How to putt to a breaking point – Tip #2 by Ernie Els

Treat every putt as a straight putt

A few weeks ago, Ernie Els gave us a great tip for putting to a breaking point. It involved assessing the line of a putt and identifying a spot where you feel the ball will start turning towards the hole. This week, he gives us different option.

“Another method you can adopt on breaking putts, one that I know is favored by a lot of good players, is to treat every putt as a straight putt. The principle is similar to the ‘breaking point’ system, but not identical.

There’s one important difference. Say you’ve read a putt and seen a 12-inch break from the right. Well, what you do is visualize an imaginary hold 12 inches right of the real hole. That’s your target. The actual hold may as well not exist – you have to putt to the imaginary hole. Again, in a practice situation you can use a prop, such as a golf ball as I have in the photos, to indicate your imaginary hole.

What you’re basically doing is treating every putt as a straight putt, which as I’m sure you’ll appreciate is bound to help you make a better, more on-line stroke. You won’t feel the need to guide the ball, or anything like that. And just as is the case with the ‘breaking point’ system, once you’ve committed yourself to the line, you can simply allow the slope of the green to do the work for you.

I like the idea of this method – anything that simplifies slope putting has to be a good thing.”

Thank you, Ernie!

Bloodline has designed a putter that will help you practice Ernie’s tip more effectively.

More often than not, you are not aimed where you think you are. Whenever you aim a putt from a side angle you are looking from a distorted and inaccurate position. You might think you have everything lined up correctly, but your eyes are playing tricks on you from this perspective. This is because of the location of where your eyes are located on your head looking down the line as well as one eye being more dominant than the other.

The stand-up ability of a Bloodline putter enables you to aim from behind the ball on every putt. By letting go of the putter and walking behind it you can see exactly where your putter is aimed. This routine allows you to check and correct your misaimed putts which reduces your margin of error and increases the probability of making more putts.