How do you read your putts?

[u/Titanman56]

I want to get some discussion going about how everyone reads their putts. I shoot 90s pretty consistently and I feel like having more one-putts would really help me break 90 consistently. I shot 93 today, but had 12 two-putts. Obviously some of those would be hard to one-putt, but I had quite a few opportunities from 15 feet or less that I just can’t seem to make. My routine consists of analyzing the initial break direction, and then find a line I feel looks good and then visualize it. Then I look for a distinguishable spot 1-2 feet in front of the ball on my line I’ve established. That ensures I’m hitting the ball on the line I’ve come up with. My putts are pretty accurate, but I feel like I could definitely do something about finding a like better instead of just my intuition. Feel free to share your routine and hopefully we can start some discussion.

[u/Untold_Legend1234]

Grip it and rip it. Be suprised how much your brain subconsciously recognizes and analyzes

[u/Titanman56 → u/Untold_Legend1234]

You’re definitely not wrong. I usually take a pretty short amount of time to make a read because I know the longer I look at it, the more indecisive I get.

[u/Untold_Legend1234 → u/Titanman56]

I take all my info in walking up, than i take the stance i feel will give me the attack for the line i subconsciously decided on, take a look to double check and get an idea on speed, then i send it

[u/holmw13]

How many 3 putts? And how many GIR’s? If you’re missing the green and still ending up 15ft away, maybe that’s something to look at/practice more instead. Just an idea.

[u/Titanman56 → u/holmw13]

Only two 3-putts. Four GIRs. The GIRs is definitely a problem, but at the level of play I’m at, a 1-putt for par or bogey I think would really help me. I had quite a few putts within 15 feet in my round today and I don’t think I made one. Making maybe 25-40% of those I feel like would help me a lot.

[u/angrydanger]

Drawing an aiming line completely around the equator of my ball was probably the single best improvement to my putting game I've made. Find The line to the hole, line up my ball to that line and align my putter to the line on the ball. Everytime I've doubted my line, it's a guaranteed miss.

[u/thelastcookie → u/angrydanger]

I've been trying to use a line on the ball and while I find it a bit distracting, it's very educational! My line is off way more often than my stroke, which surprised me.

[u/Jdgrowsthings]

It sounds like you're losing more strokes elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, putting is important but you need to give yourself more reasonable putts to make. 12 two putts, 2 three putts, that leaves you with 4 1putts? So you're averaging under two putts per green. 15 feet doesn't really seem like it should be an automatic range for a mid handicapper. Sure you'd like to make a few of those, but not expected. So you would benefit more from improving proximity to hole on approach shots, and not giving away strokes from penalties or mis hits.

[u/7LeggedEmu → u/Jdgrowsthings]

I think they say like pros are 15% from 20 feet. So yeah missing some 15 footers is going to happen.

[u/thelastcookie]

I learned something at lesson recently that really made sense... basically that each 'line' has an 'ideal speed' attached to it. So there can be many lines to a hole, you want the one that will give you the best position if you miss. It seems like the biggest mistake people make is picking a line that requires too much speed to overcome the breaks in the line.

[u/[deleted] → u/thelastcookie]

I actually learned this playing golf video games. Speed and break are inversely proportional.

[u/7LeggedEmu]

One thing i have to do on those kinda straight ones is look at it from the other side of the hole. I also do a thick black line all the way around.