When it comes to performance on the greens, there are three skills to develop:
- Your ability to start your ball on your intended line
- Your ability to control speed
- Your ability to read greens
Just as important as developing them is to make sure they match up. For example, reading more break into a putt requires hitting the ball at a softer speed. If you have a push or a pull miss, that factors in, too. When golfers are struggling, it’s because there is a mismatch in at least one of these areas. The good news is that there are lots of different techniques players use to improve these principles.
1. DIAL IN YOUR START LINE
Clubface angle accounts for 90 percent of the start line. That means you need to deliver your putterface square at impact. A big myth is that to do this, you need a stroke with no face rotation and a path that goes straight back and straight through. That’s not true. The putter shaft is at an angle.
We stand to the side of the ball, and all the joints of our body are designed to rotate. Creating a straight-back stroke with zero rotation actually requires a complex set of movements. All putting strokes move on an arc. How bent over you are at setup, your hand and arm positions, and how you move different segments of your body all change your putting stroke’s plane and radius, which changes the severity of the arc. Your goal is to find the arc that matches your tendencies.
One of Justin Rose’s favorite ways to practice his arcing stroke at home is by using a laser and a gate for the ball to pass through. You can also do it by drawing a line or placing tape on the ground. The alignment mark on your putterhead should move inside the line on the way back and through, but be square with your line at impact. If it is, the ball will roll directly down it and through the gate.
2. CONTROL SPEED WITH THE RIGHT ACCELERATION
Another myth in putting is that the putterhead must be accelerating as it meets the ball and beyond. When examining how great putters do it, peak acceleration actually happens at the very start of the forward stroke. They initially accelerate the putter but then let it coast into the ball. It’s usually the opposite of what you see in amateur strokes, where players have a lot of “hit” through the ball. It’s why amateurs' speed control suffers.
This principle of early acceleration is the same regardless of your stroke’s tempo. For example, Matt Fitzpatrick has a very quick tempo, but we still work on the putter moving its fastest at the start of the through-stroke. One drill we often do to help with this is placing a coin on the back cavity of the putter.
As he makes a stroke, the coin should slide off as he’s starting forward with the putter. That’s a sign he’s accelerating at the right point. Try this speed-control drill. If the coin comes off closer to impact, it means you’re accelerating the putterhead too late.
3. READ GREENS WITH MY TWO-THIRDS FORMULA
My students fall into two buckets when it comes to green-reading. There’s an analytical approach. Rose and Tommy Fleetwood use the AimPoint putting system to try to measure exactly how much a putt breaks. Then there’s an intuitive approach. Russell Henley gets his best reads when he’s standing over the ball. Scottie Scheffler does it like that, too. He spends a lot of time before his stroke looking at the line from his address position.
Whether you’re analytical or intuitive doesn’t matter, just be consistent with your method. But if you want a new way to read greens, try the “two-thirds principle.”
Predict where the ball will be two-thirds of the way to the hole. It’s a great reference point because it tells you where you should aim (essentially, double the break from that two-thirds spot and aim there).
You can try this method by finding a longer breaking putt on the practice green and then placing three coins down on different lines two-thirds of the way to the cup. In the picture, the right coin represents a straight line to the hole. The middle coin is the “two-thirds” point. I want to roll my ball over this coin. And the left coin is double that distance—my aim point. I bet this drill improves your reads.
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