Counterweighting: What it is, and how it will help you make more putts

Welcome to Part III of my totally unplanned three-part series on putting – counterweighting.

After the introduction to my review of the Stability Shaft turned into its own article on why putting is hard, and after spotlighting how counterweighting the putter I had rebuilt with that fancy new shaft helped bring back the feel I was accustomed to, I figured I owed it to my audience to expand on the advantages of counterweighting.

In this article I will explain, without, I hope, sounding too much like a science fair exhibitor, the physical effect that counterweighting your putter has on its performance, and why adding weight to the grip of your putter can help you make more putts.

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First, let’s talk about MOI

MOI, or moment of inertia, refers to an object’s resistance to rotation, and is a function of the distribution of mass. It is measured with respect to an axis of rotation, which is an imaginary line that passes through the object’s center of mass (commonly referred to as center of gravity, or CG.) The higher an object’s MOI, the greater the amount of force required to make it rotate; and the greater the force that is required to rotate an object, the more stable it is. As you can imagine, stability is a desirable trait in a putter.

MOI is a term that is bandied about quite a bit in connection with the design of putters, but it is usually spoken of in connection with the club head, not the entire club. The MOI of a putter’s club head is measured with respect to a vertical line through the club head’s CG. Move material away from the CG and the MOI goes up, reducing the club head’s tendency to twist around the vertical axis; that is, making it more stable.

Stability about the vertical axis is a good thing in a putter because it helps the face remain square to the swing path, which in turn helps to ensure that the ball comes off the club face in the intended direction. Putter designs have been taking advantage of this physical property ever since Karsten Solheim hit upon the idea of moving material to the heel and toe of a conventional blade putter, creating the ubiquitous Anser-style putter.

Coming to grips with moment of inertia

Stepping away from the putter’s club head, let’s look at the other end of the club – the grip. Putter grips typically range in weight from 50-55 grams to upwards of 124 grams – a fraction of the weight of the club head; the shaft connecting the two weighs, on average, about 110 grams or so.

In a hypothetical “typical putter” – thirty-five inches long, with a 350-gram Anser-style head, a shaft that weighs 110 grams, and a mid-range grip of about 60 grams – the total mass comes to 520 grams; a little over a pound. Nearly 70% of that mass is concentrated in the club head – the last inch of the total length of the putter – skewing the balance point, which is the CG of the full club, well down toward the head.

Add some weight at the opposite end of the club, in the grip, and the balance point moves closer to the grip – not by a lot, but it only takes a small amount to make a noticeable change in the way the club feels in your hands, especially in motion. But… while adding weight to the grip end of the club does affect the balance point, it is the effect on the club’s moment of inertia, its resistance to rotation about that balance point, that is the point.

It’s all about that mass – and where it’s at

Think of it this way: if you took a plain putter shaft and put the combined weight of the head and the grip of our hypothetical “typical putter” in the middle of the shaft, it would require little effort to rotate the shaft in a circle, like an airplane’s propeller, by holding it in the middle and rotating your wrist. Take that same mass (equivalent to about ten golf balls, by the way), divide it evenly in two and put the two masses at the ends of the shaft, like a barbell, and it would take much more effort to rotate that configuration – by my calculations, a bit over 10 times as much. 

Now think about what happens when mass is added to the grip end of a putter. With the mass more widely distributed toward the ends of the club, it has less tendency to rotate about the center of balance; it is more stable – like the “barbell” configuration in our example. Imagine hanging the “barbell” vertically by one end, and moving it through a putting stroke – with the mass so widely distributed to the ends of the shaft, the ends of the shaft move together, almost as one.

By spreading the main mass concentrations further apart along the length of the putter, increasing the moment of inertia, the putter moves more uniformly both backward and forward in the stroke, with less tendency for the grip to lead the club head. More stable, more consistent, motion means less lag, less head wobble, a more consistent strike in terms of both direction and speed – and as a result, better control of both line and pace.

When I transplanted the counterweighted shaft from my Odyssey Tank Cruiser into the club head of my bargain-bin Tight Lies putter, that 30-gram weight (plus a bit more for the threaded fitting in the end of the shaft) transformed a pretty good putter into a really good putter – more stable, and more consistent. Similarly, when I fitted the Stability Shaft in the re-shafted Odyssey putter with the 50-gram Super Stroke weight kit, I regained the smooth consistency that I had missed when the putter first came back with the new shaft. 

