Symptom
I can't putt on grainy greens
On Bermuda or other grainy greens, putts into the grain pull up short, putts down the grain run past, and the ball bends in ways the slope on its own does not explain.
This usually traces to something already true before the club moves: grip, aim, posture, or where the ball sits in your stance. All of those are checkable standing still, which is why the questions ask you to look rather than to guess.
Common ways golfers describe this
Putting into the grain
How much does grain affect break?
Grain on greens break
Which way does the grain run?
Grain around the hole
- Feet, in the footprints: square to the line
- Hips, cross ticks: square to the line
- Shoulders, round ends: square to the line
- Target line
Narrow it to one cause
Each question is here because golfers answer it differently, and that difference is what rules a cause out. Nothing is generated while you answer: every question, cause and fix was written and checked in advance.
A few questions · no account needed
What you will be asked
- On a grainy green, what goes wrong most?
- Before you putt, do you work out which way the grain runs?
- Watch the first two feet of a putt into the grain. What does the ball do?
- On a putt into the grain, what do you do differently with the stroke?
- Mark the putter face and roll ten putts into the grain. Where are the marks?
Where this can come from
These are the causes this symptom resolves to, in the order they turn up most often. That order is not a diagnosis and it is not your answer: two of them can produce a shot that looks identical from behind. Each has a fix you can read now, whether or not you answer anything.
Break not matched to the pace
Slope acts on a ball for as long as it keeps rolling, so the same putt takes more break when it is rolled softly and less when it is firm. Reading a line without deciding a pace, or hitting a different pace than the read assumed, misses on either side.
Read the fix
Putting low point in the wrong place
The stroke bottoms out behind the ball and drives it down into the turf, or catches it above centre on the way up. Either way the ball hops and skids before it begins rolling, which costs distance and sends it offline on the bounce.
Read the fix
Off-centre strike on the putter face
Contact away from the centre transfers less energy, so strokes that felt identical finish different distances. It also twists the face slightly at impact, which moves the start line as well as the pace.
Read the fix
Deceleration into impact
The club slows down before it reaches the ball, almost always after a backswing longer than the shot required. Speed disappears at the only moment it matters, and the bottom of the arc becomes unpredictable, which is why decelerating produces both the chunk and the blade.
Read the fix
Related symptoms
These are not here because they sound similar. Each one can come from a cause on the list above, which is why fixing one sometimes quietly fixes another. The closest matches are first.
- Uphill putts come up short, downhill putts run awayFlat putts finish about the right length, but uphill putts die well short of the hole and downhill putts race past it or bend far more than you played for.Shares break not matched to the pace
- Misreading the breakPutts you struck the way you meant take more or less break than you allowed for, and miss, often below the hole on the low side.Shares break not matched to the pace
- Putts from off the green come up short or hop offlinePutting from the fringe or the fairway, the ball bounces through the longer grass and dies well short, or you give it plenty to make up for that and it races past.Shares putting low point in the wrong place
- Putts bounce or skid instead of rollingThe ball hops or skids off the putter face before it starts to roll, so it bobbles off line in the first couple of feet and finishes shorter than the stroke deserved.Shares putting low point in the wrong place
- Three-putting too oftenToo many greens take three putts or more, usually because the first putt leaves a second that is longer or harder than it should be.Shares break not matched to the pace
- No distance control on the greensLong putts finish well short or well past the hole, so the first putt seldom leaves you a tap-in.Shares off-centre strike on the putter face
What this rests on
- Search for the Perfect Swing: The Proven Scientific Approach to Fundamentally Improving Your GameAlastair Cochran and John Stobbs, for the Golf Society of Great Britain, 2005 reissue, originally 1968
- The physics of golfA. Raymond Penner, Vancouver Island University, 2003
- The Physics of GolfTheodore P. Jorgensen, University of Nebraska, 1999, second edition; Springer reprint 2013
- Experimental study of the gear effect in ball collisionsRod Cross, University of Sydney, and Alan M. Nathan, University of Illinois, 2007
If something here contradicts what a launch monitor tells you, say so. Corrections change the page.
Discussion
Golfers who have had this shot, on what it turned out to be and what sorted it. Read it as experience rather than diagnosis: the questions above are what narrow it to a cause.
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