Are Your Three-Putts a Matter of Perception?

To Perceive or Misperceive!

Many instructors will state that speed-control, or the lack of it, is the common fault of most players.   Speed control can be minimally or largely affected by your perception.  You may need to alter your perception for better speed control to reduce or eliminate your three-putts.  Are you among the majority who misperceive distances?  If so, you may want to change how you look at things. 

In this and future blogs, we'll take a look at several keys to mastering speed control.  For those of you who have Blast Motion, we'll discuss the four key elements of the "app" that can enhance your speed-control skill.  

When it comes to the brain’s chief information-gatherer, the eyes, there are tests to help you discover and overcome maladies that affect your performance, maybe none more common than three-putting a green, time and time again.

Sports vision optometrists' performance testing has shown that one common area of perception, that of the estimation of the distance to the target, is too often misperceived as shorter than the actual distance.  In some cases, the perceptual evaluation is off by as much as 25-to-30 percent.  This translates to a 50-foot putt leaving the golfer with a second putt that could be 15 feet from the cup.

There are several tests that you can perform by yourself, right in your home, that can help you determine if your errors are at least partly due to a faulty visual perception system as well as what to do to remedy these problems. 

Testing Your Perception

A significant reason that most of your putts and even pitches and chips come up short of your intended mark is from the eyes and brain misperceiving the true distance to the target.  Take the following tests and see how your perception measures up.  

​Find a target in front of you, preferably on the floor or ground, as it replicates the look to a cup.  Ideally, the target should be approximately 30-to-40 feet away.  You may need to look out a window for this distance if you are at home.  

Take a last look at the position of the target before closing your eyes.  Now you have to visualize the target’s location, just like on the putting green, except your eyes are open and using “spatial localization” to assess the target’s point in space.  

Now, with your eyes closed, stretch out your arms and point to the visualized target with your two index fingers touching, forming a triangle with your arms.  Now open one eye, preferably your dominant eye, and  check where your fingers are pointing.  

(By the way, this test is depicted in the video on my home page.) 

If you are accurate and pointing right at the target, you are one of the few who are accurate localizers.  Still, if you are accurate, you should be able to repeat this test with the same results.  If you aren’t good with speed control, you have other issues than your perception.              

If your fingers were pointing below the target, that tends to show your perception of the target is short of its actual location.  This is, by far, the majority of the golfers and non-golfers we have tested.            

If you are also right or left of the target, you also have directional issues of aiming.   If you are above the target, you tend to perceive the target as farther than it actually is.   

Still another test is to toss a quarter to a spot on the floor, five or so feet away.  Again, it is good to have another person pick up the coins so you can do the test two or three times.  If your results are inconsistent, with a long and a short, it can indicate your lack of skill in combining the eyes with the hand (eye-hand coordination) or you have a difficult time with consistent perceptual evaluation.  

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​One of the best tests, used by eye doctors, in sports testing away from their offices, is called the Brock String Test (shown above).  Using a string or small diameter rope and approximately 15-20 feet in length, tie one end to a chair or table leg.  Hold the other end against the tip of your nose.  You should see two strings, one from your left and one from your right eye (representing your “visual axis”).  

​If you do not readily see two strings, pluck the string to get it in motion.  This may “jump-start” the eye that may be temporarily suppressing the other string.  This shows you may be relying more on one eye for distance than you would have thought and this can greatly compromise your distance judgment.  If so, schedule a trip to your eye doctor to do more significant binocular performance tests and some exercises to overcome this problem.you do not readily see two strings, pluck the string to get it in motion.  This may “jump-start” the eye that may be temporarily suppressing the other string.  If so, you may be relying more on one eye for distance than you would have thought and this can greatly compromise your distance judgment.  If that's the case, you should contact your eye doctor to do more significant binocular performance tests and some exercises to overcome this problem.
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Ideally, the strings should come together at the far end of the strings.  If they do, then you either have good perception, or you perceive targets farther in space than they actually are.  Players with a farther- than-actual perception often hit their putts or chips beyond the cup, often well beyond the cup, due mainly to their faulty perception! 

