Geoff Mangum on Revolutionizing Your Putting Game

Ever wondered how a corporate lawyer could pivot to become a leading putting theorist? In this compelling episode, we sit down with Geoff Mangum, who transformed his career from law to golf, bringing a unique blend of physics, math, and literature to master the art of putting. Jeff lives in a charming farmhouse in Fountain, North Carolina, and he’s here to share how his meticulous approach revolutionized his understanding of putting, making it an invaluable skill for any golfer.

Geoff sets the record straight about his multifaceted legal career, debunking the myth that he was just a corporate lawyer. From advocating for Native American tribes to achieving a high success rate as a criminal appellate lawyer, Jeff’s legal background significantly influenced his methodical approach to mastering golf. He talks about identifying critical putting skills like reading the putt, aiming, and achieving the right pace, using his legal research skills to dissect and perfect these techniques.

We also tackle misconceptions in golf putting and explore how understanding body mechanics can dramatically improve your game. Jeff highlights advancements in brain science and critiques the current state of golfing knowledge, emphasizing the importance of rhythm and tempo for distance control. With practical tips and insightful anecdotes, Geoff offers a fresh perspective on putting that could change the way you approach the sport. Join us for a deep dive into the intricacies of golf putting with one of the field’s most analytical minds.
Geoff’s Facebook page is called “The Putting Zone.” It is a joinable group.

To reach Justin, his email is Justin@elitegolfswing
To reach Jesse, his email is Jesse@flaghuntersgolf.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, this is Jesse Permanent from the Flag Hunters Golf Broadcast, Thank you. It's taken a little bit about a month off from recording, getting away, recentering, reinvigorating and taking a dumb-taking decreative break and this week is a good one. The next few weeks are going to be fantastic. You're going to love them. This week we've got Jeff Mangum.

Speaker 1: 0:26

Jeff Mangum is a lawyer by trade. He's a putting aficionado. He has a Facebook group called the Putting Zone, which I'm going to encourage everybody that listens to this to go and check out if you're a part of the Facebook platform. His name is Jeff Mangum, G-E-O-F-F. Mangum, M-A-N-G-U-M. He is a putting aficionado. He has broken putting down to the very essence, the molecular level of putting, and all of us know who played this game and aspire to play this game at the best level that we can achieve. Putting is really Jedi mastery. If you're a good putter you can get away with murder out there. It takes the pressure off the rest of your game and when you're putting poorly, it's oh my goodness. It's like walking backwards up a very steep mountain. It's a tough road to home when you're not putting too well. Jeff's group has a plethora of knowledge and wisdom that you can take and assimilate into your own game. I have, and this conversation will certainly steer you in the right direction the putting zone. It's called Jeff Mangum on Facebook, and this was. We did this one a while back and I wanted to make sure that we got this out there. And, once again, congratulations to Xander Shoffley a second major in a year. That major proved to be a tough one and a good one for all of us that were fortunate to see it live, and it was good to see Royal Shurn showing her teeth and having the best players in the world hit some long irons and coming down the stretch and some really tough driving and tough conditions, and Xander came away in spades. So congrats to him and thanks once again for listening. Make sure to go to Jeff Mangum, the Punting Zone on Facebook, and if you have any questions, I'll make sure that all of our pertinent information is in the show notes. Cheers everyone and I hope that you have a great week.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Hello, this is Jesse Perryman of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, bringing you a very special conversation. We've got my friend brother from another mother from Singapore. His name is Justin Tang. Everybody who listens to this podcast regularly is very familiar with Justin. I consider him one of the great instructors in the world. That is, one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking, well-rounded and holistic teachers that I know of. And the gentleman who's new to the podcast today is a man by the name of Jeff Mangum and he, quite frankly, is the guru guru of putting, and we're going to have him introduce himself now, Jeff. Thanks for coming on, pal, who are you and where are you from? Welcome, I know, I know who you are.

Speaker 2: 3:45

My name, my name is jeff mangum and I live in fountain, north carolina, which is 411 people in a rural community, uh, approximately halfway between raleigh and north carolina and the atlantic ocean, and I live on a 100 acre farm in a two-story 1890s farmhouse that was restored about eight years ago. So I'm in the lap of excellent, exquisite luxury. I can shoot my rifle out my window and not even hit a neighbor. That's awesome. That's awesome I just spent.

Speaker 2: 4:23

I spent the last eight days sleeping in a $10 tent at Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Yes, yes, yes, that was great.

Speaker 3: 4:35

Thanks, jesse, and thanks Jeff for agreeing to come on the podcast. It's been a while since you and I last spoke, right, yeah, so let's talk a little bit of how you moved from being a corporate lawyer to becoming one of the top-putting theorists and instructors Perhaps the top-putting theorist. Well let's drop the perhaps. When you related this story to me years ago, you said that your lawyering skills played a huge part in you becoming one of becoming the top Butting Theorists. Let's talk a bit about that.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Okay, well, in education in college, undergraduate school at the University of Chapel Hill I was first I started out in physics and math and then I changed to English literature and I really didn't like UNC because it was just a credential factory. You take three courses from column A and six courses from column B and you pay them money for four years and they stamp you in the forehead as a degree, bachelor's degree. Well, I got pretty disgusted with that, so I sped it up and I got out of there in 36 straight months and then I went to graduate school and got a master's degree in English literature. And then I was enrolled in a PhD program and Watergate was going on in 74, where President Nixon was the top attorney general, went to prison for obstruction of justice and lying and all this business. And so I thought, well, get a law degree and actually make some sort of difference in people's lives instead of being ensconced in an ivory tower somewhere in some minor college teaching English. So I went to law school and I got a law degree at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, north Carolina, in 1981.

