Latest news with #Pelz
New York Times
05-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Dave Pelz, Scientist Turned Golf Instructor, Is Dead at 85
Dave Pelz, who left his job as a scientist at NASA to study the short game of golf, a detour that would make him a celebrated guru of putts and wedge shots, died on March 23 at his home in Dripping Springs, Texas, near Austin. He was 85. David Pelly, Pelz's stepson and the chief executive of his company, Dave Pelz Golf, said the cause was prostate cancer. While most golfers focus more on how to drive long distances, Pelz concentrated on the short game — shots from within 100 yards, including putting and chipping and blasting out of bunkers with a wedge. In his early statistical research, he found that 80 percent of shots lost to par occur within that distance, and that putting makes up 43 percent of the game. 'Golfers think that their first two shots are the game,' he said on the PBS talk show 'Charlie Rose' in 2010. 'They drive almost every hole. They hit to the green almost every hole. But what they don't think about is that after you hit those first two shots, and you don't hit the green, there are two, three or four more shots.' Pelz, recognizable in his trademark broad-brimmed sun hat, became a major influence on the short game. He developed training aids and created clubs (he had about 20 patents); wrote instruction books; had his own Golf Channel show; opened schools for amateurs at golf resorts; and coached professional golfers. In his backyard, he built his version of a golf laboratory: He practiced putting, chipping and pitching on a mini-course of seven famous greens, like the one at the arduous 12th hole at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, home of the Masters tournament. The 12th is known for its fickle wind patterns and for a pond that guards the front of the green. 'The whole effort here,' he told The Wall Street Journal in 2012, 'is to produce every shot in golf that I care about, so that I can practice them.' Three weeks before Pelz's death, Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters champion, practiced in that backyard lab. In a tribute posted on Pelz's website after the death, Reed wrote that over the course of 10 years, Pelz 'never doubted a theory or an idea I had, he taught me to test it. He never doubted my ability, he challenged it.' Pelz's many other clients included Phil Mickelson, Tom Kite and Vijay Singh. In 2004, after winning the first of his three Masters championships, Mickelson praised Pelz's wedge wisdom. Mickelson said after his victory that his practice time with Pelz had paid off with a pitching wedge shot on the 14th hole of the final round that led to a birdie and a tie with Ernie Els. (Mickelson went on to beat Els by a stroke with a birdie on the final hole.) 'It landed right where I wanted it, checked up and ended up a foot away for a tap-in,' Mickelson said after the round. 'Those hours of work and having that proper direction, I ultimately knew or did not ever lack belief that I would ultimately win.'' David Todd Pelz was born on Oct. 8, 1939, in Indianapolis. His father, Edward, was a traveling salesman for the National Biscuit Company (the family also lived in Lexington, Ky., and Willoughby, Ohio); his mother, Lilias (Stone) Pelz, oversaw the home and also painted. Both parents were golfers, and they began teaching Dave the game when he was 6. He played through high school and received a golf scholarship to Indiana University, where he majored in physics and also studied mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. But all along, he was more interested in playing golf. While competing in the Big Ten Conference, he met an obstacle: Jack Nicklaus, then a student at the Ohio State University, who beat Pelz in all 22 of their meetings. In 'Putt Like the Pros' (1989, with Nick Mastroni), Pelz wrote that he was frustrated at losing serially to Nicklaus — who would win a record 18 major tournaments as a professional — but that Nicklaus was the 'catalyst for my early motivation to learn all I could about the science of putting.' He concluded that Nicklaus's greatest virtue as a golfer was that he putted better than anyone else. Pelz did not complete his Russian-language course — it conflicted with his golf schedule — and did not graduate. But Indiana University would award him a bachelor's degree in 2011 based on the books he had gone on to write. Recognizing that he was not likely to succeed on the PGA Tour, Pelz went to work in 1961 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a suburb of Washington. In his nearly 15 years there — during which he also played in amateur golf tournaments — he studied planetary atmospheres and rose to the position of senior scientist, with oversight of satellite programs that sent probes to Venus and Mars. He left the space agency in 1975. He had come to realize, he told The Los Angeles Times in 2007, that 'I'm a golf nut who loves physics, rather than a physicist who loves golf.' By then, Pelz had created a device that taught him how to hit his putts on the sweet spot of the club, and, with a partner, developed a putter called the Teacher, which two dozen members of the PGA Tour began to use. It was eventually outlawed by the United States Golf Association for being an illegal playing aid. 