The following are recent putting tips from my Facebook page:

There comes a point in your putting when your stroke is good enough, and the reads you make are good enough, that you should be sinking putts. If you are not, check to see whether it’s because you don’t feel the ball falling into the hole before you start the stroke. I don’t mean visualizing the ball falling in, but feeling in your body the impact of the ball on the bottom of the cup liner.

To avoid getting a sore back when you practice putting, use just one ball. That way, you have to get out of your crouch after every putt, to stand up and go get your ball.

If you’re just missing makable putts, I’ll bet it has more to do with speed than line. If you can hit your putts from twenty feet in so they all roll at the same speed when they get to the hole, you have that much more clarity about how to pick the right line, and confidence that that line is the right one.

I found my blade opened on the backswing, but wasn’t always closing. This made me miss putts to the right. I started hooding the putter, just a bit, on the way back to keep the blade square. It works.

One of the questions surrounding putting is whether to charge to putt or let it die into the hole. The pros can die the putt at the hole because they play on greens that are flawless and true. Our greens aren’t that good, so we have to hit the ball a bit harder.

A 40-handicapper and a scratch golfer have the same number of two-putt greens in a round of golf. Records bear this out. The scratch golfer, though, will have three fewer three-putt greens and three more one-putt greens. A word to the wise: It is much easier to learn how to putt like a scratch golfer than to swing like one.

I would much rather leave a 20-foot putt dead on line and two inches short than burn the edge of the hole and leave it four feet past. Ben Crenshaw once said that for him, any putt outside eight feet is a speed putt.

I think it’s important on the green that once you have found the starting line and feel the speed, you stand over the ball and forget about the hole completely. Just hit a straight putt the same as you do on your living room carpet. Thinking that there is more to do than that this point is a major reason why you miss putts you should be making.

The reason you rarely miss a three-foot putt on the practice green is that you don’t care if it goes in or not. The reason you miss them when you play is that you do.

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Lately I’ve been spending my time at the range doing nothing but putting. Here’s what I’ve learned about putting in the past few times out.

1. I miss short putts (2-3 feet) too many times. It is because my clubface opens on the backswing, but the short swing doesn’t give time for the clubface to close again coming into the ball. So I have developed a technique of hooding the clubface just a bit on the backswing so it stays square to the line. This technique works for putts out to twenty feet or so, after which when getting the ball close is a more realistic expectation than getting it in the hole.

2. To putt the ball farther, you swing the putter back farther. But there comes a point at which you lose connection with the ball and subject yourself to frequent mishits. There is only so far back you can take the putter and maintain control of the stroke. Past that point, to make the ball go farther, you have to hit it harder.

When I have a putt that I have to hit harder like this, I hit it like a chip. I’ll turn my feet a bit toward the hole, opening my stance. Then I’ll take the club back only a short way and use my right hand feel to hit the ball the right distance, like I would if I were chipping from just off the green with a 6-iron.

3. There are three kinds of putts. First are the ones you think you can sink. Line is paramount, so you spend your time aiming the putter and ensuring a square stroke and contact, using your normal putting stroke.

The second kind are beyond the point where you think you have a chance to make it, but can still get it close. The idea here is to cozy up the ball to the hole and give it a chance to fall in. The third kind is farther away than that, the true approach putt. All you want to do is get it close. Going in would be sheer luck.

Each of these putts can be hit with a different stroke. The second and third kind of putts can be hit successfully with the “chip-putt” method described above.

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Dave Pelz, the short game and putting guru, put out a factoid in the late 1970s that hitting a putt so that it would go 17 inches past the hole if it missed is the speed, at the hole, which allows the most putts fall in. Many golfers and teaching professionals believe that. But is it true?

One key to consistent putting is for the ball to approach the hole at the same speed every time. That way, you always know how much break to read since one variable, speed of the putt, is now a constant.

The fastest speed a putt can have and still go in the hole is 4.3 feet per second (fps), rolling over the centerline of the hole. A putt can be going 2.1 fps at the edge of the cup (outside edge of the ball meets the inside edge of the hole) and fall in.

How fast would a putt that grazes the edge of the hole and stops 17 inches past it be traveling when it reaches the hole? Unfortunately, that’s not a question we can give a unique answer to.

Greens have different speeds, meaning the decay rate of the putt differs. They have slope. They have grain. All this means that a putt traveling the same speed can go farther or shorter, depending on those variables. To get the ball to get to the hole at a 17-inch-past speed, it would have to be hit differently almost every time.

Say your target speed is 1.2 fps. A putt going that fast at the hole on an uphill putt will not go as far past the hole as it would if the putt were downhill. How about a bermuda green where you’re putting uphill against the grain versus downhill with the grain? Those two putts will finish at wildly different distances past the hole should they miss, even though they approach the hole at the same speed.

To have all these mentioned putts finish 17 inches past the hole, they all have to be hit at different speeds. That is what you do not want to do.

Pelz did say, and this fact is not paid attention to, that 17 inches is an average, which means it is not a goal. It is a guideline. By the way, I know about the lumpy donut and all that. Modern greenskeeping practices have pretty much eliminated or at least greatly reduced that effect. If it exists, your putt has to be moving very slowly in order for the effect to be noticed.

The biggest problem is that the “17 inches” concept focuses on the wrong thing. Forget about where the ball would go if it missed. Concentrate on where you want the ball to go when it falls in.