Speaker 2: 6:41

And I started practicing. You referred to me as a corporate lawyer. I've never been that, so let me set that record straight. I was a poverty lawyer representing poor people in legal aid and then I moved into representing Native American tribes as an Indian lawyer representing tribes seeking federal recognition, did that for three years and then I moved to representing appeals for people with convictions that couldn't afford an appellate lawyer. I practiced in front of the North Carolina Supreme Court for about three or four years and I'm going to just tell you I'm the most successful criminal appellate lawyer in the history of North Carolina since it was founded in 1776, with a 53% win record in 65 appeals. So you can check it. But anyway, nobody else knows that or cares about it. But it didn't do me any good.

Speaker 2: 7:42

I did private practice for a while and then I said, ok, lawyers are a bunch of liars, judges are crooked, prosecutors are politicians and one out of every six police officers puts his hand on the Bible and tells a bald-faced lie and everybody knows they're lying but they don't do anything about it. It's not good, so I quit, and that was I was 38 when I quit. My wife put up with it, so I had plenty of time to reacquaint myself with golf putting and I went to a golf course in Greensboro called Gillespie Golf Course and if you're familiar with the book about the integration of the game of golf with black people, a course of their own. Gillespie Golf Course is one of the signal incidences in desegregating golf in America in the late 50s and early 60s. But that's where I year for 10 years in a row.

Speaker 2: 8:50

So I'm an obsessive, compulsive nut case. I'm a completely, you know, irrational individual. But what I was doing was fairly early on. I was just trying to reacquaint myself with the skills of golf in an expeditious manner, the way a lawyer might tackle a subject like. The widow comes to your office and says the airline crashed and killed my husband and I say well, what caused the crash? I don't know. The only word I heard was avionics, avionics. And so, as a lawyer, I would immediately put on my expertise, cracking hat and determined to be an avionics expert within 30 days so I could handle this case and lawyers do that in a funny sort of a way which I learned from being an English major. I thought that I had verbal ability, I thought I could think because I could say words, complicated syntax, elaborate vocabulary, blah, blah, blah. No, law school taught me how to think like an, a, b, c, connect the dots and then discuss the application of facts to a rule or a general proposition. Application of facts to a rule or a general proposition. And so I learned how to do that kind of legal logical analysis and thinking. And when I'm standing on the green at Gillespie I thought well, that'll speed me up to learn how to do golf so I don't have to take a whole lot of time to get reacquainted with.

Speaker 2: 10:22

I played golf when I was 20, went to the law school, blah, blah, blah, and 20 years later I was 38. So 18 years later I started reacquainting myself with the skills as a lawyer would. And this is what you do you read everything and you let the conflicts sort themselves out and whatever is left standing that's probably good. Well, the first thing you find out is that 95 of everything having to do with instruction in golf is only full swing. I didn't care, I wasn't going to be the greatest ball striker on the planet. So my solution to the vast majority of all the literature in golf instruction was pick the top guy who's got pretty books and go with that, and that in 1990 was david ledbetty. Um, pretty books, nick price, nick faldo, pretty books, big pictures simple hold the baseball, hold the basketball between your knees and turn your belt, buckle to the target, blah, blah, blah. And so I said okay, so much for full swing.

Speaker 2: 11:27

Now let's go on to the putting part. And as a lawyer and as a scholar, an english literature person with advanced degrees, knowing scholarship, one of the things you do is you research and you cover what everybody's already said about the seven, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And so I did that with putting. And lo and behold, it takes you about five years to actually locate and find the old books and the old articles. And as a lawyer, what you do is you pile everything up and then you say don't read anything until you know why you're reading and what it relates to. And that's issue identification, that's a lawyer thing.

Speaker 2: 12:15

So you ask the question what are the four skills that everybody engages in when they put? And obviously you could answer it yourself if you just sat and watched. But what I did was I called up mars and asked a martian to come down and tell me what they saw. A golfer did. The martian landed on a hill near a green and he watched for about 20 minutes and he said okay, here's the deal. Every golfer reads a putt, every golfer aims the putter, every golfer does a stroke that accomplishes line and pace, and if they get the four things integrated together, ball goes in hole. So I said okay, thanks so much. And he said it's okay. Just you know, maybe I'll ask you for a favor if we ever invade Earth.

