Aimpoint Putting from an Instructor’s Perspective with John Graham

Because the whole isn't necessarily placed on a flat surface, the direction in could be slightly offset from the direction out. That's much more common than not. So that's why it has some limitations. Is it only gives us the fall line directly below the hole. It doesn't necessarily represent the fall line above the hole. We can make a decent estimation based on that, but won't necessarily be as accurate as we would prefer.

his nails on the tile. So John. A few episodes back, we talked to Mark Sweeney about the aime Point golfing system putting system that he developed, and it was to me, it's a fascinating story of a guy with an idea and how he developed it and turned it into something very useful and brought it on to teachers all over the world. And you have embraced Aimepoint.

it for? So if I can figure out what those three things are, how steep, what angle, and for how long? Based on those things, physics and science says we can predict the ball should do this. Now, certainly we can't control if it hits a ball mark or hits a spike, marray, whatever the case we be, and things of that nature. The green' is not a perfect surface, but we have between thirty and forty seconds to make the best estimate

that we can make. And if you know what the variables are, how to find them and measure them, we can do that very very quickly and be done sometimes almost before we actually get to our ball from the fairway. We can start doing this process from one hundreds of yards away, and then we just get there. We kind of refine our answer based on what we know that we're looking for, so it's a very specific process of

things that we're looking for. The time element is mainly broken down into our distance from the hole and the speed of the green. There's other things involved in that, like grain and wind things of that nature, which are much harder to quantify because they tend out to be very consistent, you know, winds coming in and out. So the main things that we deal with again are how steep one angle? Then you could say, you know, how

fast is the green and then how far away? So that's what was Once we figure those things out, we have a piece of paper that we look at saying okay, based on these inputs, the answer should be X, and we go from there and try to hit it with the assumption that our skills are going to hit the ball that delivers it between six and twelve inches past the hole. That's one of the assumptions that we kind of build in is that every part we're going to try and hit at the same distance relative to where

we are and where the hole is. So it's working on you know, the actual skill the feels involved of determining what those variables are. So that's the art part that's still there that's never changed. We look at it, we feel that we do all those things trying to

figure out what those pieces are. Then the science piece is okay, based on our skill and our feel we come up with this answer, and then we now we have the harder of the two parts, in my opinion, which is actually hitting it there at the cruck speed, aiming it there, things of that nature. So you know all of those variables. I can go in and I can measure while I'm practicing and say, okay, I thought the ground was this steep and it was this deep. I thought I was coming from this direction, I was

coming from that direction. I thought I was eight feet away when I was ten feet away. Whatever the situation is, I can do something to measure it, to find out how well I've practiced said versus how well I determined it in the real world, and continually work on these skills that I can quantify, and like you said, it's quantifying feel is a great way to explain what we're trying to do. Saying okay, we need to figure out what these things are. We're going to put an actual

number on them. Not just well it's a little downhill and it goes a little to the right. We want to know exactly how much downhill it is, how steep the ground is, that it's going down, all of those things, and based on the accuracy of our skills determines the accuracy of our read instead of just having it being a kind of a memory device, which is what normal

green reading is. In my opinion, at least the way I was taught it is you look at the ground, look at the ball at the hole, maybe go to the other side, maybe you throw the bucket of water around the green, whatever the situation may be, and then I use that information and try to apply it in the future when I run across it again. Well, the problem with that is that those only include the variables

of the ground itself. For example, if I had, you know, let's say, a ten foot pot across the slope on two different days, I can have it roll across the exact same ground and break completely different amounts because of either the speed of the green or how hard I hit it, or whatever the case may be. There's some other element in there besides just the ground itself that's going to help me to predict what it's going to do.

