Welcome to Life in the Rough! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you'd like to explore a bit, click here to find links to information about me, plenty of golf tips, reviews, and more. Thanks for visiting!

I’ve become a fan of The Golf Fix on The Golf Channel, hosted by Michael Breed.  I was skeptical of his frantic pace on the show at first, which made me wonder how much one could glean from a bunch of disjointed tips and fixes for swings phoned and e-mailed in.

I must say, however, that I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much I’ve learned from those dozens of rapid-fire tips, fixes, and information.  The show gets a big thumbs up from me, but that’s a thought for another day.

A while back, Breed took a question from a viewer who had problems reading greens.  I was very impressed with the perspective he provided on the topic.  He made the point that reading the break on greens is all about good mechanics.

You may have had the same reaction I did:  “Huh?”

He went on to explain, though, that what players do, is look at a putt and subconsciously “remember” similar putts they’ve stroked in the past and then kind of just “know” how much break there will be.

Think about it like a baby learning to walk.  When a baby first tries to walk, there’s a lot of stumbling, falling, and wobbling.  Then, after a while, walking becomes effortless because the child just “knows” how to make everything work in unison.

We all started playing the game for the first time at some point, but may not remember much from that long ago.  But, many of us have played with new players more recently.  I know I’m somewhat surprised at how imprecise a new player’s putting is in many cases.  Well, they’re just going through the stumbling, falling, and wobbling like a young child.

As they continue to play, they start to see basically the same (or very similar) putts over and over and over and over.  Before long, they’ll instinctively know how much break they need to play and how much pace is required.

So, how do mechanics figure in?

Well, if you listen to the great teachers, they all stress the importance of consistency in golf.  And consistency comes from a repeatable swing.  If you can repeat the same swing time after time, then you can predict with a high degree of accuracy what a shot is going to do.

Considering just putting for the moment, if you have a repeatable putting stroke, then you will eventually be able to intuitively predict how much break to play for a particular putt.  After all, you’ve probably putted the same distance and break dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

If your putting stroke is highly flawed, though, then your body won’t be able to learn from all those hundreds of similar putts.  One time you miss a foot right.  Next time, you aim a foot further left (you think) and still miss a foot right.  So, next time, you aim even further left and this time miss two feet left of the hole.

You’re like that wobbly baby but you never quite learned how to walk.  It’s not because your brain can’t process the break.  It’s because it’s getting the wrong signals about how the ball will react in that situation.  Your putting stroke has become a variable that your intuition can’t account for.

On the other hand, if you get the ball close a few times, gradually your subconscious will begin to take over and given future putts that are very similar, you will almost instinctively know how much break and pace to play.

That’s why it is so critical to build a repeatable putting stroke that will always give you accurate feedback after a putt.   My personal preference is the pure in-line square (PILS) stroke advocated by Dave Pelz in his Putting Bible.

Whatever style you choose, the idea is to build the most repeatable stroke possible.  That will ensure that every time you face a putt, your body will file an entry in the old memory bank, and when you face the same putt later, you’ll intuitively know how to handle the break.  You won’t need a plumb bob, a slide rule, or trigonometry.  You’ll just know.

Did you like this post? Get free RSS updates!

Leave a comment | Comment Policy | Trackback URL