What’s the bottom line? Counterweighting works

The change in moment of inertia that is realized by adding 50 or even 30 grams of weight to the grip end of a putter makes a noticeable change in the feel of the putter in your hands – and has a positive effect on the level of control you have over the strike you put on the ball.

The result? Better control of ball speed, better control of direction – and all other things being equal, more putts made.

The Stability Shaft – how good for your game is a high-tech, multi-material putter shaft?

As I mentioned in my previous post – Putting is hard – but you already knew that, right? –  I bring years of experience as a mechanical engineer, and a naturally skeptical nature, to the task of reviewing and evaluating golf equipment. I am very critical of the performance claims that equipment manufacturers make for their latest design innovation, and I subject them to close scrutiny. Putters seem to be the worst offenders when it come to gibberish tech-speak, but many golfers still seem to eat it up.

Because of the difficulty of putting and the irrecoverable nature of poor performance on the greens, club manufacturers seem to be constantly introducing some new high-tech innovation that will help golfers improve their putting. Sometimes it’s a training aid, sometimes it’s a design tweak to the putter itself, but it seems as though there is always something new coming down the pike when it comes to putters.

The latest high-tech innovation to come to putters is the Stability Shaft, from Breakthrough Golf Technology, with the involvement of well-known golf club pioneer Barney Adams, the inventor of metal fairway “woods” – the original Tight Lies clubs. While I will admit that this is a fairly new approach – little has been done with putter shafts over the years – the needle of my skepticism meter started twitching as soon as I read the ad copy on their website.

Wait, it does what?

The four-part, multi-material Stability Shaft is made up of a carbon-fiber composite tube, which forms the grip end and most of the length of the shaft; an aluminum insert placed inside the carbon-fiber tube at its lower end to “reinforce flexural rigidity”; and a 7075 aluminum alloy connector which adapts the upper end of the shaft to the conventional stainless steel tube which mates with the putter head.

The main structure of the shaft is described as “Eight layers of high-modulus carbon fiber specifically layered, wrapped and widened, with a no-taper design to greatly reduce torque.” This statement makes little or no sense in terms of mechanical attributes of the structure, or the functional requirements of this portion of the putter shaft. The little loading, either in bending or in torque, that a putter shaft experiences is concentrated at the other end of the shaft, where it is joined to the putter head.

Regarding the aluminum insert, their ad copy says, “Through finite element analysis a light-weight, 22-gram aluminum insert was developed and precisely located to reinforce flexural rigidity.” (“Flexural rigidity” is an oxymoron, by the way.) If the high-tech “high-modulus carbon-fiber” main body of the shaft is so precisely designed to resist deformation due to torque loading (which is what they really mean by “…a no-taper design to greatly reduce torque”), why are they adding half the weight of a golf ball near the middle of the shaft to increase rigidity?

Another claim for the Stability Shaft is that it “…delivers the face squarer at impact for improved accuracy and solid feel…”. The forces acting on a putter are low at impact, even lower during the swing. The rigidity and stability of a putter shaft is concerned with forces that are substantially less than those encountered in a full swing club, so what forces do the designers of this shaft feel are acting to deform the shaft of a putter during the swing? The only rotation experienced by the putter face will be the result of rotation of the entire club, caused by variability in the player’s grip, and arm and hand movement.

Fancy data says what?

The website for Breakthrough Golf Technology offers a pair of graphs which are said to show the velocity of the heel and toe of a putter with a standard steel shaft and with the Stability Shaft. Represented as showing toe and heel velocity at a data rate of 2,500 frames per second, based on the “Frame Number” scale along the bottom of the graph, they depict a little over 1/10th of a second in the motion of the putter, about 3/4ths of which is before impact. The lines for toe and heel are fairly uniform preceding impact (though apparently offset, which must be for clarity, to differentiate between the two, because unless the putter is moving through an arc, they should be moving at the same rate), but after impact the graph for a “Standard Steel Shaft” shows significant deviation of the two lines from each other, represented as a difference in velocity between the heel and toe. The graph for the putter with the Stability Shaft shows much more uniform velocities for the heel and toe, ramping up again evenly after the expected drop at impact.

Putter with a standard steel shaft

Putter with the Stability Shaft

Leaving aside the other questions which these graphs raise (the unlabeled velocity scale, for example, and the lack of information about how the data was gathered), what value is there in uniform velocity between heel and toe, if indeed that is what is actually being depicted, AFTER impact? If the ball is no longer in contact with the club face, no movement that the club face undergoes has any effect on the motion of the ball.