If the strings do not come together to form a “V” at the far point of the string, and they cross well short of the end, so they form more of a “Y” or an “X”, then you have a tendency to leave your putts and even your chips short of the intended target because of your perception.  

The ideal test is the string test, as the next recommendations can be readily appreciated as to their value in altering your perception.  

A Plan for Success
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Fear also can constrict the eyes peripheral look and add to your misperceptions, not only for distance appreciation but also fear can inhibit your aiming accuracy.  Fear comes from distances you don’t feel are easy to two-putt or from slopes or grades that are difficult to get the ball close to the cup on the first putt.  If you don’t have a plan, then the subconscious could be thinking, “It looks like a three-putt to me!”  

If you are guilty of misperceiving the target as short of actual, you may have misperceived because of what eye doctors know as the eyes natural “A-V” ratio.   

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​When a person shifts his or her gaze downward (as shown above left), the eyes naturally respond to the brain telling them the target is closer, as in reading a book.  The eyes will converge (cross) in a natural means when they look downward, the “V” ratio. 

When the eyes are looking at an object at eye level, the eyes tend to look like they are viewing a far point target, the “A” ratio.  This is the desired head position when looking at a far-point target.     

So, a part of “the plan” of better speed control to counter your misperceptions is to look with a soft look -expand your field of view - AND with your forehead tilted down, the “A” viewpoint (as shown above right).  Also, you may want to view from beside the ball and the hole to better assess the terrain and then visualize the intended speed of the ball from start to finish.

Another means to improve your distance perception is a “soft focus".  Instead of just focusing on the end of the string, have your eyes take in more peripheral areas to the sides of the target.  This peripheral view tends to relax the muscles that are responsible for the eyes converging movement as well as it is a key factor in alignment.  

One or both of the above techniques should improve your perception of where the target’s actual location that is interpreted by the brain via the visual system, when redoing the tests with the above recommended viewpoints.

Easily, the most profound means for the majority to counter misperceptions and enhance perception of the target is to “walk the walk.”  This means to dismiss an eyeballing look at the cup.  When players look only at the cup, they typically use size constancy to assist the brain as to the target’s location.  Simply put, the smaller the cup, the farther it is away.  The eyes use this as a distance clue.  And when players look at this far point, as stated, the majority of them point (converge) their eyes in front of the cup.  If you were short on your tests to begin this blog, you too, are putting to an illusion instead of the true distance.

It is imperative that your brain provides your muscles with an accurate distance assessment and there is no better means to guarantee this than when the eyes “walk the walk.”  When the eyes travel along the ground at a constant pace, as if they are following a person walking the distance, they better appreciate the distance than by just eyeballing the cup. Of course, actually walking the distance assists your appreciation of the true distance as well as the slope from the ball to the cup.  

This “eye-walking” can be done two different ways.  One is at a constant pace -- slow is better than fast -- and the other is through a visualization of the ball’s intended speed off the putter and appreciating the ball’s roll along the green’s surface as it eventually slows more rapidly as it approaches the cup.  The latter method of dynamic visualization assures the eyes providing the brain with a realistic assessment of speed control to relay to the body’s motor system (muscles) to power the ball appropriately. Of course, you must be accurate with your visualization, a key area we will discuss in future blogs.  

You can perform this visualization while standing off to the side and approximately equal distance from the ball and the cup.  This is the common position where you would view others' putts.  It isn’t uncommon for you to rapidly evaluate whether the ball will be short, long or a good putt after the putterface impacts the ball because it's a natural place to visualize the intended action to follow.  That is why you can quickly reference a putt that won’t get to the cup with a “GO” and the opposite with, “Whoa.”  

This position also provides the eyes the best assessment of the slope’s percentage if it's a downhill or uphill putt or if it's a mostly level surface from the ball to the cup.  

I hope this instruction will improve your speed control or heightened your awareness of your current skills.  If not, stay tuned for future blogs for help in this key area of putting.