Can't Putt

I was always a pretty good ball striker, but being a bit nearsighted, my putting has always been mediocre. I tried to listen to every tip, but nothing seemed to help. Nevertheless I was determined to improve, so I hung around the supermarket magazine racks with the teeny-boppers, hoping to find a golf magazine that could give me that one magical tip to cure my putting woes.

What's this? An article that says to try a cross handed grip? No no no, that is for beginners who don't know how to hold baseball bat, much less a golf club. Boy you would have to be really desperate to try something that weird, backhanding the ball like a hockey player.

The last straw came during our company golf league. On the last green I had a medium length birdie putt, and as I was lining it up, the other players in my foursome were commenting openly that it was an easy putt because each of them had holed it from about the same spot last week. The pressure was on. They continued to comment that 2 weeks ago our worst player had holed a putt from there. I could feel perspiration forming upon my furrowed brow. Then they said two of the ladies in our league sank one from about that spot. The throat was getting dry, it's choke time. By now this quivering mass of protoplasm was thinking he would be lucky if he could 2 putt from there. One of them made a bet that I would 3 putt. He lost the bet because I four putted.

As they all exited the green laughing, I went back to the original spot and something made me try the cross handed grip out of despair, and with nobody watching I sank 3 in a row. Since the following group was approaching, so I went to the practice green and waited until it was vacant because I was too embarrassed to let anyone see me holding the putter like that. Then I snuck on, looked around and made sure nobody was watching this strange grip, and sure enough, this grip worked much better than my conventional grip. I got carried away and started doing imitations of Chi Chi Rodriguez until I realized I was being watched, so I skulked off the practice green and raced back to the magazine rack, pushed the teeny-boppers out of the way, and got 4 paper cuts trying to find that magazine article again so I could find out if there were any good reasons why this grip worked.

The article said the left hand was the control hand for right handed golfers, so by placing the control hand farther down the grip, control is enhanced, and the right hand, or power hand, becomes less important, in fact the power hand is what causes most putting strokes to get messed up. At this point, being desperate enough to believe anything, it almost made sense. The article went on to say which pros were already using it, so why should I feel so self conscious about it? If the putts are going into the hole, why should I care if someone says "Whatsamatter did you forget how to hold a club", or "Stand on the other side of the ball if you want to hold the club like that", or "Gretzky with a slap shot and he SCORES".

Fortunately for me, nowadays this grip has gained acceptance. They even gave it a fancier name, the left hand low grip. Ooooooh, that sounds better. Now I can come out of the closet, so to speak (stay away from me, fruity guys, that's not what I meant).