Putting well hasn’t changed in 80 years

Jerome Travers won the US Open once and the US Amateur title four times. In 1915, he wrote The Winning Shot with Grantland Rice, considered as the greatest sportswriter.

That was two years before the US entered World War I.

Harvey was 11 years old, shagging balls at the old ACC.

At the time, golfers carried only seven clubs, which bore colorful names like mashie and niblick.

Then, as today golfers valued the shots they produced with their drivers more than those produced by any other club in the bag.

Travers thought that most golfers overrated the value of the driver, and to be honest, no one accused him of being a great player off the tees. But despite his difficulty with woods, Travers won on the greens.

To evaluate the relative importance of each club, Travers assigned each a numerical weight. Each club was 14 percent of the contents of the bag, so each should be worth 14 percent of the total — if all clubs were equal.

However, Travers placed a playing value of at least 45 percent on the putter.

Travers once watched Frances Ouiment beat Harry Vardon at the Open because Ouimet was superb within twenty feet.

In 1914 during the US Open at Brookline, Travers beat Ouimet with his own greens play. Travers said that year, his putter should have rated a 75 percent. He’d won, he thought, because he had putted uncannily.

The putt was the simplest but hardest shot in the game back then. It still is today.

How did he putt so well?

Travers thought the two keys to good putting were to join a confident bearing with an easy pendulum swing (with the right follow through).

Travers believed in an adage of the day: never up, never in. He stroked every putt a little harder than necessary. He could compensate for overhitting by confidently returning the 3- and 4-footers he often left himself. (Harvey preferred to see the putt die at the hole.)

Travers realized what Harvey, too, would come to see: that there is more psychological than physical demand to the putting stroke. He believed that confidence comes through practice; from hours spent learning exactly where the putt is going to go.

"I have frequently practiced putting all morning, and then gone out to play in the afternoon, when I had the day off for play." In that way, Travers was years ahead of his time.