Do you want it to hit the bottom of the hole first? Do you want it to bounce off the liner about halfway down? Some other place? Whatever it is, that is what you want to concentrate on, because it is a reflection of the speed at which the ball approaches the hole. You want that speed to be the same, so it hits the liner in the same place.

Drill: Practice this by laying down a club and laying down a coin about a foot in front of it. Now start with three-foot putts and have the ball hit the club just barely. When you can do that consistently, move to four feet and continue. Keep moving back foot by foot, out to about 15 feet.

When you get good at this drill, you have reduced green-reading to one variable, slope. Your line and speed will match up a lot better than before, and you will start making putts you were barely missing, all other things being equal.

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There is a simple way to hit your approach putts on the number. It involves knowing what physical impression the stroke for a certain distance makes on your body. I spoke of this in an earlier post, but this post goes into more detail.

This method works only if your putting stroke is a body stroke; that is, the rotation of your torso is the prime mover of the stroke. If you are all hands on the green, read no further.

Go to the practice green and hit several fifteen-foot putts. As you hit these putts, pay attention to any physical sensations you have at the apex of the stroke. For example, I feel certain compression of my upper back muscles on my right side.

What you have found is the physical feeling, for you, of a fifteen-foot putt. Now whenever you recreate that feeling, the putt will go fifteen feet. Simple.

Now make a longer stroke, one that hits the putt twenty-five feet, and look for the physical marker again. For me, it’s a stretching, or maybe a tugging, in the right side of my torso.

Finally, hit some putts that go thirty-five feet. When you have that distance down consistently, search once more for the indicator physical sensation. I feel a stretching or tugging sensation in my lower back.

After you’ve done this, you have found three reference feelings that produce approach putts of three definite lengths. Given a putt of that length, you merely have to reproduce the feeling as you make the stroke and the perfect distance is the result.

For putts between those reference point distances, use the feeling of the shorter stroke and add on a bit of hit with the hands.

For putts of longer than your longest reference stroke, you do the same thing–add a bit of hit with your hands. Practice will tell you how much.

If you calibrate your stroke in this way and memorize these feelings, there is no need ever to guess at how hard to hit an approach putt.

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Much of green-reading is based on the experience you have had, remembering what greens looked like they would do and what they actually did. When you read a putt, you reach into the bank of putts you remembered and pick out the one that looks the most like this one, weigh the two, and come up with a solution. That’s really what green-reading is. This post is about how to organize your reading so you can store your memories in a way that makes them easily and accurately retrieved.

When you walk up to a green, maybe from 100 yards out, notice if the table of land that it rests on is sloped in any way. You might not be able to see it from the angle you have, but it’s there. That slope will tend to pull putts in that direction.

When you get on the green, find the high point and the low point. Forget about where your ball is for the moment. Just look at the green in general. Most of the time this slope will conform to the slope of the land you looked at coming up the fairway.

These first two looks show you slope that must be taken into account. Your putt might break a different way, but if you’re going to ignore the overall slope of the putting surface, you have to know what it is first and have a good reason for ignoring it.

Now look at your putt from the low side, to see changes in elevation that would cause you to hit the ball harder or softer to get the ball over the distance to the hole. The farther from the hole the ball is, the more important speed is, and the more important it is that you take this look. Try to do it when someone else is lining up their putt so you save time when it’s your turn.

Look at the putt from behind the ball unless you are putting up or down a slope. In that case, look at the putt from the downhill side looking uphill. Contours are easier to see. Look first for the general shape of the putt—if you were to hit the ball straight at the hole, would it go in, or end up to the right or to the left?

If the ground gives you two breaks, say right to left at the start, the left to right at the end, account for both, but give the latest break more allowance, since the ball will be traveling slower and be more affected by the slope of the ground.

It is not entirely necessary to look at green contours from close to the ground. You can see all you need to from a standing position, maybe bending over a bit to look from a height of four to five feet.

Reading longer putts from behind the ball does not let you see contours around the hole clearly, and that is where you need to pay the most attention. Walk up to about ten feet from the hole and straddle the line of your putt so you can get a good look at slopes near the hole. Don’t guess from way back there.

You should have a good feel for how hard you want to hit the putt. Put that information together with what you see on the ground to pick a starting line for the putt. Do that with this next bit in mind, probably the most important thing I will say today. Beyond a certain distance, you’re not realistically trying to sink the putt. You know that if you did it would be good fortune rather than your skill that got the ball in the hole. Your skill, however, is what gets the ball close and gives it a chance to go in. Your goal then is to see how to send the ball across the green to place where good fortune can take over. That’s how you leave yourself tap-ins, and that’s how those twenty- and thirty-footers go in every now and then.

Organize your green reading this way, going from the general to the specific, step by step. That pulls out one recognition at a time and lets you build our read logically without guesswork.

Remember that you will never read greens perfectly. Did you ever see a pro on TV let a putt slide by the hole a hair on the right and have an expression of complete disbelief? Have you ever heard the announcers on TV say, “This putt goes left, doesn’t it Roger?” “It does Johnny, but it looks like it goes right, and no one so far today has figured out that it doesn’t go that way.” All you can do is read the green based on what you know, and if you get it wrong, file away the correction for next time.

See also Vector Putting

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