How to putt like Chad Thundercock

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I can't find the thread where you were playing courses but I want YOU to do one. It's called eagle point. It is yavapai point but with some changes, mostly anti thundercock stuff. Ive upped the ante a little since you destroyed it. I am requesting you play high winds in the southeast direction on pin 4. This does a few things both for and against your round, including making the par 5 18 driveable, I bet you won't thundercock the alb putt. Let me know if/when you go live I want to watch you suffer

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Somehow I missed this post, which is a shame since it’s my horrific putting that was the catalyst for the training video. I definitely need to watch this and practice it! I’ll report back with my findings.

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Can’t wait to try this! Makes sense on video, but can I do it in reality?

[echomike2]

Thank You, the approach needs work but this is something to work on. I have noticed this every now on then but did not apply it!

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Dec 25, 2018 23:26:28 GMT -5 VctryLnSprts said:

Can’t wait to try this! Makes sense on video, but can I do it in reality?

It's worth testing it out in the designer to get a feel for how the ball behaves with a firmer downswing stroke. I'm actually surprised how quickly others have been getting positive results from this, I personally think it needs mulligan drills in the designer to really become confident with it but some people seem to get the feel straight away.  

daviddlee in particular has picked up the technique nicely, his putting is really good - I just watched his web stream for this week and there were several putts that I know most players would see and think "hmmmm, he's not aiming far enough here..." but he used a nice firm stroke and more often than not the ball travelled smoothly into the hole. Here's a great example I clipped from that stream, quite a severe-looking break especially at the beginning, but David aimed for less break than you'd think (maybe 60%(?) as far as most people would aim for I reckon), hit it firmly and it never looked like missing :

twitch.tv/wooitv/clip/SoftSplendidCurlewSmoocherZ

[daviddlee]

It’s worth noting there are poor ways to execute this as well. 2nd round par 5 on front 9 I had a putt for eagle and ended with an 8. Do the math, that’s 6 putts and my worst ever. Happy cocking

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Dec 24, 2018 12:22:41 GMT -5 ohheycat said:

I can't find the thread where you were playing courses but I want YOU to do one. It's called eagle point. It is yavapai point but with some changes, mostly anti thundercock stuff. Ive upped the ante a little since you destroyed it. I am requesting you play high winds in the southeast direction on pin 4. This does a few things both for and against your round, including making the par 5 18 driveable, I bet you won't thundercock the alb putt. Let me know if/when you go live I want to watch you suffer

Ha, that sounds like quite a challenge, I'll give it a bash tomorrow

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Dec 26, 2018 17:38:33 GMT -5 daviddlee said:

It’s worth noting there are poor ways to execute this as well. 2nd round par 5 on front 9 I had a putt for eagle and ended with an 8. Do the math, that’s 6 putts and my worst ever. Happy cocking

Ha Yeah it's always possible to screw it up, but if the long term EV from thundercocking is, say, 2 more putts per round than you normally make with gentle dead weight putts, it's worth taking the hit on the occasional disaster.

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Early results of my thundercocking sessions is very positive. I played a practice round at a course that Terry Grayson is designing and I shot -9 with two bogeys, and the bogeys were actually on the front nine from 3-putts where my thundercock was just too strong. I really like the method, and basically the biggest adjustment now is learning new putting lines so I don't borrow as much on the slope. I hope to report additional positive results soon!

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Dec 24, 2018 12:22:41 GMT -5 ohheycat said:

I can't find the thread where you were playing courses but I want YOU to do one. It's called eagle point. It is yavapai point but with some changes, mostly anti thundercock stuff. Ive upped the ante a little since you destroyed it. I am requesting you play high winds in the southeast direction on pin 4. This does a few things both for and against your round, including making the par 5 18 driveable, I bet you won't thundercock the alb putt. Let me know if/when you go live I want to watch you suffer

Here you go, sorry I didn't sound too enthusiastic but as I mention in the video I'm hungover this morning. I think you may have gone a touch too far with the punishment on this course to be honest, although my perception may be skewed somewhat due to feeling like death...

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Dec 27, 2018 7:24:26 GMT -5 @larrymalone said:

Dec 24, 2018 12:22:41 GMT -5 ohheycat said:

I can't find the thread where you were playing courses but I want YOU to do one. It's called eagle point. It is yavapai point but with some changes, mostly anti thundercock stuff. Ive upped the ante a little since you destroyed it. I am requesting you play high winds in the southeast direction on pin 4. This does a few things both for and against your round, including making the par 5 18 driveable, I bet you won't thundercock the alb putt. Let me know if/when you go live I want to watch you suffer

Here you go, sorry I didn't sound too enthusiastic but as I mention in the video I'm hungover this morning. I think you may have gone a touch too far with the punishment on this course to be honest, although my perception may be skewed somewhat due to feeling like death...

