
How Long do You Read Putts?
Posted by Double Eagle in Putting Tips - 8 Comments
I’ve been reading Golf Unplugged by Jim Apfelbaum (great book; review upcoming) and it contains a quote from Bobby Jones. Faced with a pressure putt, he said:
I resolved that no matter how much time I consumed, I was going to tranquilze my breath before I made another putt. So I began to take great pains to study the line. I really did not study the line, for I have never been able to see more rolls and bumps in a minute than I could in five seconds, but I was giving my breath a chance to quiet down.

It got me thinking about how much time I spend reading putts compared with the pros.
I’ve been watching the PGA Tour for years. Of course, I also watch the European Tour, the Champions Tour, the LPGA Tour, and even the Nationwide Tour at times. It seems like just about every top-level pro in the world takes a long, long time reading putts.
They typically read from the ball to the hole, from the hole to the ball, along the line, and everything in between. They plumb bob with their putters. In a feat of flexibility and athleticism, Camillo Villegas even gets his eyes a few inches off the turf.
I have tried over the years to mimic these rituals, thinking that maybe I’m missing something. But every time, I feel exactly what Bobby Jones said. I rarely learn anything in a minute that I didn’t know in five seconds.
As I approach my ball, I pretty much already have the line by the time I get there. When I take a few extra seconds, I’m usually just trying to work out the speed or maybe refine the read a little from, say, outside left to inside left, for instance.
The only time I ever read the putt from the far side of the hole is when I’m truly undecided about the break but don’t see a straight putt. And a vast majority of the time, I’m still undecided and choose one side or the other and the putt turns out to be nearly straight.
I might take a little longer if the putt has really huge break, like ten feet or something.
I’ll also take my time if I feel that a good lag is impossible. Have you ever had a putt that’s on the low side of a slope where you know that once the ball rolls over the crest, it’s not going to stop anywhere near the hole or even on the green? When I get a situation like that, I might putt on an insane line and intentionally miss if I feel like I can stop the ball three or four feet to either side. I can make that, but I’m probably not going to make the come-back putt from the collar. These kinds of strategies take me a little longer and they’re very rare.
That said, I think my system for reading greens works well for me. A vast majority of my misses are putts that were poorly struck or putts where I did not choose the correct speed. I find that it’s rare for me to completely blow a read. I can say fairly certainly that I don’t recall having had a read from a second angle overturn my initial read and turn out to be correct.
So the question is, are the pros on television really learning new information as they stalk circles around the greens? Are they just trying to reinforce their first read with extra information because they literally have so much riding on putts? Or, is it like Jones said and they’re just trying to calm down before they hit their putts?
How long do you take to read putts? Do you find that reads from second and third angles change your first impression? Or, in the case of a pressure-filled putt, are you just trying to quiet your breathing?
posted in Putting Tips • 8 Comments


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