'I think it's the greatest thing ever invented to help the game of golf,' Bert Yancey, one of those golfers, told The Kalamazoo Gazette in 1975. The club had two prongs that extended from the face of its blade, enabling the golfer to frame its sweet spot. Pelz's passion for improving the mechanics of golfers' short games led him to create dozens of training devices designed to improve putting aim and alignment, measure the break and speed of balls on greens, and reduce the fear of three-foot putts. He made wedges — a club for short, high chip shots — that let golfers hit the ball with a higher loft. His many books include 'Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible' (1999) and 'Dave Pelz's Putting Bible' (2000), both written with James A. Frank, and 'Dave Pelz's Golf Without Fear: How to Play the 10 Most Feared Shots in Golf With Confidence' (2010), written with his son, Eddie, and Dave Allen. Pelz opened his first school for the short game in 1985 in Abilene, Texas. It now offers three-day courses at 18 resorts in the United States, Europe and the United Arab Emirates. The schools were run for many years by his second wife, JoAnn (Pelly) Pelz, who became the chief executive of Dave Pelz Golf. Pelz started his long run on Golf Channel in 1995 as the creator and star of 'The Dave Pelz Scoring Game Show.' In addition to his stepson, his wife survives him, as do two daughters, LauraKay McLoughlin and Katherine Pelz; his son, Eddie, from his first marriage, to Helen Kay Haydon, which ended in divorce; a stepdaughter, Elizabeth Mueller; nine grandchildren; and his sister, Sherry Hurley. Recalling his decision to preach the short game, he told Charlie Rose that the world didn't need 'another player trying to be a great player.' But he added: 'What the world needs was honest-to-God research in golf that had never been done — measure things that had never been measured, which I had learned to do at NASA — maybe I could help the average golfer play better. And maybe the world needs to play golf better to enjoy it more.'
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Dave Pelz's influence on putters and training aids was massive
Before the analytics revolution changed the way elite golfers and savvy recreational players approach the game, Dave Pelz was beating the drum about the importance of getting feedback and learning everything you can from every shot. That scientific approach, along with his concentration on the short game and putting, set him apart from other golf instructors and coaches before a wave of gurus and specialists developed in the mid- and late-2000s. Pelz could talk about swing dynamics and key positions, but he thrived at teaching golfers ranging from tour pros to weekend duffers who attended his short game schools about choosing the right shots, understanding obstacles, and developing programmatic practice routines that could create formulas for success. Pelz, who died on Sunday, March 23, also developed golf equipment and training aids, playing a huge role in the creation of one of the most popular putters ever produced, along with a putter training aid that is still used every day by scores of pros. Dave Pelz 3-Ball putter was designed to help golfers aim more effectively. The 3-Ball Putter After studying how golfers aimed their putters in the early 1980s, Pelz discovered that most players are terrible at this essential skill. Advertisement 'Aim is the first fundamental of putting,' Pelz told Golfweek. '[Golfers] aim to compensate for their stroke inadequacies,' he added, before revealing his research showed most players aim to the right of their intended target line, and then pull the ball to the left with their stroke. 'But if you don't aim properly, a good stroke misses every putt.' After talking with experts, Pelz came up with the idea of making a putter that had plastic golf balls extending back from the face to create a row on a golfer's target line. Six balls, 10 balls, 12 balls, the more balls that were added to the back of the putter, the better the golfers aimed. Eventually, Pelz settled on three balls and created two versions of his putter, one with a face that was 2 1/8 inches wide that featured a second piece in the back that was 5 1/8 inches wide and another putter that reversed the blades and positioned the longer one in front and shorter one in the back. Langer, Maltbie among those who used Pelz's putters Pelz started selling the putters in 1985, and among the pros who used it were Bernhard Langer, Roger Maltbie, Lon Hinkle, and D.A. Weibring, who used the Pelz putter to win the 1985 Air New Zealand Shell Open. This Odyssey White Hot OG 2-Ball putter from 2021 carries on the legacy of Dave Pelz's three-ball putters. In March 1986, the United States Golf Association ruled that the Dave Pelz 3-Ball putter with the shorter face was non-conforming because it was deeper from front to back than it was wide from heel to toe. The Pelz Big Face Putter, however, was deemed conforming. Advertisement Over time, the Dave Pelz 3-Ball putter faded, but the idea and shaping influenced several putter makers. While Pelz was working as a consultant for Callaway in the early 2000s, shortly after Callaway purchased Odyssey, Pelz licensed the patents to the three-ball putters to Odyssey. In 2002, Odyssey released the first 2-Ball putters. 