Speaker 2: 13:01

So at any rate, he goes away and I have four skills and I have a library of material in a warehouse and I bring in five big 55-gallon drums and pop the tops off and I say label one reading, label, one aim, label one stroke for line and label one stroke for touch. And then I sort everything into these buckets. Now I'm ready to read and comprehend what everybody's already said about it, and I'm talking about everything ever written Crazy, compulsive. Yes, got everything that's ever been written All the websites, all the DVDs, all the VHS tapes, you name it. I got it and I sorted it out into the buckets. Now, ready set, let's go look in the buckets. If you look in the reading bucket, there's only one book in the whole bucket. It's HA Templeton's Vector Putting the Art and Science of Reading Greens and Computing.

Speaker 2: 13:59

Break 1984, in Dallas, texas. He's an Air Force colonel and he wrote a 200-page book on the mathematical approach to fall lines and slopes and green speeds and the physics of a ball breaking on slope and he made charts for green speed and distance and fall lines and then he would treat the fall line like it was a 6-12 line on a clock, that you just simply oriented the clock to the fall line on the green and then he went around the clock. There's different positions, like 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 2 o'clock, and at different grain speeds and slopes and distances and clock positions. He made charts on how many inches to aim and the aim point would always be up the fall line from the center of the cup. So he did all this in 1984. And, lo and behold, nobody had ever heard of this book. That's the way Goff is. He had already died and his daughter was living in Dallas, texas.

Speaker 2: 15:09

But at any rate turns out that the PGA instruction manual written by Dr Gary Wyrin in 86 or something is running through the garden of instruction and recapitulating everything and sort of cut the pathway. That's what the PGA manual does. And when he got to putting he stopped and was sort of frozen and he said there's nothing on it and specifically for reading putts. He said there's only one book ever and it's Templeton. And I don't understand it. But I'll tell you what he said. And he quoted cut and paste out of Templeton and said that's the PGA manual of instruction. Now I've been meeting PGA of America people since I got serious about this somewhere around 95. So almost 30 years now I've been meeting PGA of America people and I always have this little trick question have you ever heard of HA Timpson? And they all took the class and passed the course and owned the manual. And I've never met anybody in PGA of America that knows the name HA Timpson, if I don't tell them who it is.

Speaker 2: 16:19

So in other words, golf doesn't have any kind of scholarly memory of the past accomplishments of people that teach stuff. They have no imagination, no interest. They don't read magazines that are six years old period, they just if it's not current. They don't know it right. So the read bucket has got one book in it. Okay, that's not good. So I go on the advance to the aiming bucket and I'll peer down the bottom of the aiming bucket and there's something down in there about using your dominant eye and getting behind the ball and using the line on the ball I said okay, how do you decide where the target is? Where do you aim it at? So, anyway, we go to the stroke bucket and boy, lollapalooza Monsters crawling up out of the corners, everything in the world is in there, because everybody's got an opinion, everybody's got one of those little holes, and so there's thousands of opinions in there on this is how I do it, this is how you should do it.

Speaker 2: 17:28

The players that wrote books there are some, but they're not me. Oh, if you know any of these names, uh, walter travis from garden city, long island, horton smith, the first winner of the 1934 Masters Tournament and a commissioner of the PGA Tour back in the day. Articles by George Archer and Bob Charles. A little book called the Putter Book by Bob Rosberg, 60s 1960. Bob Rosberg, 60s, 1960.

Speaker 2: 18:06

Then you have these self-anointed, egotistical people that write books on what they did, named Dave Stockton Jr. People like that. Ben Crenshaw made a VHS tape, but he never wrote a book. He's never really written much of an article. There's a couple of little pitiful things. Lauren Roberts wrote, or had somebody ghost write, a couple of little tiny two-page articles, but that's it. But since about 1980 or so, no PGA Tour players have bothered writing about putting. I don't care who you think is good, they ain't writers. Brad Faxon ain't got nothing. Who you name, somebody that's a good putter, ben crane nothing, uh, so on down the line, there's nobody.

Speaker 2: 18:54

The the only player in recent memory that actually wrote a book is stan utley. He wrote a book in about 2008 or something called the Art of Putting. I got his book and I thought, okay, well, finally some player wrote a book. He said that he didn't do his shoulders vertically, he did his shoulders like a helicopter. I thought, well, that's weird. And he said he took his forearms and rolled them, opening the putter face back and closing the putter face through, and I said, well, that sounds particularly stupid. Nobody that actually putted well on the PGA Tour or the Nike Tour for 20-some years could possibly have putted that way. So something's funny here in Stan Utleyville that way. So something's funny here in stan utleyville. And so I sent his brother an email in columbia, missouri, wherever it was, and said something wrong with your book, because that's not an anatomically a sensible way of putting. So obviously he doesn't do that. That was true. It took stan utley. Apparently they threw my email in the trash.

Speaker 2: 20:03

It took Stan Utley two years of teaching PGA of America sections. Hundreds of people let it throw for two to five thousand dollars a pop before anybody even noticed that there was a difference between this book and what he actually did. When they went outside on the brink Two years of PGA of America, teachers were looking at this without noticing, and the guy that noticed it was marty shine in illinois, because he told me about it and marty told me that he filmed everybody that gave a lecture at his facility. He filmed stan utley and he tapped him on the shoulder and said stan, look at this, your book and what you do on the green. They don't match. Okay.

