Why You Need This:

Before I share with you my 4-part system for how to read greens…

I’m wondering if you’ve ever found yourself in this situation…

You have your first good birdie putt of the round; you’re only 6 feet from the hole.

The best part of all, you can win a few bucks if you sink this putt.

You crouch down, just like you see the top pros do to read the green.

It looks like it’s going to break a little to the left.

You confidently roll the putt toward the right edge of the hole…

You hit it perfectly…

What??

It breaks even farther left and you miss the putt by a good 3 inches outside the hole.

You’re so mad, you know you won’t get another easy chance like this for a while.

Well, here’s the deal…

When it comes to making putts, you can only make what you can see.

If you want to be a pro around the greens, you need to read the greens like a pro.

Watch this video now to discover my 4-part system to get a great read every time!

What's Covered: Tips on how to effectively read a green, where to begin, and what things to consider when reading a green.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 6:15

Video Transcription:

All right guys, green reading. It’s one of the most important things to draining a lot of putts. We can have a perfect stroke, we could hit at the perfect speed exactly where we wanted to go, but if we didn’t read the green properly we’re going to miss every single time.

So we’ve got to have the right line, pair that up with our great stroke and our great rhythm, then we’re going to make a ton of putts.

Green reading starts…let’s go back up here a little bit. The number one thing that I feel most players haven’t been taught is how to properly read a green, and the step-by-step process that pros and really good players do to read a green.

Once they learn that system, it becomes very easy to read the green. It’s going to take a little bit of practice, a little bit of work, but if we follow these four steps you’re going to be a great green reader, and you’re really going to be proficient doing this.

So we’re going to stop back up in the fairway when we’re 100, 150 yards away, and we’re going to look at the overall shape of the green.

If you look at the picture of this hole, you’re going to see to my right from the fairway it’s a little bit higher, and it’s sloping to my left when I’m looking from the fairway. So I know everything’s kind of sloping down this direction, and I have an overall feel of what the green looks like before I ever get to the green.

I know everything’s going to be funneling down this way, downhill, as I’m looking from 100, 150 yards away.

Now setp number two, I’m going to verify where the straight uphill putt is. So I’ve hit my ball over here, I feel like it’s above the hole a little bit, and I verified that from the fairway.

I’m going to get about six or eight feet away from the hole and I’m going to walk in a circle around this hole. So now I can feel like I’m definitely going uphill as I’m walking this way.

Your feet are very good at this. As I start to turn around and go the other way, now I feel like I’m walking downhill. I’m getting low around here, and now I’m definitely going back uphill again.

So I know my low spot is what I’m going to guess is right around in here. Now if I go ahead and I take a golf ball, we’ll check this, I’ll mark my spot that I hit to.

If I roll a golf ball from this low point, where my feet tested this, toward the hole, we’re going to see if that’s not going to break very much at all, and that didn’t break hardly at all there.

So I know this is basically straight uphill, that’s my second thing I’m going to do.

I’ve looked at it from the fairway, number two I’ve found the low, straight up putt. Now from here, I’m going to use this to read my putt that I have above the hole. So let me go ahead and put the ball back here, so it will be easier to visualize this.

I know when I have this straight uphill point, everything on this side is going to break right to left. Everything on this side is going to break left to right back in toward the hole. So gravity’s pulling it down this way.

Now I’m going to sit down, and it again this is going to be as other people are putting, and I’m going to look at my putt from the low point here, from the straight uphill put. I can definitely see from this position my putt’s going to tend to turn when I’m top of it a little bit right to left down toward the hole.

Now it’s a lot easier to read below the hole like this than it is above the hole. You can imagine a book, if I tilt this book back toward my body, now I can read the book much more easily. If I’m up here above the hole, sometimes it’s a little bit more difficult to see. So I’m tilting the book away from me.

I’ve heard people describe it like that before, and that makes it a little more difficult. So I’m definitely going to read it from down there below the hole first as other people are putting.

Then the last thing I’m going to do is I’m going to read my putt from way back behind the putt. So I’m going to go ahead and get back here, keep on walking back, and I want to get in line with my ball, and I’m going to look down and I’m going to see which way it’s going to break.

I’m going to line myself up with the starting line of this putt. So I’m going to read it from back here, and I want to get at least 20 or 30 feet away, or as far away as I can, and I’m going to sit there and I’m going to visualize me rolling that putt into the cup over and over again to be able to get that perfect line.

Then that’s where I’m really going to hone in and get exactly the line that I want to start to putt on. Follow those four steps, get the line exactly like you want, visualize yourself putting it in from behind the hole, then you’re going to be able to step up and to train that putt.

Let me go ahead and take you from behind the ball here, and I’ll show you what I’m visualizing in that fourth step so you can see where I’m lining my body up and how that’s going to break to the left.

So now we’re behind the hole, we’re in step number four from your camera’s view, and what I’m doing is I’m getting 20 to 30 feet behind this putt, and I’m looking from your camera angle down this putt. I’m going to see if I can line my body up with this ball and where the starting line is going to be.

So from your perspective, I’m trying to figure out where exactly do I need to start this ball to get it to fall down into the hole with the correct speed. I’m watching this like a movie, I’m watching myself putt this putt over and over again until I can visualize exactly what’s going to happen.

So as we do that we’re seeing that the ball is starting out here a little bit to the right of the cup as we’re visualizing this movie in our head, and it’s falling down into the cup.

Once I’ve seen it from back there, now I’m ready, I’ve got the perfect line. I’ve gone through all four steps, I read it from the fairway, I found the straight uphill putt. I read it from down there, I’ve read it from 20 to 30 feet from behind up here, now I’ve got a crystal clear picture of what this ball’s going to do as I putt.

Now I’m ready to go ahead, set up over top of this ball, and drain this putt. There we go. Perfect line, you start to read balls this way, really get down low to the green. Feel the flow of the green, you’re going to make a lot more putts.

All right guys, so now you’re ready to go. What I want you to do to get in the habit of this, is your next five rounds, go ahead and write this down.

On every single hole I want you to go through these four steps. If you can do this five rounds in a row, you’re going start to get into a rhythm. From the fairway, find the straight uphill putt, I want you to go ahead and test that as you’re practicing. Roll some balls, get used to finding that straight uphill putt.

Read the green from down below, read the green from well behind the ball, and then you’re ready to go up and address it.

Get in the habit of doing this, and you’re going to get so much better at reading greens.

Good luck to you guys, I’ll see you all really soon.