Geoff:

When we talk about the putting stroke on your fine forum, we seem to ignore the person's anatomy and the how the ball must roll to reach the hole. I will leave personal anatomy for another discussion, so let's talk about the ball path and roll.

A straight putt whether on the level or straight uphill or downhill are simple enough to judge, however when faced with an inclined or breaking surface, the degree of difficulty increases astronomically. In fact, I would posit that linear and curvilinear putts are completely different requiring vastly different considerations.

I was playing an evening round alone except for my 6 year old grandson who I let do all the putting with his smaller putter. Interesting. The straight putts were easy enough for him to solve, but when the ball path had to be curved, the child couldn't solve the problem. I have played with adults who couldn't determine curved path putts either.

Looking at the pros, they too struggle with curved path putts, and it becomes a "best guess" effort. The chances of sinking breaking putts is abysmal, and that's undisputable.

Pro golfers can improve their judgement for best guess results through practice, but for the average recreational golfer it's the equivalent of solving a quadratic equation with only a grade 5 education.

I can appreciate your method for consistent putt stroking, but when it comes to complex curved putts, it becomes a crapshoot for the average recreational putter. Agree .. disagree???

(BTW .. my grandson expected to sink every putt, and exhibited frustration when he couldn't do it. I convinced him that he had three chances to sink it. He became relieved and was happy when he could do it in two putts. I suggested this "bogey" putting method for an incompetent adult and he felt insulted. Expectation and reality ...!!!)

Dear sammy,

Perhaps I am delusional, but I believe I have created a very useful contribution to golf history, which is the instinctive way to combine seeing the curve of a breaking putt with the appropriate touch or energy (pace or weight) so that the ball "takes the correct break" instead of the usual golfer habit of reading the putt as so many balls left or right of hole high and then wondering what touch will be correct for the visualized path / curve / break. (Even as great a golfer a Jack Nicklaus at this late stage in his golfing life uses this two-step process in which the read and the execution are not joined to gether by one usual touch, as he reads for start line and then tries to get the touch right. That's a problem that causes many unnecessary misses of breaking putts struck a little too hard or soft.)

In a nutshell, if you visualize the last three feet or so of the path using your usual delivery or terminal velocity of ball roll across that patch of green surface, this means your usual TOUCH is inherently part of the reading of the successful break and the putt path or curve, and therefore when it comes to execution of the putt to make the ball take the break correctly, ONLY THE USUAL TOUCH will work, as any other delivery or terminal speed of the ball over this outcome-determinative patch of surface will be either short or long. That's the genesis of my "ONE SPEED, ONE READ" / "ONE READ, ONE SPEED" teaching. The golfer visualizes with the usual sense of touch and sees only one breaking curve, and then there is no question about touch, as the golfer MUST use the normal touch. So the golfer simply looks to see the anticipated successful curve and then relaxes and counts the timing of the stroke as usual and the instincts handle the size and impact velocity of the stroke without conscious involvement by the golfer, whether as "worry", "hurry", "thinking", "analysis", "trying" or any other such term indicating conscious effort or interference.

In addition, I have also created a technique that generates a complementary aim line that matches up with the curved path and ALSO has an end-of-the-line to serve as TOUCH reference. In other words, there is a curved path from ball to hole that starts uphill, curls downhill, and enters the hole with your usual delivery speed at the lip of the cup; a LINE is then generated extending from ball to fall-line such that the starting direction of this line is TANGENT to the curved path's direction right at the ball; and mentally the end-of-the-line is a target spot exactly on the fall-line thought of as a "ghost hole" into which the golfer will deliver the ball with THE SAME delivery speed at the lip of this imaginary cup AS IF the putt to this hole were straight and the ball would not break or curve off line any. So if you visualize your putt entering the hole at 3 revolutions per second at the front lip, this REQUIRES in objective reality only one certain curved shape for the real putt's path, and this in turn generates an imaginary straight putt to the fall-line AS IF delivering the ball into this imaginary cup on the fall-line with exactly the same 3 rps entry speed. In this fashion, the curvilinear putt and the linear putt are both the SAME PUTT with the SAME TOUCH and this touch is simply the USUAL TOUCH. All this means that the golfer uses the usual touch to visualize the real curve and then "sees" the complementary imaginary start line with a second cup on the fall line at the end of this line, and then aims at the secondary cup and simply pulls the trigger with the usual tempo count for instinctive touch. Nothing else is correct.

The graphic drawing below illustrates this process of seeing the curve over the last three feet or so, extending this curve backwards out of the hole to the ball, and then making a tangent line from the ball to the fall-line so you end up with the real curve and the imaginary start line with a touch-based end-of-line at the fall-line:



To help golfers get this sense of end-of-the-line, I teach "never putt across the fall line", "always imagine that the fall line is a 4' high brick wall and it won't help to bounce your putted ball off this wall or to putt short of this wall so cozy the ball all the way to the bottom of the wall", and "aim high and putt slow all the way to the fall line so the ball at the end rolls closer and closer to the hole from the downhill side." What I really mean is never putt so that the ball crosses the fall-line with any speed over the line greater than or less than the usual terminal speed that goes with your usual touch and tempo.

Even for breaking putts, once the putt is read in this touch-based way, and the putter face is aimed at a target on the fall-line, "all putts are the same except some are instinctively larger in size than others."

You are quite correct that treating the problem of breaking putts as a matter of conscious application of rules is very complex and difficult and usually for this reason ends of being only a skill sort of implicitly acquired over time without understanding, but I don't teach this way. I teach an instinctive approach that can also be taught to kids as well as to seasoned golfers, but you have to understand your usual delivery speed or touch to start with and then know how to aim along a straight line at the fall line so this line is generated from the curved path anticipated / predicted by the touch-based read.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.

Visit the new PuttingZone Blog for podcasts of putting tips:
Site PuttingZone Blog
RSS XML Subscription

Your approach to finding and putting for the break differs from my personal approach to putting. Due to my technical training, I seem to sense the contour lines of equal elevation on the green, even though the topography is very gentle. From this I sense the fall lines the rolling ball must resist as it climbs the slope and then yields to as it descends to the hole. Then my sense of Newtonian Physics kicks in to determine how much putter head velocity must be developed through applied torque, to move the ball on this curved path subject to rolling friction and gravity. I make my read and practice putting strokes quickly, almost instinctively. But that's only me. My problem was the last 12 inches of the breaking putt, and your information on the velocity decay at the end of the putt has helped me better understand curved putts. Thank you Geoff.

Your method is obviously more inclusive for the golfing masses because it is a straightforward approach that can be easily learned and applied, without the need to learn topography and physics !!

(Btw, in the illustration you provided above, could you check the directon of the fall line shown through the hole.)

Anecdotally, I recall attempting to help a distressed golf partner set up for a breaking putt, and after I aligned him to putt much higher than he normally would have chosen, he blurted out: "where's the hole?"!!!! What a revealing Freudian-filled plea !!!!

Perhaps what this means is that normal primitive-minded golfers, cannot envisage putting away from the hole to get the ball to the hole ... it becomes a conflict of instinctive reasoning, a mental block, that adult golfers and children have in common. They just don't have a bead on the hole and that confuses them. This inner conflict cannot be resolved by conscious reasoning, only by trial and error and error and error, until something sinks in (pun intended). Learning and applying knowledge is reserved for only the few. The rest of them call themselves "feel" putters without the need to explain or understand what they are doing.