Speaker 2: 20:46

So from that point forward, stan Utley was trying to figure out what exactly he needed to say to describe what he teaches. It took him two years of trying to figure it out and the most he could come up with was my book's wrong. But this is what I think I do Soft elbows in the backstroke, soft other elbow in the first stroke, and that's how he summed it up. That was his corrective. Well, two years later he finally went to Rob Akins in Memphis, tennessee, who he usually goes to across the big muddy river to get fixed. Humpty Dumpty falls apart. Every year His stand goes to get fixed for his set-up, ball position, stroke motion and timing, because he loses it once a year. So he goes to his buddy, rob, and he says, rob, you need to tell me what I do when I make a stroke so that I can teach you. And so rob said you put straight back and straight through on a tilt angle. And you don't. You don't use the arms only and it's straight back, straight through. So stan nutley started teaching that.

Speaker 2: 21:53

All right, that's the only book written by a player since about the 90s, with one exception that nobody else knows about either. Bernard Langer wrote a book. He wrote it with an English female writer named Vivian Saunders and it's Bernard Langer on putting. Fabulously wonderful, honest book. He's not much on problem solving and analyzing things, but is he ever straight from the shoulder, honest? What a refreshing wonderful book compared to some jerk that writes from their ego about me and mine. Blah, blah, blah Doesn't know what he's talking about. What a refreshing nice book, bernard Longer on Pettit.

Speaker 2: 22:39

So there's two since 1980. Neither one of them is particularly informative, but the aiming bucket's got that in it. The strut bucket has got every crazy guy from Chicago sitting on the toilet. All right, then you go, you advance to the last bucket, which is the most important one, the distance controller touch. And you look way down at the bottom of the bucket and there's a sticky on the bottom, a little yellow sticky with a little note scribbled on it. And you fetch that sticky out and you say what's this? Well, paul Azinger, the no-putting coward from southern Florida color commentator on NBC I think it was NBC covering the 2010 British Open said this watching Tiger Woods putt Look at that, look at that. Tiger Woods touch. You can't teach that. You have to be born with that, and that's written on the sticky. The only thing in the whole touch bucket is this ridiculously stupid comment by paul azinger. Okay, now that's where you are.

Speaker 2: 23:49

After you do five years of library research collecting all the things that have been written on golf putting. I've actually outlined everything's ever been written on golf putting, and the outline itself is 1068 pages with my personal annotations on it. So I'm not teasing in the least when I say I've read everything. If there's anything written in japanese, I probably hadn't read, of course, chinese okay, this brings me to the next uh question.

Speaker 3: 24:23

After five minutes of reading, what do most people get wrong about putting?

Speaker 2: 24:28

number one they don't know what a skill is.

Speaker 2: 24:31

The definition of skill is you have to know what the body does to accomplish the task of the skill, for example, in a forward pass in football, it is lace your fingers on the laces of the football, plant your feet in the pocket in a certain way, rotate your shoulders in a certain way and fling your elbow and and release the ball with the snap of your fingers off the laces. Okay, it's describable in. In tennis the serve is throw the ball higher than the racket at full extension, because the amount of drop of the ball back down to the racket at full extension has to equal the amount of time to swing the racket up to the point of full extension. Otherwise you can't serve with real power. And so tennis players tie strings to the wrist and and they have the right distance up for the ball and they toss it up so the string doesn doesn't snap, and they have to practice that. But a skill is if you cannot describe it to an 11-year-old child so that they can do what you say do you don't know what you're doing. You might be able to do it pretty good, but you don't have skill because you cannot know how it works, but you don't have skill because you cannot know how it works. Now this is a little different in full swing because there's a lot of biomechanics and anatomy and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2: 26:04

I'm not really convinced that biomechanics people know all that much about the human body. They take classes. If you've ever studied biomechanics it's all about gymnastics and weightlifting. It's not really about a skill motion like throwing darts. That's a different deal. Putting is like darts or like a free throw in basketball. It's no opponents, there's nothing moving the golf course and the greens. They change Basketball courts from the free throw line. They never change. So putting is more complicated than basketball free throws, but basically there's no opponent and aside from the shot clock, you got all the time in the world to read the putt and aim the putter and then stroke it where you aim with the right touch. So a skill nobody knows in golf because it's a bunch of amateurs drinking in the 19th hole thinking they're great. They don't know what a skill is. A skill is.

Speaker 2: 27:06

How do you do it with your body so that you can explain to somebody? If you don't have that knowledge in your head, that can come out and say I just messed up because I did it wrong and this is what I did wrong. Or you can say here's how you do distance control, little Tommy. If you can't say that, then there's two bad things that happen. One, you never get feedback. And two, you don't reduce error, you just make errors and you don't know what happened.