'It was like a line extension to White Hot, so the original forecast for them was like 30,000 pieces,' said Austie Rollinson, who at the time was working in R&D at Odyssey and now is the senior director of R&D at Scotty Cameron. However, Paul Lawrie made a putt with a 2-Ball from The Valley of Sin at St. Andrews in October 2001 to win the Dunhill Links Championship, and Annika Sorenstam, the world's top female golfer, added a 2-Ball to her bag. Annika Sorenstam used an Odyssey 2-Ball putter to win many of her championships in the 2000s 'I think we made close to 300,000 that first year,' Rollinson said. 'Kudos to the development team and the suppliers to keep up with demand'. Advertisement And demand has not slowed down, with versions of the 2-Ball putter being added to nearly every major Odyssey family since its debut. Today, there are Ai-ONE 2-Ball, Ai-ONE Milled 2-Ball, Ai-ONE 2-Ball Jailbird, and Microhinge V-Line 2-Ball putters in Odyssey's lineup, and each of them can trace their lineage back to Dave Pelz 3-Ball putters. Pelz Putting Tutor The Dave Pelz Putting Tutor is designed to hone a golfer's putting stroke. After putting mirrors, the Dave Pelz Putting Tutor is one of the most popular putter training aids that you will see pros on the PGA Tour using on the practice green because it is highly portable and provides instant feedback on how well a putt was struck. Pelz said he developed the idea for the training aid while working with Phil Mickelson, and it is extremely simple to set up and use. The triangular piece of plastic has a long white line on it and three sets of tiny holes that are designed to hold a pair of metal marbles. After reading a putt and aiming the white line along your intended target line, golfers set the marbles into the holders to create a gateway, place a ball into a holder positioned on the white line, and putt. If the player makes a good stroke and starts the putt on the white line, it will roll between the marbles, but a poorly struck putt will go offline and hit one of the marbles, instantly giving the player feedback. Advertisement Over time and with improvement, golfers can put the marbles into positions that are closer together until they reach the 'Pro' setting, where only a perfectly struck putt will pass between them. Dave Pelz O Balls O Balls Today, golf balls with visual technologies are everywhere and sold by nearly every major golf ball manufacturer. Some are simple and feature lines, while others are made for enhanced visibility or to help players perform better on the greens. But before TaylorMade developed Pix or Callaway offered Triple Track, the Dave Pelz O Balls were among the first designed to show players how well they struck a putt. Advertisement The idea, again, was to provide golfers with instant feedback on the quality of their putting stroke. Sold in packs of three, the white golf balls featured four red rings, with two close together near the equator and one ring near each ball's pole. After lining up the balls along your intended target line, a well-struck putt makes the rings roll smoothly and clearly, but cutting across the ball or pulling a putt makes the rings wobble. This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Dave Pelz's influence on putters and training aids was massive
NBC Sports
26-03-2025
- Science
- NBC Sports
Legendary short-game instructor Dave Pelz dies at 85
Dave Pelz, a nuclear physicist who became one of golf's most noted short-game instructors, died Sunday in his Texas home following complications from prostate cancer. He was 85. Pelz, born October 8, 1939, left NASA in 1974 to focus on the the science of putting, and created a data-driven approach to teaching the short game. He established different techniques and training aids, and his methods were showcased on 'The Dave Pelz Scoring Game Show,' a long-running Golf Channel series. Pelz wrote instructional books, produced numerous videos, started an eponymous short-game school and worked with several major champions, including Phil Mickelson, who said Wednesday on social media: 'I have so many things to say about this incredible man. I owe so much of my success to the many things he taught me, and he lives on as I share those same insights to numerous other golfers.' Other students included, among many, Tom Kite, Payne Stewart, Steve Elkington, Vijay Singh and Patrick Reed. Pelz is survived by his wife, JoAnn, their five children and nine grandchildren.