The amount of time represented in the graphs after impact, again, based on the frame number scale along the bottom, is approximately 4/100ths of a second. The changes in velocity depicted on the graph – which are not quantified – occur in a very short timeframe, and there is no information offered as to the magnitude of the displacement which these “velocity changes” represent. If the concern is the squareness of the club face, it is obvious that the relative displacement, therefore the relative positions, of the heel and toe of the club would be of concern.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

The more I looked at and thought about the data that these graphs are supposed to represent, the more I came to be convinced that these graphs must depict vibration in the club head measured at the heel and toe ends, not the velocity of the heel and toe of the club head.

The graph for the steel shaft before impact shows tight, consistent data for the heel and toe, with after-impact data that is consistent with undamped vibration in a rigid material, such as a high-strength stainless steel shaft. The graph for the Stability Shaft depicts slightly less-regular behavior before impact compared to the steel shaft data, and a well-damped behavior afterwards. The latter is consistent with a system which contains a vibration-damping component such as a wound carbon-fiber tube.

How I evaluated the Stability Shaft

My experience with the Stability Shaft is based on the conversion of my Odyssey Tank Cruiser blade putter. Before sending it off to the people at Breakthrough Golf Technology, I swapped out the counterweighted original shaft (because I would not be getting it back) for the plain steel shaft from (ironically…) an old Tight Lies stainless steel blade putter. The Tight Lies received the counter-weighted shaft from the Odyssey.

Needless to say, when I got the Odyssey back with the Stability Shaft installed, it felt much different. Not bad, necessarily, but different. The balance was off, for instance, without the counterweight, and I noticed that the head was a bit wobbly in the take-away as a result. In order to make this as complete a test I could, after a few weeks of using the club as-is I decided to remedy that situation.

A trip to a local golf shop netted me a 50-gram counterweight kit for Super Stroke putter grips. Even though I don’t use that type of grip, I was able to install it securely in the grip end of the re-shafted Odyssey – and it transformed the putter’s performance.

Counter-weighting increases the inertial moment of the putter (its resistance to rotation) along the long axis from grip to club head, stabilizing the club during the takeaway and the down swing (such as it is with a putter.) I had noticed the difference with the Odyssey when I first got it, installing the grip counterweight after having used the club for over a year with no weight in the grip, and I noticed it in the Odyssey Mk II (as I am referring to it) with the Stability Shaft. I now own two counter-weighted putters – the Odyssey Tank Cruiser with the Stability Shaft, and the old Tight Lies which inherited the Odyssey’s original shaft – and frankly, it has become a toss-up which one I put into the bag when I play.

In conclusion

Unlike the folks at BGT, I don’t have high-speed video, or sophisticated data-gathering equipment of any kind, at my disposal with which to evaluate clubs – only my eyes, ears, and hands. What they told me over a few weeks of using my re-shafted Odyssey putter is that the Stability Shaft is not a miracle solution to anyone’s putting woes, whatever they may be.

My knowledge and engineering experience told me that the claims that are made in their advertising copy are suspect, and the time I spent with the re-shafted putter showed that, at best, after becoming accustomed to the altered swing weight of the putter, I was no worse off than I had been before. Further modifying the club with the grip end counter-weight improved the swing stability of the “Odyssey Mk II” – which reinforces what I had previously learned about counter-weighting, but did not substantiate any of BGT’s claims.

So – if you have the spare cash to drop $200 on a putter shaft, and really want to explore the option, you may find that the Stability Shaft feels right in your hands, and with your swing; but if a putter with the Stability Shaft works better for you, it’s more about balance and feel that works with your particular stroke than it is about any of the performance claims that Barney Adams and the people at Breakthrough Golf Technology are making.

Putting is hard – but you already knew that, right?

I am a mechanical engineer with 37 years of experience in mechanical design, analysis, and test. I am also a born skeptic – and I bring both my skepticism and my engineering experience to bear when I review and evaluate golf equipment.

One of the prime targets of my skepticism is putters. I believe that there is more hype, misinformation, wishful thinking, and utter nonsense attendant upon the design and use of the last club in the bag than the other 13 clubs put together. You know why? Because putting is hard, and as it is the end of the process of getting the ball from the tee to the hole, errors made with the putter are unrecoverable.