Speaker 2: 27:41

Jordan Spieth lost his distance control in England one time, had a four putt and a bunch of three putts and he was mystified for years. I mean this was like three years ago. He doesn't know anyone in golf that can explain to little Tommy or to little Jordan what went wrong. How does distance control work? Padraig Harrington does not know the least mumbling word about distance control at age 50. He thinks he does because he putts pretty good. He performs pretty good compared to who? Fat country club golfers with a beer in their hand yeah, he's better than them. Is he better than other guys on tour? Heck, no. Can he explain to little Tommy how to do a 30-foot putt? Heck, no. If you think I'm making that up, ask him and see what comes out of his mouth. I watched Patrick Harrington put three balls to a 20-foot target at the same spot for one hour at the Palmer Golf Course in Orlando and he was horribly inconsistent for one hour in a row from the same spot, the same putt, the same distance. Now that's an ignorant guy. That's somebody that cannot explain to little Tommy anything about distance control.

Speaker 2: 29:04

So golf people have this funny little idea and I have this article I'm writing right now called Whatever Works. There's two things with whatever works. That's completely wrong. One, the word whatever. Two, the word works Whatever means you don't care about how. Actually what causes what. That's horrible. That's particularly golfy. And the second word is works. What do you mean by works? Works better than country club fat, dumb, dumb 55 year old drunks? Yeah, yeah, it works better than them. Does it work better than your peers on the tour? No, does it work better than than what you could do otherwise? Or is there something that you could do to be a whole lot better, rory McIlroy? What do you mean by works?

Speaker 2: 30:00

And golf people think that any improvement in performance is learning. It's not. Learning is you understand something and you can do it correctly, and if you make a mistake, you can explain what you did to yourself or to others and you can fix it immediately. Jordan's beef can't fix. You don't have these big slumps, and so you don't have feedback, if you can't diagnose error and you don't have perpetual learning from a steady state getting progressively better and better honing, if you don't have this knowledge base of what causes what.

Speaker 2: 30:40

Golf people are aided and abetted in this by motor sports psychology. Sports people what a bunch of the whole world of sports psychology and mostly sports science that has anything to do with golf did not exist prior to about 1980. They do not know what a skill is. I checked hundreds of books and articles repeatedly for 30 years. They do not know what a skill is. Motorsports people think that implicit learning, somehow by practice of the right sort, made you do better than you used to do and they call that learning. Learning what? That's not skill at all and they don't know what a skill is. All right, that's number one. Number two motorsports.

Speaker 2: 31:32

People skipped the brain science revolution that began in 1990. Brain science completely overwhelmed psychology. Psychology was guesses about the brain and things like short-term memory, long-term memory, muscle memory, automatic processes, blah, blah, blah. They're guessing at all that. Well, the brain science took off in 1990. And in the first 10 years the human race knows more about the brain in 2000 by a factor of 50 than was ever known about the human brain in 1989. The law of human history all the way up to 1989. It went boom 50 times greater. And from 2000 to 2010, went boom 50 times greater and from 2000 to 2010 it went 250 times great because that first 10 years of researchers spawned four or five junior researchers and the money was flowing like lava out of kilauea. The united states congress was funding it, private organizations were funding it.

Speaker 2: 32:35

The guy that Alan, the Microsoft number two guy. He's given hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to brain research. He's a great supporter of brain research. So all this money has been flying for brain research and Western medicine. They're always trying to solve issues like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Speaker 2: 32:57

I'm not about that. I've been reading brain science for 32 years now, strictly to understand how the skills of putting a perception and movement operate in the brain and the body. So I'm a serious guy. I never meet anybody that even knows that's an important issue. I've never met anybody in golf that recognizes that's an important issue. I teach distance control to children how to putt better than PGA Tour players in one hour. I triple PGA Tour players' money in one hour because they don't know anything about it and I've got 32 years being mean about boiling it down.

Speaker 2: 33:39

I taught an 18-year-old Korean kid living in Melbourne, australia, came over, wanted to skip the college deal and his daddy got enough money. Him and his mama came to the United States to play cue school in Pinehurst in 2000, I guess it was 10. So he called me for a putting lesson because he'd never met a putting instructor and he wanted to tune up for the Q school. So I taught him for a day, half a day, in a nondescript golf course one of 35 in Pinehurst. There's a bunch of them and he won everything he'd ever entered over the next few months and became the number one amateur in the world. He won everything. The last thing he won was the British Amateur Championship in Muirfield, scotland. He beat everybody in the match play five and four and beat the guy who lived there at Muirfield, the guy who was destined to win for a whole year in the media in Scotland as destined to win at Mirafield. The British amateur and my 18-year-old Korean kicked him off the golf course four and three. They asked the guy what happened and the Scottish guy said his touch was so beautiful I've never had a chance. We're talking about 30, 40-foot putts going two inches past the hole. All right, this is like one less to a teenager.

Speaker 2: 34:58

By virtue of that British amateur status, he got into the British Open in 2010, the same one that Paul Ezinger made the comment about Tiger. The 18-year-old kid was third on Sunday in the British Open at St Andrews, scotland. The 150th anniversary of the British Open at St Andrews in 2010. He was third on Sunday I mean not Sunday but Friday and on Sunday he was 14th silver cup amateur blah, blah, blah. But he eagled the final putt on TV from 40 feet and the commentators said what are we seeing? What are we seeing? Quote unquote.

