminated from your posture and arms. therefore in theory club comes into ball the same every time. i think he is generally right.

gonna get back to ultimate practice routine. i think having to do something moderately challenging 20 times in a row without error means that you really have to streamline technique i.e. less reliance on timing which won't work for a bunch of times in a row but can work a fair number of times)

Decided to give this a go starting today. I have played golf sporadically on and off over the last 10 years and never had an official handicap but would of at best played off 20-22. I have played 4-5 times in the last 2 weeks, After starting up again after 18 months off so am incredibly rusty, therefore i lowered the numbers accordingly.


Putting:
15 in a row from 3 feet

This took an embarressingly long time, around 45 minutes. Putting has always been the worst part of my game so no surprises there. I got a lot of 10-13's when aiming for 25 but after half hour i decided to lower my target to 15. Reared off to the left every time i missed, never right.


Lag Putting
10 in a row from 20 feet stopping in a 3 foot circle

Lowered this from 20 to 10 in a row. Did it first time, was a lot easier than expected. Should of really gone for 15 atleast but my back was really starting to hurt after the 3 footers.



Gonna go back tomorrow and carry it on, Really enjoyed this type of routine. I find immense satisfaction is persevering and reaching the target.

Just started this, refusing to move on until i hit 25 in a row. I make a 3 ft circle and put 5 balls in each spot, so it a lot tougher then just hitting them in the same spot or close 25 times i'd imagine. But still, have gone to the putting greens 4 nights now and haven't gotten it. Got 24 one time too

So I started with shooting 110 before attempting this routine. Managed to get 25 3 footers down pat and the 20 yard lag putting under control.

That got my score down to 102 with three 3 putts and two 4 putts. Admittedly I wasn't focused enough on the 4 putts and they were hellavu far from the hole

Looking forward to more practice and lowering my score. I can see where this routine could easily have shaved 14 strokes off my score if I can master this routine.

I will continue to post back on my progress.

I'm pretty likely to get some pretty big practice sessions in this summer. I can finally afford a membership this year for the first time in a long time, and expect to get out 2-3 times a week after work, and then likely another once Saturday/Sunday. I was down to an 11 in highschool but went to school and got poor and haven't played any more than 10 rounds a summer until this past season.

I am not good (i.e. anywhere close to an 11) at golf now. I'll show shades of my former self on occasion (shot a +2 and +3 9 last year for the first time in probably 7 years), but I've broken 90 once or twice in my 20's.

Ball striking is ok for the most part... certainly not the problem anyway. Just no short game to speak of.

I went and bought a shag bag the other night, so I guess this is exactly what I was looking for. Going to read this whole thread over the next few days probably and go through this routine a few times over the summer.

just starting out learning golf. had about 4 lessons so haven't learned full swing yet but we did a putting session the other day. at what point can I / should I start with this routine?

I was just wondering if it was 25 in a row or just get 25 in there?