When things are going really well, some people thank God. Some people thank their lucky stars. If you enjoy golf, though, and how it’s played today, there’s a good chance you should be thanking Dave Pelz.
It’s unlikely golf has ever had a figure more uncannily ahead of his time – or indelibly influential – than the towering six-foot-five NASA physicist who turned his professional focus to tireless golf research in the mid-1970s.
His first foray in the golf arena was designing putters, then full sets of Dave Pelz Featherlite clubs. He was the first to patent the concept of frequency matched shafts and develop lighter, easier-to-swing clubs to help more players swing more efficiently. His putters – the Teacher and the Three-Ball – were designed to promote two elements that would become non-negotiable tenets of Dave’s teaching philosophy – instant feedback and unmissable alignment cues. When Callaway Golf later licensed the patent for Dave’s Three-Ball putter, the resulting design, the Odyssey 2-Ball – a truly Pelzian alignment-ingraining marvel – went on to become one of the best-selling golf club designs in history.
Pelz’s passion was teaching, passing on the fruits of his voluminous research for the sole purpose of making the masses understand the game better, so they could score better and have more fun. Unbelievably, his research on the game actually benefited pros before it ever reached us rank-and-file weekend warriors. Pelz convinced Tom Kite to put the first-ever 60-degree wedge in play on the PGA TOUR and Kite dominated the money list for a good chunk of the 1980s. Kite’s 1992 U.S. Open win at Pebble Beach was just one of the 21 major championships Pelz’s professional students – including Phil Mickelson, Payne Stewart, Vijay Singh, Mike Weir, Steve Elkington, and Patrick Reed – would claim.
Before Pelz’s data, golfers didn’t definitively understand the importance of the short game and putting in terms of the shots we lose to par (It’s 80 percent for anyone who can keep their tee shots reasonably in play. Kind of a big deal.). People practice differently on purpose-built facilities, use better equipment, appreciate golf data and work on their games with feedback and learning aids, all because one guy somehow found a calling higher than launching satellites into orbit for NASA during the peak of the Space Race. The Pelz Effect touches anyone who plays the game.
His Dave Pelz Scoring Game Schools have reached hundreds of thousands of golfers, along with best-selling books and his long-running shows on Golf Channel that made him a household figure.
Pelz, who passed away at the age of 85 on March 23, was endlessly curious and unstoppably passionate about researching the game. He was PGA TOUR Shotlink long before it existed. For decades, he was the industry’s expert source on almost everything. Putting, wedge play, course management, recovery shots, backspin, anchoring, moment of inertia, coefficient of restitution. It’s virtually endless what one man understood deeply enough to help the masses understand so simply. That was his gift.
The lessons in bestsellers Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible and Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible will long outlive the gentle wise man’s 85 years because Pelz never published – or even suggested anything on the practice green – that he had not already proven using the Scientific Method.
He famously said “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent.” In life, Dave Pelz practiced generosity and an unwavering commitment to learning and teaching. In the lessons he left us is where you’ll find that permanence. Rest well, DP.