USA Today
26-03-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Dave Pelz's influence on putters and training aids was massive
Dave Pelz's influence on putters and training aids was massive Dave Pelz analytic approach to putting was ahead of its time and influenced the creation of popular gear that will be used for years to come. Before the analytics revolution changed the way elite golfers and savvy recreational players approach the game, Dave Pelz was beating the drum about the importance of getting feedback and learning everything you can from every shot. That scientific approach, along with his concentration on the short game and putting, set him apart from other golf instructors and coaches before a wave of gurus and specialists developed in the mid- and late-2000s. Pelz could talk about swing dynamics and key positions, but he thrived at teaching golfers ranging from tour pros to weekend duffers who attended his short game schools about choosing the right shots, understanding obstacles, and developing programmatic practice routines that could create formulas for success. Pelz, who died on Sunday, March 23, also developed golf equipment and training aids, playing a huge role in the creation of one of the most popular putters ever produced, along with a putter training aid that is still used every day by scores of pros. The 3-Ball Putter After studying how golfers aimed their putters in the early 1980s, Pelz discovered that most players are terrible at this essential skill. 'Aim is the first fundamental of putting,' Pelz told Golfweek. '[Golfers] aim to compensate for their stroke inadequacies,' he added, before revealing his research showed most players aim to the right of their intended target line, and then pull the ball to the left with their stroke. 'But if you don't aim properly, a good stroke misses every putt.' After talking with experts, Pelz came up with the idea of making a putter that had plastic golf balls extending back from the face to create a row on a golfer's target line. Six balls, 10 balls, 12 balls, the more balls that were added to the back of the putter, the better the golfers aimed. Eventually, Pelz settled on three balls and created two versions of his putter, one with a face that was 2 1/8 inches wide that featured a second piece in the back that was 5 1/8 inches wide and another putter that reversed the blades and positioned the longer one in front and shorter one in the back. Langer, Maltbie among those who used Pelz's putters Pelz started selling the putters in 1985, and among the pros who used it were Bernhard Langer, Roger Maltbie, Lon Hinkle, and D.A. Weibring, who used the Pelz putter to win the 1985 Air New Zealand Shell Open. In March 1986, the United States Golf Association ruled that the Dave Pelz 3-Ball putter with the shorter face was non-conforming because it was deeper from front to back than it was wide from heel to toe. The Pelz Big Face Putter, however, was deemed conforming. Over time, the Dave Pelz 3-Ball putter faded, but the idea and shaping influenced several putter makers. While Pelz was working as a consultant for Callaway in the early 2000s, shortly after Callaway purchased Odyssey, Pelz licensed the patents to the three-ball putters to Odyssey. In 2002, Odyssey released the first 2-Ball putters. 'It was like a line extension to White Hot, so the original forecast for them was like 30,000 pieces,' said Austie Rollinson, who at the time was working in R&D at Odyssey and now is the senior director of R&D at Scotty Cameron. However, Paul Lawrie made a putt with a 2-Ball from The Valley of Sin at St. Andrews in October 2001 to win the Dunhill Links Championship, and Annika Sorenstam, the world's top female golfer, added a 2-Ball to her bag. 'I think we made close to 300,000 that first year,' Rollinson said. 