Think about it. Hit an errant drive, and as long as you can find the ball, and play it, you have a chance of recovering with a good second shot. Dump your approach shot into a greenside bunker, and if you are handy with a wedge you still have a chance at getting up and down for par. But blow a putt, or two, and your score on the hole is heading into “plus” numbers – no quarter asked, none given. There is no recovery from bad putting – it’s do-or-die, make it or go home.

“The devoted golfer is an anguished soul who has learned a lot about putting, just as an avalanche victim has learned a lot about snow.”

   – Dan Jenkins

And putting demands a level of precision that is not required from tee-to-green shots. Sure, you want good placement in the fairway off the tee, and you’d like to be able to do better than just get it somewhere on the green with your approach – but your target with the putter is 4-1/4 inches in diameter – just over 2-1/2 times the size of the ball. Which means that the level of accuracy that is required when putting is orders of magnitude greater than with any other shot on the course.

Consider this: When facing a 10-foot putt on a dead flat, level surface, a deviation of only 1° in the face angle of the putter at impact introduces an aiming error equal to half the diameter of the hole – the difference, all other things being equal, between missing and making the putt. 

A successful putt requires the golfer to match ball speed with the proper line, and then deliver the ball properly on that line. Given the “speed” of the putting surface – that is, the level of resistance it offers the rolling golf ball – there is a minimum ball speed that will get the ball to the hole, and a range beyond the minimum within which the ball will go into the hole and not bounce or lip out.

To further complicate matters, this speed varies depending upon how close to center the ball is when it gets to the hole. A ball traveling at a speed which allows it to fall into the hole on a dead-center hit may lip out if it arrives at the hole off-center. The more off-center, the slower the ball must be moving when it encounters the edge of the hole.

And then there’s slope. Greens are rarely flat, so the ball must be started on a tangential vector which will allow it to follow the curving path that ends at the hole. The faster the ball is going, the less it responds to the curvature of the putting surface, so when determining the aiming line for a putt, the golfer must decide what combination of ball speed and path will deliver the ball to the hole within the range of speed which will allow it to fall into the hole.

Add to the equation the fact that to get the ball into the hole you have to roll it across a living, and highly variable, surface. It’s not flat, and the amount of resistance which it offers the ball can differ from green to green, even from yard to yard on the green, and throughout the day as weather conditions change.

Suffice it to say that the difficulty, variability, and unforgiving nature of putting drives golfers a little crazy. The average golfer owns from one to five putters (and not a few own ten or more), and there are probably more different kinds of gadgets designed to improve your putting stroke and your ability to read line and speed than there are for any other part of the game.

Manufacturers sense the desperation that golfers feel when it comes to putting, and regularly introduce new innovations that are ballyhooed as game-changers, accompanied by testimonials, plaudits, and masses of quasi-technical lingo that is often just marketing bumf. Different face materials are touted to “improve feel” or “increase responsiveness”. Tweaks to the placement of the alignment mark promise to help you zero in on your preferred line better, or grooves on the face are claimed to put correcting spin on the ball and actually curve it back toward the hole.

The bottom line on putters, as far as I am concerned, is that it all comes down to what feels good to you. Try before you buy. Try every putter in the store, then go to another store and try some more. Get fitted by one or another of the high-end custom putter makers if that suits you, but in the end, figure out what putter feels best in your hand, and works best with your natural stoke. That’s the putter that will work best for you.

And then all you have to do is master the art – and it is an art – of reading line and speed, and you will start making more putts. Simple, right?

70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship coming to Poppy Hills GC

The golf courses in the Del Monte Forest are no strangers to championship events. Pebble Beach and Spyglass Hill, and the private courses, Cypress Point and Monterey Peninsula Country Club, have hosted PGA Tour and Champions Tour events, and Pebble Beach Golf Links has hosted several national championships – five U.S. Opens, and four U.S. Amateur Championships.

Poppy Hills, the home of the Northern California Golf Association – the largest regional golf association in the United States, and the only one to have its own home course – has been in the mix, too. In addition to the NCGA’s own state and local championship events, Poppy Hills was for many years one of the host courses for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and currently co-hosts the Champions Tour’s First Tee Open (presented by PURE Insurance.) In a few weeks from now, July 16 – 21, the NCGA’s flagship course will host a USGA championship of its own – the 70th U.S. Junior Girls’ Championship.

