Putting & Green Reading

This has helped me with alignment and starting the ball on line.

What're you linking? Just brought me to golf accessories.

Look for the big breaks. Then work on speed. You may not make a lot more putts, but your 2nd putt should be much easier.

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Feel. Feel. Feel. It’s the entire game on or around the greens.

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I rarely can find time since January. But I had a lot of time off around Christmas and spent hours just on the putting and chipping greens at my course. It was wild how much better those rounds were.

I do a couple things. I do all these things pretty quickly, so it's not an over analysis. First, I pace out every putt to give myself a general gauge of how much pace I need to play. It's surprising how much a distance can vary visually if you aren't using some sort of physical measurement. You may look at two putts and think they are the same length and they turn out to be a couple feet different. That can make a huge difference with pace.

My club pro had a good process to help think about how putts roll. Take a look at your putt quickly from behind the ball, parallel to the putt and behind the cup and think about how water would flow on that surface. That will give you a general idea of how the ball will roll and if it's uphill, downhill, both etc. Amateurs usually under-read break and miss low-side. Until you get dialed in, it's not a bad practice to account for a little more break.

Once you find a line you like, and have a gauge on speed pick a spot about a foot in front of the ball on that line and just try and get the ball rolling over that spot at the speed you think you need. I use a long line on the ball as well to help line up to the spot I'm aiming at.

It may seem like a lot of process, but all can be done in under a minute, most of it just walking to pull out the pin.

Always look at the catch basins near/off the green. Generally sections will flow to a basin or follow a swale to a low point if no CB's. Look at the big picture and read the grain. As a putt slows near the cup, the grain will almost always affect the ball break direction. Certainly uphill into grain putts will break more than down grain putts. Grain in the south is very real impact on green reading. Find where you would like the putt to be to make it 2/3rds of the way to the hole. Then add 50% more break. You will make more putts

For speed: collecting information from behind the hole and to the side will give you a better visual. But be careful and do this quickly if you are playing in your normal round with friends.

For break: Read the grain
If you are having a difficult time telling whether a ball will break left or right, walk up to the cup and see where the grain is running (where the dead grass is on the edge of the cup). The putt you hit will always pull towards the dead grass.

If the dead grass is on the bottom of the cup, then you are putting into the grain meaning your putt will be slower. Dead grass on top of the cup means down grain and quicker.

If the cup is on a break, there will be slightly more of the white cup showing on the side the break moves to. This is because the cup is put in straight up and down, not 90 degrees to the angle of the slope of the green.