Welcome Avatar! This post covers the basics of AimPoint Express, an incredibly useful tool for reading greens. Traditional green-reading is done through using your eyes to estimate the severity of a slope. AimPoint Express relies on your body’s sense of balance, specifically the ability of your feet to determine the percent-grade of a slope. Then, the system uses your arms and fingers to find the proper starting line. It’s remarkably easy to use and highly effective; hundreds of tour pros use it. While we don’t use AimPoint every putt, it’s a useful skill to have in your game.
AimPoint is a green-reading system that uses your feet to gauge slope instead of your eyes. Your eyes can “lie” due to a number of factors, such as a mountain-side course, or eyes not being level when reading a putt. However, the feet are incredibly sensitive to the slope of the ground, as required for keeping the body upright. We can exploit this ability to make more putts.
Assumptions
AimPoint assumes a pace of no more than 1 foot past the hole. Studies have found once you go past this, the effective area of the hole shrinks, meaning you have a smaller “window” for the putt to go in (LINK).
AimPoint assumes a true green; one lacking excessive spike marks, ball marks, and other depressions. These alter how a ball rolls and can easily throw a putt off line, which is why it’s always easier to make putts in the early morning versus late in the day.
AimPoint also assumes the player starts the ball on their intended line. If a putt has the correct pace, perfect read and perfect greens, the only thing stopping a ball from going in is a push/pulled putt.
Process
For a basic video introduction, watch this, or for a more in depth, more British one watch this.
The first part of AimPoint is what some refer to as the *foot read*. This is done by facing the hole (or parallel to the line of the ball and the hole), standing with your feet hip-width apart or slightly more, and sensing how much more weight is put on one foot versus the other. The greater the amount of left/right slope (side slope), the more weight you will feel on one foot. Obviously, if more weight is on the left foot, the ground is sloping to the left, if more weight is on the right foot, the ground is sloping right.
AimPoint Express uses percent-grade (%) slope. When first starting out, your feet won’t quite know what a 2% slope feels like. We keep an electronic level in our bags (LINK- no we don’t get paid for this) to continually “calibrate” our sense of slope. A cheaper, convenient option are smartphone level apps, but must have the option for percent-grade, ideally into the decimals. Laser Level seems to be a good one, just make sure to use the blue “clinometer” tool and change the unit to percent + decimal (LINK- Android, LINK- iPhone).
To train your feet, go to a random spot on a green and try to guess the percent-grade using your hip-width stance. Then, set your level tool or smartphone in between your feet, parallel to your eye-line. This gives you immediate feedback on how much you’re over-estimating or under-estimating a slope. Do this for a few minutes before your next few rounds and you’ll get a good idea of slope percentage. It takes a bit of time to get your feet “calibrated”, and you’ll want to re-calibrate every once in a while. Justin Rose has an entire putting studio devoted to training his foot read and “finger read”.
Most putts are between a 1% and 3% overall slope. 4% and 5% are rare, and more than that is extremely rare.
Autist note: The key to Aimpoint is the left/right slope, not anything else. There are situations with severely uphill or downhill putts where your feet sense a lot of *overall* slope, but not much side slope exists. This is why we focus on how much weight is on one foot vs the other, not just how much angle both feet are feeling.
Turbo Autist note: There’s something called the Baillee method (video LINK, 1:35 mark) (second comment LINK), which involves measuring the slope using the knee socket and shoelaces. Never heard about this before writing. Will have to test and update.
Now that we’ve covered slope, let’s get into the steps of reading a putt with AimPoint:
Facing the hole, check the slope (foot read) at three spots:
At the ball (one foot on each side)
The midpoint of the putt just on the low side (don’t step in your potential line)
At the hole on the low side
If there are multiple breaks or other important points in the putt, check those. This also depends on the length of the putt; a short putt only requires checking the midpoint or the slope at the ball, long putts may require 4-5 different spots.
Once you feel the slope at the important points (the left-right grade), you’ll want to come up with an overall number to use for the next step. Generally, the order of importance is: at the hole, midpoint, and at the ball. All of them matter, but “weigh” them accordingly. At first, use whole numbers between 1-4%.
Then, for putts over 10 feet, stand 3 feet behind the ball.
Extend one arm straight out in front of you, and hold the number of fingers out in-front for the overall grade. 1 finger for 1%, 2 for 2%, etc. Connect them if using more than one finger. We’ll refer to this as the *finger read*.
Close one eye, and align one “end” with the center of the cup, the other on the starting size of the putt (right side if breaking left, left side if breaking right). The point outside the cup will represent the start line of the putt.
