The Art of Putting

by Stan Utley

all. I’ve had stretches of a few weeks where I thought I was stroking it well and they just would not

  go in. I can remember a few times when I needed to hole a four-footer to make the cut, and it just felt

  like there was no way the ball was going in. Sometimes, it’s as simple as going back over your

  fundamentals and discovering a flaw. For me, it’s usually tempo related. Life creeps into my stroke—

  when life is moving fast, and you’ve got lots of things to think about, it’s easy to get quick with the

  putter. When I’m going really good, everything slows down and the ball is just squeezing off the

  putter. For those tougher times, when I can’t seem to find the problem in my fundamentals, the way I

  break that spell is to literally quit trying to make putts. I completely exaggerate the process of

  disconnecting from the outcome and make a stroke. Let me give you a more specific example.

  I was caddying for my friend Lee Janzen at the Players Championship in 2002 and he was going

  through a tough time getting putts to fall. After a round that left him in the middle of the pack on

  Thursday, he came to the turn on Friday really needing something to happen to make the cut. I could

  see how frustrated he was by all the near-misses and lip-outs, and I’m sure he was thinking that none

  of them were going in the rest of the day. On his ninth green, the eighteenth hole, I took a risk and told

  him to intentionally aim off to the corner of the hole and try to just miss past the edge of the cup. It

  seemed to relieve the “I have to make the next one” anxiety he was feeling, and darn it if he didn’t hit

  it right into the heart. He putted great the rest of the day, made the cut and had a good week.

  The things that happen to you in streaks just reinforce the overall idea that you should take care

  of your own business—what you’re thinking and how you stroke it—and let the putt take care of itself

  after you hit it. Go to a PGA Tour event and watch Brad Faxon on the practice green. He won’t even

  go to a hole or set up to any other target. He’s out there hitting putts to nothing because he’s not trying

  to make them. He’s trying to make sure he’s hitting it solid. He knows that if he does, they’ll go in. I

  really like another variation of that kind of practice, something I saw Jeff Brehaut do on the putting

  green. He sets up to hit a fifteen-footer to no specific target on the practice green, then hits five or six

  to see where the break actually is. Then he’ll use a tee to mark where he hit the putt from, drop a coin

  where the high point of the putt is, and put a plastic disc down where his first five or six putts ended

  up. Then he’ll practice that putt—to the high point and the coins and down to the plastic disc—making

  the same smooth stroke. He lets the green determine the break, then practices replicating his

  mechanics.

  CHAPTER 6

  ADVANCED TECHNIQUES

  Your stance and setup have improved, and you’ve got your grip running up the lifelines instead of

  down in the fingers. Your stroke is looking great, and the ball is rolling nicely. So what happens now?

  How do you take that from the practice green out to the course?

  It starts with the stroke you’re making. I really believe that whether you know it or not, you’ve

  got enough natural talent that a putting factor like speed control will take care of itself if you can learn

  to hit your putts solid. Yes, there are other factors—like break, grain and green conditions—that go

  into making a good stroke, and those are the things we’ll be talking about in this chapter. But the first

  thing you have to remember is that making a good stroke and hitting a solid putt are the most important

  things you can do. Do that and it’s funny how many times the ball seems to run into the hole for you.

  Let’s talk about reading greens. Ideally, you want to use that great putting stroke you’ve been

  working on to send the ball in the right direction. Jack Nicklaus picks a spot in front of his ball and

  aims for that spot, on both his full shots and putts. I use more of a path technique—I pick out two or

  three or four objects that my ball may roll over along the way. The most important part is to be able to

  see the break, and see the line you want the ball to start on. I’m teaching people a stroke that they can

  hopefully repeat no matter what kind of putt they have. So the goal is to figure out what the ball is

  going to do after it leaves the putter, so that we can make the ball leave on the right line to curve into

  the hole. I call it the high point of the break. You’re trying to hit your putts so that they start on a line

  that will get the ball to roll solidly to the high point of the break. The ground takes care of the rest of

  it.

  As a tour player, my green-reading preparation starts days—and sometimes years—before the

  actual tournament round I’ll be playing in. I have a yardage book for every tournament I play in, and

  the book comes with straightforward measurements like the distances from certain landmarks to the

  center of the green, and topographical information about each green.

  For example, I can look at this chart of the fifteenth hole at Fox Den, where I played the

  Knoxville event on the Nationwide Tour, and tell you exactly what I’m supposed to do. The notation

  on the bottom says that the ball really runs on this fairway, so driver is too much. There’s no reason to

  risk hitting it through the dogleg into the trees on the left. The “OK” designations short right of the

  green tell me where I can miss the green and have the best chance of getting up and down—usually the

  place where there’s flat terrain and short grass, or maybe a big bunker without much of a lip.

