Rel. 04, Jan 2013
Contents: 1. Introduction 2. My putting quiz (excerpt from Golf Putting Lines Ebook) 3. My test to answer the question: Are you a consistent three-putter? 4. My video 5. My articles Golf Putting Tips About Wet Greens A New Golf Tip on Putting From Off the Green What Is More Important in Golf Putting, Line or Distance? A new golf putting tip on effective green reading Gadgets and procedures that may (or may not) help in golf putting Beware of a common pitfall in golf putting A black hole in golf putting 6. A final word
1. Introduction Improving your golf scores can be as simple as finding a way to discover successful ball tracks in golf putting. Here you have my video, my articles and other stuff I wrote about this subject. As far as I know, no one has ever addressed this subject the way I have. And it s understandable because I m not the typical golf pro revealing some tips about a golf subject. I m not a golf pro at all. I m just a golf lover, 60, creator of a patented golf equipment for computer-assisted teaching and training and now writing about golf putting lines of breaking putts. I am also the author of Golf Putting Lines Ebook As a retired engineer, I decided to use some of my professional background to go deeper in the analysis of some aspects of the game of golf. My main challenge is to use plain words to make clear to everyone the subjects I write about. To learn a lot more about breaking putts, a sure way to hole more putts and get lower scores, visit my site at http://www.puttinglines.com
2. My putting quiz This is an excerpt from my Ebook, Golf Putting Lines. It s intended to be a kind of opening section before starting to explain the details of breaking putts and as two different situations. Fig. 2.1 A B C D First situation: Consider you are playing a round of golf early in the morning and there is dew covering the greens. Another group goes ahead of you and you can clearly see the ball tracks of their putts every time you enter in the greens. By a curious coincidence you find your ball over a ball track of a successful Copyright by Marcel White
2. My putting quiz (cont.) breaking putt of one of the players of the previous group. (Stop smiling because it s not impossible and it has already happened to me!) My first question is: Where do you aim to make the ball follow the successful ball track that is in front of your eyes? Answer: You must aim B because the red line is tangent to the ball track in the point where the ball is. If you discovered the solution by yourself it s fine. If you didn t, keep it in mind because it s the most important concept we ll use to solve all our putting problems. The force that drives the ball along any trajectory is tangent to that trajectory in every point. Copyright by Marcel White
2. My putting quiz (cont.) Second situation: Now, consider you were training putts on a green that was flat and at constant slope. The yellow line is the fall line and the grey one is the aim line. You hit the ball and it moved as shown till it stopped at the point Z. Fig. 2.2 Ball at start Aim line Z Then you decided to hit a second ball from the same point and using the same aim line, but with less strength. My second question is: Does the second ball move along the same ball track but stops at X, before reaching the point Z reached by the first one or does it move to Y, along a new ball track that is under the previous one from the very beginning? Copyright by Marcel White
2. My putting quiz (cont.) Fig. 2.3 Ball at start Aim line X Z Y Answer: The second ball moved to Y because gravity was the same at both cases and had a bigger influence over the trajectory when the forward momentum was smaller. Here again if you discovered the solution by yourself it s fine. If you didn t, keep it in mind because it s also one of the most important concepts we ll use to solve all our putting problems. If you keep the aim line but hit the ball with a different strength you get another ball track. Copyright by Marcel White
3. My test to answer the question: Are you a consistent three-putter? Use this test to discover the nature of your problems! Fig. 3.1 17 1.5y 15.0y For those who aren t sure about the nature of their putting problems let s try the following test that s included in my Ebook Golf Putting Lines. Click here if you want to see a better image (page 7 of the Ebook). Copyright by Marcel White
3. My test to answer the question: Are you a consistent three-putter? (cont.) Here is how to perform the test: At home, in a room with a rug or carpet to make sure you are on a flat and level situation and without imperfections, take your putter and a golf ball. Use a second ball as a target and place it at a distance of one to two club shafts (*). Repeat several strokes changing target position in the mentioned range and count how many times you hit the target ball in every ten attempts. Five times or less means a technique problem. Eight times or more means a line reading problem. Results between those limits probably mean some of the two. The rationale of the test is this: If, on a flat and level situation and without imperfections, you don t hit the second ball, or rarely do, you surely reveal a poor technique. If you are successful 80% of times, or more, in the same circumstances, you are a fine putter that probably doesn t read lines as well as you could do in order to avoid three-putting. Copyright by Marcel White
