I Played 7 Of The Most Famous Putts In Golf History And This Is How I Got On

I’ve never been great at putting. In fact, it would be fair to say I’ve done rather too much of it over the years, so I was trepidatious to say the least when I was selected from the Golf Monthly team to go and attempt a putting challenge at the Zen Green Stage indoor demo room inside the historic St Andrews Golf Company shop at Number 9, Golf Place – a short pitch away from the 18th green of the Old Course.

In fact, where the Zen demo room is located was actually where the green of the old course once sat – right outside Old Tom Morris’s shop front. That seemed fitting as the set up in the demo room recreates the feeling of putting on the course proper with images of the Royal and Ancient clubhouse on one wall and the Links road on the other.

The demo room is super-cool with a selection of modern and historic putters available to try on the rather incredible Green Stage.

The 8ft-wide Zen Green Stage can recreate every makeable putt on the planet, and can also accurately reproduce real-world gradients for full-swing golf indoors. It is available in both On-Floor and In-Floor versions, and in lengths of 12ft, 16ft and 20ft. You might well have seen them in use by the Sky Sports pundits.

Video: perks of winning the open

Zen is a Sheffield-based company but their products are attracting attention around the world as they offer amazing coaching, learning and entertainment opportunities.

It’s a hugely impressive piece of kit that moves silently to create desired gradients, left to right, right to left, up and downhill.

I’d principally gone to see the kit in operation but the best way to test it was to take part in Zen’s 2022 Hickory Putting Challenge. The challenge involved seven iconic putts from the professional game. I was nervous just listening to a description of the rules but by the time I had selected a putter and stood up on to the stage to take on hole 1 – Seve’s 12-foot right to left downhiller on the 18th of the Old Course in 1984 – I was shaking slightly and my palms were sweating. A small gallery had formed backstage adding to my anxiety. Each hole on the course was a par-2 and if you hit the bumpers past or to the side of the hole you made an automatic three. Everything had to be holed out.

I very narrowly missed Seve’s famous putt and so was unable to recreate his Matador’s, fist pumping celebration. I hit the bumpers on Jack’s putt from the 1986 Masters so couldn’t do the putter loft. There were no celebrations either for Tiger’s one-legged US Open putt from 2008, not GMac’s Ryder Cup winner from 2010 nor Jon Rahm’s massive swinger from the 2021 US Open …. But I did manage to hole Sandy Lyle’s downhiller to win the 1988 Masters so did my little jig, and I holed Phil’s long downhiller to win the 2004 Masters. I declined to do the leap in the air for fear of damaging a very expensive piece of technology. One-under though so not too bad – the current best is three-under by an un-named pro, so I certainly didn’t feel too ashamed.

The Zen Green Stage is a really tremendous bit of kit. It’s compulsive and just great fun to experiment on. The team showed me double breakers and other funky settings that really test your judgement and touch. I could imagine spending hours on the thing and, perhaps, even getting quite good at putting. Unfortunately this time though, it was someone else’s turn to take on the Hickory Putting Challenge so I had to stand down. I hope they didn’t beat one-under!