Is There Any Non-Anecdotal AimPoint Data?

[Bonvivant]

On 4/8/2019 at 11:12 PM, Zippo said:

I think Aimpoint has been helpful for me and agree the method is quick once you learn it. One caveat - I haven't attended a class but did buy the DVD. I'm quite certain the class would give more.

I bought and watched the DVD last night. I think that with a digital level and some dedication you could self teach to probably 75% or better of a full class value. 50 bucks + the level vs 125-200 depending on where you go around me. I think that the DVD is plenty good, albeit short, to get the idea.

[IowaGreg]

Aimpoint express.  While I do not use it all the time, it has helped greatly reduce that dreaded 3 putt...…….

[grubby98]

Finding out more I use it I need to know the slope more accurately 1.7 compared to a 2 with stamp of 10 can be inches in aiming.   But I’m getting better at knowing the difference.  I feel once I get my home course fully mapped out, as I play I will be able to train my feel and eyesight to the slopes and take with me to other courses 

[jshots]

 

15 hours ago, grubby98 said:

Finding out more I use it I need to know the slope more accurately 1.7 compared to a 2 with stamp of 10 can be inches in aiming.   But I’m getting better at knowing the difference.  I feel once I get my home course fully mapped out, as I play I will be able to train my feel and eyesight to the slopes and take with me to other courses 

To me this is the whole problem with it. You might as well wipe away all of the practice you've done reading greens and start from scratch if its all going to be a feel thing anyways. Learning to guess a 1.7 to a 2 with your feet... good luck with that. Learning to match your arm distance to a stimp for aimpoint express and figure out the stimp with any accuracy, good luck with that. 

I would be seriously shocked if any of the aimpoint diehards were hitting a very high percentage of slopes within a good enough accuracy to make more putts. Maybe it helps people get in the right vicinity with a putt line, but it isn't going to get you the perfect line. Your money is better spent on other areas of your game unless you are truly terrible at reading greens.

[rehmwa]

"non-anectdotal data"?

I know a couple friends that tell me there is........

 

 

On 4/8/2019 at 3:13 PM, iacas said:

Or at least until physics changes.

So it's fine until we see something more permanent come along...

[DaveP043]

14 minutes ago, jshots said:

To me this is the whole problem with it. You might as well wipe away all of the practice you've done reading greens and start from scratch if its all going to be a feel thing anyways. Learning to guess a 1.7 to a 2 with your feet... good luck with that. Learning to match your arm distance to a stimp for aimpoint express and figure out the stimp with any accuracy, good luck with that. 

I would be seriously shocked if any of the aimpoint diehards were hitting a very high percentage of slopes within a good enough accuracy to make more putts. Maybe it helps people get in the right vicinity with a putt line, but it isn't going to get you the perfect line. Your money is better spent on other areas of your game unless you are truly terrible at reading greens.

The stimp/arm stuff is just something to calibrate on the practice green, you don't need to know a stimp number.  Read (or feel to be more exact) some putts, hit the putt, compare the results to what you expected.  If it breaks more, the greens are a little faster, move your hand a little closer to your eyes.  Do this a few times, and you're reasonable set.

As for precision, compare having a number derived from senses you've calibrated with the imprecision of using your eyes, and the very real potential that your visual reads are being influenced by shapes that are well beyond the hole itself.  The application of Aimpoint will never be an exact science as long as greens are not simple flat planes, and as long as we don't have perfect distance control, but Aimpoint DOES have the potential to improve green-reading for most people.  I was pretty good at reading greens before, I'm better now.  I love it when good players tell me "Wow, I could have sworn that would break the other way!"

 

[billchao]

5 hours ago, jshots said:

To me this is the whole problem with it. You might as well wipe away all of the practice you've done reading greens and start from scratch if its all going to be a feel thing anyways. Learning to guess a 1.7 to a 2 with your feet... good luck with that. Learning to match your arm distance to a stimp for aimpoint express and figure out the stimp with any accuracy, good luck with that. 

I would be seriously shocked if any of the aimpoint diehards were hitting a very high percentage of slopes within a good enough accuracy to make more putts. Maybe it helps people get in the right vicinity with a putt line, but it isn't going to get you the perfect line. Your money is better spent on other areas of your game unless you are truly terrible at reading greens.

I don't think you have the right idea about AimPoint at all, but at this point I'm pretty sure you've already made up your mind about it and no argument presented would convince you otherwise.

[jshots]

5 hours ago, billchao said:

I don't think you have the right idea about AimPoint at all, but at this point I'm pretty sure you've already made up your mind about it and no argument presented would convince you otherwise.

