Short-game guru takes scientific approach

Pelz goes from NASA to links

Golf is many things to many players. It can be the game of a lifetime or a lifetime of anguish.

To Dave Pelz, golf has long been a science.

Especially the short game.

“My teaching is all based on physics and testing,” Pelz told the Journal. “It doesn’t change over the years. The ball only listens to the physics of a golf club; how a putter moves through impact and how you read greens.”

Pelz has been considered by many as one of the gurus of the short game for nearly four decades.

On Aug. 24-26, his teachings will be held at Sandia Golf Club. Each day will feature a six-hour shortgame and putting clinic.

While Pelz will not attend the session at Sandia, he said the instructors on hand “are the best shortgame instructors in the world. We train every winter and they have all been with me between 15 and 25 years (at the Dave Pelz Scoring Game School).

“They are better teachers than I am.”

Clinics begin with indoor theory presentations, then move outdoors so students can practice under the staff’s supervision.

The fee for each one-day clinic is $395. To enroll, call 800-735-9868 or visit www.pelzgolf.com.

Pelz said there will never be more than six students with an instructor at a time.

Phil Mickelson, Vijay Singh, Tom Kite and the late Payne Stewart are a few members of the PGA for whom the Pelz tolls.

Pelz’s Short Game Bible was a New York Times “national best-seller” in 1999 and he was named by Golf Digest as one of the 25 most influential instructors of the 20th Century.

Pelz, who played college golf at Indiana University, majored in physics and worked at NASA for 15 years before leaving to apply his love of physics and golf to students of the game.