'Kudos to the development team and the suppliers to keep up with demand'. And demand has not slowed down, with versions of the 2-Ball putter being added to nearly every major Odyssey family since its debut. Today, there are Ai-ONE 2-Ball, Ai-ONE Milled 2-Ball, Ai-ONE 2-Ball Jailbird, and Microhinge V-Line 2-Ball putters in Odyssey's lineup, and each of them can trace their lineage back to Dave Pelz 3-Ball putters. Pelz Putting Tutor After putting mirrors, the Dave Pelz Putting Tutor is one of the most popular putter training aids that you will see pros on the PGA Tour using on the practice green because it is highly portable and provides instant feedback on how well a putt was struck. Pelz said he developed the idea for the training aid while working with Phil Mickelson, and it is extremely simple to set up and use. The triangular piece of plastic has a long white line on it and three sets of tiny holes that are designed to hold a pair of metal marbles. After reading a putt and aiming the white line along your intended target line, golfers set the marbles into the holders to create a gateway, place a ball into a holder positioned on the white line, and putt. If the player makes a good stroke and starts the putt on the white line, it will roll between the marbles, but a poorly struck putt will go offline and hit one of the marbles, instantly giving the player feedback. Over time and with improvement, golfers can put the marbles into positions that are closer together until they reach the 'Pro' setting, where only a perfectly struck putt will pass between them. O Balls Today, golf balls with visual technologies are everywhere and sold by nearly every major golf ball manufacturer. Some are simple and feature lines, while others are made for enhanced visibility or to help players perform better on the greens. But before TaylorMade developed Pix or Callaway offered Triple Track, the Dave Pelz O Balls were among the first designed to show players how well they struck a putt. The idea, again, was to provide golfers with instant feedback on the quality of their putting stroke. Sold in packs of three, the white golf balls featured four red rings, with two close together near the equator and one ring near each ball's pole. After lining up the balls along your intended target line, a well-struck putt makes the rings roll smoothly and clearly, but cutting across the ball or pulling a putt makes the rings wobble.
USA Today
26-03-2025
- Science
- USA Today
Remembering the pioneering spirit of Dave Pelz, who changed the game in so many ways
Remembering the pioneering spirit of Dave Pelz, who changed the game in so many ways In 1974, Dave Pelz was visiting Kenya of all places, laying on one of its white sandy beaches, when he made a life-changing decision. For more than a decade, he had studied planetary atmospheres and ran satellite programs as a senior nuclear physicist during the golden age of the space race for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Flight Center outside of Washington, D.C. But his hobby of clinically measuring what happens when a putter head hits a ball was absorbing more of his time and interest. He became obsessed with calibrating speed and break in the greens, energy imparted to the ball when it was hit on the heel, toe and sweet spot of the putter. He built a two-pronged appendage to the face of his putter, framing the sweet spot. The device worked simply enough: Hit the prong and the ball deflected off course. Pelz took his new tool to the practice putting green and proceeded to miss the first 97 putts. But the 98th attempt, he stroked squarely and the ball rolled straight and true into the cup. That summer, he won his club championship. Pelz concluded that putting mechanics had been totally neglected as a field of study. Good putters, the experts said, were born not made. His own experience in 1974 convinced him otherwise. Comforted by the assurance from his boss that he could take an educational leave of absence and still return to physics after a one-year trial in the putter business, Pelz made the plunge. He started working in the basement of his home and despite losing his investors' money that first year, he determined there was no going back. 'I loved that year,' he told Golf for whom he served as the magazine's longtime technical consultant. 