The World According to Dave Pelz

The short game coach on Phil Mickelson, saving shots… and his back garden 

It’s not what you do off the tee – it’s what you do with your wedge shots 

“You have to understand, I tried to be a player – but I couldn’t make the tour. When I got out of college, I couldn’t qualify with the pros. Fifteen years after joining the NASA centre , I realised, ‘I have enough information to make better golf equipment, so I’m going to spend a year doing golf business and see if I love it’.

I loved it. I loved it when I was losing money, so I started to wonder what it would be like once I started to make money. I had three kids at the time, so I took a chance. I started making a living, and I said this is the greatest thing I have ever done, as I’m enjoying every day, doing the research, and yet I still can’t work golf out.

As much as I’ve played, I don’t understand how a man like Gay Brewer, who had a terrible golf swing, won the Masters. I said ‘Pelz, you have to study how players like Brewer, Palmer and others, who have awful golf swings mechanically, can beat players like Gene Littler, who has a wonderful, mechanical golf swing’. So, I started measuring every shot in the game and I found that the short game is the key to scoring. It’s not how you hit the ball off the tee – you have to hit it reasonably well -­­ but what matters is if you can hit your wedge shots close enough to one putt rather than two putt. That’s the main difference in the game. That’s why Lee Westwood is a great player, who will win a major, but he hasn’t yet because of his short game. If he had Phil Mickelson’s short game, he would have won ten majors, as good a player as he is. Thirty years ago, people didn’t understand this.

Every tour player now works on his short game, every club is building short game practice areas. When I was younger, if I was caught hitting a wedge onto a putting green at my club, I was fined, and threatened to be kicked out. Right now, the biggest thing I could do for amateurs, and one of the things I do at my school, is teach them to hit eight, 12, 14-yard pitch shots. When you miss a green, the most popular pitch shot is a 14-yard carry, you want to carry it 14 yards and make it bite and roll to the pin. If you can’t do that accurately, you can’t be a good player. Everybody misses greens, even the pros. Pros miss five or six greens a round, amateurs often miss them all, so they are hitting greens with wedge shots, not 4-irons. You have to learn the wedge game.”

Even if you go to ten great teachers, your game won’t necessarily get better

“The numbers are cold, hard facts, there is no arguing this. The most important real estate in golf is the distance from two feet around the hole. At two feet, the conversion rate is 100%. At three feet, it is down to 95%. At four feet, we are down to 70% and, at six feet, for amateurs, we are down to 50%. From ten feet, they miss 80% of them. You go from 100% to 20%

in eight feet, so every inch that you chip closer to the hole helps your scoring significantly. As soon as you improve your chipping to within ten feet, the scoring gets better and better, and if I get you inside of six feet, wow! You have really started to become a player.

When I was working with Ian Baker-Finch, he had a wonderful season. He won the British Open and he had the best year of his career. What he had done was spend a whole year improving his chipping from six feet to four-and-half feet. He was a wonderful putter, he holed 100% from four feet, he holed a lot from six feet… but he was better from four. That changed his career, but in some ways ruined it as well.

He came to me and said, ‘I’m going to take a year off my short game as I don’t hit it far enough.’ He was No.2 in the world but, with Greg Norman ranked No.1, he said, ‘I’ve got to hit it further’. He changed swing coaches to hit it further, then again and again. Even if you go to ten great teachers, your game is not necessarily going to get better.

Take Tiger Woods, the best player in the last 20 years. He is on his third great teacher now – if you have so many swing thoughts going on in your head, it may not be beneficial for your game. He has not quite got it back yet, but we all hope he will. I admire his game, but I want Phil to beat Tiger at his best. If there is confusion in his mind, he can’t play. He has to get his old swing out of his game and relax on his new one.”

I have the ‘greatest back yard ever built’

“I have had a wonderful career in golf. I’m living the dream life. I recently built a new home, pooling 30 years’ worth of earnings into one home. The Wall Street Journal recently called it the ‘greatest back yard ever built’. I have eight greens in my back yard. I can hit every shot imaginable within 100 yards 30 seconds from my living room. I can be hitting any short game shot in golf within one minute of whenever I want to. I can practice at any time of day or night. I still work for a living but I am really getting excited about my own game for the first time in a long time. For 40 years, I have been helping others with their game but now

I am able to start playing my own. I am now starting to hit the ball better. I cannot believe how poorly I hit it when I started back and I only used to play once or twice a year.

Due to my teaching commitments, I played so little that I was playing so badly I lost any enjoyment for playing the game. When I’m working with the best players in the world, if you can imagine criticising Phil Mickelson, and then I am going out and shooting ridiculous scores, it’s tough. My brain knows what to do but my body can’t do it! Well, that’s changing, I am starting to hit good shots, so I am getting excited for my own game whilst helping others do the same thing.

I’m helping to design different people’s backyards. I have been developing a grass with a company called SYNlawn that is really a good replication of a fairway lie. It carries directly to the golf course, unlike the old synthetic grasses. Now, we have developed a good fairway, a good rough, a good fringe, and wonderful putting surfaces that are as good as bent grass or Bermuda greens and they hold shots. I can practice my honest to God golf game in my own backyard, then I can go to the golf course and apply it and it carries over.”

