Pelz trying to pull fast one

OAKMONT, Pa. -- After a rhythmic swing of his hybrid, Phil Mickelson stared down his drive on the first hole, reached to retrieve his tee, then strode into the morning sunshine. Without hesitation, the remainder of Team Mickelson jumped into action: Jim MacKay, the trusty caddie; Jim Weathers, whose job it is to make sure the pain stays to a minimum in Mickelson's left wrist; and the zany Inspector Gadget, who carried the secret to world peace in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.

On second thought, it could have been Dr. Strangelove, carrying the presidential "hot box."

But no, on closer examination, it was Dave Pelz, a onetime NASA employee whose expertise in physics, mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, Balinese cuisine, and afghan-knitting has been turned into a hugely successful golf teaching business. Several years ago, Mickelson turned to Pelz for short-game help; major triumphs at the Masters (two) and PGA Championship followed, so they remain an inseparable team, like fish and water.

OK, so we kid about Balinese cuisine and afghan-knitting, but not about the briefcase. Pelz carried it with him for all nine practice holes that Mickelson played yesterday at Oakmont Country Club in preparation for the 107th US Open. Maybe it wasn't chained to his wrist, but it may as well have been, for the contents of the briefcase are that crucial to Pelz and Mickelson. Ben Hogan once said the secret was in the dirt; Mickelson puts his faith in the suitcase.

It contained the "Pelzmeter," and when Mickelson and his group (Fred Funk, Jose Maria Olazabal, and Darron Stiles) arrived at the second green, the tension was thick. That's because US Golf Association officials were already there with their time-honored "Stimpmeter." A score by Henry Mancini or John Williams was desperately needed as Pelz went to work with the "Pelzmeter" and head to head went the tests.

"It appears," said an interested observer, "that we have a serious case of 'Stimpmeter envy' going on here."

It takes just one roll of the ball to demonstrate that the greens at Oakmont CC are fast, very fast, but in a world that is becoming more analytical by the second, that's not good enough.

Players want to know exactly how fast, and for more than 30 years, an invention that Edward Stimpson of Boston had come up with 40 years earlier had served the purpose. Pelz no longer thinks it does the job as well as it can be done; thus did he reinvent the wheel and come up with the "Pelzmeter." Mickelson spoke sarcastically to show in whose method he believes.

"Oh, yeah, I'd much rather use a stick that was invented 71 years ago," said the lefthander, who flashed a thumbs-up to the briefcase. "Twenty years before NASA? That's great."

Stimpson, who died in March 1985, probably wouldn't have appreciated Mickelson's disrespect, for he always had a passion for the game and never realized any financial gain from his invention.

"No, golf is my love. I'm giving this to try and return to the game," Stimpson once wrote to a friend in a letter that his son, Edward Stimpson III, read yesterday from his home on Cape Cod.

"All he ever wanted to do was come up with a quantitative method to get consistent greens," said the son. "He wasn't trying to make greens faster."

Stimpson, a Harvard graduate, came up with his invention shortly after winning the 1935 Massachusetts Amateur at his home club at the time, Brae Burn CC in Newton, but it has been incorrectly reported that he was prompted to do so by what he saw at the 1935 US Open at Oakmont.

"The family that year had had a serious bank failure and his wife was pregnant with my older brother, so there was no reason he would have gone to Oakmont that year," said Edward Stimpson III.

Though he used it on his own over the years to advise club officials of green speeds, it wasn't until the mid-1970s -- nearly 40 years after he invented it -- that the Stimpmeter was used by the USGA and thus became a fixture on the golf landscape. Never did the family try to market it or gain financially from it; in fact, Stimpson's children put a halt to a company trying to sell the devices through a catalogue.

Pelz, of course, is all about marketing. Since leaving NASA in 1975, he has built a small empire around teaching golf -- especially the short game -- through mathematical theories. In Mickelson, he has a disciple.

"He spent $150,000 on this computer chip, and it has a mathematical computation that allows him to measure greens on any surface regardless of slope and pitch," said Mickelson, and if somewhere Sam Snead and Gene Sarazen are scratching their heads, it's no wonder.

"It's all very scientific," said Mike Davis, the USGA's senior director of rules and competition. He acknowledged that Pelz knows his stuff, and in fact, Davis spent a few moments on the second green with Mickelson, comparing data from the Pelzmeter and the Stimpmeter.

"In some cases, [the differences] were significant," said Davis, though he reiterated something that Stimpson probably said 71 years ago. "What you try to do is get them as consistent as you can. But the bottom line for me is, at least in the year 2007, it's impossible to get all greens rolling the same. You can't do it."

Unlike the Stimpmeter, which is a 36-inch hand-held bar, the Pelzmeter is a contraption that, when placed on the green, makes you think the mad scientist is about to unleash a couple of those old Matchbox "Hot Wheels" cars down a ramp. Instead, he releases with an automatic lever three golf balls and then unstraps from his belt his trusty 25-foot tape measure to ascertain how far the balls rolled. In so many ways, it does what the Stimpmeter does; if a ball rolls 13 feet, it is said that the greens are "running 13."

But Mickelson insists that the Pelzmeter is more accurate on pitched greens like Oakmont's, and his short-game coach has revealed some startling information. Like what? Pelz wouldn't say, "because I work for Phil and I'm only giving the information to Phil. I don't share it with the other players."

The lefthander -- who wore a black wrist guard that made it appear as if he were going bowling -- wasn't sharing specific hole data, either. He did, however, insist that the briefcase has helped.

"I had one [green] as fast as 15.6 and one as slow as 11.2," said Mickelson. "That's 4 1/2 feet of difference right there. It's important that I have that information."

Indeed it is. But Davis and his colleagues respectfully suggested that the Stimpmeter adequately presents the same sort of information, and they are quick to mix in some common sense and human emotions that are overlooked when cold, hard data is treated as the end-all.

"At the end of the day," said Davis, who indicated that his staff is shooting for an average green speed of 13 1/2, "it's still a game played on natural grass, and all we're trying to do is make it as fair as we can. It's not about being perfect."

Somewhere, Edward Stimpson is nodding approval. He said the same thing more than 70 years ago.

Jim McCabe can be reached at jmccabe@globe.com.