Should Putts Fall Into The Front Of The Golf Hole Or Should They Be Rammed Into The Back (Video) - by Pete Styles
Should Putts Fall Into The Front Of The Golf Hole Or Should They Be Rammed Into The Back (Video) - by Pete Styles

Question here is, should putts be rammed into the back of the golf hole or should it be trickled up so they just fall through the front door. And there can't really be a right or wrong answer to this, because different golfers react in a different way to produce different pace of putts. If we look at somebody like Tiger, Tiger is a very aggressive putter, he looks at the hole and he knocks the putt quite a long way past. Different players – somebody like Padraig Harrington, Padraig is a lot softer the way he rolls the putt. He rolls the putt through the front door and it just falls in. Now those golfers have to read putts differently. Interestingly when Tiger is looking at a putt, if he is going to hit the ball quite hard so it rolls two or three, four past if he were to miss, he could read a relatively straight line on that maybe just an inch or two break.

Harrington might read the same putt with four, five inches a break because he is going to really roll it in gently like four through the front door. So it's a slightly different form of reading the green, slightly different form of hitting the putt aggressively or not. The only consideration you’ve got if you are Tiger Woods, is if you are going to be quite aggressive and hit putts hard towards the back of the hole, if they miss you’ve got quite a big difficult come back putt. Tiger was always very confident in his head if holding these return putts he was always confident and he could knock it four for pass and get a return putt. Maybe Harrington like to see more break on his putts, maybe Harrington is not quite so confident holding a return putt, so he would try and hit the putts slightly slower down there so that they just went past the back edge of the hole and then he could tap in the return putt. So Tiger was aggressive, Harrington was less, so. Again I can't give you the right and wrong answer for this. It's really about your preference of how you read the greens, how you see the putts breaking and how you like to return your return putts if you're confident enough. The one thing I would suggest is try and be consistent because the pace changes the line. So don’t hit one putt really hard, the next one really soft, the next one really hard, try and get them all falling through the front door generally or running into the back of the hole. And maybe have around the golf where you're aggressive and around the golf where you're defensive and see which way of putting works best for you, which improves your score the best and which gives you the most enjoyment and the most satisfaction and confidence. 2014-10-14

Question here is, should putts be rammed into the back of the golf hole or should it be trickled up so they just fall through the front door. And there can't really be a right or wrong answer to this, because different golfers react in a different way to produce different pace of putts. If we look at somebody like Tiger, Tiger is a very aggressive putter, he looks at the hole and he knocks the putt quite a long way past. Different players – somebody like Padraig Harrington, Padraig is a lot softer the way he rolls the putt. He rolls the putt through the front door and it just falls in. Now those golfers have to read putts differently. Interestingly when Tiger is looking at a putt, if he is going to hit the ball quite hard so it rolls two or three, four past if he were to miss, he could read a relatively straight line on that maybe just an inch or two break.

Harrington might read the same putt with four, five inches a break because he is going to really roll it in gently like four through the front door. So it's a slightly different form of reading the green, slightly different form of hitting the putt aggressively or not. The only consideration you’ve got if you are Tiger Woods, is if you are going to be quite aggressive and hit putts hard towards the back of the hole, if they miss you’ve got quite a big difficult come back putt. Tiger was always very confident in his head if holding these return putts he was always confident and he could knock it four for pass and get a return putt. Maybe Harrington like to see more break on his putts, maybe Harrington is not quite so confident holding a return putt, so he would try and hit the putts slightly slower down there so that they just went past the back edge of the hole and then he could tap in the return putt.

So Tiger was aggressive, Harrington was less, so. Again I can't give you the right and wrong answer for this. It's really about your preference of how you read the greens, how you see the putts breaking and how you like to return your return putts if you're confident enough. The one thing I would suggest is try and be consistent because the pace changes the line. So don’t hit one putt really hard, the next one really soft, the next one really hard, try and get them all falling through the front door generally or running into the back of the hole. And maybe have around the golf where you're aggressive and around the golf where you're defensive and see which way of putting works best for you, which improves your score the best and which gives you the most enjoyment and the most satisfaction and confidence.