I'm just skeptical when someone who spends a bunch of money to take a clinic claims its the greatest thing ever. Especially when they give you no data, and show people completely irrelevant optical illusions to prove why they are point. It smells of a manipulative sales tactic.

I could be easily convinced, which is why I posted this thread... someone show me some concrete data and I would probably switch!

[boogielicious]

5 hours ago, jshots said:

I'm just skeptical when someone who spends a bunch of money to take a clinic claims its the greatest thing ever. Especially when they give you no data, and show people completely irrelevant optical illusions to prove why they are point. It smells of a manipulative sales tactic.

I could be easily convinced, which is why I posted this thread... someone show me some concrete data and I would probably switch!

It is based on a tremendous amount of data and testing. But even that will not convince you. I've used it for years and I read putts better than most I play with. I played with a Pro in FL a couple of years back and  he didn't even know I was using it.

But hey, do what you think is best for you.

[iacas]

6 hours ago, jshots said:

I'm just skeptical when someone who spends a bunch of money to take a clinic claims its the greatest thing ever. Especially when they give you no data, and show people completely irrelevant optical illusions to prove why they are point. It smells of a manipulative sales tactic.

I could be easily convinced, which is why I posted this thread... someone show me some concrete data and I would probably switch!

I could show you the data from hundreds of students.

Here's a small sampling: we ask virtually every student to give us between 1 and 3 reads, which we've pre-tested and know to be accurate with the Perfect Putter, and then ask them to give us between 3 and 6 different reads afterward.

On average, before AimPoint Express, golfers read just over 1/3 of the putt's actual break. They're off by 65% - a putt that breaks 30 inches they'll say breaks about ten. Afterward, they're off by single digit percentages.

Hell, man, we've had people misread the break on a putt that broke four feet to the right as breaking to the left. (The putt we used in MA last summer, which @boogielicious will recall.)

[amished]

If you've ever watched coverage that gives you an area that a putt can be hit and still made, that area is made by using aimpoint data (basically).  They make a topographical map of the green, estimate the stimp as it changes over the course of the day and knowing the starting stimp number, then plug in the speeds that the cup would capture the ball.  Aimpoint is literally teaching you how to try to measure all of this without having technology do it for you.

[iacas]

2 hours ago, amished said:

If you've ever watched coverage that gives you an area that a putt can be hit and still made, that area is made by using aimpoint data (basically).

Eh, no, not for a number of years.

The AimPoint stuff was just the line. Those wide paths are pretty soundly made fun of by AimPoint people. I mean, look at the graphic you posted: the break varies… this much?

No.

2 hours ago, amished said:

AimPoint is literally teaching you how to try to measure all of this without having technology do it for you.

The rest of what you added is true.

AimPoint (using Mark Sweeney's algorithms) stopped being used on telecasts a number of years ago. It was incredibly accurate, and they still haven't figured out how to do it anywhere near as well as he did, which is why you get garbage like the above.

[amished]

I know the area from my picture is an extreme example, but what's stopping a putt's break from being that different based on speed?  The speed you hit your putt affects how much the putt will break, I don't think either of us will dispute that.  Across a slope, a putt hit slower will break more than a putt hit faster which is something I think both of us could agree on.  

Sure, if you only ever want your missed putt to finish close to the hole (within a foot or two), you're not going to risk the high pace and need to hit it perfect line but that's not to say that the putt couldn't go in on that line.  You're probably turning the 7% chance of a pro making that 30' putt into a .005% chance by taking that line so you wouldn't want to do it, but it's possible, no?

At a speed where you'd only leave the missed putt within a certain radius of the hole, the shaded area is clearly wrong as the area would be much smaller, but I don't think that's the intent of the graphic.

[iacas]

2 minutes ago, amished said:

I know the area from my picture is an extreme example, but what's stopping a putt's break from being that different based on speed?

It's off topic for this topic, but assuming that the slope is constant (i.e. that it doesn't flatten out toward the lower line), the range of making a putt is pretty small. It's nowhere near that big. Remember, a ball rolling I think 10 revolutions per second (that's about 1.8 miles per hour, IIRC) will not go in even if hits the center of the cup.

2 minutes ago, amished said:

The speed you hit your putt affects how much the putt will break, I don't think either of us will dispute that.  Across a slope, a putt hit slower will break more than a putt hit faster which is something I think both of us could agree on.

Nobody's debating that. I'm simply saying that quite often in those images with the two lines, the difference is simply much too large.

Watch some of the coverage when this comes on. You'll see guys hit it in a way where they should miss high, but miss low, and vice versa all the time.