Speaker 2: 35:41

Nobody in golf knows diddly squat about skills. It's not that you know, I'm such a fabulous magical teacher, it's just that I ask the right questions and I'm such a compulsive nutcase and I get down. I get the problem solved. That kid in four days at St Andrews, where the danger of three putts is almost as high as it is at Augusta National, tiger Woods that week had five, three putts. The field average was 4.5 in four rounds and the 18-year-old kid had won won three putt. Never played a professional event in his life, never played St Andrews in his life, won three putt in four days and then he went on. You know blah, blah, blah. But this is not bizarre.

Speaker 2: 36:34

I teach a high school team one lesson and they win 15 tournaments in a row. They win the state Maryland 4A championship three years in a row. Then whoever I taught graduated. I taught a girl from Drake University, a Division I school in Mississippi Valley, one afternoon in December and then she went her senior year. She played seven college tournaments at Division I and she won six out of seven and the seventh one she was second. And then she graduated and she played five statewide tournaments in Minnesota. When she went back home she won all five of those. So she won 11 out of 12 tournaments and came in second in the other one.

Speaker 2: 37:21

And this is not. You know, it's not, it's not magical, it's just ask the right questions, dummies. It's golf. So you ask what's the biggest problem in golf? Don't know what a skill is. Can't tell little Tommy how to do a putt, how to do a 30-foot putt.

Speaker 2: 37:41

Don't know what the purpose of the stroke is. The stroke purpose is to putt it where you aimed it, it's not to start it on line. It's not to sink the putt. It's putt it where you aimed it. The function of the aim is to aim the start line of the curve Different ways to do that. The function of reading the putt is to predict the actual physics of the distance. Control makes what curve and what start line. It's physics, not optional.

Speaker 2: 38:10

If you sort out what the distance control is, there's only one curve. That's possible. If you know how to see a start line, there's only one aim. That's possible. If you have aimed your putter face into the only one start line that could possibly work with that pace, the stroke is not optional. And then you're back to full circle. What do you do for the pace? The same pace you used to read the putter to begin with. That's just logical analysis that golf people do not have not, cannot do, never have. So you know, when I say I'm the number one putting instructor in the history of the game, I'm not really teasing about that. I'm going to be a little more strong about that than even that crazy sentence. There is no other, because they don't teach skills, they teach improvements, little tiny improvements. Change to a claw grip, colin, you'll suddenly learn how to putt.

Speaker 2: 39:09

That's ridiculous. Colin Morikawa came out one of the worst putters on the PGA Tour. Out of 205 guys, he was 200th. First year on the PGA Tour. I wrote his golf coach, walter Chun, and I said, walter, you had this guy in your stewardship for four years and he comes out this way. That's going to ruin his life if you don't tap him on the shoulder and get him some help. I don't care who you get to help him, but don't waste this kid's talent. And how many years later are we where Colin Morikawa still can't putt? He putts every once in a while. That's good, but on the long haul, boys, he's terrible. He needs to get it fixed. He doesn't know anybody to talk to, because that's the way golf is. They don't know what a skill is that's bad?

Speaker 3: 39:58

Well, that's a lot to consider and digest there, Jeff.

Speaker 2: 40:02

Well, you just boil it right down.

Speaker 3: 40:04

Nobody in golf knows what a skill is, For the sake of our listeners, just getting to know you and your theories and your fabulous book, the Putting Zone. What is that one thing, what is this one thing that our listeners can do right after listening to this podcast to improve their distance?

Speaker 2: 40:23

control? Sure, absolutely. Distance control is basically intentionality to the well-defined perceived space. Stop the ball at the hole and then that's one. And the second aspect of distance control this is brain science. By the way, the second craft aspect of distance control is make a rhythm.

Speaker 2: 40:45

A rhythm is some tempo one way away from the ball, in the backstroke. Same tempo again. That would be a rhythm. It's the relationship of the tempos. Back and through, the human body uses same same, because the human body doesn't discriminate left and right, it just swings things.

Speaker 2: 41:06

Your human body swings the arm away, it falls back, it throws the leg away in the step and the step falls down to the ground and then you fall forward and throw the second leg forward. So everything about human motion, thousands of times every day, is just swinging things. Ding dong, ding dong, and the amount of the tempo is basically the energy saving that you get. When you throw your arm away, gravity brings it back. You don't have to spend energy of your body by eating cookies and stuff to bring the arm back. So maybe 50 percent of the time, gravity brings the arm of the leg back to where it came, where it started from when you threw it away. That particular arm swing has a tempo, just like a pendulum has a tempo depending on how long the pendulum rod is. A pendulum rod that's one meter long swings one second from top to top and another second from back to the beginning. So an arm is close to a meter and so it's close to one second timing and it's actually a little quicker because it's not really a full meter. So you know, nine tenths of a second or something. That's the natural tempo of the arms and the brain has already wired up how to use that particular tempo and that particular rhythm by all the years of your life, of all these motions reaching for doorknobs, reaching for cups on the table. So your listeners need to go on a green and to just make a rhythm and let the tempo be the same both ways.