  I spend a lot of my time carefully drawing arrows on the green to show the fall lines—the ridges

  built into the surface of the green that have the most influence on how putts will break. Here, you can

  see a long, gentle ridge in the front-right quadrant of the green, a sharper hump in the back-left section

  and another hump in the back right. The dots show the different places where pins have been set on

  the hole. For example, if the pin is set front right, I know I can miss a little to the left of the pin and the

  ball will funnel toward the hole. And to get to that back-left pin, I know I’ve got to carry it up onto the

  tier, or else the ball will kick off the ridge and leave me with a tough putt.

  The yardage book is the first piece of the greens-reading puzzle. Next, I play practice rounds and

  carefully note what my shots do when they hit each green. Do they feed left or right? Do they tend to

  check up, or run toward the back of the green? I also pay close attention to the topography of the area

  around the green as I walk up to it after hitting my approach. Is the area flat, or is there a mountain or

  valley to one side of the green or the other?

  I draw the green contours in the yardage guides I use for each tournament I play in. If I know the general characteristics of the green, it helps me when I’m reading particular putts on that green.

  Walking up, I can usually get a general idea of what the green’s tendencies are. That way, if I’m

  torn between two reads later on, I can use that piece of general information about the green to break

  the tie in my mind. Then I’ll hit some practice putts from different spots around the green, taking note

  not so much of the specific amount of break, but of the general tendencies. What do putts from the

  front-l
eft corner to the middle tend to do? Are they fast or slow? Does a putt up into the back left

  break more than I expect, or does it break less than it looks? All of these notes go into the yardage

  book, which I bring with me year after year. I also draw onto the pages what the tournament-round

  putts I’ve faced have done. After three or four years, I’ve got a pretty good scouting report on just

  about any pin location they can throw at me.

  You might be thinking to yourself, that’s fine for a tour player, but how does that help me? If you

  play at a club, you’re in a great position to get detailed information about every green at your course.

  In fact, if you go out and play without it, it’s like leaving a club out of your bag. It’s as easy as going

  out with a little notebook for a couple of practice rounds and recording the general tendencies of the

  greens. It’s amazing what this one step, actually going out and taking notes on your greens, adds to

  your body of knowledge. You might have a general idea that the green on number four is fast and

  breaks hard right, but do you really know what a putt from four or five different spots on that green to

  a front-right pin really does? Go practice them, and you’ll never be shocked by what your putt does

  during a round that really counts.

  That kind of information is great to have, but what happens when you’re playing a course for the

  first time? You obviously want to walk toward each green after your approach shot with your head up

  and your eyes open. You’re looking for the overall tilt of the green, which influences the way most

  putts will break. Once you’re actually looking over your putt, there’s a straightforward, quick method

  to deciphering the break. I start by looking at my putt from behind the ball, and then I walk behind the

  hole and look at it from the opposite direction. When I’m returning to my ball, I make sure to walk to

  the low side of the hole—the opposite side from where the ball will break—and look at the putt from

  halfway between the ball and the hole. For example, if I’m looking at a twenty-footer with a foot of

  break from left to right, I want to look at the break from the right side of the ball, halfway between the

  ball and the hole. From that position, you get the best perspective on the amount of break the putt will

  have. This is something I do when I play, and most tour players do it out of instinct. I’m emphasizing

  it very purposefully because Dave Stockton, one of the best putters of all time, told me it’s one of the

  most important things he teaches in his clinics.

  Your first read on a putt comes as you’re approaching your ball for the first time. You’re trying to get an overall sense of the topography of the green.

  Next, I move behind the hole, on a line with my ball, and look at the putt from that direction. You often can get a better sense of the break from that side.

  On the way back to my ball, I read the putt from halfway between my ball and the hole, on the low side of the break—the opposite side from where the ball will break. This gives me a feel for just how much break to play.

  Once you look at your putt from that angle, you’ll probably wonder if you’re really seeing as

  much break as you think you are. You are. Most amateur players dramatically underestimate the

  amount of break in the average putt. Add in the fact that many players fixate on the hole and not the

  high point—where they need to aim the face to account for the amount of break in the putt—and it’s

  easy to see why most putts miss on the low side.

