You're Correct!

One of the biggest mistakes amateur golfers make when it comes to green reading is that they pay no attention to anything at all when they are walking up towards the green.

Why? you all ask. Because the walk up to the green from around 70 yards away allows you to vizually see the slopes, the size and direction of the banks as they run away from the bunkers and any subtle changes in elevation. This would instil you with the confidence required to positively hit your putt on a good line. The best way to read every green would be to:

• Walk to the green after your approach shot with your eyes wide open. This will give you a good vizual of any slopes.
• Once you get to your ball, feel for the slope with your feet. This means for you to feel the change in your weight distribution as you stand tall, the more weight you feel on a particular side will confirm the slope that you have just seen on your approach.
• Dont under estimate the amount of break you need to allow for. Most amateur players under estimate by up to a third of the break needed to hole the putt.
• Always remember that if your putt is both downhill and across the slope then your putt will break more than on a normal downhill putt or breaking putt. Make sure you allow for this in your read and speed control.

Many golfers actually do just as their playing partners do. This is generally down to the fact that most amateur golfers believe that they are ok or good at putting. This leads to most of you wanting to focus all your attention on your full swing or hitting your driver 300 yards rather than working on the one area of the game that accounts for 43% of your shots.

This is a common practise amongst all golfers, and there are times when it will be valid for you to get a read this way. Remember that the speed a putt is hit with will determine the line of that putt. Even if your playing partner has a putt on a similar line, watching their putt will only tell you the line for the speed they have hit their putt with.

The big question you need to ask yourself in this case is - what speed are you going to hit your putt with?

There are very few putts on a green that dont break at least a little, so every now and again you will hit a successful putt that will find the bottom of the cup. But beware that if you start to hit your putt with too much speed in an attempt to stop the ball breaking, you will miss the putt 99.9% of the time, and end up facing a difficult comeback putt.