The Northern California Golf Association (NCGA) will host its first national championship when the 70th U.S. Girls’ Junior Chanpiosnhip comes to Poppy Hills GC July 16–21, 2018.

The Girls’ Junior, which is a showcase for the Curtis Cup, Solheim Cup, and LPGA stars of the future, last visited Central California in 2012. That year’s event saw current LPGA stars such as Ariya Jutanagarn, Lydia Ko, and Minjee Lee playing for the Glenna Collett-Vare trophy at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City. The tournament has been played on the Monterey Peninsula before, in 1952 at Monterey Peninsula Country Club, when future World Golf Hall of Fame member Mickey Wright, then 17 years old, was the champion. Next month at Poppy Hills some of women’s golf’s stars of years to come will certainly be in the field.

Renovated Poppy Hills course is ready for a championship

When qualifying concludes on June 28th, a field of 156 girls up to the age of 18 will be headed for the Monterey Peninsula to contest their national championship on the beautifully renovated Poppy Hills course.

The course closed in March 2013 for a complete makeover, reopening in April 2014 after a 13-month-long renovation. Completely sand-capped to improve drainage, the course also received a state-of-the-art irrigation control system for more efficient water use. Native areas were restored, eliminating 25 acres that were previously irrigated turf to reduce water requirements. Water hazards were reduced or eliminated, some holes were realigned, and many of the greens significantly revamped.

Later that year, once the renovation was firmly in place, the NCGA approached the USGA about the possibility of hosting a national championship on the now “firm, fast, and fun” course, and in 2015 were selected to host this event. Planning for the tournament began in 2016.

Expect a different look than the Poppy Hills you play

The course will play a bit differently for the tournament than day-to-day players are used to. The nines were flipped after a couple of years’ experience with the new layout, improving pace of play by eliminating the backups that occurred on the then-front nine, which has an early run of difficult holes.

Tracy Parsons, the USGA’s tournament director for the event, first walked the course with the original order in place.

“The very first time that I came on this golf course, the First Tee was here, and that’s the way that I walked the course, that’s the way that I began preparing, and that’s the way that I envisioned the championship being played. When the NCGA flipped the nines I started walking the golf course the opposite way…and it didn’t make much sense to me for our championship.”

“When we go to match play we go to a single-tee start, and I’d like to have the crowd around the first tee for all the players. It obviously makes more sense for us to have it (the first tee) right here (near the clubhouse), and to have both the finishing holes right there as well. In match play, obviously some of our matches won’t make it to the 18th hole, and some of those holes on the front nine are so key to the round that I don’t want to skip them. The way that the routing was originally works in our best interests for the championship. I understand why they (the NCGA) flipped it for regular play, but for our purposes I think it makes the most sense to stick with the original routing.”

A record 1,609 entries were received for this year’s event, 103 more than in 2017. Forty sites around the country are hosting qualifying tournaments, where 140 girls (156-player field minus 16 exempt players) will advance to the championship event at Poppy Hills. They will play the course to a par of 71, at a length of 6,182 yards.

These Girls Are Good

Entry into the championship requires that the player carry a handicap of -9.4 or better.

“People who have never come to the Girls’ Junior think, ‘Oh that’s so cute, with their little pigtails and their bows,’ tournament director Tracy Parsons told the media during the recent preview day, “but I think that if they were actually to come and watch these players compete – because that’s what they are, they’re competitors – they would be surprised, and in awe of what these girls can do. I think the testament to that is the fact that the USGA has recognized the level of play, and last year awarded this champion an exemption into the U.S. Women’s Open.”

A USGA review of the level of play in both the Girls’ Junior and the Junior Amateur Championship two years ago led them to raise the maximum age from 17 to 18, and also to raise the bar for the required handicap. Prior to 2017 the requirement for the Girls’ Junior was -18.4; it was slashed nearly in half to the current -9.4. In 2017 no player that advanced to the championship was above a 6.0.

For a taste of the level of competitor who will be playing in this tournament, Concord’s Yealimi Noh, 16, a member of the Junior Tour of Northern California who qualified for the championship with a 5-under 67 on the par-72 course at The Reserve at Spanos Park, in Stockton, carries a +4 handicap.

Play begins July 16, with rounds of stroke play on the 16th and 17th to trim the field down to 64 players. Single-elimination match play at 18 holes will cut the field down to an eventual two finalists squaring off for the championship, which will be decided by a 36-hole match on 21 July.

Admission to the tournament is free for spectators.

