The Secret of Reading Putts

The secret of reading putts is touch or distance control, which means the consistent ability to deliver the ball with the same ending speed or velocity right at the front lip of the cup, regardless of the length or difficulty of the putt. A golfer with excellent touch consistently delivers all putts to the cup with the same speed, whether the putt is a 50-foot snake for eagle or a knee-knocking 4-footer to save par. (A typical good-touch delivery speed is about 2 revolutions per second at the lip, in which the ball dives deep into the cup before hitting the back wall of the liner.) Touch is critical to reading putts because there are three factors that determine the real curvature of the roll of the ball -- the tilt or contour of the green, the green's speed, and the rolling speed of the ball over that section of green surface. Of these, the golfer is only in charge of the ball's rolling speed, and the section of the putt that really, really matters to whether the ball sinks or misses is the last 2 to 3 feet of the putt as the curvature enters the hole. Without good touch, a golfer is not going to be a good reader of putts and will not sink nearly as many makeable putts as he could. Accordingly, with good touch, the golfer's brain can successfully predict the actual curvature of the critical path of the roll at the end of the putt. This means the golfer visualizes the curvature of the break implicitly using his normal sense of delivery speed at the end. When the golfer visualizes with one sense of touch, he must also execute the putt with that same sense of touch, or else he is reading putts in English but putting them in Spanish. The secret of reading putts is "one speed, one read." See the break with touch and execute the putt with the same touch. (audio podcast, 4 mins. 50 secs.) -- LISTEN