Dear Art,
The "target" to aim at is a spot on the green near the hole for both line and distance, found by using your standard "touch" delivery speed of the ball at the cup to accurately predict and visualize the shape of the ball's rolling curve on the ground over the last three feet or so into the cup. The target spot is the spot to aim the putter face at behind the ball for the startline of the putt, and also the spot on the green where you want your putt's energy to peter out. If you ignored the fact that the green surface is contoured or sloped and imagined the green as a perfectly flat putt-putt carpet, your mental "understanding" of the target spot is a spot on the putt-putt carpet to aim at and to putt to as if the putt will roll dead straight without any break and your ball's roll will peter out and your ball will roll right on top of the target spot with the same speed you visualize the ball crossing over the lip into the cup. This is called "committing to your line", but I am adding in the critical element of touch for breaking putts as well.
So, how do you find this spot near the hole?
In general, the spot is ALWAYS somewhere along the fall-line straight uphill and downhill thru the cup (there is only one for any hole location) on the high side of the cup. The only question is how does your specific touch define exactly how many inches uphill above the rim the spot is located for this putt. There is really nothing more to it than this unless there is some specific contouring out of the usual flat-but-tilted over this last section of the putt.
I've described finding the fall-line before, as the cup is the center of a clockface and you want to orient the clockface so the 6-12 line matches straight uphill thru the hole on the flat-but-tilted area right around the cup. These
TIPS of mine address seeing the fall-line accurately.
The most precise method to locate how far up the fall-line this target spot will be is to visualize the roll of your ball in realtime from start to the end when it curls thru the break and drops into the cup (fast at the start, gradually slowing in the middle, and rolling as it always does at the end as it curls into the heart of the cup). Because all putts (regardless of length or break) of a golfer with good touch arrive at the end of the putt at the hole with the same ending pattern of speed, as all balls dive over the lip with the same end speed (e.g., 2 revolutions per second over the lip deep into the cup), a golfer with touch is able to accurately visualize and see what is really going to happen when he putts with the usual touch. So he can literally walk over to the cup and "draw" with his fingertip scraping the green what exactly the shape of the last three feet of the putt will look like for a perfect putt.
This last segment will always aim into the center of the cup, whether it enters the cup at the bottom on a straight uphill putt, or whether it ranges in from the lower right quadrant on a right-to-left breaking uphill putt, or elsewise. Seeing this last piece of the putt is ALL that matters. If you can "make this happen" when you putt, you don't need anymore. If you in fact make it happen, the ball finds the bottom of the cup, and if you don't, you miss. So this last piece of the putt is "outcome determinative" unless you change to a different pace of putt (not advisable).
Once you can predict and see this last piece of the putt, you can draw the complete curve of the putt from beginning to end, starting inside the hole working backwards over this key segment. That is because putt paths across greens always change direction smoothly and never have any corners or kinks and humas intuitively know this and can "follow" these curve changes by keeping in mind the realtime speed the ball will actually have across different parts of the putt. So as you retrace the curve of the successful / predicted putt path backwards out of the hole, it gently curves and then straightens out and more or less finishes up in a segment that is straight back to the ball at your feet. Only when the putt path straightens out can you see the line along which to start the putt, assuming you stick to your usual touch.
So this method allows you to see the end of the putt's real curve AND build backward from that to identify the start-line and initial aim of your putter face.
This leaves only the "end of the line" pretending this start-line is a straight and level putt across a putt-putt carpet to a spot to stop your ball on top of. That's easy! Wherever the start-line meets or intersects the fall-line, that is where the spot is located. Aim at that spot and putt as if you wanted your ball to roll straight at that spot, as far as that spot, arriving at that spot the same way your visualize putt arrives at the lip of the cup, pretending the putt is straight and level across putt-putt carpet. This is called "committing to the line AND the distance" for the breaking putt.
This "read" is much better than reading a putt as, say, "one and a half balls right", because that way of reading and expressing reads LACKS THE CRITICAL TOUCH COMPONENT, whereas what I am teaching comes with line and touch integrated together. You read with your touch and then you putt with the same touch, or else you cannot use the read at all. One speed, one read. Golfers who "read" the putt and THEN worry about finding the right pace to make the putt succeed are not integrating touch with line, but are coming and going for both independently. Touch first, read second, with THAT touch, then also putt with the same touch. This is why when you have real touch, you never want to change your tempo or the pace of your putts based on length of putt or other factors.
Here is a sample putt with the steps for reading to find the target spot outlined and diagramed:
The only assumption in this is that there is not any subtle CHANGES in contour along the way that would inject double or multiple breaks. If there are, you have to deal with each separate break, but always with an eye on the prize of what MUST happen right at the end of the putt, or else you miss. The approach to any OTHER contour between you and the hole is to tackle each problem working backwards from success, from the "known good ending" back to the unknown / as-yet-unsolved problem contour in between you and success.
For example, if there is a protective mounding to keep water on the green from washing out the sand of a bunker, this mounding will generally project a "shoulder" contour into the interior of the green. Suppose one of these shoulders lies between you and the hole, but past the problem contour the green at the hole is the usual flat-but-tilted area surrounding the hole. You would read the final segment of the putt into the hole, seeing the ball arrive with the same-every-time ending speed, visualize the last three or so feet of the putt, and start working backwards from this until you "hit the shoulder" as a separately identifiable feature of the green contour. This backwards projection of a successful putt will precisely identify the "EXIT WOUND" of your putt out of the problem contour area. Now you just have to find the "ENTRANCE WOUND" for this "shoulder" that results in the correct exiting of the ball out of the problem area back into the successful track into the hole.
In general, every separate contouring feature and any additional break is handled in this working-back-from-success approach. But right around the hole, the green is almost always flat-but-tilted, and the last three feet of the curving path is outcome determinative and only seen accurately with the usual touch's delivery speed of ball over lip.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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