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BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Female Golfers Can't Put?



Sunday, June 11, 2006  

Female Golfers Can't Put?


Not to reawaken the now-slumbering beast, but I've had the Golf Channel on for the last 90 minutes (hey, it's this, baseball, Arena Football, or Portugal vs. Angola) while waking up and making some breakfast (2 fried eggs over toast), and I have yet to see a single woman make a put longer than 6 feet. (As if to taunt me, Se Ri Pak just rolled in a 20-footer to take the lead.)

I don't play golf anymore (I used to every summer when visiting my grandparents, but that was when I was young and had nothing but time to kill during vacation.) since it's such a tremendous time sink, but I do occasionally watch some on TV, if Tiger's winning. I never had any interest in women's golf until recently, and my attention now is solely due to Michelle Wie's quixotic quest to make the cut in a men's event. She hasn't done so in an American tournament, yet, nor has she won a women's event, but it seems inevitable that she will the latter and might the former, given that she's only 16 and already hits further and better than just about any woman alive.

Anyway, I'm watching this because Wie's playing and since she started the day just 1 off the lead. And while she can't put... neither can anyone else. I have never seen so many lipped out 6-10 footers, and any putt longer than 12 feet is just an odyssey; they're lucky if the end up within 4 feet. And this course isn't exactly the Masters; the greens aren't that fast or contoured; chips stop where they're hit, there aren't huge swells on the green that force puts to be hit 45 degrees crooked to roll down, etc.

Prior to this weekend, my impression of women's golf was that they don't have the length to play the courses as the men do, but that their short irons and putting were good enough to make up for it. So if a par 4, 420 yard hole came up, an average male pro would drive it 280, hit a medium iron to the green, and have a 20 foot put for birdie which he'd likely miss, but might make. An average woman pro on the same hole would drive 240, smash a long iron to the fringe, and have to chip it close enough to try and save par. So the man would putt (semi-makeable) for birdie and tap in for par, while the woman would chip (less-makeable) for birdie and need to make a tough 8-12 footer for par.

In fact, if this LPGA Championship is any indication, the women have plenty of length for the course, and their irons and fairway woods are quite accurate. They just can't putt. As I said, it took well over an hour before a single woman made a putt from more than "gimmie" distance, and there must have been a dozen missed 8-10 foot birdie putts. As a result, everyone bunches up with occasional birdies on par 5s or when they make a really great iron shot, but no one can pull away. There have been something like 15 golfers at -7, -6, or -5 while I've been watching. No one can pull away since no one can make a putt, but no one's collapsing either, since all the women are good enough to constantly be on the green with 2 shots to make par. Even Michelle Wie, the reason I'm watching, can't put. She had constant 8-14 foot birdies, missed every one (often lipping it out), and consistently wasted tee and fairway shots 99.9% of the golfers alive would kill for by being unable to finish off the holes.

I don't watch that much men's golf, but whenever I turn on a tournament on a boring weekend, I am guaranteed to see half a dozen amazingly long putts or chip-ins within any given half hour. The men need them too, since they're constantly scrambling to save pars or make birdies, while the women seem to never need par saves, since they're so consistently on the fairway and the greens.

I have no idea why. It's not like there's some inherent, penis-related ability to estimate the way a ball will roll over short-clipped grass, and even if there were, most of the players have male caddies to advise them. When I used to play golf with my grandparents, my granny always outputted me, and while part of that was due to her greater consistency and much shorter length with irons (she had shorter putts, since she was often chipping from just off the green), she was as accurate as I was from any random distance. Then again, I wasn't exactly on the tour myself.

So the play during today's tournament has been disappointing, but it's nothing compared to Michelle Wie's outfit. She's a budding beauty with an incredibly tall, lean body (she's like 6'2"/185cm, towering over the average height women she's competing against), and she looks great in any kind of her form-fitting Nike slacks/shirts. Today, starting near the leaders in the LPGA Championship, she chose a ghastly baby blue, sleeveless, overalls-style romper, over a long-sleeved black shirt, crowned with an orange cap that almost (but not quite) matches the fringe on her overalls-skirt. It's practically a GoFugYourself entry, and when you compare that to Tiger's trademark power red shirt on Sundays, it's clear that his fellow Nike model has a long way to go when it comes to picking out fashion that will help her intimidate when she closes out tournaments.

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The funny part, and this is what my dad always says about foul tips in baseball (Why don't they just swing 1 inch higher?) is that Wie must have run 12 long putts past the hole within 3 inches of the cup, left or right. Almost all of them stopped close enough for an easy tap in.

My solution: just have her aim 3 inches left of where she thinks she should on every putt. She'd miss half of them by 6 inches instead of 3, but she'd make half of them too, for a net gain of 3 or 4 shots per round.


 

well, I think more men are hitting putts mostly because Tiger was doing it. he knew early in his career that to make him a champion, he had to hit his putts, then spent an entire off-season working on it. And everyone works on whatever Tiger is working on.

I think the technology in golf clubs and in health has equalized the game for the genders.

There was a column about Michelle Wie saying that she's the Sasha Cohen of golf in that she's bascially sabatoging herself and can't quite finish a championship whether or not it'a women's or a men's tournament.

Every champion knows how to finish and every champion knows how to pick up the fine details (like putting) that makes them that much better than everyone else.


 

http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=2479801
I'm telling you, none of them could make putts. At least not this weekend. From the article about the tournament winner:

"Webb missed birdie putts of 4 feet and 10 feet on the final two holes and closed with a 4-under 68. Pak could have won in regulation, but she three-putted for bogey on the 18th hole and shot 69.

...Wie made three birdies in a five-hole stretch to get within one shot, but a 4-foot par putt swirled 270 degrees around the cup on the 16th, she grazed the lip with a 10-foot birdie on the 17th and she [3 putted 18] settled for a tie for fifth, two shots behind."


 

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