'Every minute of it was great. I was able to look past the money loss. I knew I could be successful; I was certain I could contribute something to the betterment of the game.' Pelz resigned from NASA, mortgaged his home and two cars to fund his business and the game of golf has never been the same. He revolutionized how the game is taught, played, and understood. Pelz spent the next 50 years applying statistical research to golf instruction in his quest to help golfers shave strokes. He became golf's resident short-game guru philosophizing on the importance of shots from 100 yards and in — nearly 80 percent of shots lost to par occur within that distance, he discovered — and focusing on practicing putting since it made up 43 percent of the game. He was ShotLink before ShotLink existed. With the brain of a renaissance man, he used his scientific background to develop a data-driven approach, computing the depth that most golfers could never grasp but had the gift of being able to communicate it in simple terms that a child could understand. He articulated his teaching methods via the written words in articles and in best-selling books, on informercials and The Dave Pelz Scoring Game Show, a long-running Golf Channel instruction show, at golf schools and to his pupils on the PGA and LPGA tours. Pelz, whose name became synonymous with the words "short game," died on Sunday due to complications from prostate cancer at his home in Dripping Springs, Texas, his stepson, David Pelly, confirmed. He was 85. Pelz waged a silent battle against the disease for many years. In the May 2019 issue of Golf, he went public with his fight, writing, that he had spent the past four years battling the disease but was cancer-free and had walked nine holes with pupil Patrick Reed at TPC Sawgrass during practice rounds at the Players Championship two days in a row for the first time in a while. 'I want to tell you just how great that feels,' he said. Pelz was golf's absent professor, dubbed "Professor Putt," a 6-foot-6-inch, teddy bear of a man in his trademark bucket cap, who spoke softly and sincerely. He was a pioneer in so many fields — from frequency matching shafts to founding the World Putting Championship — that compiling a list of what he didn't do in golf may be shorter. In 1981, Tom Kite became the first player to carry a third wedge in his bag, which allowed him to be more precise with his distance control. Kite went on to lead the money list and win the Vardon Trophy for low-scoring average that season. The facility to produce higher, softer pitch shots around the green has made the 60-degree wedge one of the most important tools in golf. Pelz developed more than 40 different training aids, including the Pelz Putting Tutor, that have helped golfers more quickly grasp the concepts he teaches for getting out of a bunker, for holing more putts and for chipping it close. In 1982, he opened his first short-game school in Abilene, Texas. His Dave Pelz Scoring Game School became the first clinics to concentrate exclusively on the short game and became so successful in Boca Raton, Fla., that it was expanded to Palm Springs, Calif., and Vail, Colo. By the late 1990s, it had grown to more than 40 schools and his acolytes continue to teach his methods to thousands of students every year. "There is a misnomer out there that practice makes perfect," Pelz once said. "Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. It's sad, but there are thousands of golfers out there who are practicing the wrong things and are actually ingraining flaws into their swings.' In 1982, Pelz introduced the Dave Pelz Featherlite golf clubs. In 1986, he left the manufacturing business, convinced his niche was in the area of research, development and education. But he held 20 different patents, including for the two-ball putter, which Odyssey licensed for $250,000. It went on to become one of the top-selling clubs, let alone putters, of all time, and changed perceptions of what a putter could look like. 'He cared more about lowering the handicap of a stranger in Des Moines, Iowa, than one of his major champions,' said Carl Mickelson, who handled marketing and public relations for Pelz Golf for 21 years, and remembered the time Pelz's New York Times best-selling book 'Short-Game Bible,' leaped past 'Who Moved My Cheese.' The Pelz stable of students – Kite, Vijay Singh, Andy North, his first major winner in 1978, Paul Azinger, Lee Janzen, Payne Stewart, Mike Weir, Beth Daniel, Jane Geddes, Michelle Wie, the list goes on and on – combined to win more than 20 majors. Just a few weeks ago, he met with Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters champ, and helped him prepare for this year's first major. "He taught me how to think, how to listen, and he brought so much life to my game. Dave Pelz (DP) was and is the best coach I ever had," Reed said. "Everything he ever taught me holds strong and holds true, and