DEBATE
Fergus Bisset
A golf-obsessive who studied at St Andrews and is a member at Banchory in Aberdeenshire
Jeremy Ellwood
A 22-year Golf Monthly veteran who plays as an artisan at Royal Ashdown Forest in Sussex
I didn’t play proper golf until my late teens but, like many kids, we had a couple of putting greens or pitch-and-putts close to home that we would visit at weekends and during school holidays.
Some will accuse me of donning rosetinted spectacles here, but propelling a small ball along the ground towards a slightly bigger hole seemed a breeze 50-odd years ago. No-one in my circle of friends indulged in a spot of plumb bobbing, crouched down studiously behind the ball or stalked a putt from every angle before hitting it.
No, we walked straight up and hit it after instinctively assessing the lie of the land to work out which way the ball would move. It wasn’t rocket science and I think many golfers would putt better if they didn’t make it such a science now. I know I do, and most of my worst putting rounds are when I get too bogged down in reading my putts rather than just going on first instincts.
It becomes all too easy to second-guess yourself when you start feeding your brain too much information. It’s a bit like driving down a narrow country line – you’re fine when you’re not really thinking about it; it’s only when you start looking around too much that you begin to worry about how close you are to that hedge. You’ve switched from automatic to conscious.
I know that after missing a putt I’m far more likely to find myself muttering, “I wish I’d gone with my instincts,” than, “I wish I’d spent more time looking at it from every angle.”
We put the same question to our X followers...
FIRST INSTINCTS 89% GO TO TOWN 11%
Go to town on the read Says Fergus Bisset
Putting is the part of golf in which personal preference comes most into play. Everyone has a type of putter they prefer, be it blade or mallet, face-balan
