Seeing the line putting?

I have a large chunk of time off from work and want to spend time improving my putting. I'm happy with my stroke and more than happy with my speed putting. BUT I struggle mightily with getting the line inside 15 feet. When I put the putter down behind the ball I really have no idea where it's facing (It appears to be facing right in my mind). So I use the line on the ball, but I still struggle to know if it's pointing at my target. I practice a lot with a chalk line, which is great, but once I leave the line I go back to not seeing it. Any help or drills would be appreciated. Thanks.

Use the line on the ball and then trust it. You’re having trouble pointing that line at the hole when crouched behind the ball? Then hold up the edge of your putter shaft to the line through the hole, ala Justin Rose.

Also, put the putter behind the ball, line up with your dominant eye, then take your stance and grip club.

The line gets much easier to see once you decide the spot you want the ball entering the cup. Too many people work forwards from the ball, instead of backwards from the hole.

The line on the ball lies for many people. It should not be trusted

How wide is the line on your ball? I play with a buddy who's line is about 1/4" wide and about an inch in length. Looks like a chunky, long rectangle but he putts pretty good with it. He says it enlarges his path/sight line so he doesn't feel like he has to be so exact when lining up .

I prefer to use marks on the green for sight lines.

I’m a good player and putt well but have had this issue as of late. Had a putter fitting on SAM lab Thursday and it was very eye opening. The good was how consistent my stroke was and I discovered some “truths” I thought I knew about putting were actually not correct (TXG putter fitting video explains this exact thing) the “bad” or it’s actually good was I discovered I consistently aligned myself 1.3 degrees to the right with my current putter which is a 7s with the short slant neck. Going to a double bend instantly corrected my alignment issue. So it may be worth it to go through a fitting from a qualified individual.

Eye Dominance and the Parallax effect of looking down the line, opposed to sighting it from behind. If you are right eye dominant, the rule of thumb is more offset and an anser style putter. However you can change your setup so you can see the line better, again right eye dominance will favor an open stance and being more behind the ball, you are essentially trying to get your right eye more over the ball.

The problem with just using the line and trying to trust it, your brain receives to much feedback with your eyes and compensating measure usually takes place in your stroke.

Most people that are left eye dominant will see the true line better, but this is not always the case. The studies I have seen show that people are all over the map when it comes to how they see line when standing next to it.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I am very right eye dominant, use a center shafted putter with no offset, and have an open stance.

I did an experiment with my 4some today, I put the ball down with the line pointing at (what I thought) the left edge of the hole. Then asked the other three where they thought it was pointing, each of them said dead center. So I'm not lining/seeing that line properly. Basically not seeing the target line properly with or without the line on the ball. Ugh

> @Asics10 said:

> Thanks for the responses everyone. I am very right eye dominant, use a center shafted putter with no offset, and have an open stance.

> I did an experiment with my 4some today, I put the ball down with the line pointing at (what I thought) the left edge of the hole. Then asked the other three where they thought it was pointing, each of them said dead center. So I'm not lining/seeing that line properly. Basically not seeing the target line properly with or without the line on the ball. Ugh

I have the same problem with line on the ball method. I saw a drill on YouTube, I think it was Mike Malaska, that totally messed with my head. On the practice green find a straight putt - 10 ft or so. Put a tee in the ground a foot ahead of the ball. Stand behind the ball and make sure if the ball went through that tee it would go straight to the hole. Then line up the putt and aim at the tee. Now look up at the hole. A good alignment would still look like the ball going through the tee is in line with the center of the hole. For me, it looked like the tee was aligned so far left of the hole I'd miss by a mile, but in reality it's in a straight line between the ball and the hole. The idea then is to play around with your stance, your head position, whatever you have to do to get it where you see it lined up. My problem is no matter how I stand or position myself it never looks in line.

> @Asics10 said:

> Thanks for the responses everyone. I am very right eye dominant, use a center shafted putter with no offset, and have an open stance.

> I did an experiment with my 4some today, I put the ball down with the line pointing at (what I thought) the left edge of the hole. Then asked the other three where they thought it was pointing, each of them said dead center. So I'm not lining/seeing that line properly. Basically not seeing the target line properly with or without the line on the ball. Ugh

If you are behind the ball and having trouble lining up the line, it will just take practice and you need to close your left and sight it like shooting a rifle. Some people like to hold the ball at little higher, line it up and then set it down in the same orientation.

Quite honestly i would ditch the line on the ball and just pick a spot a few inches in front and set up to the ball while staring at that spot. This will get you pretty darn close. The rest is dictated by speed. I've never been a fan of a line on the ball...it's a round ball with a straight line and a square putter face....nothing ever looked right to me. As a result i would make a less than confident stroke because I was worried about the line.

