Bad stroke, or bad read?

[rengle820]

Curious to hear why putts are missed in the 10 - 15 foot range.

[iacas]

Sometimes it's neither. I can line up a Perfect Putter and roll balls from the same exact spot, and from 15' it's not uncommon to miss more than half of them because of tiny little differences in the paths they take - one will hit the left side of a tiny bump, one will hit the right side, one will bounce over it.

"Randomness" is thus missing from the poll.

That said, my reads are pretty good, so it's often a 1° error or whatever in my putter face angle or something like that. Sometimes it's the read, but even if we discard randomness and only count those which I can definitely attribute to read or stroke, it's more like 40/60 or something.

[JonMA1]

I voted bad stroke.

While the majority of my 15' putts involve both causes, I'd guess a bad stroke has a worse effect.

[dennyjones]

Speed is my Achilles Heel.   I can read most putts fairly well but still need to work on my speed.   So I guess it is a bad stroke.

[Patch]

If you hit your initial line, it can be both, a bad read and/or a bad stroke. 

If you miss your initial line, then it's definately a bad stroke. 

Most of my misses are due to wrong speed. I mostly miss close, but I also tend to put too much speed on the ball. 

[MuniGrit]

How about when you make the wrong read but make a bad stroke and make it because of that!

[Missouri Swede]

Just now, MuniGrit said:

How about when you make the wrong read but make a bad stroke and make it because of that!

been there done that

[Buckeyebowman]

Heck, the make percentages of the pros aren't all that great from 15 feet, what can we expect? I'm pretty good at reading the line, but will know immediately if I've shoved or yanked it. Like Patch, many of my misses come down to speed. I hit the ball too hard to take the break I've read, or I don't hit it hard enough and it breaks too much.

Especially on those down hill left to right sliders! Man I hate those!

[saevel25]

What about speed or aim? 

Out of the two, I would say the stroke. I read greens pretty well.

[rengle820]

All great responses.

I should have broken down bad putt into:
Bad putt - speed
Bad putt - line

In my case I feel like it's a mix as well, but if I am very confident in the line I've picked I can usually hit that line. I've found I might be an inch or two off on my read and that'll cause a miss in many cases.

[mcanadiens]

If I were to put it down to percentages:

Mishit - 50%

Bad putt - speed - 40%

Bad putt - line - 10% 

The bad reads on line are the rarest, but they really stand out when they happen. Nothing quite like watching the putt break in the opposite direction from where you thought it would go. 

Edited December 27, 2017 by mcanadiens

[DaveP043]

From 10 to 15 feet, I hit a lot of really good putts that don't go in.  Most of them, in fact, do't go in.  I'd say the most common "miss" is not matching the actual speed to the read.  Its less common for me to miss the read or the initial direction by very much.  But it takes such a tiny discrepancy at that range, I don't worry about it.