Reading Greens, What Is The Best Way To Read Golf Greens (Video) - by Pete Styles
Reading Greens, What Is The Best Way To Read Golf Greens (Video) - by Pete Styles

So once you’ve established that you’ve got quite a good stable solid putting stroke, I am afraid to say that’s only about half the battle to being a good putter. Because there’s no point aiming dead straight to the hole every time and hitting a load of great putts, you then find that they missed because you didn’t look to reading greens as a help. Reading greens is almost a game within itself and it’s a huge skill that you will develop with experience over time.

But here is a few of my top tips to help you improve on your green reading skills. Firstly we’ll look at this putt down to this area here and it’s quite obvious there’s going to be a slope on this putt. Now what I do here is I look around the whole area the whole environment I survey as much as I can, almost as a big picture sometimes even as I am walking upon to the green we survey the big picture and there’s an obvious mound here that’s influencing what we see on the green. The next thing I will do is I would a full 360 around the putt if I could. So I would walk up on the high side and I feel from the high side and I am feeling with my feet as much as I am looking with my eyes I can feel where the slope goes. Now I imagine if I had a big a bath full of water and I threw the water on to the surface how that would affect things. It would clearly take the water off one side so I walk all the way around the green looking back and then all the way back around the low sides. So walking back down to the low side really enhances that feeling that I am looking up to the line that I am going to be taking the putt along, I will then come down and bend down on this side again looking at the slope that I want to hit the putt on. And then maybe pick a point upon here that I want to aim towards. I understand that the ball won’t actually get towards that point the ball will curve underneath that point, it’s not going to actually reach the, the sort of point that I am aiming for that’s where we don’t apex putt. So we are aiming up to that right hand side and the ball is going to curve around. And then have one last little look from this side and just work on my speed because I know the speed will affect the pace – sorry will affect the line. And if this green was a very quick green I would have to allow more slope, this green on todays I am on today has had its winter treatment so it’s actually, relatively slow so I could probably aim a little bit straighter. But it is slightly uphill so I do need to be quite positive with this putt and then step to the side have a good look and have a good couple of practice strokes, pick my spot upon that right hand side I am going to aim towards get my feet my body my shoulders everything aiming up at the hill, then go ahead and have a nice push up the hill. Try and be nice and positive with it and it curves and it breaks around and it finishes about half a bull short of the hole. So it’s actually a very good putt in terms of the way I read it, I might have slightly under hit it, I was about half, half a role short there but the line that I took I was very happy with that line had a good walk around it, imagine the way the water would flow with the bath water falling off this way. I had a good read of it from the low side, felt it with my feet and all that data inputted into my head meant that I got the line right. And I promise you that was the first time I had taken that putt to date but I got the line quite right on the first go. 2014-10-10

So once you’ve established that you’ve got quite a good stable solid putting stroke, I am afraid to say that’s only about half the battle to being a good putter. Because there’s no point aiming dead straight to the hole every time and hitting a load of great putts, you then find that they missed because you didn’t look to reading greens as a help. Reading greens is almost a game within itself and it’s a huge skill that you will develop with experience over time.

But here is a few of my top tips to help you improve on your green reading skills. Firstly we’ll look at this putt down to this area here and it’s quite obvious there’s going to be a slope on this putt. Now what I do here is I look around the whole area the whole environment I survey as much as I can, almost as a big picture sometimes even as I am walking upon to the green we survey the big picture and there’s an obvious mound here that’s influencing what we see on the green. The next thing I will do is I would a full 360 around the putt if I could. So I would walk up on the high side and I feel from the high side and I am feeling with my feet as much as I am looking with my eyes I can feel where the slope goes. Now I imagine if I had a big a bath full of water and I threw the water on to the surface how that would affect things.

It would clearly take the water off one side so I walk all the way around the green looking back and then all the way back around the low sides. So walking back down to the low side really enhances that feeling that I am looking up to the line that I am going to be taking the putt along, I will then come down and bend down on this side again looking at the slope that I want to hit the putt on. And then maybe pick a point upon here that I want to aim towards. I understand that the ball won’t actually get towards that point the ball will curve underneath that point, it’s not going to actually reach the, the sort of point that I am aiming for that’s where we don’t apex putt.

So we are aiming up to that right hand side and the ball is going to curve around. And then have one last little look from this side and just work on my speed because I know the speed will affect the pace – sorry will affect the line. And if this green was a very quick green I would have to allow more slope, this green on todays I am on today has had its winter treatment so it’s actually, relatively slow so I could probably aim a little bit straighter. But it is slightly uphill so I do need to be quite positive with this putt and then step to the side have a good look and have a good couple of practice strokes, pick my spot upon that right hand side I am going to aim towards get my feet my body my shoulders everything aiming up at the hill, then go ahead and have a nice push up the hill.

Try and be nice and positive with it and it curves and it breaks around and it finishes about half a bull short of the hole. So it’s actually a very good putt in terms of the way I read it, I might have slightly under hit it, I was about half, half a role short there but the line that I took I was very happy with that line had a good walk around it, imagine the way the water would flow with the bath water falling off this way. I had a good read of it from the low side, felt it with my feet and all that data inputted into my head meant that I got the line right. And I promise you that was the first time I had taken that putt to date but I got the line quite right on the first go.