I train students to putt 17” past the cup

“That’s the optimum speed of the ball at the arrival of the hole. As the ball approaches the hole, it needs to have enough speed to carry all the spike marks and footprints that are around the hole. If you carry enough speed through the footprints to the hole that is great, but the more you increase the speed, the more you are likely to get lip outs.

There is an optimum between being too slow to get into the hole and too fast that you start to get lip outs, and that is 17” past the cup. You don’t miss 17” coming back, so you need to carry your putts at the optimum speed for whatever stroke you may have. I’ve measured it, it’s true, and so I teach all my pupils, amateur or pro, to putt, on average, 17” past the cup. I penalise my students if they putt more than 34” past the hole, or if they are short of the hole, so I subconsciously train them to hit it 17” past the cup.”

You should think about the length of your swing

“The piece of data that changed my career was realising that a pro could take a wedge from 60 yards and, if he hit it 20ft left, he would be mad at himself. If he hit it right at the pin, but long by 20ft, he was happy. As a scientist, I’m saying he is pleased and disgusted with the same 20ft putt. I realised in the whole of golf the misses are left and right, the problem with the power game is direction.

As soon as you get into partial swing shots, less than a full swing with wedges, direction is good as it is a shorter more upright swing, but your distance is wrong as you are not using a 60-yard club for a 60-yard shot, but a 110-yard club that is reliant on how hard you swing.

Distance control is the issue due to having to swing half or three quarters.

If you just think about the length of your swing you will hit better wedges.

I formulated a theory that is based around how far you hit your wedges from specific lengths of swing, based around a clock system. If I learn how far I hit my 60 degree wedge from 9 o’clock downwards, it’s a shot I now have in the bag. I hit this shot 71 yards, so now I have a 71-yard club in the bag.

Phil has five wedges and several different distances for each he knows, he can hit them with his eyes shut, which is an advantage over other guys.”

Mechanics is always first, feel is second

“I am a scientist and I teach mechanics in my school, as no matter how good your touch is, if you have a bad mechanical swing you are going to be a bad player.

If you have a bad putting stroke, it doesn’t matter how good your feel is. If you can’t repeat your putting stroke mechanics, feel doesn’t matter. But, once you get good mechanics, you build feel on top of that.

Feel is a learned, experiential thing that happens. Once you find out through repetition how far a stroke will go, you can find out how to fit that into the situation you are presented with. In my world of teaching, it is mechanics first, feel second. If you can’t learn a reasonably well repeating swing, don’t even bother trying to learn touch, as it’s never going to happen. Once you havea mechanic and layer on top feel, the mechanics soon become second nature and feel becomes the sole thought.”

The easier for Phil, the tougher for Phil

“Phil is not mechanical, I have been working with him nine years now and he has solid mechanics, and now can focus on feel when he practices. When I first started working with Phil, he was great if he had to hit over or round a tree, or into a bank and check it and bounce – he was not so good with ten yards to the green without any obstacles. Phil would not engage mentally, there was no difficulty in his mind so he would just hit the shot and view it as no challenge. He was brilliant at difficult shots, but ordinary at normal shots. I started challenging him by saying, ‘You have to make this shot to make the cut’. As soon as he tried to hole the easier short game shots, the less challenging shots went from ordinary to extraordinary.”

Mickelson thinks, ‘If I can do it, I’m going to try it’

“Phil has a philosophy that he loves to challenge things. He is so competitive that he tries to do anything. I am from a world where this is a problem, as I teach people that if you can’t do something nine out of ten times, then don’t try it, especially if there is a one-stroke penalty if you are a foot short! Phil thinks, ‘If I can do it I’m going to try it – if one out of ten works, I’m going to try it’, versus me saying ‘Only try it if you can do it nine out of ten times’. In nine years, he now thinks ‘If I can do it half the time, 50%, I’m going to try it’. Of course, when the heat is on, he tends to think he can do anything. He thought he could hit his last drive on the fairway at Winged Foot, and he hit it into the tent. He was driving poorly and should have hit a 4-wood off the tee, and he would have won the US Open. He didn’t, and we are still looking for our US Open, hopefully next year. He’s a great player, I love working with him. I don’t change Phil Mickelson – he takes what he wants from my research. He is doing pretty well, he has won four majors, and hopefully he is going to win four more.”

Lee would have ten majors by now if he had Mickelson’s short game

“I know Lee Westwood. I see him at Augusta every year when I’m preparing with Phil. He knows he can win a major. He’s been close. He’s been working on his short game. I would have to measure his game and learn where his short game weaknesses are, I really don’t know what they are until I measure them. The fact he is just working on his short game is good news to me. I wish him luck every time I see him. He drives on the fairway and hits every green he needs to. His power game is great, but if he had Phil’s short game he would have won ten majors. I sincerely believe that. He may not have time in his lifetime to get to Phil’s short game level but he doesn’t have to. He has been close so many times without a good short game. So, with a reasonably good one, he won’t struggle to win majors.”

• THIS INTERVIEW FIRST APPEARED IN ISSUE 119 OF BUNKERED

Bryce Ritchie is the Editor of bunkered and, in addition to leading on content and strategy, oversees all aspects of the brand. The first full-time journalist employed by bunkered, he joined the company in 2001 and has been editor since 2009. A member of Balfron Golfing Society, he currently plays off nine and once got a lesson from Justin Thomas’ dad.

Editor of bunkered