2 minutes ago, amished said:

At a speed where you'd only leave the missed putt within a certain radius of the hole, the shaded area is clearly wrong as the area would be much smaller, but I don't think that's the intent of the graphic.

Of course not. I'm saying that the lower line isn't even necessarily a "hole-able" speed.

Mark Sweeney has done the math on some of these, and I agree. Quite often, especially for larger breaking putts, the difference is over twice as large as it should be.

[jshots]

6 hours ago, boogielicious said:

It is based on a tremendous amount of data and testing. But even that will not convince you. I've used it for years and I read putts better than most I play with. I played with a Pro in FL a couple of years back and  he didn't even know I was using it.

But hey, do what you think is best for you.

Right, because this entire post wasn't asking for data so I could make a decision on where to spend my limited golf budget. The post is titled "Is there any non anecdotal aimpoint data?" and nearly every single post is "IT WORKS FOR ME, NOTHING WILL CONVINCE YOU!"

 

5 hours ago, iacas said:

I could show you the data from hundreds of students.

Here's a small sampling: we ask virtually every student to give us between 1 and 3 reads, which we've pre-tested and know to be accurate with the Perfect Putter, and then ask them to give us between 3 and 6 different reads afterward.

On average, before AimPoint Express, golfers read just over 1/3 of the putt's actual break. They're off by 65% - a putt that breaks 30 inches they'll say breaks about ten. Afterward, they're off by single digit percentages.

Hell, man, we've had people misread the break on a putt that broke four feet to the right as breaking to the left. (The putt we used in MA last summer, which @boogielicious will recall.)

I just want to know how AimPoint helps someone hole more putts. Looking at the few Tour Pros who use AimPoint they don't seem to be stacked towards the top of SG putting. Why is that?

The math part is fine. You don't even need AimPoint clinic to use it. You can stand over a putt that you know is 2% and putt until you make it and that is your 2 finger calibration. Seems pretty simple.

My concern is with measuring slope. @iacas if I put you on a green where I knew all the slopes and tested you, what percentage would you be accurate enough to make the putt? How long and how much practice did that take?

[jlbos83]

I do not use it, but I am tempted to get the DVD.  Hopefully the chemo induced neuropathy in my feet won't render the concept useless.  The cons I see being mentioned see to me to apply as much or more to traditional green reading as to Aimpoint.  No matter how you read, you need to have a feel for the speed, and you need to "know" the break.  Then you have to put the two together, and decide where to aim, and how hard to hit.  And I know that I have played courses where the surrounding topography totally destroys my ability to "see" the break. And I am sure that if I can learn to "feel" it, that will be more accurate.  For me just that would be success.  

 

[klineka]

6 minutes ago, jshots said:

My concern is with measuring slope. @iacas if I put you on a green where I knew all the slopes and tested you, what percentage would you be accurate enough to make the putt?

• Making the putt
• Knowing the slope so you know where to aim to give yourself a greater chance to make the putt

Are two completely different things that you seem to be combining into one.

Let's pretend Erik and I are exactly equally skilled at reading slope (we aren't) he would still make more putts than me even if we had the exact same aiming point/slope reading because he is a more skilled putter than I am. He hits more putts on-line and with the correct speed than I do.

[jlbos83]

9 minutes ago, jshots said:

Right, because this entire post wasn't asking for data so I could make a decision on where to spend my limited golf budget. The post is titled "Is there any non anecdotal aimpoint data?" and nearly every single post is "IT WORKS FOR ME, NOTHING WILL CONVINCE YOU!"

 

I just want to know how AimPoint helps someone hole more putts. Looking at the few Tour Pros who use AimPoint they don't seem to be stacked towards the top of SG putting. Why is that?

The math part is fine. You don't even need AimPoint clinic to use it. You can stand over a putt that you know is 2% and putt until you make it and that is your 2 finger calibration. Seems pretty simple.

My concern is with measuring slope. @iacas if I put you on a green where I knew all the slopes and tested you, what percentage would you be accurate enough to make the putt? How long and how much practice did that take?

As far as tour players are concerned, they are all pretty darned good putters to begin with.  And some probably use the principals without saying it, they are learning something in their stalking the green before they putt.  And their green books are giving them a lot of info.  So I don't think their results are necessarily that important.  And it's a very small sample size.  On the other hand, if a "poor" putter moves up to "not quite as poor" after using it, that seems like a success, as well.

I wouldn't be worried about making the putts, certainly not at first.  But getting the ball significantly closer to the hole would be nice.