I can't read a flipping green to save my life.

[Deleted member 21258]

the trouble is with putting is you get no feedback from your shot. what i mean is........

you can hit a bad put with a bad read and it can go in
you can hit an excellent putt with a bad read and it'll miss
you can choose an excellent line with a bad putt and miss


you need to know if its your stroke. i usually find a flat line on the practice green from 6 ft and see if i hole them.

It's easy to assume it was the read when it was actually a crap stroke

I'm very poor at green reading. aimpoint didn't help one bit.

It can be this, my wife closes the clubhead massively in her putting stroke. Sometimes the putt goes in sometimes it doesn't and most times she misses left of the hole.

When you look at her alignment of the putter face, she aims right and then 'hooks' the ball left normally. She not realise it, she thinks she aims correctly and swings the putter straight. Crazy.

Pace is normally much more important than line. Over a twenty foot putt, if you are 3 foot out on line, an 'easy' two putt, but it is very easy to be 6 foot out on pace(not an easy 2 putt).

When reading the greens, I am looking at what part of the green is higher, whether the edges of the green or the middle(if it has slope) and then kind of guess the turn depending on how much higher it is. With time your guesses become better. Hope that helps.

 

[Orikoru]

Another vote for AimPoint Express (when money allows!).

Mis-reading a green is almost certainly not always the only reason(s) why you're missing putts.
You're probably not understanding the variables. Not understanding the putt itself.
It's not the green - that the easy bit, working out that it slopes one way or another is not hard.
A putt is a balanced function of multiple elements. That's what most people simply do not understand about AimPoint.
I missed two putts this weekend because of wind, didn't even occur to me to factor that in.
What I'm saying is putting is hard!

follow this guy twitter.com/MKanskigolf
Shows some very interesting aimpoints and breaks according to green speed and distance.

have a great wedding!

Speak for yourself! Haha. Honestly, I played in a pairs scramble recently and there was one particularly putt where I read it as going right to left and my partner read it as being the opposite. I went first and sure enough, I was completely wrong. My eyes were telling me it will roll left and it rolled right.

Anyway, of course I know my stroke is highly unlikely to be perfect, but I think reading the green is the bigger issue at the moment. If I'm not even sure where I should be aiming, it's hard to gauge whether the stroke was right or not. I'm going to try a lot of what people have said here, particularly using my feet more if I can.

 

[richart]

Have you considered aimpoint......?

Troublemaker.

 

[GreggerKBR]

Speak for yourself! Haha. Honestly, I played in a pairs scramble recently and there was one particularly putt where I read it as going right to left and my partner read it as being the opposite. I went first and sure enough, I was completely wrong. My eyes were telling me it will roll left and it rolled right.

Anyway, of course I know my stroke is highly unlikely to be perfect, but I think reading the green is the bigger issue at the moment. If I'm not even sure where I should be aiming, it's hard to gauge whether the stroke was right or not. I'm going to try a lot of what people have said here, particularly using my feet more if I can.

Oh dear mate, I feel for you. Been through similar myself. AimPoint Express helped me a huge amount, the number of long putts I get really close now is amazing compared to where I was two years ago.

All you need to do is locate the mid-point of your putt and work out which way the slope is going. Which is the high side, left or right.
Using your feet to calibrate as others have suggested. Once you know that you know the break, so it's just about figuring out how much break the ball will take. That's where the time, distance, speed and (downhill/uphill) elements start to come into the equation.

Forget all this crap about, "how much it breaks at the hole" and "always break to the water or from the bunker"
And we don't have enough grain in our grasses this country for any of that to be a factor.

Honestly, it is simply all & only about the reading just slope your ball has to travel over.

see this post...

[FONT=&quot]Michael Kanski‏ @[COLOR=inherit !important]MKanskigolfhttps://twitter.com/MKanskigolf Aug 9[/FONT][/COLOR]
[FONT=&quot]3-15ft ladder, 3% LR / 11 stimp. Two different ball speeds. [COLOR=inherit !important]@[COLOR=inherit !important]PuttView[/COLOR] with visuals on [COLOR=inherit !important]@[/COLOR][COLOR=inherit !important]ZenGreenStage[/COLOR] [COLOR=inherit !important]#[/COLOR][COLOR=inherit !important]putting[/COLOR] [COLOR=inherit !important]#[/COLOR][COLOR=inherit !important]greenreading[/COLOR] [COLOR=inherit !important]#[/COLOR][COLOR=inherit !important]readlinespeed[/COLOR] pic.twitter.com/WRb3KCLUEe
[/FONT][/COLOR]

 

[GreggerKBR]

have a listen to this

https://www.pscp.tv/NickDougherty5/1mnxemkwPVQxX?autoplay&t=180

https://www.pscp.tv/NickDougherty5/1kvKpjplVzdJE?autoplay&t=14

 

[Region3]

2 things not already mentioned that help me...