Looks good. You definitely identified the 2 hardest holes correctly. You really have to hit driver on the long par 4 to have a shot at birdie. In exchange for a big ask on the tee shot, there is virtually no trouble besides the trees. The par 3 is what it is. I personally don't have a problem with a par hole here and there. I was kind of bummed you didn't look to the green on the 18th. I was really looking forward to your albatross putt

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*** Update to the OP, quoted below. Shouting out to those who I know have tried the method out already so they can see this, apply it and take their scoring to the next level: VctryLnSprts, daviddlee, ABU_Bear, toddfather, Tenahka, ohheycat, mayday_golf83



So, I'm seeing lots of people trying out chadputting which is awesome, but I thought I'd go into some more detail especially on distance control as there seem to be some misunderstandings or assumptions that it's a 'trick' rather than something requiring practice.

So just to be clear, chadputting is not a band aid or trick, it is a systematic method to calibrate the feel of your thundercock (ahem) to develop a personal baseline from which to adjust according to conditions. Your counting pace/rhythm and mine, and your perception of break severity and mine, will not be the same, and it will also change depending on green speeds. But it doesn't matter how fast you count or how severe you read them, there's no right or wrong count or aim, what matters is that you have your calibrated individual baseline. 

Ultimately it's a method which reduces variance and increases consistency for you, based on your own internal distance control and assessment of breaks, which will lead to one or two, hopefully more in the long-term, putts going in which is by far the most effective way to reduce scores. The last part of the vid shows just how insane you can reduce the break - a 7ft dead-weight distance putt needed about 9-10 cups of break to go in. However as I gradually increased the power I was able to reduce the break to 1.5-2 cups by putting at 15ft pace. That was an extreme just to show how pace can dictate the break, and most people I assume would rather play for less break, because you don't have to be as precise in your judgement.

Dec 21, 2018 5:03:12 GMT -5 @larrymalone said:

UPDATE: Seeing quite a few players are taking up this approach which is awesome, so I've decided to go into a bit more detail, especially with the counting method for distance control as I think there are some misunderstandings here and there. The thundercock approach for distance control is a systematic method to calibrate and internalise your distances rather than a 'one weird trick' that you can just take to the game. This video is much more comprehensive on how to get a truly consistent way to reduce variance in your putting, and ultimately the fastest way to lower your scores:

[mayday_golf83]

Good stuff @larrymalone ... Not dissuaded after a horrendous 72-67 MC on PGA this week, more because I played awful tee to green and was ready to rage quit by the 12th hole R1. Oddly, while I find I'm definitely playing less break on downhill putts (that seems to be where this method is helping me the most), I've tended to have to play slightly more break on uphill putts, and I suspect that's because I'm used to adjusting the putting marker back to add a little extra pace on uphillers. 

In playing conditions, I'm finding there are instances where being selective might be better overall. For instance, I had a downhill birdie putt hole 2, R2 this week -- that par 3 with the massive false front, with the pin only a couple of paces from it. Got the line wrong and putted off the green (I did chip in for par while muttering obscenities under my breath in the direction of AF). In hindsight, I think better course management for that putt would have been to play dead weight, be happy with par and move on rather than potentially bring bogey or worse into play. That's the exception rather than the rule, however and usually, if I miss, it's been a managable comebacker. Even if I'm 7-8 foot away, the putt coming back has generally been pretty much straight up the fall line and an easy putt to make. 

Feels like I'm starting to make a few more putts, and the ones that are missing aren't missing the mark by much. Might take a week or two off from PGA to continue working on this, but it does feel like movement in the right direction. Cheers for putting this out there. Aren't a lot of putting tutorials (meaningful ones at least) but I agree with how vitally important it is, especially at the game's highest levels.

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Nice one mayday I agree of course it depends on what you're facing, I personally find the method best for 5-30ft putts that are uphill, level or marginally downhill. With especially scary downhill breaking putts of 10ft+ I chicken out and give it a little tappy, as I'm just not that confident I'll get it right and the risk outweighs the reward. Same for the monster putts, I don't expect to hole those so just trying to time my distance to get close is the priority, and that's where the counting method works really well.

Might be worth you and anybody else testing this out to make a note of your current medium and long putt stats (for your TGCT events only since everybody will have been trying their best on those), and see how they develop over time. Before I went all-in on chadputting my medium putt was around 86-87% and long putt around 28%, now it's 94.5% medium and 35.5% long. Not sure what that equates to per round but even if it's just 2 more made putts than usual on average, that's 8 strokes over an event which is a huge leap. My GIR is still weak compared to the PGA field, mostly down to tempo issues as I'm pretty good at calculating high percentage approach landing spots, but I'm still competitive because of putting since that has a disproportionate impact on scoring.


Edit: just played a round on Valle Crucis, pretty poor tempo round for me, I counted 8 fast downswings tee to green (normally I reckon I'm around 5-6 so it wasn't appalling) but still had a very solid -12 thanks to putting, with 100% short, 100% medium and 44% long putt stats making up for my 78% GIR:





And here's a clip of my final putt, thumping in a scary breaking 9ft, 2-inch downhiller like an absolute mad lad

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IT REALLY WORKS!!!