3 THINGS TO KNOW CREATE, DEVELOP,

AND OWN YOUR PUTTING.

By Preston Combs

INTRODUCTION

Feel versus real. Want versus need. Style versus skill. These are all little skirmishes that players face on a regular basis, even several of these at the same time. During my years of professional putting instruction, it has become evident to me that the relevant components to actually making putts, compared to other areas of putting instruction, are not effectively portrayed to golfers. That said, it is my pleasure to share with you 3 Things To Know.

Knowing what you are trying to do with the club and ball prior to hitting the next shot undoubtedly makes the job easier. It establishes concepts, framework, and in an otherwise complicated game, narrows down what’s important. I am reminded of Jamie Foxx recounting his story about playing the piano with Ray Charles as they prepared for the filming of the movie Ray.

“As we’re playing, I’m on cloud nine. Then, he moves into some intricate stuff, like Thelonious Monk. I was like, ‘Oh shit, I gotta catch up,’ and I hit a wrong note. He stopped because his ears are very sensitive. ‘Now, why the hell would you do that? Why you hit the note like that? That’s the wrong note, man. Shit.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr.

Charles,’ and he said, ‘Let me tell you something, brother. The notes are right underneath your fingers, baby. You just gotta take the time out to play the right notes. That’s life.’”

That story is simply one of my favorites. Imagine how much easier putting would be for you if you

looked at it this way. You just have to take the time to hit the right putt. That’s putting. But, what are the things that you are looking for when you do this? They are the three most important things are that are an actual part of any putt going in the hole. In fact, they’re so important that we’re going to give them a name: The Putting Priorities. They are that

important to giving you direction and serving as a road map for your putting. You will have a clearly defined pathway for what you need to do in order to find your destination a bit sooner. After all, everyone’s ball can use a little help to find its way home in one stroke instead of two. For some reading this, that might be two strokes instead of three, but you get the picture.

Speaking of pictures, it is time to quickly test how clear your picture is of what is important when putting. What are those three simple items? Set-up? Alignment? Posture? Speed? Ball Position? Aim? Take a moment and make your best educated guess as to what The Putting Priorities actually are.

What did you answer?

Most people don’t get all three of The Putting Priorities which comes as no surprise. Over the next few pages, you will start to recognize that you need all three to make more putts. For most golfers,

regardless of age or ability level, a working knowledge and understanding of these components is a great start to performing better.

Beyond just having the road map and knowing which way to go, you will have a resource to develop the necessary skills to perform better. Skill development is what separates accomplished players

from those still searching for answers. When you take the time to discipline your practice to The Putting Priorities, you will have a solid foundation to grow as a better putter. Your discipline to becoming proficient in each of these areas determines how well you are capable of putting.

It is time to get started on your putting journey beginning with first of the 3 Things To Know.

The Jamie Foxx and Ray Charles story is featured in Tim Ferris’ Tools of Titans, a tremendous book that a great friend of mine shared with me. I’ve drawn some pretty great inspirational stories from it. Thank you Sam.

THE FIRST THING YOU NEED TO KNOW

“The putter face at impact controls upwards of 90% of the starting direction of the golf ball.”

— Science Your New Best Friend for Better Putting

DIRECTION

We’re going to cut right to the chase for the First Thing To Know. Stop saying you pulled or pushed a putt each time you missed it and immediately start working on your putter path. This is a common misnomer and that may have you looking in all the wrong places for improving your stroke. While the path may influence the direction of the putter face, it is time to face the facts, no pun intended.

Start giving the putter face more credit for the direction your golf ball starts. During a future practice session, try keeping the face pointed at a target and making a decently out to in or in to out path. Make a couple of observations about the first few putts using this technique and it will be fairly evident that the face is running the show.

While working together to help you build your skills as they relate to The 3 Things To Know, a lot of time will be spent on becoming more aware of the putter face not just at impact, but throughout the stroke. As the introduction indicates, each of the components are all essential components, but it must be perfectly clear that a player must be proficient at this skill to putt well. Hitting putts at the

intended target must always remain a constant focus to putt your best.

It’s time for an honest assessment of yourself and your putting. How often have you worked on getting putts started on line? How much importance have you placed on this concept in the past? How often do you find yourself throwing away strokes because you missed a relatively flat putt?