When I'm looking from behind the ball I try to shield my eyes from seeing the surrounding area, because as you say it can play tricks on your eyes.

If I'm still not sure of which way the break is, I'll try to find the line that goes through the hole from low to high. Uphill breaks towards that line and downhill breaks away from it.
The downside to that is you sometimes have to look at it from all around the hole if it's subtle before it becomes apparent, but as you do you can try to feel when you change from going uphill to downhill and vice versa.

 

[tsped83]

Opticians?

 

[louise_a]

I am not good at reading greens either

 

[jim8flog]

Are you already a glasses wearer? if not have you had your eyesight checked? If yes have you tried different glasses?

I recently became a 'full time' glasses wearer and the difference is really noticeable. Mind you it took me 3 pairs to find ones that I could actually play golf in and that did not slightly distort the greens.

 

[Yant]

Some tips.

Look for the highest points on the green to see where things slope from there.

Watch what your partners putts and chips do to give you an idea of which way the green roles.

Short putts are rarely going to be outside the hole (with the odd exception). Just be positive with your stroke and keep the break inside the hole.

I get the best read of a putt from the side.

 

[shortgame]

As long as you're not trampling over someone else's line walk down near the line of your putt and try to feel the slope with your feet. As others have said eyes can deceive if there are slopes/humps & bumps etc near the green

Also, check for slopes nearer the hole as they will have more impact as the ball (hopefully!) slows

HTH

 

[HomerJSimpson]

A very simple guide (by an idiot) on how aimpoint works so you should be able to get the gist from there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKxTlCCspqc&t=14s

 

[FairwayDodger]

Troublemaker.

moi?

 

[Cheifi0]

Some tips.

Look for the highest points on the green to see where things slope from there.

Watch what your partners putts and chips do to give you an idea of which way the green roles.

Short putts are rarely going to be outside the hole (with the odd exception). Just be positive with your stroke and keep the break inside the hole.

I get the best read of a putt from the side.

I saw a good tip about reading it from the low side. I have started doing it and it really helps me visualise the putt better. If I am really struggling with the line I will look from the other side of the hole as well.

 

[FairwayDodger]

the trouble is with putting is you get no feedback from your shot. what i mean is........

you can hit a bad put with a bad read and it can go in
you can hit an excellent putt with a bad read and it'll miss
you can choose an excellent line with a bad putt and miss


you need to know if its your stroke. i usually find a flat line on the practice green from 6 ft and see if i hole them.

It's easy to assume it was the read when it was actually a crap stroke

I'm very poor at green reading. aimpoint didn't help one bit.

There's a drill for that.

Set up a practice putt. Mark the point you're putting from and read the line. Set up a "gate" with two tees about a foot or two from the ball, just wide enough for a ball to pass through, on the line you've chosen. Putt it through the gate. If the ball goes through the gate but not in the hole your read is wrong.

 

[shortgame]

There's a drill for that

Great idea!

 

[Orikoru]

A very simple guide (by an idiot) on how aimpoint works so you should be able to get the gist from there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKxTlCCspqc&t=14s

Cheers, I'll give that a watch when I'm at home tonight. I can't play until next Tuesday now, but that's going to be a friendly knock so I can try some of this stuff out freely and see how I get on.

 

[Green Bay Hacker]

Not sure about reading putts but over the last 3 weeks I seem to have totally lost the ability to putt at all. From averaging about 32 putts a round that has now jumped up to about 40oo: Hopefully a bit of practice will see the touch return but 36 holes at Formby on Thursday is going to be a test.

 

[Orikoru]

Not sure about reading putts but over the last 3 weeks I seem to have totally lost the ability to putt at all. From averaging about 32 putts a round that has now jumped up to about 40oo: Hopefully a bit of practice will see the touch return but 36 holes at Formby on Thursday is going to be a test.

Yeah, too many times I've done 39 or 40 putts on a round. As I say, my problem is that a bad mis-read can leave me not only 8-10 feet away, but with confidence gone as well.

Even my best medal round of 88 was achieved with 37 putts. Quite ridiculous really.

 

[richart]

When I can be bothered I read the putt from behind the hole. The break around the hole is usually more important than the break near the ball. Assumed your starting point is not on the side of a burried elephant. When you start a putt, the ball is travelling faster, and takes less break, but as it approaches the hole it is slower and takes much more of the break.

Strange that when you misread a putt, as soon as you get to your ball, the break is obvious.