Reading Greens / Reading Fairways

[hunterxaz]

Can someone link me to, or explain a concise explanation of how to read greens and fairways?

Meaning:

What does it mean when a green is fast,

What does it mean when a green is slow,

What does it mean when a fairway is hard,

etc.

I know fast, means the balls roll faster, but how do you account for that in a swing? Lower the power?

Any info / posts are appreciated.

[Zeph]

The ball will obviously roll faster on a fast green, but it will also break more and roll faster downhill. On a slow green, the ball might stop in the middle of a downslope, on a fast one, it might never. Hitting the ball harder is of course the solution on a slower green, and maybe taking a little less break. A hard fairway means pretty much that it's hard. The ball will bounce more, might give you more roll, but might also bounce or roll off the fairway.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by Zeph

The ball will obviously roll faster on a fast green, but it will also break more and roll faster downhill. On a slow green, the ball might stop in the middle of a downslope, on a fast one, it might never. Hitting the ball harder is of course the solution on a slower green, and maybe taking a little less break.

A hard fairway means pretty much that it's hard. The ball will bounce more, might give you more roll, but might also bounce or roll off the fairway.

Actually, although it seems counter-intuitive, I find that I have to play less break on a faster green, unless I play the ball to die at the hole (I'm not counting playing on dead slow greens that roll only 5 or 6 on the stimp - that's something that I only see on one course I know of, and most putts there can be played almost straight).  If I play my normal stroke for the ball to run past a couple of feet, I play less break because the ball doesn't lose speed as quickly, and thus it doesn't break as sharply until it's past the hole.  It's easier to hit right through the break.

I find this to be very true on my home course.  I've been playing this course for more than 25 years, and as the greens have been made faster over the years, the amount of break I play for a typical putt is less.  This doesn't entirely hold true on an extreme break, but with the many subtle breaks which I encounter there, I have to play less borrow than I once did or I miss every putt on the high side.  That doesn't mean that they are all straight putts, just that what was once an 8 inch break might now be only 6 inches, then will fall off another 4 inches once past the hole.

I have rarely found any hard and fast rules for green reading.  It's really as much art as science, and only experience will train your eye to spot many of the slight slopes which seem to cause more misses than the obvious breaks.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by Fourputt

Actually, although it seems counter-intuitive, I find that I have to play less break on a faster green, unless I play the ball to die at the hole (I'm not counting playing on dead slow greens that roll only 5 or 6 on the stimp - that's something that I only see on one course I know of, and most putts there can be played almost straight).

It's not only counter-intuitive, it's flat out wrong from a physics standpoint. Faces with a hole and a ball on the same location and on the same green, and a putt which travels the same distance past the hole, the faster the greens, then:

• the longer the ball will take to get to the hole
• the slower the ball will be rolling at any point
• the more break

The same breaking putt always breaks more on faster greens. Always. I like you a lot FourPutt, but the laws of physics don't cease to exist at your course.

Originally Posted by Fourputt

I have rarely found any hard and fast rules for green reading.  It's really as much art as science, and only experience will train your eye to spot many of the slight slopes which seem to cause more misses than the obvious breaks.

Take an AimPoint seminar. Screw experience. Good green readers become great green readers. Bad ones become very good ones. We say "experience" because, prior to AimPoint, we didn't have any real way to teach green reading.

We do now.

[golfdu]

AimPoint is probably the best thing to happen to green-reading, I love it!