it always will, because Dave didn't back anything he wasn't 100 percent sure of. He didn't sway with the wind, he was the wind. Every time I ever met with him, he blew me away." Pelz's most famous pupil was Phil Mickelson, who was winless in 43 starts at the majors when he contacted Pelz in late 2003. "I said, 'You've got to be kidding. You're already the best. Why do you want me?' " Pelz recalled on The Charlie Rose Show. Mickelson said he wanted to shave one-quarter stroke per round off his average 18-hole score. His one-shot (per four rounds) request came because he had missed playoff opportunities in the majors by – you guessed it – one shot. It had happened six times. Anxious to shake the label of 'best player to have never won a major,' Mickelson reasoned that if he could have scored one stroke lower in those six events, he would have won at least one playoff. Pelz developed a computer program he dubbed 'AEMAX,' an acronym for 'Analyze your game, Eliminate your weaknesses, and Maximize your ability to score.' 'I'm just saying: he has won three green jackets and five total majors (now six) since adopting our strategy of 'bomb it at the Masters, hit more accurate short shots everywhere else,'' Pelz wrote in a magazine column. Mickelson was quick to credit the data Pelz had collected for improving his game. 'Dave found that the average bunker shot is 10 yards, so I practiced from that distance, and I went from 180th in sand saves in 2006 to third two years later,' said Mickelson, who again ranked third in 2016. Pelz was born Oct. 8, 1959, in Willoughby, Ohio, and attended Indiana University on a golf scholarship, majoring in physics with minors in mathematics, philosophy and astronomy. By the time Pelz left Indiana, he had compiled a perfect record against Nicklaus, his nemesis in dual matches, round-robins and Big Ten Conference meets. "I was 0-22, but that wasn't so unusual," Pelz said. "Most people haven't beaten Jack Nicklaus." Pelz never abandoned his scientific training, applying the scientific method, isolating variables, studying them independently. For 50 years, he woke up thinking about golf and never had an off switch. "In the shower," his wife, JoAnn, said. "It's awful. I mean, everywhere. David's a very narrow person." When he started counseling pros, 99 percent of them putted with a conventional grip and rejected the cross-handed style he preferred. 'If you did, you had given up. You had the yips,' Pelz said, referring to the involuntary loss of control that affects a player's nerves on short putts. From 1977 to 1980, Pelz tracked the putting of one of his pupils, Tom Jenkins, who had the worst putting stroke Pelz had ever measured at the time. Pelz's charts, diagrams and graphs indicated that the journeyman pro putted better cross-handed. Jenkins would putt that way during practice rounds, but he always got cold feet and reverted to a conventional grip once the tournament began. 'Tom has a sensitive personality and people loved to tease him. But my research proves putting cross-handed is a more stable stroke. It levels your shoulders and allows you to follow through better,' said Pelz, who taught his sons to putt that way. Eventually, Jenkins joined the converted and enjoyed the best years of his career. 'I can honestly say Dave Pelz saved my career as a professional golfer,' Jenkins said. Pelz also built arguably the greatest backyard practice facility in golf in Austin, Texas. With greens that replicate those found at such iconic courses as Augusta National (including No. 12 and Rae's Creek), Pebble Beach (14th and 17th greens) and TPC Sawgrass (17th island green). Pelz's backyard laboratory also had a tee box for full shots that extends more than 400 yards. 'In the morning, I can come out here in my skivvies,' he said in 2019. 'There's no one here. It takes me 38 seconds from the living room to have a wedge airborne. If I'm here, I can practice. If I had this 40 years ago, there's no telling how good I could've been.' This coaching and testing ground allowed him and his Pelz Institute research team to carry on refining his theories and training techniques even in the final weeks of his life. He is survived by his wife, their five children, nine grandchildren, and a grateful golf community. Those who wish to share their thoughts or memories are invited to a special tribute page at
