I have a golfing buddy who could sink putts from anywhere on the practice green, but once he got on the course he would only hit the ball 5 feet on a 10 foot putt, then hit it 10 feet on the 5 foot putt. I asked him why he thought there was such a difference between the course and the practice green and his reply was "the putt doesn't mean anything on the practice green." He just went with his gut feeling and hit the ball. Once he was on the course, he was over-analyzing everything and forgot how hard he needed to hit the ball. The best advice for putting I can give is to line up your putt with whichever break you read. From there, TRUST YOUR LINE.

If you don't trust your line, you won't be able to get the proper weight on your putt. For example, if you think your line might be a bit inside the correct line, you will hit the putt a bit firmer than normal to take a little bit of the break out. If you miss, you will probably have over 3 feet for your second putt. The same if you think you are lined up outside the correct line - you will proably try to let the break carry it to the hole, leaving yourself a 3 or 4 foot downhill putt. TRUST YOUR LINE and only try to judge the correct weight - it's amazing how many more putts you will make.

__________________
Gord

Quote of the month:
"It's easy to see golf not as a game at all but as some whey-faced, nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister's fever dream of exorcism achieved through ritual and self-mortification." ~Bruce McCall