3. My test to answer the question: Are you a consistent three-putter? (cont.) It s worth noting that hitting a second ball that is one and half club shafts distant (roughly 1.5 yards) means that for a 15 yards putt, if the distance was good, you d be inside a 17 inches radius circle centred in the hole. Very good, if the objective is avoiding three-putting. Keep in mind that distance, another factor that causes threeputting, has a lot to do with your ability to feel the peculiar conditions of that green, that day at the right time you are putting. Practice is the best thing you can do to fight it. (*) I often use one club shaft as a length unit because it s easy to use in any circumstances. If you prefer you can replace it with one yard or one meter and the sentence still makes sense. Copyright by Marcel White
4. My video Just before my site went on line, I decided to include this video in order to let people see the putting line, the aim point and how to use the concepts of parabola and tangent. It s an animated video that shows the mechanics of a putter stroke on a green flat and at constant slope. You can see how the forward momentum produced when the ball was hit, combined with gravity and friction, influence the ball s behaviour in order to make it break. Also revealed is the importance of having an aim line tangent to the anticipated parabola shaped curve. Don t be scared with the video. It is not intended to teach anything, but just to show that perhaps there are a few more things you need to know in order to be a better putter. Click here to see the video
5. My articles Golf Putting Tips About Wet Greens Summary: Wet greens are slower and golfers have to hit the ball harder to reach the same distance. See how to adjust your aim point if the green is wet and your next putt breaks. Caution! Golf putts, when the green is wet, are slower than when it is not. It s common sense. Some of us also know that it breaks less. If this is enough to you, don t waste your time reading the rest of this article. If you would like to discover something better than this qualitative approach keep reading and I ll try not to disappoint you and provide some insightful tips to improve your golf putting. Let s start with an example. Once, you were on that green, that is flat and level, facing a 5 yds putt. Your feel on the green is well known among your golf buddies. You read
the putt, made the required adjustments, took your stance, hit the ball and, as usual, it died just in the hole.... A few days later, you were on the same green facing exactly the same putt but it was a rainy day and the green was really wet. You knew that under these circumstances the greens are very slow and you took the decision to double the stroke intensity. This made the ball speed at start double compared with the previous scenario and the result was wonderful. It started moving very fast but friction was greater this time and it ended again dying just in the hole. The only difference was noticed by one of your buddies that measured time spent by the ball in both putts. On the wet green, with double speed at start, the time to reach the hole was reduced by half.
Was this information, gathered by your meticulous buddy, important in this case? NO! But we ll need to revert to this subject later because if it were a breaking putt this detail would make all the difference. A) Let s start organising our thoughts about putting on wet greens that are flat and level. In this situation you have straight putts and you just need to discover how much will the water, on the green s surface, slow your putts. You can estimate it as a percentage. Let s see an example: You have a 10 ft putt and during your testing you found that you have to hit the ball as if it was a 12 ft putt. This roughly means that you have to hit the ball 20% harder. This can be made easily by moving, in your head, the hole 2 ft back. Of course this is not exact science but my motto is: it s better to have a rough estimate than not having any estimate at all.
You can think of situations when you have to hit 30, 40, 50% harder, or even 100%, as in our first example. The technique is simple: address the ball, look to the hole, move it back in your mind by the desired amount, forget the rest and putt to that new target. You ll discover that your brain works wonders in these situations. B) Let s see what happens with breaking putts on sloping wet greens. The situation is really very different and it s easy to see why. Just remember our first example and the insightful remark of that guy that noticed that the ball, on the wet green, had to be hit twice as hard as in the normal green but only took half the time to reach the hole. To understand why this detail changes the entire situation let s check this video I produced and that is available in my site http://puttinglines.com/video.php Now you know that when a ball moves on a sloping green there are 3 forces that influ-
ence ball s behaviour: a) Forward momentum, produced by the putter stroke, that makes the ball move forward. b) Friction, mainly a result of the contact between the ball and the grass, that continuously slows the ball till it stops. c) Gravity, which pulls the ball downwards and only depends on the ball weight and green slope. The conclusion is simple: if gravity pulls the ball downwards and, in this example, it only works half the normal time period, the ball must break less than in normal circumstances. How much less is what remains to be seen. Beware of fast conclusions!