If I only play the same course all the time, or at least a course that has the same speed of the green all the time, I can get very good at applying what I see now to the future. As soon as I go to a new course or come to my course on like the invitational or remember guest day, and the greens are faster than normal or slower than normal, whatever the case may be. I have no way now to predict what the curve will be based on all of my experience because they no longer

apply to the same situation. So I will constantly struggle trying to figure out, why does this ground look exactly what I'm used to, what the ball is doing something different. So we're trying to teach people to kind of get out of that kind of, you know, the endless loop of you know, apply to the current what I saw in the past, instead of saying, okay, here's what the actual variables are. Let's figure out what they are and then just apply them to the situation that I have.

It's just a very different process of doing it. And it's very similar to you know, the change from you know, SI seven years ago or in every full shot was

an eye based event. I look at the green here I am, I predict about how far away I am, and I choose a club based on that visual appearance, and through time I start to build a relationship between what I see in my distance and what the club that equals, and I'm sure at some point in time when yardage markers and lasers became more prevalent, the golfers that had learned the skill of doing it by sight were very reluctant to switch because they had invested all

of this time and this energy and the skill in learning that visual event. But nowadays nobody plays golf that way. All of the players that play for a living are mapping the course out in advance or shooting lasers, aregating as much detailed information as they can get to help them make that one choice. It's that same idea that's that we're bringing to the green that instead of it being just a strictly visual event, it's an area that can be measured and can be quantified and can be

learned as a skill. And then we apply science to an answer.

doing stuff online trying to gather info. And so when I had heard about this, I'm like, oh, this is interesting. No one's ever tried to say they could do this. I want to get a hold of this guy and figure out what's wrong with it. Well, how can I break this thing so it doesn't actually actually work? And when we got together, you know, he was able to measure and quantify the things that he was doing, so

I couldn't really argue with him, so I got involved. Now, since then, I believe there are two other systems that are at least maybe even more than that, maybe three that are kind of working off the same idea of at least trying to predict what the ball will do. But I have not had any personal experience with either of those other systems, aside from just what I've read online or heard from others. But I've never been to another class another system to see exactly what they do.

different one. That's a different one. And there's another one that a guy who used to do yardage books for the tour I think his name is and and he's just within the last couple of weeks or so, he's he's used all the topography information that he's gathered on tour to generate an app to say, Okay, well if the holes here and the balls here, the balls should break like so. But it's right on the phone. It would be completely illegal, but.

to get right now. But you do give you know, you were here in northern California just recently doing clinics all over the country, all over the world, all the time.

to not break at all. It's just going to go dead straight right. Explain to me how we can do that on a green without dropping a ball. I mean, let's let's go through the various steps on what it requires and how we learn how to do that.

surface and the flag, they can see those things. We start trying to identify the fall line from hundreds and hundreds of yards away, generally speaking in terms of a general slope direction. Sometimes that's easier to see from a distance relative to the high and low points that kind of surround the surface itself. So we've actually had tournaments where we do all of the green reading from off the green just to see how well we can do, and then once you get there you kind of refine it.

But so when you're on the green, you know, it can still be a site event for sure, trying to figure out, you know, relative to you know, where the hole is and where the ball is and if we're assuming that we're crossing a single, single surface, we'll start with the easiest one first. You know, the surface between the ball and the hole is consistent. It's the same direction and the same amount throughout. Now, certainly that doesn't happen on all pots, but for the easiest of ones,

we'll kind of start there. But it's trying to figure out, you know, in that area between the ball and the hole, what direction is the ground going. As you mentioned, what direction is the fall line. You know, I've used pictures of taking a hose and stuffing it in the hole and filling it up with water, and you know, figuring out where the water would come out. You know, we've we've talked about walking a circular shape around the hole and then based on how you feel changes of elevation,

you can feel where the fall line will be. You know, if you're kind of walking half of a circle at some point you'll be walking down the other part to be walking up where that change is will be where the fall line is. You know, another way that we do it is strictly just by sight, you know, just by looking at the hole, trying to figure out what's the high and low part on the whole. We also do it by in terms of just general all overall balance.

