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As mentioned in the previous section on eye movement, we recognize that the eyes are necessary in gathering information for the brain to process. In many cases this processing is done subconsciously, but it is happening all the time.
When we throw a ball to someone, we do not go through a conscious process of evaluating how heavy the ball is or how far away the person is or with what speed or trajectory we need throw the ball. We do this instinctively based on our experience of throwing a ball, gained through often difficult early learning phases but perfected over time with repeated practice.
Learning to read a green well is one of the most difficult parts of putting and a skill that depends on an understanding of what happens to a ball once it starts rolling on different slopes at different speeds.
We need to quantify two things when making a decision about how hard to hit a putt and in what direction. These are the green speed and the slope of the green.
Green Speed:
First the student must establish how fast the greens of any given golf course are. For simplicity’s sake, he should assume that the practice green is representative of the green speeds on the course. This is important, because it is the major source of calibration for what to expect.
You know from experience that a lack of warm-up on the practice green will make that first 15-footer no fun, the equivalent of putting blind, so-to-speak. While a close examination of the green’s surface texture may yield some interesting information, there is no substitute for putting to ascertain the green’s speed.
Once the student has determined the practice green’s speed and calibrated himself for flat putts, he is ready to move on to studying the slope of the green between the ball and the hole.
One tip to remember – you are allowed to hit a few putts before leaving the first green. Take advantage of this option, allowed under the rules (without holding up play), to gain more intelligence on the speed of the greens.
Green Slope:
Reading the slope of a green would be simplest if we had perfectly horizontal or vertical reference points. Then we could see how inclined the green was and use that information to determine its effect on the ball during the putt. But rarely are there such perfect reference points on a golf course.
One way to combat this lack of reliable reference points is to read the green’s slope from the two opposing sides of the putt allowing trees, light poles and other vertical lines to guide you.
Another way to create a reliable reference point is to use a hanging putter as a vertical reference line. The student should be cautious about doing this without first knowing what he is doing. In most cases a putter shaft will not hang in a vertical plane, simply because the center of gravity of the head is not directly in line with the shaft axis. As a result, it will hang tilted away from where the center of gravity is in the head.
If the putter is rotated such that the eye the student is looking through is in the same plane as the shaft and center of gravity, then he will see the shaft in a vertical plane. To find out how the center of gravity and shaft are oriented, have the student balance the putter horizontally between two fingers – one from each hand. The center of gravity will align itself with the shaft and be directly below it. Have the student make a mark for a reference point on the top side of the shaft, facing him. He can test to see if this is vertical by hanging the putter with the mark facing him and see how it lines up with a doorframe or some other know vertical edge of a structure.
Remind the student that the shaft is tapered from the top down, so the side of the putter shaft may not be perfectly aligned with the doorframe all the way down. Have him check the other side of the shaft; it too should be slightly off at the small end of the tapered shaft.
There are various suggestions on how to read a green using the “plumb-bob” method. My strong suggestion is not to listen to them, because the only way plumb-bobbing will work is if the golfer, the ball and the entire distance to, and at, the hole are all on exactly the same slope, a circumstance that is unlikely.
With the above in mind, the golfer must prioritize his tasks when reading a green in order to provide the brain with enough appropriate information to send the right messages to the body about what to do and when.
The first thing to establish is, where the fall line is, and how it is oriented relative to the hole and the ball. The fall line is the line up and down which there is no break and along which water would flow if poured on the green. This line is the one that the ball seeks to roll down. If there is no slope at the hole, then the fall line between your ball and the level area around the hole needs to be established.
The average slope on a green is about 2 or 3 percent. Generally, there should be about 10 or more locations on the green where the slope is less than this for potential hole locations.
In some cases where the slope is up to 3 percent or more, the speed of the green is important. For instance, a ball will continue to roll and not slow down with a slope of 7 percent and a green speed of about 8½ feet on the Stimpmeter (based on some research work by HA Templeton). This we can call the critical slope (the angle where this starts to happen is called the “Limiting Angle of Repose”).
A 7 percent slope is defined as a 7 inch fall in 100 inches of travel. To the naked eye, that is not a large slope. But on fast greens, those up to 10 or 11 feet on the Stimpmeter or more, a 7 percent slope is well past critical. In fact, responsible golf course architects do not design greens with much more than 3 percent slopes given that fact.
The Fall Line
To practice how to read where the fall line is around the hole, the student should go to a practice green or one on the course not in use, and try to figure this out using his eyes and any aids he will normally have during a round. He should look at the trees and surroundings, and using the putter as a plumb-bob (described earlier in this section to establish a vertical line), determine where the slopes are and what are their directions.
Once this is done, the student should test himself by rolling balls just past the hole and watching how and in what direction they break. He should keep moving around the hole and rolling balls until he finds the line where the rolling ball has no break. This is the fall line, and now knowing where it is, the student can grade himself on his success based on his initial estimate vs. the true fall line.
Now that he knows what a fall line is, the student must recognize that the ball will tend to find that line no matter where he is putting from. It will always break down hill toward the fall line. The maximum break of a putt will be at 90 degrees across the fall line.
With a 3 percent slope and an 8 foot green speed, a putt will break about 12 inches directly across the slope, and most of the break will happen in the last 3 feet (the last 3 feet of a putt is where the break is most active).
Putting it all together
A good drill to help read greens and let a player’s instincts play more of an important part in the process, is to drop a ball about 10 feet from a hole on the practice green. Have the student scout the surrounds with all the aids available to him and have him try to make the putt. Have him review how the putt broke and how hard he hit it and then have him grade himself on both green reading and execution. Then have him take a second putt from the same location trying to correct the read and distance. Then have him move onto another hole and repeat the process.
To become a good green reader, one needs to practice and eventually be able to let instincts guide the process. A player should not go through a series of calculations before making a putt. He should look at the green, imagine how a ball will roll between where it lies and the hole, and then, knowing how a ball behaves when rolling across a slope make a judgment on how hard to stroke the ball and in what direction, to make the putt.
