If you're tired of missing breaking putts on the low side, you can always force
yourself to aim higher as a matter of habit, but this doesn't really come to grips with the
problem. How much higher? How do you see enough break to begin with? Here's a quick tip to help: Try to envision the slowest putt you can hit that will still make it to the hole. That's the putt with MAXIMUM break. Your putt ought to have a little less break than that, but not too much less.
Some Theory.
Speed is the first and last consideration for breaking putts. All breaking putts are speed putts. Imagining or "seeing" the curve of a breaking putt first requires a pretty accurate appreciation of how fast the ball will be rolling in the putt.
The trouble is, there is a range of possible speeds that can get the job done. With different speeds, the curve the breaking ball will follow is different. Generally, the slower the ball rolls, the more opportunity the constant tug of gravity from the tilt has to curl the ball downslope. So slow putts have greater break than quicker putts.
The situation is greatly simplified by realizing that for every putt, there ends up being only the speed you actually give the ball. In this sense, there may not be a single "optimal" speed, and instead a fuzzy range of usable speeds, but in any event you will only hit one speed, and it ought to be comfortably within this optimal range.
The trick is to focus in on the optimal range. The set of curves corresponding to the optimal speed range clearly lies between the extremes. The easiest and perhaps most accurate way to find the optimal range, then, is simple: identify the outer, extreme boundaries first, and then work inward to the optimum, based on the ball's approach speed as it enters the cup.
A Dash of Science.
Putting surfaces vary widely, but the simplest case is a flat and level surface. If the surface is BOTH flat and level, all putts are straight. As a practical matter, such greens don't exist because the green has to drain properly, and at least 2 to 3 degrees of tilt is needed for good drainage and healthy turf. So the next simplest case is a green that is tilted some but is otherwise flat, like a large sheet of plywood elevated on one edge. Occasionally, the section of a green that your putt crosses may approximate this simplicity. More commonly, putts cross surfaces with undulations, ridges, troughs, tiers, and more. For clarity, we have to stick with the simple case. A 3% slope is one that rises 3 feet for every 100 feet uphill. A ten-foot putt straight uphill on a 3% slope covers 120 inches and rises 3.6 inches in elevation. In our case, there is no up- or down-tilt from ball to hole, as both are at the same elevation. All the tilt is from right down to left (so the ball at address is uphill for
right-handers).
To get the speed and shape of the curve right, we need to consider the motion patterns of breaking putts.
First, gravity is constant, but its effect shows up more as the ball slows down. A fast ball and a slow ball moving along the same line on a tilted surface have identical tugs from gravity downhill but it's sort of like both balls have their steering wheels turned downhill to the same degree. The slow ball runs off the road in a lot shorter stretch of highway than the fast ball does. The slow ball's radius of curvature is sharper but only because it's not going as fast forward.
Second, all breaking putts on slopes like this start out uphill and then come back downhill in the arc of the putt. This alters the speed pattern of the putt somewhat.
Imagining the Extremes.
For a green that is medium fast (so a test ball rolls about 7.5 to 8 feet off the Stimpmeter), with a tilt of 3 degrees right down to left with an axis of tilt that parallels a direct line from the ball to the hole, and a putt length of 10 feet, how much break would you estimate? The answer, of course, depends on how fast you start the putt off. But the extremes of possible speeds are fairly easy to identify.
See the fastest curve for the putt that will not run over the hole. The first extreme is the most direct line to the hole, or the fastest speed. By the laws of physics, there is an outer limit on this speed and that is a speed that is too fast to allow the ball to drop halfway while crossing over the 4.25-inch diameter cup. Without getting into details, this "capture" speed has to be less than about 50 inches per second as the ball crosses over the front lip (roughly, a ball that is rolling about nine revolutions per second covers about this distance in one second, so they are two ways to express roughly the same speed.) If you need to visualize this speed, roll your index fingertip over your other index finger nine times while counting "One Mississippi..." It's pretty fast. A ball that misses the hole going this fast will roll about 4 to 5 feet past on a medium fast green.
A putt that is going to go 4 to 5 feet by the hole if it misses will have the path with the slightest curvature, but it will have some curvature. In our case, it probably wouldn't be much more than two or three inches off the direct line to the hole (or baseline).
And such a putt must cross the hole dead center, too. Anything off to the side a bit doesn't leave enough hole-crossing for the ball to drop far enough for capture, and it hops or spins out of the hole. In order to have the central third of the hole available for capture, the ball can't be going much above 30 inches per second as it crosses the lip. That's a 40% decline in putt speed.
