US Masters / Ralph Ellis / 29 March 2011 /

Martin Laird won on the USPGA Tour this week and deserves full credit for his achievements but there was also an impressive third-place finish for Justin Rose, who revealed the bizarre secret to his putting success.

You know the feeling, standing over a six-feet putt, knowing you should knock it straight in the hole but wondering whether you will. You've read the green and it seems to go right-to-left, but then suddenly you look again and it's definitely left-to-right. You practice the stroke, try it a couple more times. Then you step up to the ball. And by this time you feel as if you might as well just shut your eyes and forget about it.

Well guess what? That actually seems to be the answer - at least according to Justin Rose whose putting at Bay Hill on Sunday allowed him to finish third in the Arnold Palmer Invitational. While Scot Martin Laird was rightly getting all the plaudits for picking up first prize, few people noticed Rose put together a back nine of just 31 shots.

You could argue that Rose didn't see it himself, either! Half way through his final round he started literally putting with his eyes closed. "It's a training drill I use, and because I was holing nothing I thought I'd try it for real," he explained. "It was quite thrilling to open my eyes and see the ball tracking every time for the hole."

It's an interesting approach, especially a week before the Masters where the greens of Augusta make the biggest demands of all. Peter Alliss described them best as "trying to roll the ball down the bonnet of a car and making it stop before it falls off". But if Rose has suddenly found a way that works for him, then maybe [8.6] for a top five finish is not the worst bet.

Laird himself has sorted out his own putting by doing less work rather than more. His fortunes have improved since a lesson last summer with Dave Stockton junior who told him never to spend more than 30 minutes at a time on the practice green. "After that you start to think too much," explained the Scot.

So here we have one top player putting with his eyes closed, another refusing to rehearse his shot. It just goes to show there's no such thing as perfect preparation - which makes predicting the outcome of the year's first Major even more difficult.
You could go with the likes of Rose and Laird who are clearly on form - but then others like Ian Poulter are trying to get their games to peak next week when it matters most. Poulter is at Augusta today playing a 27-hole practice round with Graeme McDowell and Henrik Stenson. If his game can match the enthusiasm with which he announced his plan on his Twitter account, then he could be big value at [11.5] for a top five finish.

When the three of them arrive for their work-out, however, they will find that Lee Westwood has already been and gone. He played 27 holes on Sunday and another 18 yesterday together with his caddie Billy Foster. Runner-up last year when he saw a five shot lead agonisingly slip away against Phil Mickelson, there would be no better time to recover his status as world number one and collect his first Major all in one go.

Five things you might not know about Martin Laird

1. Born in Glasgow in December 1982, he first learned to play golf left-handed
2. He showed such talent that his dad decided to buy him a set of junior clubs - but could only get right-handed ones and he's teed it up that way ever since.
3, He moved to America as a 17-year-old to take up a golf scholarship at Colorado State University, where he graduated with a degree in marketing
4.He stayed in Arizona after meeting his fiancée Meagan. They plan to marry this summer
5. His cousin David Weatherston plays centre forward for Queen of the South in the Scottish First Division

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