The secret to learning the grain, according to one of the Tour’s best putters

The scene was New Orleans but it could have been the Borscht Belt when Keith Mitchell and Brandt Snedeker took the field Tuesday ahead of this week’s Zurich Classic.

Colleagues at the team event at TPC Louisiana in Avondale, the two veteran Tour pros and close friends teamed up in slapstick fashion, smiling as they asked questions while mocking each other’s games.

The gist of their jokes: Mitchell can’t place, and Snedeker can’t keep you in the world with his driver.

“We’re close enough to where we won’t be upset this week,” Snedeker said. “We can’t hurt each other’s feelings.”

But because things are only funny until someone gets three jacks, the conversation took a serious turn when Snedeker was asked about a serious topic: cereal.

Ah, yes, cereal. Golfers’ hobgoblin in the Southern Swing, blamed for every lip-out and bad putt lag from Florida to Louisiana and beyond. Or you can imagine if you tune in to TV coverage of PGA Tour events.

“Was it the bullets that got him, Johnny?” (Or Bones. Or Dottie.) The word is used so often, it can be the basis of a drinking game.

But how much of an impact does cereal have, really?

Ask some chiefs, and they will tell you that its impact is overstated. The types of grass are grown very well, the argument goes, and the greens are cut so tightly – especially for the elite events – that there is no grain at all. Or, rather, it exists more in the player’s mind than it does on the shelf.

Snedeker has thought a lot about it. Like his friend, Mitchell, he grew up in Tennessee. Unlike Mitchell, he became one of the best players of his generation, honoring his pop-stroke on Bermuda grass grabby.

So, how does Snedeker compete with grain?

“I think grain is a really hard thing to measure,” Snedeker said. There’s no formula for it, no metric that tells you how many inches of break you can add per foot of putt when the grain runs left or right.

“You have to have more emotion,” Snedeker said. And developing the feeling takes time and practice, “being open and comfortable with it,” Snedeker continued. “It’s one of those things, like, hey, if you see the putt is straight and the grain is going to the right, hey, man, let’s play this thing to the inside left because the ball might drag a little.

The bottom line is that cross-grain putts can be frustrating head-scratchers, no matter how experienced or skilled you are. Some days, you’ve felt it. Some days, you don’t.

“If you go slow, you’re going to hit a lot of putts to the right or to the left and you’re going to drive yourself crazy,” Snedeker said.

To save his sanity and his points, Snedeker isn’t too grainy, at least not when it comes to his influence on the break. Finding it more effective to focus on speed.

“The biggest account is in grain, bottom grain,” he said. “The grain is going to be really slow. The grain is going to be really fast. Those are the things you really pay attention to.”

And if all else fails, you fall back on finishing your partner. “We’re not shy about giving each other a needle out here,” Snedeker said. So I think having a partner where you have someone you’re comfortable with, can give you a sense of urgency and you’re excited about them hitting a bad shot that day.

Mitchell agreed.

“Hopefully he doesn’t hit it like me, and hopefully I don’t drive it like him and we’ll be in good shape,” he said.