This alert must be made because it would be tempting to say that if it works half the normal time period it would also break only one half. Wrong! Why? Because when gravity pulls an object downwards it produces an accelerated movement not one at constant speed. This causes the reduction of the break to be much more drastic than expected. In our example it was reduced to just one quarter of normal break. But you don t have to worry because I did all the math needed to give a few guidelines that are easy to keep in memory and ready to be used if needed. Here they are: > If you have to hit the ball 20% harder the break will be only 2/3 of the normal break > If you have to hit the ball 40% harder the break will be only 1/2 of the normal break > If you have to hit the ball 100% harder the break will be only 1/4 of the normal break
Or, in other words: > Move the hole 20% back and consider only 2/3 (67%) of the normal break > Move the hole 40% back and consider only 1/2 (50%) of the normal break > Move the hole 100% back (double the distance) and consider only 1/4 (25%) of the normal break Perhaps there s one question crossing your mind: How to measure break in order to use these concepts? First consider the free fall line, the direction the water would take if you poured a lot of it in the hole till it overflows. Break, in this case, must be measured over that line. See the pictures for the 2nd and 3rd situations:
> In this image we drew the blue line of the normal putt and then imagined that the hole was 40% behind its real position (consider only one half of normal break). The new line would break less. Aim Point New Aim Point 4 ft New Hole Hole 10 ft Ball
> In this image we also drew the blue line of the normal putt and then imagined that the hole was 100% further behind its real position (consider only one quarter of normal break). The new line would break much less. Aim Point New Hole New Aim Point 10 ft Hole 10 ft Ball
I hope this tip works with you as it does with me. But, in any case, getting feedback from you would be nice. Final note: While I was reviewing this article, TV was showing day 1 of the Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. After the first groups had already finished there was weather change and the rain started falling. Not heavy rain but enough to disturb. And I could notice that there was a lot of breaking putts missed on the upper side. I attributed that to the wet greens breaking less because, even for professionals, it is more usual to miss on the lower side. Marcel White (2012/07/23) www.puttinglines.com
A New Golf Tip on Putting From Off the Green Summary: Find the answer to the question golfers always ask: for the same distance, how much harder shall I hit the ball when putting from off the green? Don t expect this article to explain how, or recommend when, to putt from off the green. For me the rule is simple: use your putter always you feel that the putter is the golf club that will provide the best result. Let me just add a small piece of advice: don t forget to make some experiments from time to time because our golf skills change and without testing no one knows if something, that was impossible a few months ago, didn t become feasible now, or vice versa. Before explaining this new golf putting tip let me tell a few things about the putting process. First, for the sake of simplicity, I will divide our body in two parts: the brain and
the rest. Putting is the golf chapter that involves the most our brain and the least the rest of our body. For a solid and reliable putter stroke our lower body shouldn t move at all and our wrists are not allowed to bend. Usually, only a few muscles in the player s back will receive a mild call to action. The brain will perform all the rest. Let s see: after you read the green and decide if it is slow or fast and if your next putt is uphill or downhill, against the grain or not, affected by the wind or not, breaks or is straight, all the rest depends on your brain capacity to process all the information you gathered. It will reveal the aim point to let the player align, address the ball accordingly and make the pre-putt routine. And after a last look to the hole to allow some final adjustments the command to your muscles comes, the putter strikes the ball and it will start moving with the speed and direction your brain considered convenient to roughly reach the hole.
And why is this detail worth to be mentioned here? Because when you putt from off the green your brain is submitted to what we can call a cognitive dissonance, that is, an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. You read the green carefully and provided all the information you gathered but when your brain starts processing it receives an alert: there is a correction to be made and the ball must be hit harder than for the usual putts on the green. Poor brain! Harder? What is this? How much harder? These are the questions your brain will ask several times in a fraction of a second and that can ruin the decision process. Very often the results are not what you would like.
Here is my tip: a) Make everything as if it was a normal putt on the green. b) See what is the distance from your ball to the edge of the green (d) and keep it in your memory. c) Look for a spot (P) behind the hole at roughly the same distance from it as the one you registered in memory (d). For instance, if your ball has to roll 2 yards to reach the green the spot you choose must be 2 yards behind the pin. d) Address the ball and try not even looking at the hole. Just look at the spot you chose. e) Keep telling yourself, that is, to your brain, that the ball must reach that spot. f) Hit the ball as if you were on the green, control your curiosity and keep your head still. With some practice, talent and luck the ball will stop close to the hole or even in the hole.
The tee is just to show the distance to measure. Because this is a breaking putt, the ball, the tee and the pin are not aligned. Watching from behind the hole we can see that the distance tee-hole is roughly the same as the distance ball-tee.