You know, the body is designed to keep us upright and vertical so that we don't fall over, and based on just the way that we're standing on the surface, our body will make some adjustment to that, and in certain directions that we're going to be facing, we'll get a a sensation of balance that, Okay, this is facing up the hill and this is facing down the hill straight where if I was facing across the hill, I'd have one foot lower than the other. You can kind

of visualize that. So trying to figure out a balance relationship within our own body as to where the fall line would be based on how we're actually just standing on the ground would be one of the last ways that we do it.

a nice, straight, continuous line. So we try to figure out the fall line that's between our ball and the hole, so that the walking one we don't use because generally you have to do it in a manner that's too far away from where the ball is, So you know, it's kind of taught to do it below where the hole is. Well, if the ball is not near below where the hole is, the fall line could completely change somewhere else relative to the fall line that's below the hole,

so we don't really use that. We try to figure out the fall line that's between the ball and the hole, that the fall line the balls are actually going to roll across as precisely as we can by doing more of that balance feel between the ball and the hole.

Because the whole isn't necessarily placed on a flat surface, the direction in could be slightly offset from the direction out, and that's that's much more common than not. So that's why it has some limitations. Is it only gives us the fall line directly below the hole. It doesn't necessarily represent the fall line above the hole. We could we can make a decent estimation based on that, but it will necessarily be as accurate as we would prefer.

Let's say that same ten feet that you mentioned the green that's called the slow green, I actually have to hit with more force. I have to hit it harder to travel that same distance because it has additional friction on it, So that ball actually rolls faster for the amount of distance that it's rolling. The ball on the twelve I hit with less speed with less force. That ball rolls a lot slower for a lot longer and

longer amounts of time for that same ten feet. So a slow green has the fastest rolling golf balls on it, a fast green has the slowest rolling golf balls on it. Just like a downhill putt is considered fast has the slowest rolling ball on it, and a pillo PUDs that are considered slow you have to hit them hardest. They have the fastest rolling puts on it. It's been a poor way of describing what slow and fast greens are relative to what the ball is actually doing on them.

You know, the only reason an eight breaks less than a twelve is because I have to hit it harder and it travels for less time. That's why it breaks less. We could have the exact same ground, the same everything else, But the reason why it breaks less is because I'm hitting it harder, as traveling for a less amount of time, less time, less amount of time that gravity can affect it. Let's break over the same distance. So it's and most people, once you explain that to them, go like, oh uh okay,

I get that, I just wasn't thinking right. But it's a fairly common misconception that I run across in the clinics that I do.

for Memory Only. And if you are not a member of golf Smarter for Members Only, I encourage you to check it out at golfsmarter dot com because with your membership, you will not only get a new episode every single week that we publish one, you'll get part two of many of the conversations that we have, but you'll also have access to our entire archives. And now that golf Smarter is up in the three high three hundred number, there's a lot of conversations that will help your golf game.

So please, I encourage you, I ask you to support golf Smarter and help it stay alive by joining golf smarter for members only and take advantage of the benefits that also include additional discounts. My last question before we get to the members only though, is your follow up with your students on I know one person who's done aim point was totally fired up about it and try

to get me to understand everything. He tried to give me the lesson, and then two months three months later, we were out playing and I noticed that he wasn't using his book, he wasn't going into the details. I asked him or I thought you were doing am point and he said, yeah, it was too much And I got it and I don't really need to do it anymore. How is the long term reaction from your students have you been following up on that?

get the right answer. I just want to get an answer this kind of okay, and then they can just kind of, you know, fill in the gaps with their own feel or whatever. On their own I can cleatly understand both ideas and concepts. You know, I certainly fall into the more exacting side based on, you know, the way that I think and my preferences, and because of that, I will do the extra work to get the answer

that I want. I know a lot of people will will feel that, you know, trying to learn a green reading system based on actual true numbers takes away their feel and it becomes too too thoughtful and too mechanical

or whatever the case may be. You know, Yet at the same time, you know, you ask them what their driver launch conditions are, and they know their angle of attack and their club path and the spin rate and their launch and all the other kind of stuff where they know exactly, you know, they're going to shoot a laser from here to the flag. But if I tell them to aim three inches out, they're like, well, I just want to kind of just kind of hit it

