Playing Your 1st Golf Round – Part 8 – “The Putt”
Author: Mike | Category: Playing Your First Golf Round
The “Putt” is the stroke or shot in golf once your ball has landed on the green. This shot calls for rolling the ball toward the flagstick or cup if the flag has already been removed and is normally made using the putter. The putter is the club which has the least loft and a relatively flat face. If you have followed parts one thru eight in “Playing Your First Golf Round” then you have progressed from making your first tee time reservation, arriving at the golf course, the first tee jitters, hitting your clubs and progressing down the fairway and finally reaching the green. Congratulations !
There are two key ingredients to making a good putt, Speed and Direction. Because the green usually slopes in different directions it is key to learn how to read the slope of the green. The five main different types of putts normally encountered are Uphill, Downhill, Left To Right, Right To Left and Straight. For an uphill putt the ball must be struck harder in order to make it up the incline slope. The opposite holds true for a downhill putt because the ball will have a tendency to accelerate down the slope depending on the severity of the decline of that slope. A left to right putt will do exactly what it says – go from left to right. This means that you will aim your ball toward a target or line left of the cup and the opposite holds true for a right to left putt. The amount of distance left or right again depends on the severity of the slope of the green. There are also double breaking putts and even triple, which are usually associated with longer putts on very undulating greens, but that is a discussion for another time. When first starting to putt I would advise to aim directly at the cup or flagstick and experiment to get a feel for both speed and direction. These two ingredients of putting are critical to ultimately scoring well at golf. More than half of the total strokes of a persons score are usually made on the putting green.