San Jose’s Shintaro Ban clinches U.S. Open berth

June 4 is not yet the longest day of 2018 in astronomical terms, but in the world of golf it is. “Golf’s Longest Day” – the day when 36-hole sectional qualifying tournaments for the USGA’s premier golf championship event, the United States Open, are held in ten U.S. locations and two more overseas.

Shintaro Ban, of San Jose, steps in to retrieve his ball after making an eagle on the par-five 18th hole at Lake Merced Golf Club in the June 4, 2018 U.S. Open sectional qualifying tournament. The two-foot putt clinched his spot in the field for the 118th United States Open, next week at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, on Long Island. (photo by author)

It falls on the same day every year – the Monday two weeks before Fathers Day – because the week of Fathers Day is traditionally the week of the U.S. Open. These sectional qualifiers are, with few exceptions, the final chance for golfers across the country and the world to earn a berth in the toughest, and arguably the most important, tournament in the game of golf.

The California venue for this final hurdle before the main event alternates between Northern California and Southern California venues, and in 2018, as in other even-numbered years, the event was held in the Bay Area, at the conveniently adjacent courses at Lake Merced Golf Club and across the lake, at the Olympic Club, on their Ocean Course.

Eighty-six players vied for six spots in the field in the 2018 U.S. Open, which is returning to the storied Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, on New York’s Long Island, for the first time since 2004. The field was split between Lake Merced’s par-72 layout, recently the venue for a new LPGA event, the LPGA Mediheal Championship, and the Olympic Club’s par-71 Ocean Course, sister course to the renowned Lake Course, itself a five-time U.S. Open venue. Going off in the morning starting at 7:00 a.m., the players completed 18-hole rounds on one course before taking a lunch break and moving to the other venue to compete another 18-hole round of golf – it’s easy to see why it’s called “The Longest Day in Golf”, right?

At the end of the day, an Arizona State college golfer, rising junior Chun An Yu, of Chinese Taipei, took medalist honors. Yu laid a crisp 6-under 65 on the Olympic Club’s Ocean Course, carding seven birdies and a lone bogey in the morning round. Taking on the Lake Merced course in breezy conditions in the afternoon round, Yu again had a lone bogey against three birdies for a two-under 70, for a total of eight-under 135.

A South Bay golfer makes the grade

San Jose’s Shintaro Ban, a well-known name to South Bay golfers, came in one stroke behind Chun An Yu, posting a seven-under 136.

Ban, a 2014 graduate of Archbishop Mitty High School in San José, also played Olympic in the morning and Lake Merced in the afternoon, knocking down four birdies and an eagle, on the par-4 sixth hole, against two bogeys for a four-under 67 in the morning round.

The eagle came as a surprise to Ban, “(I) had a hundred yards in. There were a couple of people up there, but they didn’t react and I’m like, ‘Aw, it must be close’, and  I walk up and they’re like, ‘Oh, it went in.’ ”

Ban carded another eagle in the afternoon round at Lake Merced, but it didn’t come without some troubles beforehand. “I struggled to make birdies on the front (nine) par-fives, and I really needed to take advantage of the back nine.” The 2018 UNLV grad put himself in a hole briefly in his afternoon round when a pushed drive on the 5th hole, a downhill, left-bending 399-yard par-four, landed him in a gully between the fourth and fifth fairways. His second shot, out of the gully, hit a tree, resulting in a total of four shots to reach the green, and a two-putt double-bogey. A birdie on the par-3 eighth brought him back to even par for the front nine.

Three birdies and two bogeys through seven holes on the back nine had Ban back under par for the afternoon and within range of advancement to the big show – the United States Open – next week on Long Island, but it was his performance on the final hole of the tournament that closed the deal.

The 18th hole at Lake Merced is a scenic, but problematic, par-five. It’s not the hardest hole on the course, but it is the longest, and it is distinguished by a generous helping of elevation change, dropping over 25 feet down to the lowest point in the fairway from the elevated tee box, and climbing more than double that back up to the putting green. With more than 200 yards to the flag after his drive, Ban had to take into account a climb of about 42 feet from his position in the fairway to the the left-front hole position.

“I didn’t expect to hit it to two feet.”

Lake Merced’s number 18 is a tough reach in two, so it was quite an accomplishment for Ban to place his second shot, a 5-iron from 215 yards, to within two feet of the hole. Ban’s approach shot went inside the excellent approach of playing partner Tim Widing, a USF Don who is originally from Sweden, who laid his second shot to about four feet.