This is the basic configuration of the tip but you can make some refinements. For instance, if you play very often the same course and you know that the fringes around the greens usually show a low cut and are very fast, you may try only one half of the distance mentioned in b). Or double that distance if you always have to deal with slow fringes (tall grass) around the greens. Spend some time training this tip and perhaps in a near future you ll decide to use your putter in situations you never considered before. And if you decide to try this tip, please give me feedback in my site www.puttinglines.com because I always like to know if it worked for you as it worked for me and my friends.
What Is More Important in Golf Putting, Line or Distance? Summary: Almost all golf players believe that controlling distance is the key factor to a solid golf putting performance. This is not 100% true. See why line or distance can be the most important factor, depending on the nature of the putt you have to make. I believe you picked a wrong answer to a silly question in the title! Yes, whatever your choice, the answer is wrong and this makes my question a silly one. Keep reading and discover that line or distance can be the most important factor, depending on the nature of the putt you have to make. In order to follow my theory you have to separate long putts from the short ones because the skills needed to master long and short putts are different.
For long putts you need putting technique and feel For short putts you need putting technique and special knowledge As putting technique is needed for both of them it won t be treated here. It s out of the scope of this article. I ll focus on feel and knowledge and try to explain why they are important in different ways when you putt. 1- Let s start with long putts When you try to sink a long putt, if you are a talented lucky person, you may hole it but usually you don t. So, what you desperately need is to let yourself a manageable short putt in order to avoid 3 putting. A tap-in would be great! To achieve this objective and assuming your technique is good enough, the other skill you need is feel.
Yes, you have to feel the peculiar conditions of that green, that day, at the right time you are putting. Otherwise you risk letting the ball a few yards long or short and increase your chances of 3 putting. Good technique is worthless if you can t predict how moisture, grain, grass length, grass consistency, green slope and wind are influencing green speed. Some of these factors change on a daily basis and others on an hourly basis. Only slope and grain remain constant. This means that you have to develop the capacity to let your brain process all the information you get. Then you ll start feeling how to produce strokes adjusted to your needs. To get that feel, necessary to prevent the long putt fiasco, you need lots of practice and attention to details. For instance: Moisture makes greens slower. As the temperature raises, grass becomes harder making the green slower. If the wind is against our putt the ball will move less and vice versa.
The great majority of golf courses don t mow the greens on weekends. So, if you play Saturdays and Sundays consider that, all other factors being the same, greens are slower on Sundays. And so on, and on and on. 2- And what about short putts? Well, short putts are different in many ways. You still need putting technique but feel isn t so overwhelming as in long putts. Now what you need above all is special knowledge to help you anticipate how the ball will behave after the putter stroke. Even for short putts, straight lines are not the rule but the exception. There are so many factors influencing the ball trajectory on the green that it is almost impossible to make it follow a straight line. The most important are: slope, wind, grain and imperfections.
Imperfections matter but their effects are often unpredictable and the only solution against them is to pray (and even that one usually doesn t work). Grain is less important than slope and wind and can be overlooked when they are present. Wind and slope have the same nature: forces that work to change the way the ball is moving on the green. Under normal conditions wind effect is negligible. If it is strong, the best solution for the golf player is to consider that it slightly increases the effect of slope if it is blowing downwards or slightly reduces it if the opposite is true. This means that slope is above all when it comes to short putts. It causes your ball to move along a parabola shaped line and you MUST know how to anticipate the ball trajectory (putting line) in order to hole putts. That is why I keep telling that knowledge is a key factor here. Of course practice is important but if you don t have the right tools to understand what is going on you risk to practice not to improve but to perfect your mistakes. Only when you learn how to deal with parabolas you will get a clearer picture of your putting lines BEFORE you putt, not after.
I know that some of my readers consider this is not worth the effort it takes. I disagree and can explain why. See, if you make 3 putts for a long putt you think it was one stroke too much. And what if you make two putts for a short putt, isn t it one stroke too much? Where is the difference? Keep track of your putts and you ll discover that you lose more strokes making two when only one was needed than making three when only two were needed. To finish this article, let s draw some conclusions and guidelines: a) Distance is the most important factor for long putts. b) Line is the most important factor for short putts. c) During a round of golf all of us have more short putts to do than long ones. d) The solution to increase the putting performance is to get rid of three putts (for long putts) and to increase the conversion rate (for short putts).
e) Collecting real data is the only way a player has to identify their weaknesses. f) Discard myths even if everybody seems to believe they are true. There is still one point missing that is not as easy as it seeams: how to define long and short putts? If you are interested, please go to my site www.puttinglines.com, chose Contacts & links and contact me. I ll send that page to you by email. It s part of my ebook Golf Putting Lines and I don t want to let that one online.
