Video:How to Read Break on the Putting Green

Transcript:How to Read Break on the Putting Green

I'm Todd Kolb with About.com. We're going to talk about reading greens.

Get General Shape of Putting Green

When it comes time to reading greens, there are three key things I want you to be aware of. The first thing you want to do is you want to look at the green as a whole. Most greens will have a general shape to them. Some greens are going to have a lot more movement than others and some are going to be more relatively flat, but a lot of the greens you're going to run into are going to have a general slope to them, meaning the green is going to be higher on the back side and lower on the front side or vice versa. So your first look when you're walking on to the green is asking yourself, "okay, what does this green do as a whole?"

Walk the Distance of Your Putt

The next thing I'm going to recommend is that you actually walk the distance of your putt. You start at your golf ball and walk to the cup. A couple things are going to happen here: number one is you're going to figure out how far the putt is, which is very important because all reads are based on the assumption that the ball is going to travel a certain distance and the distance that you want the ball to travel is you want the ball to travel such that if it went past the cup it's going to roll anywhere from 6 to about 18 inches by the cup. Now, if you know how far the ball is going to travel, you can look for a couple other things as you're walking that putt off.

Be Aware of Your Feet on Putting Green

One great tip that I like to give students is that as you're walking the distance that the ball is going to travel, just be aware of what your feet are doing. Your feet are a great resource for figuring out if the putt is uphill, downhill or side hill. So as you're walking the distance to figure out how far the ball needs to go be aware of what your feet are doing. If you feel like you want to walk to the left or to the right, you know that the putt is going to probably break that direction. You'll also get a sense of if you're walking uphill or downhill, which will tell you of course if the putt is going to be faster or slower.

Find Target on Putting Green

So, the first thing we've done is we've looked at the green as a whole. Now we've looked at our putt specifically in terms of okay what is it going to do. The third thing we're going to look for in the process is we're going to look for the target or where we need to start the ball at based on the information that we've just gathered. So, we've looked at our putt, we know how far it is, we have a general idea of the slope, so we're going to pick out a target to the right or to the left of the cup if it's going to break, or right at the cup if it's a straight putt and we're going to go ahead and aim the putter.

Summary of How to Read a Break

So when it comes to reading putts, there's a lot of different things that you can do but the three key components are, number one look at the green as a whole, is there a general shape to the green that will give you an idea of where all balls will flow. Number two, look at your putt specifically, how long is it, how far the ball needs to travel and as you're walking that out, be aware of where your feet are and what they want to do, do they want to go left, right, uphill or downhill. And third and finally, take that information do a calculation, make a good guess in terms of where do I need to start that golf ball so that all that works out together and hopefully that ball finishes in the cup.