Your Eyes And The Golf Short Game (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Your Eyes And The Golf Short Game (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

So, just to finalize this little miniseries of golf tips about your eye position, your eye movements during the golf game, we can now look at how the eyes affect the short game and particularly the putting. Now putting is all about feedback, reading the green, taking on information before you actually hit a shot. You consider that every 250 yard drive you hit, it’s pretty similar, you Tee the ball up, fairways down there, setup, hit as hard as you can. Yes, there’s certain information about wind direction and bunkers and lots of thing, but generally the swing itself is just hit it as hard as you can. But a putt is so, so very different because every putt we have has a different line, a different break, an uphill or downhill, a different distance, and all of this information needs to be fed into your brain before you actually calculate the type of shot you’re going to hit, and your eyes are responsible for bringing that information in. So as we setup to a putt, we want to try and give it a really good read. Now most golfers are familiar with a concept of reading a green, that we stand behind, we look down, we see which way it’s going to break, but the ironic thing about reading the green is the area where the putt breaks the most and the slopes will have the most affect is the area furthest away from where we read it. So, if I was hitting a putt from here back to the camera, and it’s, let’s say, 20 feet, as I hit this putt it won’t break much at the start, it's traveling quite quick, it breaks more at the end, breaks twice as much, let’s say, toward the end. But I’ve not read that end as well as I’ve read this end this end I read quite well because I’m standing near it, but I didn’t read it from that end.

So there's the tip, go to the other end and read the putt from the hole end as well so you get a really good feel for what the putt's going to do later on in its break. So you read it from both ends and actually I would encourage you to read it from side on as well. Stand side on, look at the uphill, look at the downhill that changes the way the putt breaks as well. The other consideration might be that we look at the grass really quite in detail, so we actually stare down at the grass, we’re looking for things like break and we’re looking for things like burrow in the green, we’re looking for the nap of the green. So, a green might have a certain texture to a grain, if you call it, and in United States mainly it's referred to as grain. So if a grass grows a particular direction, it will have a grain to it and that can have quite a big affect on the way the putt will break. In the UK or the European greens we might also look for the way the mower has gone. So if it’s a light stripe and it’s away from us, the light stripe generally means the grass is folded this way and it’s going to go faster, if it’s a darker stripe and we’re looking at it from here, the darker stripe means the mow has come this direction, the grass is folded this way, the ball is going roll slower. So if it’s a silvery stripe, it will be quick, if it’s a dark green stripe, it’s going to be slow. I can read that information through my eyes. The one last piece of information I can pick up on is a sort of a bigger picture, I stand back and look at the whole slope of the green, so I’m looking at where the high points is, where the low point is, if there’s a lake over there or a drain over there, I can see how the green is being built to let the water drain away from it and I can see a bigger picture. So sometimes when I’m reading greens, I get down and look at the minutia of the grass, look at the minutia of how it will break from end to end and then I just stand back and have a little sort of a big picture look, does the whole thing slope this way, whole thing slope this way. All that information gets fed into the internal computer, then we can work out the line, the speed, how far, how fast, where we’re going to aim our putts and all that information has to happen before you actually setup to the putt. So when you’re on the putting green, spend all of the time looking at the surface reading that information. Don't be sort of wondering around looking at the trees, looking at the birds, oh, Pete, it's your go, right straight and then I have to hit my shot. Take your time, read the surface of the green before you take your putt. 2016-04-22

So, just to finalize this little miniseries of golf tips about your eye position, your eye movements during the golf game, we can now look at how the eyes affect the short game and particularly the putting. Now putting is all about feedback, reading the green, taking on information before you actually hit a shot. You consider that every 250 yard drive you hit, it’s pretty similar, you Tee the ball up, fairways down there, setup, hit as hard as you can. Yes, there’s certain information about wind direction and bunkers and lots of thing, but generally the swing itself is just hit it as hard as you can. But a putt is so, so very different because every putt we have has a different line, a different break, an uphill or downhill, a different distance, and all of this information needs to be fed into your brain before you actually calculate the type of shot you’re going to hit, and your eyes are responsible for bringing that information in. So as we setup to a putt, we want to try and give it a really good read. Now most golfers are familiar with a concept of reading a green, that we stand behind, we look down, we see which way it’s going to break, but the ironic thing about reading the green is the area where the putt breaks the most and the slopes will have the most affect is the area furthest away from where we read it. So, if I was hitting a putt from here back to the camera, and it’s, let’s say, 20 feet, as I hit this putt it won’t break much at the start, it's traveling quite quick, it breaks more at the end, breaks twice as much, let’s say, toward the end. But I’ve not read that end as well as I’ve read this end this end I read quite well because I’m standing near it, but I didn’t read it from that end.

So there's the tip, go to the other end and read the putt from the hole end as well so you get a really good feel for what the putt's going to do later on in its break. So you read it from both ends and actually I would encourage you to read it from side on as well. Stand side on, look at the uphill, look at the downhill that changes the way the putt breaks as well. The other consideration might be that we look at the grass really quite in detail, so we actually stare down at the grass, we’re looking for things like break and we’re looking for things like burrow in the green, we’re looking for the nap of the green. So, a green might have a certain texture to a grain, if you call it, and in United States mainly it's referred to as grain. So if a grass grows a particular direction, it will have a grain to it and that can have quite a big affect on the way the putt will break. In the UK or the European greens we might also look for the way the mower has gone. So if it’s a light stripe and it’s away from us, the light stripe generally means the grass is folded this way and it’s going to go faster, if it’s a darker stripe and we’re looking at it from here, the darker stripe means the mow has come this direction, the grass is folded this way, the ball is going roll slower. So if it’s a silvery stripe, it will be quick, if it’s a dark green stripe, it’s going to be slow. I can read that information through my eyes. The one last piece of information I can pick up on is a sort of a bigger picture, I stand back and look at the whole slope of the green, so I’m looking at where the high points is, where the low point is, if there’s a lake over there or a drain over there, I can see how the green is being built to let the water drain away from it and I can see a bigger picture. So sometimes when I’m reading greens, I get down and look at the minutia of the grass, look at the minutia of how it will break from end to end and then I just stand back and have a little sort of a big picture look, does the whole thing slope this way, whole thing slope this way. All that information gets fed into the internal computer, then we can work out the line, the speed, how far, how fast, where we’re going to aim our putts and all that information has to happen before you actually setup to the putt. So when you’re on the putting green, spend all of the time looking at the surface reading that information. Don't be sort of wondering around looking at the trees, looking at the birds, oh, Pete, it's your go, right straight and then I have to hit my shot. Take your time, read the surface of the green before you take your putt.