A New Golf Putting Tip on Effective Green Reading Summary: In this article you can find an explanation of Marcel White s technique for green reading more detailed than the one delivered in a previous article. In my last article I wrote about several gadgets and procedures that may (or may not) help in golf putting. In that article, among those procedures considered useful and in total accordance with the rules, I introduced Marcel White s technique for green reading. I mentioned then that it had never been revealed before. After the article went on line I received some comments and had some discussions about that technique and discovered that it had not been a good idea to introduce it in the middle of the article together with other subjects. Some readers suggested that I should write a more detailed article focused exclusively on that point. Here it is! Situation NR 1. Let s start with the easiest feature this technique can provide. When considering your next putt, discover if the hole s level is below or above the ball s level.
Perhaps you think this is a piece of cake but it isn t. If you are on a sloping green evaluating your next putt, as you move from one point to another, your perspective changes giving you misleading perceptions and you find yourself not sure about it being uphill or downhill. Consequences can be devastating if you consider downhill a putt that actually is uphill, or vice-versa. This is the approach I recommend to solve the problem. a) Look for a spot that is roughly at the same distance from the hole and the ball and not very close to the ball-hole line and don t care if you are on the higher or lower part of the green in relation to that line. Stand on that point. I always try that my distance to the ballhole line beats the ball-hole distance. Standing on that point, you, the ball and the hole are forming a triangle, an isosceles triangle because two sides of it are equal. Remember that the spot was chosen to be at the same distance from the hole and the ball.
b) Align yourself in order to let your shoulders parallel to the ball-hole line. Use both your forefingers to handle your putter and raise your arms, keeping them straight, till the putter s shaft is horizontal in front of you and parallel to your shoulders. Now, your eyes and the club shaft define a plane in which any straight line parallel to the club shaft is horizontal. So, just move slowly both arms, keeping the putter horizontal, till you see it touching the hole. Now, the image of the club shaft you see on the ground is a horizontal line that will tell you if the ball is above or below the hole and how much.
I agree this is not as accurate as an electronic meter but, so far, the choice is between this technique and nothing allowed by golf rules. Besides, we can take some steps to improve it. First, do it while the pin is in the cup. It s vertical and will help to see if the shaft is horizontal because both lines are perpendicular. Second, you can train your eyes as much as you want because horizontal lines are everywhere to help you confirm your guesses. For instance, any house or building has horizontals on the top of doors, windows, walls, etc. Put yourself with your shoulders parallel to a wall, holding your putter the way mentioned before and move both arms at the same time in order to adjust the shaft image to the top of a door or window and calibrate your horizontals. You ll discover that this technique is pretty accurate.
A final note on situation NR 1: It doesn t matter if a putt starts, or finishes, uphill or downhill. If ball s level at start is above hole s level you face a downhill putt (see image). If ball s level at start is below hole s level you face a uphill putt.
Situation NR 2. Now, an interesting question is perhaps crossing your minds: if you line up with the ball and the hole, will this technique work to reveal the lateral break? Yes, it will, but it is not that simple! So, get down, in line with the ball and the hole, and find two spots you can remember, on the grass, at each side of the ball-hole line and at similar distances from it. The two spots must define a second line that is perpendicular to the ball-hole line. You and those two points are now forming the isosceles triangle needed to use this technique. As before, the next step will be to raise the horizontal putter to discover which one of the spots is at a lower or higher level and how much. That is the lateral break. If you suspect of a double break repeat the entire process close to the hole. Just take care to avoid slowing the game.
I recommend that you start using this technique in situations NR 2, only after you are in full control of it in situations NR 1. To practice, you can go to a sloping putting green and start using 2 tees and fixing them on the ground instead of looking for the two spots needed to define the triangle. After some practice you ll find that you can do without the tees. As far as I know, this is the best and most reliable technique to improve your green reading without breaking the golf rules. With it you get a clearer picture of your putting zone in every situation. But don t forget that your objective is to sink the next putt, not to get a topographic image of the green. Provided you know how to use all the information you gathered, a nice putt is on the way. Otherwise, it will have been a waste of time. If this is the case, in the resource box you can find more suggestions that can help.
