Three-putting raises ire of game’s elite

The two words that most furrow a PGA Tour player’s face into a frown are

Nothing disgusts golf’s best players more than needing a trio of taps to get the ball in the hole.

The pros simply are not accustomed to three-putting. A few years ago, Swede Fredrik Jacobson went 542

holes without one. There was one Jack who particularly hated to three- jack. Jack Nicklaus used to go eight to 10 tournaments without three- putting. And when it finally happened, the Golden Bear could barely bear it.

“I hated three- putting,” Nicklaus said before this month’s Memorial Tournament. “It was just stupidity.”

A majority of highhandicap players would call it something else: normal. It is nothing for the weekend golfer to three- putt a halfdozen times during an 18- hole round. That partly explains why amateurs enjoy watching the U. S. Open, which begins today at Erin Hills in Wisconsin.

If the ability to avoid three- putting is one of the main separators between tour players and everyone else, then the U. S. Open is one of the biggest equalizers.

The typically hard and difficult greens at Open sites make the ultra- talented “them” look like the whack- andhack “us.” The pros show up at America’s national championship every June prepared to step into a cold shower of shock that washes over them on the greens. It is like washing their hair with ice water — wince and repeat.

“It’s probably one of my least favorite things to do,” two- time major championship winner Zach Johnson said of three- putting. “And three- putting for double bogey is the worst.”

Erin Hills’ greens might not be as diabolical as some other former U. S. Open courses, including Oakmont, which hosted last year’s championship on its slick, tabletop greens.

Two years ago, the carpets at Chambers Bay were condemned as shag. But this week’s putting contest won’t be a pushover, either, prompting players to be extra mindful of getting their first putts close enough to the hole to relieve pressure for the second attempt.

Nicklaus, who won four U. S. Opens, benefited from a bettersafe- than- sorry approach to putting. If he had to miss, Nicklaus preferred coming up short to going past the cup.

“Arnold ( Palmer) was a charge putter. ( Tom) Watson was a charge putter. And when you do that you’re going to make more of the first ones, but you’re going to miss some and leave more coming back, and when you do your nerves are always on call,” Nicklaus said. “To me, distance is a lot more important than accuracy with putting. If you can put the ball somewhere around the hole, you walk up and tap in and that isn’t very stressful. I tried to take the stress out of the game.”

The U. S. Open being the ultimate stress producer, pro Harold Varner III believes the key to avoiding three- putts is to focus on the first putt more than any other.

“Three- putting is not so much wrapped up in missing the 3- footers,” he said. “It’s more the guy blew his first one by 10 feet and now he has to grind on a 10- footer. It’s the putt before that causes the three- putt.”

Jacobson believes tour players distinguish themselves from amateurs on the greens because of proper pace.

“Amateurs come up short one time and long the next,” he said. “Out here on tour you see everybody with pretty similar pace.”

That’s not always true at the Open, which tends to separate the great putters from the good ones.

“All the best putters have the best touch,” Varner said. “You don’t have to have the best stroke, necessarily. It’s like bowling. You don’t have to grip it the right way … but it’s the guy who can make the ball do what he wants to.”

That is, if Erin Hills lets him. Stay tuned. Three-putts await.