Understanding and being aware of this concept, regardless of your skill level, matters a lot. From the weekend warrior all the way up to the best in the world, managing the face is an essential skill.

After answering those questions, you will start to realize how important Direction will be for your putting. It’s time to make the changes that you need to putt better. But it doesn’t stop with just

hitting putts online. You’re going to learn how The 3 Things To Know are related and use The Putting Tree as your road map to recognize which areas of your putting need the most attention.

“Discipline equals freedom.”

— Jocko Willink Extreme Ownership:

How US Navy SEALs Learn and Win

Since I started playing the game, and though I was not old enough to recognize it at the time, one of the most enjoyable parts about it was the creativity. Hitting shots allowed me to create curvature, trajectory, and see if I could replicate whatever I imagined. I loved the freedom to test the waters and push towards outer limits of what I was capable of doing with a club and ball. The same type of

freedom carried into my putting as I experimented with different stroke patterns, capture speeds, and start lines to figure out what worked best. While I didn’t describe it in those exact terms as a younger person, the word freedom was still at the forefront.

Yet coaching seems to differ. The majority of golfers come from too much freedom. Their

background and concepts lack direction which has led to more harm than good. Without sight of The Putting Priorities and the discipline to enhance those skills, the journey can become that much more challenging. The uncertainty of guessing versus knowing is a predicament a lot of golfers find themselves in on a regular basis.

Jocko Willink’s quotation that opens this portion about The Putting Tree emphasizes the value of having direction and not guessing. Within The Putting Tree, players are not left with the predicament of attempting to identify on their own what is important. While they may land on particular areas that influence The Putting Priorities, if those areas are not the most relevant at the time, it can hinder the development and even create major setbacks.

The liberating emotional lift after a par saving putt on the opening hole gets the day started on the right foot. The exuberance after draining a birdie putt taps into every golfer’s emotions and keeps a

round going. Knocking in the five footer to win a match with the weekend group is why putting matters. It is moments like these that highlight our putting journey.

Developing a putting stroke can be an exciting venture. No two putting strokes are alike. No putting stroke is ever repeated. The best in the world have developed a wide variety of personalized

approaches from grip and setup to face and path relationships. Some of them are conventional, while others look like they were concocted following a day of desperation and too many missed putts. Yet each of them are capable of executing The Putting Priorities. Each produces predictable results on a regular basis.

3 Things to Know provides the foundational concepts for The Putting Tree. A closer look at The Putting Tree reveals additional layers that revolve around technique and application of concepts that will further a player’s proficiency. With this information organized so players can better understand what matters most to their putting, they will be able to tactfully and efficiently master their putting

rather than look under every rock for answers. The coaching and training opportunities from Preston’s Putting will fill in the blanks of The Putting Tree and help all golfers on their journey to make more putts. Let’s continue the journey with the Second Thing To Know.

THE SECOND THING YOU NEED TO KNOW

“Speed control is your opportunity to walk into a casino and tip the odds in your favor.”

— Preston Combs 2018 Southern California PGA

Northern Chapter Teacher of the Year

SPEED

Two golfers are getting ready for their morning round and begin hitting putts to warm up. The first golfer races his putt ten feet past the cup and exclaims “These greens are fast!” The second golfer, on the same green mind you, leaves his putt eight feet short and mutters “These greens are like velcro.” Each of these very different outcomes and reactions came on the same putting green at the

same time. That begs the question who is right? The first golfer? The second golfer? Neither? Even more perplexing is how this can possibly happen on the same putting green.

All golfers including you are guilty of having just wandered up to a green and mindlessly whacked a few balls towards a cup without considering the consequences. After all, they are just practice putts,

right? Wrong. The first few putts establish a player’s perception of speed for the day. Drilling an uphill or downhill six footer into the back of the hole is not the best way to warm up. In fact, it doesn’t give you any essential feedback that you need to understand the speed of the greens for the day. However, if you prefer to have long second putts for the remainder of the day, please skip ahead to The Third Thing To Know.