Gadgets and procedures that may (or may not) help in golf putting Summary: Learn how to deal with breaking putts. First, a quick review of procedures and devices not allowed, or not useful, or both and why they are not the solution for golf putting problems. Afterwards, a quick review of procedures allowed to deal with breaking putts, that are the solution for some golf putting problems. Everybody agrees that golf putting is the most important part of the golf game. At first sight, however, improving the putting performance doesn t seem so rewarding as working with the driver or any other of the golf clubs inside the player s bag. No wonder that the great majority of average golf players don t devote any serious attention to golf putting. And when it comes to breaking putts, even fair and good players are usually, and understandably, moving in the desert. Believe me, the great majority of what you can read about this subject are laughable pieces of absolutely worthless text. We have to deal with two main problems. First: To read the green, that is, to evaluate the shape of that area between our golf ball and the hole.
Second: To know what to do supposing the green was correctly read in the previous step. There are some gadgets and procedures available to assist golfers in the first step that will be analysed in this article. Some of them are not allowed in the golf course because of golf rules and others are just useless. Only two are useful and permitted by golf rules and one of those two, as far as I can figure, has never been revealed before. But if any of my readers can prove that someone else has disclosed it before, please let me know because, in that case, I owe the author an apology. Let s start our comprehensive review. If you are not interested in solutions that aren t useful or violate golf rules, skip to c). a) Plumb bobbing. A procedure that is allowed but is useless. I won t give too many details about this technique. Those interested can google plumb bobbing in golf and get countless results. Briefly, stand behind the ball and look straight to the hole, hold the top of the grip between your thumb and forefinger, extend your arm slightly and let the putter hang
freely in your grip. Block the view of the ball with the lower end of the shaft of the putter. Only keep your dominant eye open. If the hole looks like it is on the left of the shaft, then you should expect the break to be from the right to the left and vice-versa. All this is pure fantasy. It s always possible to position the shaft, the ball and the hole in the same alignment. If they are not aligned it s because the players have done what they needed to do in order to see what they wanted to see. It s a kind of confidence booster to reinforce what they probably already saw by careful visual examination of the putting surface. If you are not convinced imagine the pin is in the cup standing vertically. Imagine also that you have a big door that turns around the pin. Rotate it, in your mind, till it is over the ball and stop. The door is a vertical plane that, if you were plumb bobbing, would contain the pin, the hole, the ball, the putter s shaft and your dominant eye. How can you measure any break in this situation? The answer is: you can t, unless you cheat and move your head a bit to get it out of the door. b) Devices to measure break and provide the direction of the fall-line. Very useful gadgets but not allowed.
We are now referring to objects, either electronic or air bubble based, which display the most important piece of advice needed for the management of breaking putts: the direction of the fall-line, information that is critical to establish the shape of the curve the ball will follow after the putter stroke. Fortunately, in my opinion, they are not allowed. However, due to its usefulness, they are currently used by golf professionals to map the greens before tournaments. Here you have the names of some of them, not as an endorsement but for pure informative purposes: eez-read, an air bubble based break meter exelys break master, an electronic break meter A quick reference also to the green reader, a disguised sophisticated plumb bobbing device, not allowed by golf rules. And now, let s see the solutions that are available to assist in green reading and that are useful in golf putting and in full accordance with golf rules.
c) Guessing the direction of the water flow. Very useful and allowed. This is a very effective procedure that I highly recommend. Carefully observe the ground close to the hole and imagine someone poured a fair amount of water in the cup till it overflowed. The direction the water would take isthe fall-line or line of maximum slope. How to make full use of it is out of the scope of this article but it is explained in detail in my Ebook Golf Putting Lines. d) Marcel White s technique for green reading. Very useful and in total accordance with the rules. This is the one that has never been revealed before. Let s start with the easiest feature this technique can provide. You are on a sloping green but you are not sure about it being uphill or downhill because, as you move from one point to another, your perspective changes giving you misleading perceptions. The consequences can be devastating if you consider downhill a putt that actually is uphill, or vice-versa. Use this approach to solve the problem. Look for a spot that is roughly at the same distance from the hole and the ball and not very close to the ball-hole line. Standing on that point, you, the ball and the hole are forming a triangle, an isosceles triangle because two sides of it are equal.
Align yourself in order to let your shoulders parallel to the ball-hole line. Use both your forefingers to handle your putter and raise your arms, keeping them straight, till the putter s shaft is horizontal in front of you and parallel to your shoulders. Now, your eyes and the club shaft define a plane in which any straight line parallel to the club shaft is horizontal. So, just move slowly both arms, keeping the putter horizontal, till you see it touching the hole. Now, the image of the club shaft you see on the ground will tell you if the ball is above or bellow the hole and how much. I agree this is not as accurate as an electronic meter but the choice is between this technique and nothing allowed by golf rules. Besides, we can take some steps to improve it.