Widing missed his eagle putt, a crucial error which led to him missing out on an opportunity to go to Shinnecock – at least directly. His five-under finish tied him with Edward Olson, of Aptos, California, and the two became the 1st and 2nd alternates from this event.

Ban took due care with the short but crucial putt, dropping it into the heart of the hole to close out his day at 7-under and ensure himself of a place  in the field for the 118th U. S Open.

There was a lot riding on those two eagle putts on #18. If Widing’s had dropped and Ban’s hadn’t, there would have been a five-for-four playoff, with Ban, Widing, and eventual T-3 finishers Rhett Rasmussen, of Draper, Utah; Franklin Huang, of Poway, California; and Sung Joon Park, of Irvine, California, returning to the 10th hole to battle it out for the four qualifying spots behind Chun An Yu.

Next year the U.S. Open will return to Pebble Beach Golf Links for the sixth time, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the world-famous seaside course.

Another book about Arnold Palmer? (Yes, and it’s worth a look.) ★★★★☆

Books by and about Arnold Palmer are something of a mini-industry within the world of golf publishing. Even a quick search for “Arnold Palmer” on the Amazon website yields a couple dozen titles within the first few pages of search results—the man who was golf’s greatest ambassador was easily the most written-about figure in the game. In the great library of the game of golf, only Ben Hogan comes close to this level of attention, and most of those books are volumes purporting to reveal the “secret” of his phenomenal golf game.

Chris Rodell, a golf writer who was Arnold Palmer’s neighbor for 24 years, has compiled an entertaining collection of reminiscences about golf’s greatest ambassador.

The latest volume about Arnold Palmer, entitled Arnold Palmer: Homespun Stories of The King, by Chris Rodell, is a delightful read that is sure to be appreciated by fans of the man who will always be remembered as one of America’s greatest sports figures.

Arnold and golf on television came into the American consciousness at about the same time, and the American viewing audience fell in love with the ruggedly handsome young man who played golf with a swashbuckling, go-for-broke style that endeared him to viewers all over the country, and eventually the world. It was Palmer who almost singlehandedly transformed the game of golf—in the eyes of Americans, at least—from the pastime of the white-collar denizens of stuffy, exclusive country clubs to the status of the everyman (and -woman’s) game that it has always enjoyed in its birthplace—Scotland.

Palmer’s love for the game, and for the fans who adored him, translated into commercial success that kept him among the top earners in the game years after his playing days were over, and a large part of that mutual love stemmed from the hometown appeal that he exuded.

A man like Arnold Palmer could have lived virtually anywhere he wanted, and though he had homes in Orlando, Florida and La Quinta, California, in the Palm Springs area, his birthplace of Latrobe, Pennsylvania was his true home until the end of his life. As hinted at by the title, the anecdotes that make up this book are largely hometown stories told to the author by the townsfolk who knew Palmer as Deacon’s boy, the guy who stopped in at the Youngstown Grille for breakfast or the Tin Lizzy tavern for a drink, and who played much of his golf at Latrobe Country Club.

From the way he treated people, and the way that people responded to him, you might never know that Arnold Palmer was a man who had literally dined with presidents, kings, and queens; who could, and had, played golf at the most renowned and exclusive golf courses in the world (and was a part-owner of one of the best, Pebble Beach Golf Links), or that a street, the local airport, and a few other things around town in Latrobe were named after him.

Author Chris Rodell brings considerable hometown cred to the table in writing this book of reminiscences. Rodell has himself lived in Latrobe since 1992, within walking distance of Palmer’s own home. He came to know golf’s greatest legend after first meeting him in 2001, and in 2005 was hired to go through more than a dozen legal-sized boxes of magazine and newspaper clippings detailing Mr Palmer’s life as told in publications the world over, for the purpose of compiling a timeline of the great man’s career. Throughout the process, if he had a question, all he had to do was go ask Mr Palmer—not bad, huh?

It was a level of access that is unique among the dozens, if not hundreds, of journalist and writers who have interviewed Arnold Palmer over the years, and gives this book a level of authenticity that is virtually unmatched in the canon of Palmer bio’s. If you are a golfer (or even if you are not), and a fan of Arnold Palmer, you will enjoy this book. Arnold Palmer: Homespun Stories of The King is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and if they know what’s good for them, at your local golf shop.