Speaker 2: 42:52

The only other thing the third word for a pendulum tempo and rhythm. The third word is how big or size of swing. If you just pick a size and do that same tempo, rhythm and size repeatedly, that will give a ball exactly the same physics for impact and you can put up three balls in a row, that size, that tempo, rhythm, and they'll all go some distance. On a green you don't know how far they'll go, because you haven't really guessed about the green speed or whether you're putting uphill, downhill or level. But if you just do same size, same tempo, same rhythm, three times in a row and I recommend the size be just slightly outside your rear foot, that little size probably corresponds to maybe a 10 to 12 foot putt.

Speaker 2: 43:44

That little size, exactly the same size, exactly the same tempo, exactly the same rhythm, three in a row, three balls to go out there and kiss each other in a little group.

Speaker 2: 43:52

How far they went tells you directly the green speed of the day and you just appreciate it is what it is as a fact.

Speaker 2: 44:02

Then your tempo and rhythm is calibrated to that green speed and you can intend to go further and your body will instinctively size furthers.

Speaker 2: 44:15

For example, you take a golf ball and you just pitch it on out there about 30 feet and call it a rabbit, and then you put a golf ball down and you say, ok, hound ball, I want you to go there and kiss the rabbit. And then you go intention to kiss the rabbit and perceive where it is. And then you go intention to kiss the rabbit and perceive where it is, and then you go ding dong and your instincts will size that stroke to go. Kiss the rabbit. That's called a core foot is the first thing and the second thing is rabbit and hound. So if your players or your listeners did those two things on a practice screen early in the day, did those two things on a practice screen early in the day, then their stable tempo and rhythm will serve them well for distance control the rest of the day by just intending to go to targets. That's kind of a life-changing thing for most people, like it did for that guy, that Australian 18-year-old.

Speaker 3: 45:11

Okay, thanks, thanks a lot.

Speaker 2: 45:13

Jeff, you know I'm real generous with my time. By the way, if anybody wants to contact me directly, I got articles, videos and all that that I just send people for free.

Speaker 3: 45:28

So how can people get in touch with you? Obviously, this conversation that we're having is probably part one of many parts. I think there's a lot of stuff that we can go digging the weeds with you in relation to your skills, right? I also had a lot of questions to ask, but I guess this would have to be reserved for another time, another segment. I can give you real brief, really, really quick, but I guess this would have to be reserved for another time, another segment.

Speaker 2: 45:53

I can give you real brief, really really quick things on reading, aiming and stroke.

Speaker 3: 46:01

You want me to do that in under two minutes? Okay, let's get targeted to one particular question that a lot of our listeners will be interested in, and it is this right what's the most common putting mistake that really good players make?

Speaker 2: 46:15

Well, they actually are not really good at putting where they aim, and that's kind of one. Another one is they're not real well-defined on staying on the high side. I created a thing called a baseline, which is just a simple line from the bottom of the ball straight to the center of the cup. And then I added another line called the fall line, from the center of the cup straight uphill, and the baseline depends on where your ball is 4 o'clock, 8 o'clock, 10 o'clock, 2 o'clock, whatever it is but the fall line is a permanent feature of the golf course. So these two lines make a corner and this corner isolates the only part of the green that matters the side of the baseline that's in the direction of the fall line, that's the high side. Now, if anybody misses a putt to the low side, they're not aware of the baseline and they're not skillful at staying on the high side. That's a big mistake that PGA Tour players make all the time. They're just not organized. They think it's just me. I'm talented, I don't have to worry, because I'm better than country club golfers and I'm on the PGA Tour. Well, you're not the world beater, rory. You're not the world beater Colin. You're wasting your life because you're not problem solving these issues and nobody you know caddies, sports agents, teachers nobody you know can intelligently analyze and tell you what you need to tell little Tommy about how these things work. So, pga Tour players, I'm amazed that somebody like John Rahm can be as good as he is without actually knowing how he's doing it. He improved significantly in the last year in his putting. Rory McIlroy has not Rory's going the other way. He's like 180th on tour in strokes game putting. That's bad. There's only 200 guys out there. So you know, for somebody as good as Rory for driving and iron play, fix the problem. Boy. Talk to somebody who knows what they're doing. He hasn't met them yet. You know this business of putt like you're a kid. That's completely ludicrous. That was his thought when he went to Augusta National this year. Was putt like he was when he was six? According to Bob Rotella, the guy doesn't know any brain science. That's ridiculous. To tell somebody like Rory McIlroy putt like you're a six-year-old when you go to Augusta National. He was terrible at putting. It's a complete waste of time. There's no meat on the bone, there's no actual knowledge, there's no problem solving. It's just all this business about me, me, me, I'm on tour, so I must be good. No, you suck, you stink, fix it. Quit wasting me, me, me, I'm on tour, so I must be good. No, you suck you stink, fix it. Quit wasting your time.

Speaker 2: 49:18

Sergio garcia wasted years. He's he's not near as good as he could have been, and it's like that. You ever heard of joe durant, the greatest ball striker in modern time? Yeah, oh yeah, you heard joe durant, right, okay, he's on the scene.