See the slowest curve for the putt that will just make it to the hole and drop. The other extreme is a little more tricky. This is the SLOWEST possible putt that just makes it to the hole's edge and topples in. This is where the imagination is tested. People with a lot of experience putting will naturally find this curve easier to envision, but novices can learn this technique pretty readily, too.
Because of the physics (as described above), the SLOWEST possible putt in our case will be one with maximum break of approximately 20 inches uphill from the baseline, and this "breakpoint" will be somewhere near the start of the last one-third of the total putt (say, three feet from the hole). From the ball to the breakpoint, the curvature from gravity will be pretty slight, since the ball will be moving fastest in this section of the putt. The putt needs only a little more speed than necessary to reach this highest breakpoint to then curl back downhill three feet to the hole. From the ball's perspective, three feet is not quite seven rolls.
So this slow putt is about the same as putting uphill a bit to just barely send the ball through a point about seven feet away and 20 inches or so uphill from the baseline. The surface rises 3% of these 20 inches, or 6/10th of an inch, so it's not THAT much uphill. For this extreme, then, the "seeing" of the putt's speed and curve translates into seeing the speed of a putt of about seven feet to a point 20 inches up-slope from the baseline.
In case you still have trouble, and in particular can't see how this highest breakpoint comes out about 20 inches uphill, here's another trick: Imagine putting straight at the hole with just enough speed to reach the hole in an untilted putt, and then imagine how the ball would actually curve downhill from the tilt. Doing this, you can envision the ball falling at least 20 inches below the hole as it curls down on the "amateur side." It may well go past that, because there is no uphill in this putt to take out some of the ball's energy. The shape you get is about what you want to see for the highest putt. If you mentally shift this whole curve uphill so the ball's resting place coincides with the hole, you get a good approximation of how high and far along the maximum break point is located.
Narrow Your Focus to the Optimal Range.
These extremes narrow the possible curves between breakpoints of about two inches and 20 inches uphill. That's still a very wide range. Where is the optimum?
The optimum depends on managing the last few feet of the putt to maximize the chances of sinking the putt. Obviously, the optimum will be closer to the highest curve, because even the highest curve has sufficient speed to deliver the ball into the cup. In addition, we already backed off the fastest curve by at least 40% to open up the effective width of the hole. And there are two others reasons: a slower approach to the hole results in misses that are a lot closer; and since the ball approaches the hole from uphill, the opposite side of the hole's rim is a little lower than the entry edge, so the ball has to be slower to have more time to drop farther than normal to be captured.
Broadly speaking, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being slowest, the optimum speed for the putt we have described is definitely above 5, and probably above 7. That puts the optimum breakpoint around 70% of the way from minimum to maximum.
On the other hand, you don't want to go all the way to the slowest extreme, because then you would have no margin for error on the slow side left. Any slower than the slowest is too slow!
Taking everything together, the optimum is probably about two-thirds to three-fourths the way between the baseline and the maximum breakpoint. This curve gives a very nice approach speed into the hole, with a good margin of error.
Finally, Work Backwards from the Hole to the Breakpoint.
Now that you can see the narrowed region of optimal curves, it's critical to finish the job by seeing the last several feet of the putt. You really need to make sure the vision of the putt has the ball actually entering the cup dead in the heart. This is essential to crystallizing the very line your actual putt needs to follow.
If the closest point on the cup to you is the six o'clock position on a clockface, a right to left breaking putt as described will enter the cup at about the four o'clock position, and at a speed such that the ball drops well below the back rim before hitting the back wall of the cup down in the hole. Coming backwards with our vision, given this entry speed and line, we can pretty clearly see exactly where the curve goes through the breakpoint area. From here, the task is very direct: send the ball to that breakpoint with the right speed that the ball connects with and follows this final entry pathway and rattles home. That's about all you can do.
Make This Part of Your Game.
When faced with a breaking putt (with the surface otherwise generally flat), imagine a putt straight at the hole with just-get-there speed and visualize how far down the amateur side the ball would curl. Transplant this "slowest" trajectory uphill so the ball would end up in the cup. This curve sets the maximum breakpoint. The optimum range will be somewhere around two-thirds to three-fourths of the way from the baseline to this maximum break. The speed won't be much more than just enough to get the ball uphill to this breakpoint, because the final three feet past this point or so are downhill at least a little.
Finally, get the whole putt crystallized in an exact curve by seeing the last several feet of the putt in reverse, with an optimal entry speed, from the hole back to the optimal breakpoint area. The last several feet are the ones you must make happen for real.
The numbers will vary with green speeds, slope, actual contour, and other factors, but generally speaking, looking at breaking putts like this will help you see more break than you might be accustomed to, and will keep you within the ballpark of the possible as you try to give your putt its best chance of going in the cup.
