80% of the missed putts in the last group were because they misread the greens.... Scary to think what numbers they would be shooting if they could read the greens properly!
I've watched too much professional golf in my lifetime -- and it seems to me that misread greens is the reason the pros miss 80 percent of the "makeable" putts not just this past week, but every week!
Mechanically speaking, most of the pros are just amazing putters.
These guys aren't good. They're ridiculously good! (Unless they're Charles Howell III leading on the back 9 Sunday. He made some horrible strokes yesterday afternoon.)
I remember when I learned how mechanically pure the PGA Tour players are. It was during the '91 Open at Hazeltine, at the 4th green, on the day my wife accompanied me to the tournament.
She was seven months pregnant at the time, and after we'd wandered the property for awhile, she needed to sit and rest.
We chose the par-3 4th, where we sat in the grandstand for a couple of hours and watched several dozen players come through. The pin was back left, tucked behind a bunker; the smart play was to the center of the green, short and right of the hole. Player after player after player left it 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 feet short and right of the hole. And then player after player after player read that putt -- and missed it by an inch to the right. I was just dumbstruck by how consistently they marginally misread the putt -- and then hit it perfectly.