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Weekly Quiz!

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Good luck! 😀 

How I Read Greens

Yesterday I posted a short video that walks you through how I use a green book to help me read greens.

First, a special shout out to Arccos Golf. If you are not tracking your game yet, you should check out Arcoss. (Use code DATALOU15 to save 15%)

I first saw someone use this approach back in 2001. I was playing my practice round at the New York State Amateur and saw some guy on the green with a level and a notebook. I thought he must have been part of the tournament committee or grounds crew and for some reason unknown to me, was measuring greens.

I asked him what he was up to and we got to chatting. We ended up with him saying that reading the green could be treated as a math problem. He explained how you could use the slope, stimp and distance to the hole to calculate how much the ball would break. This made sense perfect to me when he explained it.

I was fascinated by this and I went down a rabbit hole to learn as much as I could. I found a website back in 2001 where some random guy (who I think was a physicist) had created and shared the break charts that are below. That website has long been gone. I wish I could remember his name.

The advent of green books was amazing. The books that I am using here from StrackaLine  (Use code DATALOU15 to save 15%) are INCREDIBLY accurate. It does not take long at all to get comfortable with this method.

Here is the post on X that shows how I use these charts.

The charts are below the video.

Here are the charts.

• The stimp is in the upper left corner

• Percent slope across the top

• Distance to the hole (in feet) down the left hand side

• Boxes that are grey in color means the target line is INSIDE the hole and that many inches from the edge. For example, in the first chart below, if you are 4 feet from the hole and the slope is 0.5%, your start line would be one inch INSIDE the hole.

• Boxes that are white in color means the target line is OUTSIDE the hole and that many inches from the edge. For example, in the first chart below, if you are 8 feet from the hole and it is a 2% slope, your start line would be 6 inches OUTSIDE the edge of the hole.

  
  
  
  

My Thoughts

I realize this approach isn’t for everyone….. But if you have never tried it, I would encourage you to give it a go for 5-10 rounds. I am very optimistic your putting will improve!

See you next week!

Finally...

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  Have a great week!