This simple fix has me learning vegetables like a pro
We’re now in episode 3 of the Lab with PGA Tour Putting Advisor Stephen Sweeney, and I’ve been unabashed about how this practice has changed my game. In episode 1 we talked all about setting up, and Sweeney changed every part of how my body prepares for the ball. In Episode 2 you took me through the concept of shot speed, and how staying consistent with your target speed can help you make more putts, and now Episode 3 deals with learning the green. I wasn’t ashamed of learning green as the worst part of my placement, but one simple sentence ended up changing everything.
As we know from previous episodes there are three reasons for a player to miss a putt. There are technical reasons, including a small part of the actual equipment in your hands, there is speed control, and there is the learning you decided on in the first place. As Sweeney explains in the video, most of the time the problem starts with reading the player they think they have in their head.
“Any putt within 1º of the target line is not technically a forfeit,” Sweeney said.
To start working on my green reading skills he asked me to mark the point on the Platform Golf putting green at his studio in Jupiter, Florida. This point was meant to be where I thought the putt would break. I accidentally failed to follow the directions and ended up signing the spot where I was trying to start my putt.
Sweeny fired up his Quintic Overhead technology and marked that green so we could follow where I thought the line was, and several putts I’d hit before we figured it out. (Spoiler: I was too far away.) I couldn’t match the speed and line required on this seemingly easy inside putt. By the fourth try I was hitting the ball too hard to be comfortable with my level, so obviously something was wrong with the aim of the line I created.
As I continued to miss putts, Sweeney expressed his frustration at how poorly novices tend to learn their putts.
“I go out to play and I hear the cards in the distance saying that there is a ball to the right or to the left. It is not a ball outside the left, not at this distance.”
After a few missed putts, Sweeney dropped a number on me that completely changed the way I think about studying the green:
If you miss a putt on the high side, the miss will only affect about 50% of the reading. If you call a putt one foot to the right of the hole and miss on the high side, the miss will be about 6″ assuming you’ve got the right speed from distance. If you miss on the low side, however, the miss is multiplied by a factor of three. If you call a putt one foot to the right and you end up missing, you could end up going three feet on the low side.
Read that again! That statement changed everything for me.
Mainly if you miss on the high side, you can be more aggressive with the putt itself. Mainly because you hit the putt uphill for a long time, the effect of gravity at the end of the putt is reduced. If you miss on the low side, you allow gravity to hit the ball too quickly during the putt and it will continue to pull the ball harder.
Sweeney ended with a funny story saying that he teaches Aim Point but knows it’s not for everyone.
“When it comes to the beginner’s game, one of the best tips I got was from an 8-year-old dentist. He said that whatever he thinks is learned, he just plays twice. Now that’s probably the easiest advice I can give to a beginner golfer.”