First, do it while the pin is in the cup. It s vertical and will help to see if the shaft is horizontal because both lines are perpendicular. Second, you can train your eyes as much as you want because horizontal lines are everywhere to help you confirm your guesses. For instance, any house or building has horizontals on the top of doors, windows, walls, etc. Put yourself with your shoulders parallel to the wall and calibrate your horizontals. And now an interesting question is perhaps crossing your minds: if you lined up with the ball and the hole, will this technique work to reveal the lateral break? Yes, it will! So, get down, in line with the ball and the hole, and find two spots you can remember, on the grass, at each side of the ball and at similar distances from it. The two spots must define a second line that is perpendicular to the ball-hole line. You and those two points are now forming the isosceles triangle needed to use this technique. As before, the next step will be to raise the horizontal putter to discover which one of
the spots is at a lower or higher level and how much. That is the lateral break. If you suspect of a double break, repeat the entire process close to the hole. Just take care to avoid slowing the game. As far as I know, this is the best and most reliable technique to improve your green reading without breaking the golf rules. With it you get a clearer picture of your putting zone in every situation. But don t forget that your objective is to sink the next putt, not to get a topographic image of the green. Provided you know how to use all the information you have gathered, a nice putt is on the way. Otherwise, it will have been a waste of time. So, if the results don t show, I m sure it s time to read Golf Putting Lines Ebook and to discover the pleasure of making good breaking putts. It was one of my objectives when I wrote it.
Beware of a Common Pitfall in Golf Putting Summary: This article deals with a problem very well known among golf players: Does your next putt break to the left or to the right? Sometimes, observations from the ball s side and the hole s side lead to different conclusions. Find out why this is so and how to avoid the pitfall in order to save precious strokes to your golf scores. Now you are on the green, holding your putter, facing the pin and trying to evaluate the shape of that area between your golf ball and the hole. Forget about the strokes needed to reach the green. That s past, that s history. And because it s not the right time to put pressure on yourself, also forget a) that the last few yards on the green can take more strokes than the 3 or 4 hundred yards between the tee and the green b) there s no such thing as a recovery for a missed putt
Let s assume that you are aware of all that and take golf putting seriously. So, the most important thing you desperately need now is to know the slope of your putting area, that is the green s zone your ball will cross on its way to the hole. You carefully observe from the ball s side and there s no doubt it will break slightly say, from north to south (n/s). Now, let s have a look from the other side to get a clearer picture. And... oops! It breaks slightly from south to north (s/n). Now you have a big problem that all of us (who look from both sides) have faced several times. If your group is alone on the golf course and your buddies aren t pushing too much, you can repeat the entire process but the results won t change. Perhaps it s because the shadows are distorting the image or, perhaps, some objects in front of you (trees, fences, etc) are giving you a wrong perception. Still more likely, perhaps you are a biased observer. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps! But the truth is that the data your eyes sent to your CPU doesn t match, so your brain gets confused with that and any commands coming to your muscles will reflect that dilemma. It s easy to predict there s trouble ahead.
Some of us, in this situation, decide to forget what they have seen from the hole s side. It s a wise decision. At least you ll act according to what you see when you take your stance to putt. But you can almost safely bet that you won t make that putt. Why? Well, if the break is there it won t disappear just because you have decided to ignore it. Another solution is to try to emulate King Solomon s method, when he ruled that a baby was to be cut in two pieces, one for each of two women who wanted the child (fortunately the case was settled before the King s command was executed!). Using this method you just aim straight to the hole. The rationale is that if you see one thing from one side and the opposite from the other side, chances are that the solution is just in the middle. If you are a lucky guy, it might work. But don t expect too much. My conclusion, after lots of missed putts and careful observations and experiments, is this: When you see something it s better to believe it s true and not a product of
your imagination. If you see a n/s break, it s probably there. If, from the other side, you see a s/n break, it s probably also there. You have a putt with double break and your observations just privileged the green s area closer to you in both cases. You shouldn t be surprised to get a better and more detailed view of what is closer to you, should you? And don t forget we are talking about slight breaks, not clear double breaks where we can use the method explained in Golf Putting Lines Ebook.
The double break theory explains why some of us only use the information gathered from the ball s side and don t report a major cognitive dissonance. On one hand, our brain is a bit more confident because it s acting according to what our eyes see when we putt. On the other hand, we witness that the ball starts breaking as it s supposed to. There s only one disturbing factor: it rarely enters in the hole, because we didn t consider in our putting equation the second break that was there waiting for the ball. Next time try to make a small adjustment and reduce the anticipated break a little bit. It has worked with me and perhaps it will work for you too. Good luck!