We like to take the alignment marking located on most golf balls and point it directly at the spot (your “Aim Point”). A good trick to make sure it is aimed correctly is angling the putter up in-front of you, close one eye, and align the putter-shaft along the marking, and see where it points relative the chosen spot. The amount you angle the putter upwards depends on the length of the putt; you want the ball and the aiming point to both be on the putter-shaft line, and use either the very left or right edge of the shaft. This takes out having to project where the ball is aiming by use of visualization. Adjust the marking on the ball accordingly.
Then, hit the putt with the right pace (1 foot past).
Modifiers
There are situations where you need to change the finger read.
Green Speed: Alter the length you hold out your arm for the green speed. The faster the greens are, the more you need to bring your arm in towards your eyes. This *increases* the amount of break played, as faster greens require less pace, which increases gravity’s effect. There’s not quite an exact rule for the amount you bring your arm in; you develop your own scale over time.
Arm Length adjustments for green speeds: Numbers are stimpmeter measurements; for context, tour greens generally run 11-12 on the stimpmeter.
8 (slow; non-dog-patch public course): arm fully extended
10 (medium; really good public course or average private course): arm slightly bent
12 (fast; really good private course or top public course): arm slightly more bent
Again, this is general. These can be different depending on the finger-width to arm length ratio.
Uphill / Downhill adjustments: The more downhill the putt, the greater the time it moves along the ground, increasing the effects of gravity, increasing the break of the putt. The more uphill the putt, the less time it takes, decreasing the effects of gravity, lessening the break.
Slightly uphill: subtract about half of one finger width from the alignment point
Slightly downhill: add about half of one finger width to the alignment point
Moderately uphill: subtract one whole finger width
Moderately downhill: add one whole finger width
Severely uphill: subtract up to two entire finger widths
Severely downhill: add up to two entire finger widths
Ex: 15 foot putt, moderately downhill, 2% grade slope left-to-right. Aiming point would be 3 finger-widths outside the left.
Inside 10 feet: Depending on the length of putt, you have to alter the length you stand behind the ball when you’re determining the aiming point. Outside of 10 feet, you’ll want to stand ≈3 feet behind the ball before you raise your arm up. Inside of 10 feet, stand directly over the ball by straddling your feet on each side.
Inside 6 feet: While it is great to determine the % grade of the slope, aiming points are different for short putts.
Aimpoint for 5-foot, level putt:
1%- left/right center
2%- just inside the left/right edge
3%- 3 inches outside the left/right edge
4%- 4 inches outside the left/right edge
If the putt is inside 5-feet, take away some break. For a 4-footer, take away an inch of break for the 3-4% putts.
If the putt is outside 5-feet, add some break. For a 6-footer, add an inch of break for the 3-4% putts. Outside of 6-feet, use the normal aimpoint method (fingers).
We’ve found that short putts on fast greens break roughly the same amount as on slow, non-dog-patch greens, excluding severely fast putts.. On fast greens, putts seem to almost glide over the top of the grass, whereas on slow greens they grip the ball, all minimizing the effect of green speeds.
Also, traditional green-reading (eyes) seems to be more suitable than Aimpoint for many people.
We’ll have to experiment with the following, but we heard these adjustments allow you to use the normal method on putts inside of 6-feet.
The main foot read will be from the ball, not the midpoint (although midpoint does matter if you have time)
The finger read will be from over the ball, not 3-feet behind
Start of the finger read is from inside of the opposite edge, not the center. Ex: 2% left-to-right, rightmost part of fingers would be on the inside edge of the right side of the cup.
Double Breakers
These are tough for the Aimpoint method. There’s not an exact rule, but we’ve found success with basically valuing the break closer to the hole at double the value of the break closer to the ball.
Example: 20 footer, first 10 feet are 2% left to right, last 10 feet are 4% right to left. The first 10 feet, we’d make that a 1, and keep the last 10 feet at a 4. Take 4, subtract 1, you get……3! So you’d hold out 3 fingers on the right side of the cup and make that your aiming point.
However, this is a guesstimation. If the second break occurs earlier or later in the putt, you have to adjust.
Lastly, AimPoint doesn’t work precisely for every putt. Situations like putting down a tier, or putting across a ridge, requires a heavy amount of guesstimation and creativity.
Yes, this seems like a lot. Once you have the process down, it’s extremely fast, and much more accurate than only traditional green reading. It takes a lot longer to put into words what could be shown in person. We use AimPoint as a *tool*, not an end all be all. It’s perfectly fine to not follow this to a tee. Everyone’s body and feels are different, so their AimPoint measurements will be different.
AimPoint is also extremely useful for speed drills, which we’ll go over soon.
Give it a shot, experiment with it, and use it alongside traditional green reading methods. Just don’t ever plum-bob.