For myself and some of my friends golfing, the line on the golf ball provides directional aid when we stand over the golf ball. But the line on the golf ball is not for connecting to the "putting line".

the two lines will be on differen plane. Very difficult for the average person to connect them together without extensive practice.

What you're looking for is to "read" the contours on the putting surface better, and connect that to the general topography of the green to the golf course and surrounding elements ( mountain, large body of water, direction of the Sun and the time of the day.............. ).

Try this, opening your putting stance a little and put your head slightly behind the gold ball, so when you tilt your head toward the line of putt, you can have a look from behind the golf ball down the intended direction of putt. because of the change of center position moving the head slightly off, need extra effort of keeping the putter head square through impact. You might just like this after practicing.

It's not a line to the hole, but a 4 1/4" path. Try a blade putter, easier optics.

You'd be surprised how much better you can aim with a more natural approach. About 10 years ago there was a study from a European research group and they found that the lines on putters are more likely to cause worse aim. And the interesting part was that despite aiming worse with more lines on the putter, the players *thought* they aimed better.

My suggestions are to find the right putter for your size and your natural posture with the putter. These days I see more golfers using too short of a putter.

I would also recommend looking at your ball position. I have one of those putting lasers from Wright Putting Dynamics and when I first used it, despite the putter aimed right at the hole, the putter head looked like it was aimed dead left. Once I fiddled around with the ball position I found that when I moved the ball position back the head now looked like it was aimed at the hole instead of appearing to be aimed well left of the cup.

Lastly, think about changing your way of aiming the putter. For me, I used to go from the ball/face of the putter to the target. When I started to do the opposite...visualizing a line from the target back to the putter/ball my aim improved dramatically.

RH

I still fight with myself like many players regarding the line on the ball.

On the one hand, I know intuitively that there is no way I’m going to aim better standing over the ball looking at the hole than I will crouched down behind the ball pointing the line/logo at my target.

But it does make it tough to trust when you stand over the putt and think “that just doesn’t look/feel right.”

I have tried the Malaska drill where you set your eyes first to make the lines match up and then set your stance around that, but I end up with my eyes much further inside the line than pretty much any pro other than Malaska would recommend, and for good reason, because I push a lot of putts from that position just like you would expect.

In other words, it seems to me position that gives me the most consistent stroke and the position that lets me see the line the best aren’t the same.

There are videos about this. What you can do is this, line up the line on your ball directly at the hole. Then address the ball with your putter, and see where you see the line is now pointing. It's best to adjust your ball position and distance from the ball to see the line better. I don't care how good your stroke is, if you address the ball and it always feels like you need to swipe if left you'll miss it left instead of straight in. All dependent on your stroke and tendencies, but should test this out on a putting green.

Like @DLev45 said, need some experimenting, but then say move the ball forwards or backwards in your stance. If you can't figure out the best solution, probably go see a putting specialist. I'm sure they will sort your out or give you some suggestions to work off on. If I stood over a ball and couldn't see where it was going or if I thought it was going one direction and then it went 1 foot left, I'd have no confidence. I used to do that and with knowing where the ball should be in relation to my stance and stroke I putt much better.

Also, you can just ditch the line. Imagine the line of the ball travel, and just putt it there. You'll figure out how to aim where you want despite the lines if it's giving you so much trouble. A buddy of mine never uses line, and he sinks plenty of mid length putts.

I suggest "ditching the line," as @Golfjack says in the previous post. I'm like his buddy, I never use the line on the ball, and don't struggle with my aim. Just practice rolling the ball consistently over a spot 12" in front of the ball. Find a putter and/or play with ball position, etc., to make doing this "natural" for you. Then all you have to do is pick that 12" spot by visualizing the path of the putt from the hole back to the ball.

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Here is what works for me. While reading the putt, I visualize the actual path I think the ball needs to travel, considering the speed the ball needs to be moving in order to stop just past the hole, and carry that path all the way back through the ball. As I step into the putt, I am continuously moving my eyes back and forth along the path of the putt, then I align my putter face to that path as it comes back through the ball and then set my feet so I feel I can naturally return the face to that position at impact. Then I reconfirm my visualization with another look, "feeling" the speed needed to produce the path I have visualized, then stroke the putt.

Also, the drill/video that @raindawg1 mentions makes no sense to me. If your eye is not directly over the ball, then that tee (intermediate spot) will not appear to be on a line between the ball and the hole because of parallax. Nevertheless, that spot **is** on that line, and all you have to do is roll it over that spot and not worry about what it looks like in relationship to the hole. Is that video really trying to say that you must have your dominant eye directly over the ball? I don't think that is reasonable, but it does point out the fact that the farther your eye is from being directly over the ball, the more parallax error will exist. This means you may need to putt over an intermediate spot, even on fairly short putts.

My experience on the topic is very similar to what Golfjack explains.

Find a straight putt on the practice green. Put a marker halfway to the hole - right on the line. Address the ball and check your aim. You will have a perception of the putt-line that may be correct or flawed. If it looks like the marker is on the line, your in a pretty good shape. If it looks like the marker is left of the line(as you see it), or right (less common) your sub conscious is manipulating you to compensate for a swing flaw that is going to happen. The most common flaw is closing the club face extensively right around impact.

Bottom line: If your aim is off, so is your stroke. The cure is to adjust whatever needs to be adjusted until you see the straight line as a straight line.

I discovered this many years ago. Glad do see that it is becoming common knowledge.

I kind of do the same as mentioned above. I pick my line by visualizing the path then pick out a spot along that line/path a few inches in front of my ball. What I do different is visually create in my mind the "railroad" tracks through the ball and my spot I have picked, I then make sure my feet are aligned parallel to the line running through my ball and my spot first. That then helps me almost instinctively line up the face perpendicular to the that line which in turn aims it at my spot and my intended path. I find by instinct I align my face along my foot line. Just like hitting balls when i practice putting i always use alignment rods. I have one where you can bend the ends up to 90* and i place that over top of the ball, basically like the string drill and one standard one on my foot line.

I used to draw a line on my ball, but I couldn't even get that to work consistently for me when practicing at home when I had all the time in the world to line it up perfectly. I had a tough time getting that feeling that everything is aligned perfectly. I started putting better by positioning my ball so that it looked as "blank" as possible. That helped quite a bit.

Last year I got a putter fitting and found that my stroke was actually pretty consistent, however, I couldn't consistently aim my putter (at the time) inside the hole for a straight putt. I was aiming it a few inches left of the cup almost every single time -- which was incredibly consistent with my tendency to pull putts. Once I got a putter with sight lines that enabled me to aim it correctly, I was much less likely to pull putts, but there were still certain putts that don't suit my eye.

Fast forward to a few nights ago practicing, I realized that my eyes start to wander during my putting stroke. So directly in the middle of the blank area, I put a dot on the ball with the sharpie to act as a focal point during my putts. This helped significantly (my eyes weren't wandering), but I observed a few things:

1) My putter is a blade with a short sight line in the middle and for whatever reason, that dot on the ball made it incredibly easy for me to align my putter. I call it "dotting the i".

2) I have always preferred my eyes to be directly over top of the ball. Provided that I keep the dot at the top of the ball when I place it, the dot visually moves "off-center" if I don't keep my eyes above the ball. So it's also a visual cue that I can use to know that my eyes are over top of the ball.

3) I was putting so well that I actually tried my old putter and sure enough, the pulls were pretty much non-existent.

4) It takes almost no more time that normal to place the ball.

Bottom line is that everyone processes visual cues differently, so you might want to experiment with different visual cues (both on the putter and/or the ball) to see if that helps you any. Once you find that visual cue, it can really free up your stroke because you aren't second guessing your alignment.

> @drvrwdge said:

> ...What I do different is visually create in my mind the "railroad" tracks through the ball and my spot I have picked, I then make sure my feet are aligned parallel to the line running through my ball and my spot first. That then helps me almost instinctively line up the face perpendicular to the that line which in turn aims it at my spot and my intended path. I find by instinct I align my face along my foot line. Just like hitting balls when i practice putting i always use alignment rods. I have one where you can bend the ends up to 90* and i place that over top of the ball, basically like the string drill and one standard one on my foot line.

I used to try setting my feet parallel to my visualized path. But I found that doesn't naturally result in starting the ball on that path. So I align the face to the path, but then I set my feet naturally, by just "feeling" the stance that will naturally start on that path. For me, that ends up being a bit open.

> @DaveGoodrich said:

> > @drvrwdge said:

> > ...What I do different is visually create in my mind the "railroad" tracks through the ball and my spot I have picked, I then make sure my feet are aligned parallel to the line running through my ball and my spot first. That then helps me almost instinctively line up the face perpendicular to the that line which in turn aims it at my spot and my intended path. I find by instinct I align my face along my foot line. Just like hitting balls when i practice putting i always use alignment rods. I have one where you can bend the ends up to 90* and i place that over top of the ball, basically like the string drill and one standard one on my foot line.

>

> I used to try setting my feet parallel to my visualized path. But I found that doesn't naturally result in starting the ball on that path. So I align the face to the path, but then I set my feet naturally, by just "feeling" the stance that will naturally start on that path. For me, that ends up being a bit open.

>

Just goes to show how everyone is different. I align my feet which naturally aligns my face. You align the face which naturally aligns your feet, albeit a bit open.

Golf is such a crazy game. You would never pick out an intermediate target if you were throwing a ball to a target... Maybe we are making it more complicated than it needs to be?? LOL

> @RichieHunt said:

> You'd be surprised how much better you can aim with a more natural approach. About 10 years ago there was a study from a European research group and they found that the lines on putters are more likely to cause worse aim. And the interesting part was that despite aiming worse with more lines on the putter, the players *thought* they aimed better.

>

> My suggestions are to find the right putter for your size and your natural posture with the putter. These days I see more golfers using too short of a putter.

>

> I would also recommend looking at your ball position. I have one of those putting lasers from Wright Putting Dynamics and when I first used it, despite the putter aimed right at the hole, the putter head looked like it was aimed dead left. Once I fiddled around with the ball position I found that when I moved the ball position back the head now looked like it was aimed at the hole instead of appearing to be aimed well left of the cup.

>

> Lastly, think about changing your way of aiming the putter. For me, I used to go from the ball/face of the putter to the target. When I started to do the opposite...visualizing a line from the target back to the putter/ball my aim improved dramatically.

>

>

>

>

>

> RH

Do you know what study this was or have a link? This is interesting to me. I have a line on my putter but when I use the Pelz Putting Board the line on my putter looks left on the line on the board. I'm sure its an illusion because it looks straight from behind view.

Well... I went to work on it again today. I did the Malaska tee "drill" and the tee appears so far left, probably a foot or more on a 30ft putt, I literally could not put my body in a position that allowed me to see the tee on the target line, the other guys on the green must have thought I was crazy. I am rolling the ball end over end cause the line on the ball is rolling on the line I pick.

Clearly this is a visual problem I'm having. I would love to pick a spot, path, and visualize train tracks, etc... but what I'm seeing is not where I want the ball to go. Is side saddle still legal haha.

> @Asics10 said:

> Well... I went to work on it again today. I did the Malaska tee "drill" and the tee appears so far left, probably a foot or more on a 30ft putt, I literally could not put my body in a position that allowed me to see the tee on the target line, the other guys on the green must have thought I was crazy. I am rolling the ball end over end cause the line on the ball is rolling on the line I pick.

> Clearly this is a visual problem I'm having. I would love to pick a spot, path, and visualize train tracks, etc... but what I'm seeing is not where I want the ball to go. Is side saddle still legal haha.

>

>

>

This is exactly what I was referencing in post #16. The Malaska “set your eyes first where the line looks right” method had me looking like I was putting with a sawhorse between me and the ball.

> @Asics10 said:

> Well... I went to work on it again today. I did the Malaska tee "drill" and the tee appears so far left, probably a foot or more on a 30ft putt, I literally could not put my body in a position that allowed me to see the tee on the target line, the other guys on the green must have thought I was crazy. I am rolling the ball end over end cause the line on the ball is rolling on the line I pick.

> Clearly this is a visual problem I'm having. I would love to pick a spot, path, and visualize train tracks, etc... but what I'm seeing is not where I want the ball to go. Is side saddle still legal haha.

>

>

>

Here's the video I referenced if anyone is interested. It starts at the 4:30 mark.

You can figure this one out on your own. Assess the info, play around with it and know the permutations aren't that complex.

Buy a chalk line and a putting mirror. You'll thank me later.

> @CardsChamps11 said:

> > @RichieHunt said:

> > You'd be surprised how much better you can aim with a more natural approach. About 10 years ago there was a study from a European research group and they found that the lines on putters are more likely to cause worse aim. And the interesting part was that despite aiming worse with more lines on the putter, the players *thought* they aimed better.

> >

> > My suggestions are to find the right putter for your size and your natural posture with the putter. These days I see more golfers using too short of a putter.

> >

> > I would also recommend looking at your ball position. I have one of those putting lasers from Wright Putting Dynamics and when I first used it, despite the putter aimed right at the hole, the putter head looked like it was aimed dead left. Once I fiddled around with the ball position I found that when I moved the ball position back the head now looked like it was aimed at the hole instead of appearing to be aimed well left of the cup.

> >

> > Lastly, think about changing your way of aiming the putter. For me, I used to go from the ball/face of the putter to the target. When I started to do the opposite...visualizing a line from the target back to the putter/ball my aim improved dramatically.

> >

> >

> >

> >

> >

> > RH

>

> Do you know what study this was or have a link? This is interesting to me. I have a line on my putter but when I use the Pelz Putting Board the line on my putter looks left on the line on the board. I'm sure its an illusion because it looks straight from behind view.

I'd have to go back and try and find it. It was pretty interesting.

RH