Dave Pelz, Scientist Turned Golf Guru of the Short Game, Dies at 85

Dave Pelz, who left his job as NASA scientist to study the short golf game, a detour that would make him a famous Guru or put and wedge shots, died on March 23 at his home in Springs Springs, Texas, near Austin. He was 85 years old.

David Pelly, the stepson of Pelz and the executive director of his company, Dave Pelz Golf, said the cause was prostate cancer.

While most golfers focus more on how to drive long distances, Pelz concentrated on the short game, shooting from 100 yards, including putting and shaking and flying bunkers with a wedge. In his early statistical investigation, he discovered that 80 percent of the lost shots along with that distance, and that putting represents 43 percent of the game.

“The golfers think that the first two shots are the game,” he said in the PBS interview program “Charlie Rose” in 2010. There are two, three or four more shots. “

Pelz, recognizable on his registered brand wide hat, became a great influence on the short game. He developed training aid and created clubs (he had about 20 patents); Write instruction books; He has his own golf channel show; Opened schools for fans in golf resorts; and trained professional golfers.

In its backyard, it builds its version of a golf laboratory: the putting practiced, the spot and launch in a mini dish of seven famous vegetables, such as that of the arduous hole 12 in the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, home of the Masters tournament. The 12 is known for its volatile wind patterns and a pound that protects the front of the green.

“All the effort here,” he told Wall Street Journal in 2012, “is to produce all the shots in the golf that matters to me, so that I can practice them.”

Three weeks before the death of Pelz, Patrick Reed, the 2018 Masters champion, practiced in that rear patio laboratory. In a tribute published on the Pelz website after death, he rode that in the course of 10 years, Pelz “never doubted a theory or an idea that I had, hey, he taught me to try it. He never hesitated my ability, he challenged it.”

The many other Pelz clients included Phil Mickelson, Tom Kite and Vijay Singh.

In 2004, after winning the first of his three teacher championships, Mickelson praised the wisdom of Pelz’s wedge. Mickelson said after his victory that his practice time with Pelz had been worth it with a launch wedge in hole 14 of the final round that led to a Birdie and a tie with Ernie Els. (Mickelson beat Els for a blow with a Birdie in the final hole).

“He landed just where he wanted it, checked and ended at one foot for a blow,” Mickelson said after the round. “Those hours of work and having that appropriate address, finally knew or never needed to finally win.”

David Todd Pelz was born on October 8, 1939 in Indianapolis. His father, Edward, was a street vendor of the National Biscuit Company (the family also lived in Lexington, Kentucky, and Willoughby, Ohio); His mother, Lilias (Stone) Pelz, supervised the house and also painted. Both parents were golfers, and bowed teaching Dave the game when he was 6 years old.

He played at high school and received a golf scholarship to the University of Indiana, where he specialized in physics and also studied mathematics, astronomy and philosophy. But all the time, I was more interested in playing golf.

While competing at the Big Ten conference, hey, with an obstacle: Jack Nicklaus, then a student at Ohio State University, who beat Pelz in his 22 meetings.

In “Putt Like the pros” (1989, with Nick Mastroni), Pelz wrote that he was frustrated by losing Serialy by Nicklaus, who would win a record of 18 main tournaments as a professional, but that Nicklaus was the “motivation of catalyst motivation”, he concluded that Nicklaus is the best virtue of Nicklaus as Golfer was that he was that he was that

Pelz did not complete his course in Russian, in conflict with his golf schedule and did not graduate. But the University of Indiana would grant him a degree in 2011 based on the books he had wrote.

Recognizing that it was not likely to succeed in the PGA tour, Pelz began to work in 1961 at the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, a Washington suburb. In his almost 15 years there, he is also playing in amateur golf tournaments, studied planetary atmospheres and rose to the position of senior scientist, with supervision or satellite programs to Venus and Mars.

He left the space agency in 1975. He had noticed, touched the Los Angeles Times in 2007, that “I am a golf utility that loves physics, instead of a physique who loves golf.”

By then, Pelz had created a device that taught him how to hit his stalls at the optimal point of the club and, with a partner, developed a putter called The Teacher, that two boxes of the PGA Tour are to use. It was forbidden by the United States Golf Association for being an illegal game aid.

“I think it’s the best thing that has been invented to help the golf game,” said Bert Yancey, one of those golfers, he told Kalamazoo Gazette in 1975. The club had two points that extended from the face of his blade, allowing the golfer to frame the place of Itet.

Pelz’s passion to improve the mechanics of the short games of the golfers led him to create devices or training devices designed to improve the target and alignment, measure the rupture and speed of the balls in the green and reduce the fear of the three -foot putts. He made wedges, a club for short and tall shots, which allowed the golfers to hit the ball with a higher loft.

His many books include “Dave Pelz’s short game Bible (1999) and” Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible “(2000), written with James A. Frank and” Dave Pelz’s Golf without fear of fear of the 10 most fear, confidence in dishes. “

Pelz opened his first school for the short game in 1985 in Abilene, Texas. Now offers three -day courses in 18 resorts in the United States, Europe and the United Arab Emirates. The schools were directed for many years by his second wife, Joann (Pelly) Pelz, who became the executive director of Dave Pelz Golf.

Pelz began his long career in Golf Channel in 1995 as the creator and star of “The Dave Pelz Scoring Game Game Show”.

In addition to his stepson, his wife survives him, like two daughters, Laurakay McLoughlin and Katherine Pelz; His son, Eddie, from his first marriage, to Helen Kay Haydon, who ended up divorce; A stepdaughter, Elizabeth Mueller; Nine granddaughters; And his sister, Sherry Hurley.

Remembering his decision to preach the short game, he told Charlie Rose that the world did not need “another player trying to be a great player.”

But he added: “What the world needs was an honest investigation in the golf that had never finished the things that had never measured their legs, which he had learned to do in NASA-Maybe, could help the average player of golfers and perhaps the world.”