A Black Hole in Golf Putting Summary: An article for golf players where the author writes about Golf Putting and the specifics of breaking putts. It s also analysed why this subject, till recently, has never been deeply studied. No, I m not referring to that hole on the green where the pin rests waiting to be removed to let the golf ball go in. Instead, I m talking about Black Holes, those regions of cosmic space with a gravitational field so intense that not even light can escape from it. That is, we don t know anything about what s inside. In golf putting there s also a kind of Black Hole for the great majority of players. Inside, is carefully kept the background needed to confidently face breaking putts. As a consequence, millions of golf players feel like zombies, lost in the middle of sloping greens, having their eyes blindfolded.
Too much drama? I won t dispute that. I just want to emphasise that there are lots of easy putts missed everyday, everywhere, by golfers that never had the chance to learn how to deal with this subject of breaking putts. And it can be taught and made easy to use for common players of all levels. Remember your first attempts with breaking putts. Perhaps you are a self made putter that found your way by trial and error; or maybe you went to the golf course with some kind of golf guru that, for every breaking putt, told you to aim x inches, or y feet, or z yards above the hole. And, regardless of the outcome, you were astonished and wondering where did those magic distances come from and desiring to get the talent to decide it on your own. But you found it impossible to discover anything written specifically about it or a serious way to be taught about that. This is a very important subject because breaking putts are something every golfer has to face several times during a round of golf and, no matter how good his putting technique is, success won t come unless he chooses a good line. This fact is related with another one. When a golf player has a breaking putt to do he must aim at some point that isn t
the cup s centre and if he or she doesn t know what kind of ball track the ball will follow all happens as if he, or she, is putting blindfolded. Even for non-golfers it s easy to feel the drama. And if we consider that during a round of golf almost half of total strokes are putts and more than half of them can be breaking putts, the drama turns to tragedy. The reason that has made this problem remain for so long without some light being shed on it, is the fact that some basic concepts of physics and geometry are needed to deal with it. And those 2 words are scary and intimidate common people, even before you enter the subject. This means we are facing a kind of vicious circle: the problem is important and needs to be addressed, the solution is based on some basic concepts that scare people, no one dares, so, the problem remains unsolved. The first serious attempt I know to break this stalemate is an Ebook called Golf Putting Lines that is now selling online. As far as I know, there are no other books, articles, videos, whatever, thoroughly treating this subject. It assumes that correctly identifying lines is a matter that requires some background in physics and geometry that the great majority of golf players don t have, or don t remember, or don t even want to hear
about for its reputation of being difficult and inappropriate for a golfing environment. As a consequence, objective number one was to make it simple at any cost. I believe it is and I also believe it s accessible for anyone with a normal background. This is what is inside: >Insights about ball tracks. The concept; the different kinds. >Break definition and the right point where it must be measured. >Introduction to the concepts of aim point and break point. >Explanations about break and clues to evaluate how much a putt will break. >Analysis of the different factors that affect ball trajectory. >Suggestions of some drills and experiments that will help golfers to become
more sensitive to the several green factors that influence putting lines and, as a consequence, make them more confident with those putts that used to make people sweat even in cold winter days. For those interested in a deeper insight, it s also revealed why and how things happen and no more than that. This is a separate chapter everybody can skip without major consequences. There is also room for surprise, for instance, when it s explained why putts in the range 1 to 4 yards (roughly) are more reliable if there is a clear break to consider than if they look flat and level. Interesting, as well, is the fact that the Ebook is as succinct as possible because the author believes readers are looking for solutions, not for literature. The result is an Ebook that tries to fill the gap between the solutions every golfer needs to become a better player and the theory behind those solutions, something no one is remotely interested in. In other words, it is a successful attempt to provide some gain without pain.
6. A final word I have written this small free Ebook to put together some texts that are now on line but on several sites of different kinds (golf sites, article directories, forums, etc.). All of them are about breaking putts, my field of expertise, but are only complimentary to what I have written in Golf Putting Lines. I use my articles to clarify Golf Putting Lines and to introduce some refinements to it, not to be used instead of it. You must understand that an Ebook with 81 pages and 122 figures, Golf Putting Lines, has certainly some merits that can t be found in some free articles available on line, almost everywhere. Anyhow, I love to be useful to other people and help whenever possible. In order to let me improve my work, please give me feedback about the points, doubts or anything you think deserves your comments, criticism, suggestions, etc. Click the following link, http://www.puttinglines.com/links.php and write to me. Thank you. Marcel White