The German philosopher Nietzsche once said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  Of course, that was easy for Nietzsche to say; he never three-putted.

           Of all the ways golf can torture its players, the cruelest by far is the three-putt.  Anyone who’s ever played the game knows that three-putting is just about the fastest way you can turn the ecstasy of a birdie into the agony of a bogey.  Efficiency aside, three-putting’s also about as much fun as losing your job — at Christmas.  (Of course, when you get fired, at least you can play golf while you collect unemployment.  When you three-putt, you not only don’t want to play golf, you’d like to slice open a vein with a divot tool.)

           I’m not alone in complaining about this, either.  None other than the great Ben Hogan called putting a separate game that should be scored differently.  He was certainly right about that: There are two games within golf, one played in the air, and the other on the ground.  We all know players who are great ball strikers but poor putters, and vice versa.  The guys who are great at both are playing on television.

           But until they change the Rules of Golf, that little three-footer is going to count every bit as much as the biggest drive you can bomb down the fairway, and the cliche that “it ain’t how you drive, it’s how you arrive” will still ring true.  You’ve got to finish the hole, and the rules say that means getting the ball to drop into the cup.

           Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it up to here with all of this Zen-like advice that putting is all in your mind and that you just have to see the ball going in the hole, and you’ll putt well.  I’ve tried that, and my ball still acts as if falling into the cup is a suicide leap from a bridge.  Really, it’s enough to make you drown your sorrows in ball washer fluid.

          When you putt as badly as I do, you get all kinds of advice.  Consider what Moonlight McIntyre, the famous caddie in The Greatest Course That Never Was, told me.  I had tried everything from a longer putter to a shorter stroke, and I was really looking for help. He just fixed me with a steady gaze and said, “If I were you, lad, I’d just try to get the ball a little closer to the hole.”   Yeah, right.  That’s when I had a little suggestion of my own for Moonlight that involved using the nearest ball washer to brush his teeth.

           All I know is, Nietzsche was wrong.  If three-putting made you stronger, I could leap tall buildings with a single bound.  And before you say it, I know: Bernhard Langer survived his very own three-putting hell, so why can’t I?  Well, in case you haven’t noticed, Bernhard is of the Teutonic persuasion, like Nietzsche.  Maybe it’s a German thing, I don’t know.