Speaker 2: 49:31

Tour now, for I think 16 years on PGA Tour he was the number one ball striker, way better than Tiger, way better than Phil, way better than Sergio, way better than whoever you want to name. He was like the number one guy for five years in a row. He's like always the top 10 guy. Another five or six years. His lifetime average on greens and regulation was twice as good as tiger and he was one of the worst putters ever on a pda tour. Every single year, over and over and over. He's like 185 out of 200 guys every single year, with all this ball striking talent. And how many times did he win on tour? Oh, maybe four and 16 years. That is average. That's a terrible waste of his life. I think he made 13 million dollars. You know, being on tour for 16 years, which is terrible. Tiger woods makes 16 million dollars in a month. So you know that was that's joe durant. Wow, we don't want colin maracawa to spend his life on tour that way. Sergio already did.

Speaker 2: 50:40

Sergio lost lots of tournaments because he can't put. Every now and then he'll come out of the, come out of the wings and he'll put great rider coat, but he doesn't actually know much. So you know these tour players make a lot of mistakes. One was Nick Watney four-putted from three feet or something Ridiculous. I think the first putt was 20 foot but then he got within three feet and he took three more to get down. You know, once you get within five feet, be careful with your pace. I see tour players wrapping putts with inside five feet way too far past the hole. That means their line control better be absolutely crystal perfect, and tour players are not.

Speaker 2: 51:31

The average tour player misses the, the, the aim line with his stroke by 1.2 degrees. That's terrible. That is rancidly bad. That is 50 50 from eight feet. You couldn't possibly do better because you don't have a stroke. To use your reading skills, you can read names as good as you want to, but you got 1.2 degrees offline. With your putt You're 50-50 from eight foot, no matter what you do. So you know they're not aware of this. They're blinded by their egos. They think they're great and they're not. And if they find out that they're not, they're afraid to confront it because it makes them feel bad. And they're drinking from this little kool-aid jar all day. About confidence.

Speaker 2: 52:21

What in the heck is confidence doing for solving that problem? Nothing. You can be as confident as you want. It's delusional, doesn't have a thing to do with it. The only value of confidence is keeping you from double clutching in the middle of a stroke with some kind of doubt or plan B. Right in the middle of the stroke you go to plan B. Confidence will suppress that. But other than that, confidence ain't got nothing to do with it. It's a 150-yard 7-iron. Little Tommy's got to do it, big Patrick's. Nothing to do with it. It's 150 yards, seven iron. Little Tommy's got to do it, big Patrick's got to do it, little Sally's got to do it. Nobody cares. It's physics. Do it right or you stink. So you know, in these problem-solving issues, the confidence and the egotism and the narcissism of the PGA Tour players is their worst enemy. Face the problem, figure it out. They don't do that.

Speaker 3: 53:15

All right man. Thanks, jeff Sure. Where can our listeners find out more about you?

Speaker 2: 53:22

I have a Facebook page. Got about 5,000 people on it right now. My name, g-e-o-f-f Mangum in Facebook at my name, g-e-o-f-f Mangum in Facebook. And then I have a private coaches only spot where I write posts all day and I've written 1,381 posts in the last 809 days, which is a little over two years.

Speaker 2: 53:49

I write 1.7 new articles on putting science and putting skills and different aspects about putting science every single day, seven days in a row, 365 days a year nonstop. I've written two today and I've got another four that I've got to write in the next couple hours. But I'm inventing stuff all day long. I just invented a brand new stroke. I invent ways to read putts. I invent ways to aim putters.

Speaker 2: 54:19

Nobody in golf did it and that's what I found out back in the 1990s, and so I've spent the last 25 to 30 years actually creating these knowledges of how these skills work, and I'm the only one doing it. I don't mind saying it anymore because I'm 79 and I've been modest about it for 30 some years. I'm kind of sick of being modest about it. If you know anybody that knows what a skill is, call me. You're probably mistaken. It's okay for full swing. I don't say bad things about full swing people, but for putting, I'll say bad stuff about everybody that thinks they know anything about it if they hadn't learned it from me Period. So what's the instructor's?

Speaker 3: 55:06

website on Facebook.

Speaker 2: 55:10

If you want to go to the private forum, you just have to send me a request. I have to approve it. Be glad to. You got my email. It's my first and last name, with a dot at Gmail. It's geoffmangum M-A-N-G-U-M at gmailcom. Anybody wants to get into that treasure trove of knowledge? Send me an email.

Speaker 3: 55:35

Hey, could you send Jesse and myself that invite Sure.

Speaker 2: 55:40

Absolutely no problem. You bet, you bet. Yeah, please do.

Speaker 3: 55:44

All right, thanks again, jeff. Yeah, man, jeff, thanks so much for your time.

Speaker 1: 55:49

Yeah, thank you, jeff for your time and Justin, and we're certainly going to have Jeff back on because You're in California. Right, we've got a. Well, I'm in California, justin is, he's on another planet, in Singapore, right, right, right. Singapore what part of California are you in? I'm in Monterey, california, pretty close to Pebble Beach.

Speaker 2: 56:13

Okay.

Speaker 1: 56:13

All right. All right, yeah, we're going to have a lot more questions and certainly have Jeff back on Jeff. Once again, thank you for your time, justin. Thank you, justin, and we'll talk soon. And thanks, see you guys, see you.

Speaker 2: 56:26

Justin Nice talking to you Okay, thanks a lot, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye.