One Simple Tip to Improve Your Greens Reading

Jacob Spott is a PGA professional in Abingdon, Virginia and this post from his blog has a lot of information about reading Bermuda greens. I want to focus on this specific tip because I think it will help a lot of you.



See that jagged, chewed-up edge of the hole? That's your tip-off to the direction in which the grain is growing. Here's what he says:

Two things to remember around the hole:

• Sharp edge of cup = high side of the hole or fast side
• Jagged edge of cup = low side of the hole or slow side

It is important to pay attention to the grain around the hole because, let's say, you are putting from the lower left corner of the picture, your putt (even though it might look straight) will break to the right. If you are putting from the upper left corner, it should be very fast down grain with little break.

The jagged edge of the hole is jagged because the roots of the grass were growing from inside the hole and they got chopped off when the hole was cut. As you're looking at the photo, the jagged bit runs from around 1 o'clock to 4 o'clock, so the grain is headed to the right of the photo.
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Jake's post has a lot of good info about reading graining Bermuda greens, so make sure you take a few moments to read it.