New Putting Style: Look Ma, One Hand

If you’re ever on a golf course and this kind of funny-looking character with smoked glasses comes up and says he can beat you with one hand tied behind his back, don’t reach for your wallet. Particularly if you’re on a putting green.

Remember the legendary Texas golf hustler, Titanic Thompson? He used to offer to beat you playing left-handed? Of course he could. That’s the way he normally played.

Mike Hulbert won’t exactly be trying to hustle you. He began to putt one-handed for the most archaic of reasons: He found it was a way to get the ball in the hole. Golfers will try anything to do that, including ransoming their grandmothers.

Hulbert found his left hand was superfluous. So, he took it out of play.

There’s nothing wrong with his left hand. There used to be a golfer, Ed Furgol, with a withered left arm and hand. But even he kept it on a putter.

Hulbert is something different. He was just trying to strengthen his right hand through the ball when he noticed something. His ball was rattling in the cup. There’s nothing wrong with his left hand. It has all its fingers and sinews. It’s just that it gets in the way on the green.

In a way, you look at Mike Hulbert and you say, “Of course, you putt left-handed!” Hulbert is kind of--well, “spacey” comes to mind. He doesn’t march to his own drummer, he marches to his own band--drummer, cornet, glockenspiel, tuba and fife. He’s as deadpan as a coroner. He stares at you behind these tinted glasses like a motor cop who has just stopped you for speeding. (“Did you know you were doing 70 in a 35 zone, fella?”)

It’s entirely fitting Hulbert would be the first one-handed putter in golfing history. Hulbert would be the kind of guy who might ski downhill backward. You want to ask him what part of the moon he’s from. You ask him, for instance, if he ever considered trying contact lenses. “Naw,” says Hulbert. “I decided I was too ugly.”

Hulbert is not sure he’s the first to putt one-handed in tournament golf. “There was a guy named Turnesa won a tournament that way, I think it was the Long Island Open or something back in the ‘20s,” he says vaguely.

What happened? Hulbert shrugs. “I think he drew too much attention to himself,” he said. “He got tired of all the letters and phone calls. From people he didn’t even know.”

It’s called notoriety, Mike. And Hulbert is feeling the press of fame. “I like the mail from amputees the best,” he brightens. “They say it gives them encouragement.”

Of course, there’s no right way to putt in golf. Sam Snead putted sidesaddle. Players have tried cross-handed, they’ve introduced the long-handled putter. They are more or less in agreement that the correct way to putt is croquet-style with the blade between your legs. But the USGA outlawed that.

They haven’t outlawed one-handed putting. Yet. But anyone who knows golf knows that, should Mike Hulbert start one-putting and winning tournaments, the whole tour will begin experimenting with the approach.

Already another pro, David Edwards, is experimenting with it.

Hulbert switched over to it at the AT&T; at Pebble Beach this year. He decided since he wasn’t making any putts two-handed, he might as well miss them one-handed.

He doesn’t miss all that many any more. At Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial tournament up here this week, between the lightning bolts and rain squalls, Hulbert was a lordly eight under par after two rounds. He was right up there with one of the great putters of all time, Ben Crenshaw. And Ben has both hands on the shaft.

Hulbert doesn’t do it to be quaint. He already was that, one of the tour’s resident eccentrics who loves fishing so much he once said when his son was born a healthy eight-pounder that he was “just right for mounting.”

But Hulbert does note it has lifted him out of the pack of cookie-cutter golf. “I got in Golf World magazine because of it early this year,” he says proudly. “They never thought to put my full swing in there.”

Actually, Mike Hulbert’s full swing is not that bad. After all, he has won three tournaments. That’s a long way from Ben Hogan but pretty respectable in today’s brand of golf. Some of the pros call him “Gump” in honor of Forest, but Mike doesn’t let trivialities of that sort concern him. He just plays in more tournaments than anyone on the tour these days, 31 a year. If the money’s out there, so is Hulbert. He takes in about $200,000 a year. He comes from a long line of people who show up for work.

One-handed putting may not win the 1995 Memorial. It was not clear up to nightfall Saturday whether anything would. Bedeviled by electrical storms for the 12th year of its 20-year existence, the tournament saw its third-round leaders teeing off after 6 p.m.

Getting this tournament in was a little like trying to inscribe the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin. They didn’t have much room between lightning bolts. Raindrops kept falling on their heads.

When the leaders marched out to begin the third round, the moon was on the horizon.

Golf is not your basic twilight sport, but the Great White Shark, Greg Norman, was swimming around in the lead at 12 under par when play was called. He was on the 14th hole and 21 other players were still on the course with him, almost all of them within four shots of the lead.

Hulbert was one of them. But Mike proved a little less adept at playing golf in the evening shadows, and curfew found him two over par for the 13 holes he played.

He lost two shots to the field. But he was, after all, taking them on with one hand tied behind his back, so to speak. Let’s see the Shark do that.