Putting is where golf scores are truly made. While most golfers spend countless hours working on their full swing, over 40% of all strokes in a round happen on the green. Improving your putting strategy—not just your stroke mechanics—can immediately lower your scores and dramatically improve consistency.
As the founder of Putty Golf, I've spent hundreds of hours analyzing putting data from our users and testing AR green reading technology on courses across the country. What I've learned is that most golfers don't have a putting stroke problem—they have a putting strategy problem.
In this guide, you'll learn how elite golfers and modern technology combine to improve your putting through:
Whether you're a weekend golfer or building a competitive edge in your game, this is your complete, practical framework.
Many golfers believe putting success comes down to having a smooth stroke. While technique matters, strategy determines whether your stroke has a chance to succeed at all.
According to instruction philosophies popularized by coaches such as Dave Pelz, poor green reading and speed misjudgment—not bad strokes—are the leading causes of missed putts.
In fact, Pelz's research shows that:
My own data from Putty Golf users confirms this: After analyzing over 1,000 tracked putts, we found that golfers using our AR green reading reduced misreads by 43% in their first month. The stroke didn't change—the strategy did.
This is why great putting begins before you ever step over the ball.
Before selecting a line or committing to a stroke, you must build a complete picture of the green.
The most reliable green readers always look from:
This triangulation helps reveal subtle elevation changes that are often invisible from only one viewpoint.
The Modern Approach: While this manual process works, it can take 30-60 seconds per putt—which adds up when you're trying to keep pace. I developed Putty Golf's AR visualization to instantly show you slope information from any angle, overlaying the break direction and severity directly on the green through your phone's camera.
[SCREENSHOT: AR slope visualization showing break arrows on green]
The fall line is the direction water would naturally run if poured onto the green. Once you find the fall line, you instantly know:
A helpful drill is to imagine a clock face around the hole. The low side is always at 6 o'clock.
Pro Tip from Putty Data: Our users report that identifying the fall line is the single hardest skill to master. On average, it takes golfers 3-4 rounds before they can consistently identify it correctly without technology assistance. Putty's AR overlay shows you the fall line instantly with a visual slope indicator.
If you play on Bermuda grass (common throughout the southern U.S.), grain can strongly affect roll:
Visual cues for grain:
Green speed varies daily based on:
A widely used benchmark for green speed is the Stimpmeter, the official measurement device used by organizations such as the United States Golf Association.
👉 Learn how green speed is measured:
https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/course-care/green-section-record/58/green-speed.html
The Challenge: Even experienced golfers struggle to calibrate speed on unfamiliar courses or when conditions change throughout the day. Putty's AI Caddie learns your typical putting distances and provides speed recommendations adjusted for the specific green you're on, based on historical data and current conditions.