  The read itself is one part of the equation, but the type of putt itself is another important thing to

  consider. When you take into account the topography of the green, keep in mind that a tilt in the green

  early in the putt is going to have less impact on the roll of your ball than a tilt toward the end, near the

  hole. In other words, as your ball slows down near the hole, it will take more break than it did when

  it was coming right off the putterhead. In practical terms, you’re doing a general read on the overall

  tilt of the green for the first ten or fifteen feet of a twenty-footer, then a more detailed, specific read

  for the last five feet. The same principles hold true when you have a downhill putt. You have to make

  a smaller, slower stroke to account for the downhill slope, and when your ball is rolling more slowly,

  it will tend to take even the most subtle break. You can read less break into an uphill putt, because

  you’re making an aggressive stroke to account for the slope. That’s why players at every level, from

  the PGA Tour to the B-flight at the club championship, hate sidehill-downhill putts. They have a lot of

  side-to-side break, and they have to be hit gently to account for the downhill slope. Get too tentative

  with them and you leave yourself another downhiller to finish up. Get too bold and you’re ten or

  fifteen feet past the hole.

  It’s really a golf cliché by now, but you are better off leaving yourself below the hole—where

  you have an uphill putt left—on an approach shot, pitch or chip. You’ll be less tentative with your

  stroke, because you’re less worried about knocking it by the hole and leaving yourself a tester coming

  back. Because the ball comes off the putter faster in the beginning of an uphill putt, it will break less

  overall, which lets you play the putt straighter. The idea of leaving yourself below the hole is a good

  one for lag putting as well. On a long putt, say one of fifty or sixty feet, your goal is to leave yourself

  within five feet of the hole for the next putt. It’s obviously better to favor the side of the hole that

  leaves you something relatively straight and uphill, if possible. That’s something I think about

  automatically when I go through my read and pre-shot routine for a long putt. It’s like playing pool.

  You want to know where your best leave is—the best spot to hit the next shot.

  Another small but significant factor in green reading is grain—and that’s not just for those of you

  who play on Bermuda greens. It’s been my experience that almost every grass grows in a certain

  direction. Sure, Bermuda greens have a more pronounced grain that will make your ball move more

  than closely mown bent grass. But when you’re playing on bent and you can see the shine on the

  greens, that means you’re putting with the grain, while a shaded color means you’re playing into it. If

  the greens are already quick, that difference in the direction of the grain is going to make a difference

  in how hard you have to hit the putt. That’s great information to know, and your brain needs to process

  it at least on a subconscious level.

  One other thing to keep in mind when you make your reads is the moisture on the greens. After a

  night of rain, the greens are obviously going to run a little bit slower. If the sun is out, you can expect

  those same wet greens to dry out over the course of the day—and dry out even quicker if the wind is

  blowing. That can make a significant difference in green speed from the time you play the first hole to

  the time you make the turn. Unless you’re in the desert, there’s also morning dew to consider. Until

  that dew burns off, the greens will run slower. If you’re in a period of wet weather, the grass at the

  course will tend to grow more quickly—and the maintenance people won’t have as much chance to

  get out and cut the grass. Longer grass on the green usually translates into slower speeds. The

  opposite is true as w
ell. In a dry summer (or a standard summer here in Scottsdale, where I live),

  greens tend to play firm and fast. Those kinds of greens actually make a different kind of sound when

  your approach shot lands on them—a hollow clunk instead of a wetter thwack.

  If you’re feeling good about your stroke and you start to make some good reads using the

  strategies I’ve been talking about, it’s amazing how your speed starts to take care of itself. Your brain

  can sense factors like uphill and downhill, and when you start reading enough break into your putts,

  your brain won’t be subconsciously trying to yank the putter onto the path that will get the ball started

  on the right line. That confidence just starts to grow and grow. One of the questions I get over and

  over again is, “How do I know how hard to hit it?” My answer is that you already know how hard.

  You just have to put yourself in position to use that information.

  So you feel good about the read. Now what? I have a regular physical and mental routine that I

  follow every time I hit a putt, and it helps me consistently translate my read into where I actually hit

  the putt. It starts with eye dominance. Everyone has one eye that is dominant over the other, and the

  dominant eye leads in terms of focusing on a target. You can figure out which of your eyes is dominant

  by looking up at a target that’s pretty far away, like a light or a street sign, and pointing at it without

  thinking too much about what you’re doing. Without moving your finger, try closing your left eye. If

  your finger is pointing directly at the target, you’re right-eye dominant. If your finger is pointing off to

  the side of the target, you’re left-eye dominant.

  Why is eye dominance important to know? Because, as you can see from that simple eye test I

  just described, if you rely on your non-dominant eye to line you up with your target, you could be a

  few inches—or even a foot—off as to where the face of your putter is actually aimed. That means

  you’ll have to do something in your stroke, either consciously or unconsciously, to get the ball back

  on line. I know I’m right-eye dominant, so I set the putter down with my right hand first, and let my