By Katie Dillard Photography by Kelsey Grudle
Last month, the Golf Club’s professional staff were lucky enough to team up with Marius Filmalter, who Golf Magazine dubbed “The Tour’s Putting Guru,” to offer a world-class putting clinic to our membership.
Marius is a colorful character, professional golf instructor, inventor and research scientist originally from South Africa. He moved to Germany in the early ‘80s where he began researching the yips. The yips can creep into other motor skills and he’s studied many different avenues including pilots, musicians, surgeons and obviously golfers. In the late ‘90s, Marius was the prime inventor of the SAM Puttlab which is still considered the gold standard in putting analysis. Over the years, he’s worked with and measured the best players in the world including Tiger Woods, Mark O’Meara, Brad Faxon and Ernie Els.
Participants were invited to join Marius for dinner on Friday night where they quizzed him on everything about golf and were treated to data, facts and inside stories of the best players in the world, including the big cat himself — Tiger Woods. The following day, Marius worked closely with 12 players teaching them the characteristics of the best putters in the world and how to apply those traits to their individual game. The instruction varied from mechanics to mental preparation, and all players were measured on the SAM Puttlab. Perhaps Marius’ biggest strength is taking the enormous amounts of data he has collected over the years, breaking it down and presenting it to students in a way that is easy to understand and implement.
Players of all abilities attended the clinic and each of them walked away with tips specific to their putting needs and styles. Marius’s master class in putting was the perfect complement to our August Monthly Clinic on speed and distance with guest Hunter Gathright (developer of the TruSpeed training aid) and player development coordinator Katie Dillard. If you would like to improve your game, please reach out to a member of the golf professional staff to see if any of our upcoming monthly clinics could help you shoot lower scores.
Katie Dillard is the Player Development Coordinator and Coach at The Clubs of Cordillera Ranch. She can be reached at kdillard@cordilleraranch.com or 830.336.4653.
