87 years of Putting Science

Edward Stimpson's observation in 1935 that the travel of a golf ball on a putting green could be evaluated and assigned a relative speed was the first attempt at a measurable system for putting. Stimpson's result was the invention of the Stimpmeter which is used throughout the golf world at a vast majority of golf courses to assign a relative speed value to the green surface each day of play. It’s insight is in order to help the golfer understand the varying degrees of force the golfer would have to apply to the ball in that particular setting.

The Stimpmeter results that maybe as low as 2 or as high as 13 or more, simply states that with the potential energy created by raising a the golf ball above the surface of the green in a tubular device with a notch holding the golf ball and then letting it ball fall by gravity and travel a given distance establishes how much friction the green surface creates to impede to travel of the ball. 2 feet being a very slow green and 13 feet being a very fast green.

Some 62 years later, in 1997, using the idea of friction, force and ball travel on the green surface, I began the invention and development of a quantitative system of putting a golf ball that I have now shared with the golf world in the publication of my book: "Putting By The Numbers". In the 25 years of development, use, testing and re-testing of this quantitative method, I had to be sure that this method worked on all golf courses and surfaces including greens, fringes, fairways and first cuts of rough.

After playing many golf courses all over the western world, I became increasingly convinced that this method was accurate, reliable and repeatable. The one factor that makes this method absolutely useful and beneficial to any golfer is that the method is completely LINEAR. That is the master key. The simple example of linearity is that on the surface you are putting: if the ball travels 12 feet for every inch of retraction you retract the putter before striking the ball, then if you retract the putter 3" and strike the ball it will travel 36 feet.

This is all based upon your individual power factor that is developed and defined in the book. I suppose the most interesting observation about the development of this method is that it took 87 years before a method of quantification was developed and published after the relative speed travel efforts of Edward Stimpson.