Instead, start your day by rolling putts to the fringe of the green from varying distances, let’s say 10 and 20 feet. During this warmup, consider the size and tempo of each stroke and develop a feel for which one produces the best and most consistent results. Keep in mind, putting to the fringe is not for working on mechanics, but rather getting in touch with the type of surface speeds you might face

that particular day. This exercise will create an awareness that develops a player’s touch and enhances their capture speed.

Capture speed is the pace at which a ball is rolling and can still fall into the hole. Putts traveling faster as the ball approaches the cup reduces the cups’ effective size. Conversely, a putt traveling

slower as the ball approaches the cup increases the cup’s effective size and improves the chances of holing the putt.

Our goal is to make the cup as big as we can because it just improves the odds of making the putt. But how fast is too fast? Can you hit a putt too slowly? Instead of thinking about speed control as

drudgery, start accepting that speed control is your opportunity to walk into a casino and tip the odds in your favor. Why wouldn’t you want to do that all the time?

THE THIRD THING YOU NEED TO KNOW

“Picking a good target is the first phase of being a great putter.”

— Mark Sweeney Founder of AimPoint Green Reading Technologies

READ

For a lot of people, the concept of reading greens is presently guesswork and can be one of the primary causes why players have developed issues with their putting stroke. Most golfers have relied on their caddie or anecdotal tips like “it breaks away from the mountain” or “it breaks towards the ocean” and give an overwhelming amount of credit to grain and wind. While the latter two do have

some influence, our golf ball is very smart and doesn’t pay much attention to the surrounding scenery. It only knows the surface it is rolling across and reacts to that.

Consider this story about Mark, your weekend golfer who typically shoots in the low 80s in his friendly game. When he arrives on the putting green prior to his morning round, he drops three balls

on the green about 12 feet from a cup. The putt is slightly downhill and has a moderate left to right break. He aims at the left edge of the cup and hits his first putt. It misses seven inches right. It is just his warm up, so he rakes another ball and aims at the same spot again. This time, it goes in. The third one also pours in over the edge. What changed?

Mark doesn’t realize it at this point, but he actually manipulated his second and third putts to allow for the extra break he didn’t realize was there. Why is this subconscious adjustment an issue? Because Mark didn’t pick a relevant target, he is teaching himself to putt with a closed face on left to right breaking putts. He is going to face a significant conflict later in the day when he needs to make a flat putt to win the match, but more on that when we further discuss coaching and needing to

adapt to a changing environment.

This scenario typifies the average golfer and shows how easy it is to get off base and develop compensations. Without selecting a relevant target, players can begin blaming any other number of issues like the stroke and speed when the hot streaks become farther and fewer between.

If that story is not compelling enough for you, just remember how you felt the last time you stood over a six foot putt and didn’t know which way it was about to break because you couldn’t see it. Just remember the time when you absolutely wanted to make a putt for birdie or to tie a friend and it was not even close. Unsettling right?

Time to put a stop to that. Time to start reading greens proficiently. Time to start Powerful Practice.

POWERFUL PRACTICE: STARTING YOUR PUTTING JOURNEY

“Success is the sum of the small efforts repeated day in and day out.”

— Florence Taylor

It is fairly common to see players supposedly practicing their putting, whether that be prior to a round, during a practice session, or following a day of one too many misses. It is a safe assumption that the majority those players are also noted for continually searching without any particular guidance. Their feelings about their putting are often reactionary and efforts to change mechanics

are decisions founded on nothing more than pseudo science. They search and spend time without any accurate means of measuring the progress that they have made. In fact, most of that time is just a wasted effort marred by a chaotic compilation of false methodologies and isms.

The jumbled entanglement of block and random practice has little structure and even less meaning

to the areas a player truly needs to improve. We will outline what each of these types of practices are and how they can benefit you in a future piece, but for the immediate future, consider that your practice sessions will be Powerful Practice. In the coming weeks, you will receive information on how to structure, sharpen, and quantify your practice. Very conveniently, that information that reflects and produces Powerful Practice will link directly back to The Putting Priorities and The

Putting Tree.

It is clear that the greater percentage of golfers spend time on other aspects of the game rather than putting. This concept of Powerful Practice is not a vain plea to spend more time practicing putting. Instead, the goal of Powerful Practice is to make the existing time you spend on your putting more

effective. As the quotation at the beginning of the chapter suggests, now is the time to start making the commitment to actual improvement rather than merely spending time putting.

