Dear Lee,
For fast downhillers, there is a big difference between "stoppable" and "non-stoppable." That is, if a downhill putt goes down a slope with too severe a COMBINATION of slope and speed, the ball cannot possibly be stopped at the hole. The faster the green speed, the less severe the slope that crosses this line. For these conditions, all you can do is "start" the ball with a quarter roll or so, to dislodge it from its sticking point.
Whenever a hole is located past the bottom edge of a tier, this issue comes up, since tier slopes are almost always such that you cannot stop the ball ON the tier itself, so there is always some minimum roll-out past the bottom edge of the tier. If the hole is closer than this roll-out extent, all you can do is "start" the ball over the top edge of the tier, and even this will roll past the hole to the end of the roll-out. But if the hole is located past the end of the roll-out, the remainder of distance from end of roll-out to hole is the EXTRA you send the ball over the top edge of the tier with above just "toppling" the ball over the edge.
And if you are on normal surface slope that is severe but not so severe that it is impossible to stop the ball right at the hole, then there are two situations: one, when your normal tempo can handle the putt, and two, when your normal tempo is just too strong. In the latter case, I suggest changing to a "fake, tight, slo-mo" tempo by tightening up the muscles in the upper chest and making a stroke that is not a free-flowing, naturally accelerating stroke but one that moves back and forth with a steady, constant speed. But this stroke still goes with your usual tempo timing, and the size of the backstroke is the same as the size of the stroke from middle to end of follow-thru. This sort of fake tempo results in a controlled stroke that add just the right speed above merely starting the ball rolling, and rolls the ball down fast surfaces to stop right at the hole.
A third problem raised by your post is going uphill. Going uphill is much tougher than most people realize, as it is about RAISING the ball up in the air above its starting elevation. A thiry-foot putt that runs uphill so that the end of the 30 feet is 1 foot higher than where the ball starts requires that the golfer putt the ball all 30 feet as usual PLUS add enough energy to the putt past 30 feet that will raise a golf ball 12 inches straight up in the air. So how do you know aht that takes?
A Stimpmeter raises a ball 10.5 inches off the ground, and this energy causes the distance of roll off the end of the ramp. So on a 10-Stimp green, 10.5 inches of height equals 10 feet of putt across the surface. In the above example, the ball needs to be raised 12 inches, which is slightly more than one unit of Stimp. So on a 11-Stimp green, you need to add slightly more than 11 feet to the 30-foot putt. So, if you imagined that you were putting across level (unsloped) surface to a hole 30 feet away, your distance target would be 41-43 feet away, 11-13 feet past the hole. You would make a stroke to roll a ball across level green about 41 to 43 feet.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
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