about a cup out or whatever. It's it's an interesting dichotomy between you know, the preferences of some people relative to wanting exactness in other areas and then wanting a little bit of vagueness in others. So it completely depends on the person. I've certainly run into both types. There's no question that most people underestimate the amount of skill required to do it well and the amount of practice to do it well. There was a gentleman that I

saw at a conference. His name was doctor Brett McCabe, who had an LPGA player who had learned the system and was doing quite well with it. And then a few months later he had noticed kind of the same thing that she hadn't been doing it so much, and he had asked her, you know what's been the change is? She goes, well, you know, I've learned it all. You know, I think I got it. And doctor McCabe's response was is, like, you know, aimpoint is a skill. It's not a gift.

It's not one of the information piece, which is the putt prediction break amounts. That's the science piece. The actual skills required to generate the answer that will provide the correct amount of break requires a great amount of skill that requires continual maintenance and practice to do well. Especially

living up north. You know, I'll go especially on the holidays, I won't step on the ground actual ground for you months at a time, and then when I go to teach, I can certainly sense that my perception of the skills I need to be able to do to per see what the ground is doing have lessened and that it takes a little bit of time for me to get back into reacclimating my skill set to what the reality

of the ground actually is. So a lot of people aren't necessarily familiar with the idea that it's not just information, it's an actual skill, just like their golf swing is, and then if they don't do it, it gets worse. Or some people may make mistakes and then not know that they mistakes and think that the science is bad

because I didn't match what they had. I run across that one more often than not that you know, someone will do a read and what all actually does doesn't match what the chart did, and they just assumed that whatever they did was correct and what the numbers on the chart were wrong without ever going back to check to see, well, did I have the slope ride that I have the angle right? Did I have the distance right? I did I have the inputs right?

Because that was what was fun, is watching the ball go in the hole. That was what he was there for. And Watson said, to this day he does not like anybody hitting a putt back to him. He likes to finish, whether it's two inch or six inch or ten inch or two footer. He wants to put the ball in the hole because that is the point of the game.

should do as well? Or do you need to swing a certain way before flattening lie angles on wedges?

address that they want. And good players and I always encourage golfers to watch video of good players hitting short game shots, wedge shots, full swing nine irons, you know, and particularly the little delicate shots around the green, and you'll see these guys crouch a little more on their knees.

Their hands are hanging straight below their shoulders, so their hands are lower at address, closer to the ground than they would be with a full swing seven iron or six iron, because they're standing more upright for a more powerful swing. And if you don't flatten the lies on your wedges, and you do that, you're going to stick the heel of the club in the ground. With a more upright line golf club, I like to think that the lie of the club is my guide as to

how I'm executing. So if I feel the toe of the heel, the toe of the club, or the heel of the club sticking in the ground, I know that was a swing flaw, not not a misfit golf club. So if I'm sticking the heel in the ground, I'm getting too low with my hands, which doesn't happen too often, but particularly what most offers, you'll feel that toe sticking in the ground because you're getting more upright your hands

are drifting a little further away from your body. And you know, if you think about it this way, if you set up to the golf club, Paul, and make sure that club is sold flat on the ground, swing so that you feel that soul, make flat contact again. Let the club be your school. Let the club be your guide to schooling you as to whether you're doing it right or not.

And we should talk more about the toolkit in future episodes because I'm I mean, it is so important. You've got a big investment, and if you invested in the wrong things, you're going to be frustrated. Out there.

This is the last club in the bag that has not caught up to the modern game that we play, the full swing power game, you know, and fifty years ago nobody made full swings with wedges, and now everybody does, and the wedge did not catch up with that, and so people get ballooning trajectories and inconsistent distances and it's not their fault. We give absolution here. It's not your fault.

You're playing a nineteen fifty model golf club with the twenty thirteen model game, and there's a disconnect there, and there's better technology, and we've seen upstart companies challenge the status quo for the last forty or fifty years in golf, and better technology wins every time.