How to read a green

If every green is to you an open book, then you are a very remarkable and very fortunate golfer. But oddly enough the art of reading greens is at least in one respect quite similar to that of reading newsprint.

It helps if one scans the turf, line by line, from left to right, just as one does when reading.

Start close to the hole. Look at the grass two feet or so to the left of the hole. Look at the ground around the hole. Look at the grass two feet to the right of the hole.

Now blink several times and do the same thing along a line a few feet in front of the hole. Look left. Look along the line to the hole. Then look right.

After doing this a few times I think you will be surprised at how much more clearly you can see the lie of the land. Don't spend too much time on it; only about as much time as you would take reading three lines of this golf tip. Then, the reading done, putt promptly.