All golfers have a finite amount of time to invest in their games. Consider the small efforts you are making to see that birdie putt drop. Your improvement does not need to consist of lengthy practice

sessions to improve, but will have structure and measurable ways to allow you to verify your progress. You have 3 Things to Know. Now, it’s time to do something with them.

Together, we’re going to fill out The Putting Tree and start your journey.

WHAT’S NEXT?

You are probably wondering how we’re going to fill out The Putting Tree and get you the information that you need to start making more putts. Like all of the offerings from Preston’s Putting, there is a plan to help you along the way. A series of videos and introducing new concepts, techniques, will highlight some of the additional layers in The Putting Tree. Beyond that, you will gain insight about what is required of a player willing to make changes, little known information about improving, and

be provided with ways to measure your progress through interactive drills and games to keep you engaged throughout the improvement journey. You will have a new perspective on what is important to your putting and how to make the changes you’ve always wanted.

MAKING YOUR EXPERIENCE THE MOST EFFECTIVE

Like with any process, the commitment level directly impacts those results. The golfers that make

the small efforts day in and day out will see the greatest improvement as they create, develop, and own their putting. As future videos will further explain, the concept of a dynamic blend will assist you in that process.

The great part about putting is that a fair amount of your practice can be done in the comfort of your

home. The tools that you will need to assist with feedback and training are easily acquired through my site by just contacting me via e-mail. This is the first step in the journey. Get ready to get better and welcome to Preston’s Putting!

AFTERWORD

Since this is my first official publication, it wouldn’t be complete without properly thanking those that have helped me along the way.

Mom and Dad, you’ve always been supportive of my endeavors since I started playing this game with a spatula and a plastic ball at six months old. Thank you for being the guiding forces, sounding

board, and most importantly, keeping me focused on what’s really important in life. It always has and always will be about the man I’m going to be someday. Thank you for helping me better myself each and every day.

Don, thank you for taking me under your wing. This industry has more than its fair share of volatility

for young professionals. You have helped me navigate those challenges, provided an opportunity, and allowed me to flourish both personally and professionally. The mentorship that you provide on a daily basis is remarkable. This is just the beginning of building something pretty spectacular.

David, talk about learning from one of the game’s best and brightest. You have shared so much with

me over the years beyond just putting. More golf professionals should strive to deliver the excellence that you offer so many people on a daily basis. I think we both know what’s in store in future years.

Mario, you have taught me a whole lot about golf, life, friendships, and life. Yes, life twice, because me being kind to me is a pretty important idea. Fact of the matter is, none of this happens if you

don’t take the time that night at a Fayetteville restaurant to set me straight about instruction and coaching. Means a lot to have a friend like you there for me. Cheers to always keeping the good meal streak in tact!

The Brain Trust, you know who you are. Thank you for always answering late night messages,

offering advice, and realizing that when I ask for a five minute phone call, it is usually a much larger multiple of five.

Deron and Susan, thank you for the graphics and logo. That extra touch is a pretty big deal. Couldn’t have done it without you both.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Preston Combs began his collegiate career at Methodist University in Fayetteville, NC. There, he majored in Business Administration with a concentration in PGA Golf Management. After graduating in 2011, Preston

first entered the golf industry as a Class A PGA Professional and studied under some of the game’s top instructors.

His main area of expertise in putting separates him as

both players and coaches seek to learn more about his coaching tactics, dissemination of information, and application of technical data. Teaching certifications

include Flatstick Academy Level 2, AimPoint Green Reading, SAM PuttLab Level 3, and use of top tier technology to help players create, develop, and own their putting. Preston was awarded the 2018

Southern California PGA Northern Chapter Teacher of the Year award.

Preston joined the team at Don Parsons Golf Instruction in Santa Barbara, CA in January 2016 as the Lead Coach. The mentorship opportunity in conjuncture with building his own business is just a step in the process of becoming one of the world’s foremost authorities on putting coaching.

He can be contacted through his website at www.PrestonsPutting.com or followed on Instagram using the handle @PrestonsPutting.

3 THINGS TO KNOW