AimPoint vs Tour Read – Green Reading Systems

[NittanyCPA]

4 hours ago, fwilliam said:

I use Aimpoint Express and have compared a  modified plumb bob by hanging the putter straight down then using 1/2 finger for 1/2 cup, 1 finger for 1 cup break etc. The plumb method depends a lot on upright stance and I plumb 2-3 times given the inherent vagaries..Green speed matters a lot, ie faster greens break more, grain affects it etc etc. Given my age and astigmatism, despite trying numerous "green-reading" sunglasses , my visual reading is inaccurate, thus I need the above methods. 

If you're using Aimpoint Express, why would you bother with plum bobbing?

[iacas]

1 hour ago, fwilliam said:

I respectfully disagree and have my own system that works about as well as Aimpoint . I average 31-32 putts a round, green speed at my home course is 10-11, and I am happy with my results with the current system. No superstition involved, but trial and error and practice over a few years involved. 

I try not to disagree with facts, but maybe that’s just me. 😀 There’s one of several studies linked above in a PDF.

[ferrispgm]

2 hours ago, fwilliam said:

I respectfully disagree and have my own system that works about as well as Aimpoint . I average 31-32 putts a round, green speed at my home course is 10-11, and I am happy with my results with the current system. No superstition involved, but trial and error and practice over a few years involved. 

So it works for you because you are an average putter?  right.  

[Wooley12]

Curious. Your average putts per round? 

[JackTheRipper]

From what I've read and seen about Aim Point, the player straddles the presumed line of the putt to estimate the side slope in percent then puts up that number of fingers to estimate the aim point. 

If this is true, then Aim Point considers only the side slope at the point where you take your measurement.  Even on a planar green, which is the simplest case, using only the side slope would give you the same 2-finger read if you were putting 45 degrees down or 45 degrees up the slope.  That would be wrong, so if Aim Point only looks at side slope it doesn't work.  Aim Point also doesn't seem to have any recommended way to account for the pace that you're hitting the putt, although tromboning your arm would allow for slight adjustments, but then you're back to just putting by feel.

So let's use this as the test case example:  Suppose you have a stimp 10 green, a 30 foot putt, and a planar 2% slope, and the ball is either at +45 degrees or -45 degrees to the slope, and the ball is struck at a pace that would roll 12" past the hole on a miss.  In both cases this corresponds to a side slope of 1.4%, so Aim Point, as I understand it, gives a read of 1.4 fingers left or 1.4 fingers right, and in fact this is the aim for any distance, not just 30 feet.  Is that the Aim Point estimate?  What does Tour Read estimate in each of these two cases for the aim and the pace?

Does Aim Point have anything to say about the pace to hit your putt to account for upslope or downslope, in combination with the side slope read?

Edited May 20 by JackTheRipper

[SNIPERBBB]

1 hour ago, JackTheRipper said:

From what I've read and seen about Aim Point, the player straddles the presumed line of the putt to estimate the side slope in percent then puts up that number of fingers to estimate the aim point. 

If this is true, then Aim Point considers only the side slope at the point where you take your measurement.  Even on a planar green, which is the simplest case, using only the side slope would give you the same 2-finger read if you were putting 45 degrees down or 45 degrees up the slope.  That would be wrong, so if Aim Point only looks at side slope it doesn't work.  Aim Point also doesn't seem to have any recommended way to account for the pace that you're hitting the putt, although tromboning your arm would allow for slight adjustments, but then you're back to just putting by feel.

So let's use this as the test case example:  Suppose you have a stimp 10 green, a 30 foot putt, and a planar 2% slope, and the ball is either at +45 degrees or -45 degrees to the slope, and the ball is struck at a pace that would roll 12" past the hole on a miss.  In both cases this corresponds to a side slope of 1.4%, so Aim Point, as I understand it, gives a read of 1.4 fingers left or 1.4 fingers right, and in fact this is the aim for any distance, not just 30 feet.  Is that the Aim Point estimate?  What does Tour Read estimate in each of these two cases for the aim and the pace?

Does Aim Point have anything to say about the pace to hit your putt to account for upslope or downslope, in combination with the side slope read?

Speed of the greens is accounted for with Aim Point. You adjust for speed by how close you golf your fingers to your eyes. Closer for fast greens, farther away for slower greens.  Severe uphill/downhill putts don't need adjusted for in my experience with AE.

[iacas]

@JackTheRipper, yes, you can move your fingers closer to or farther away from your eyes.

 

12 minutes ago, SNIPERBBB said:

Closer for fast greens, farther away for slower greens.

 

Closer for downhill putts, farther for uphill putts. For most slopes you don't need to adjust anything there, but for severe uphill/downhill putts, you do.

 

12 minutes ago, SNIPERBBB said:

Severe uphill/downhill putts don't need adjusted for in my experience with AE.

 

I don't know if you had a typo there or not, but they do need an adjustment. A severe downhill putt plays like a faster green and vice versa. This is also the adjustment you make for grain: into plays slower, down plays faster.

[JackTheRipper]

re: I don't know if you had a typo there or not, but they do need an adjustment. A severe downhill putt plays like a faster green and vice versa.

That would be one way to adjust for uphill/downhill slope, but now you would need to do an extra up/down slope reading so that you can make an effective green speed adjustment.  Although it is theoretically possible and quite do-able, I've never seen anyone estimate the uphill/downhill slope this way using Aim Point, or convert to an effective green speed.  While it is *possible* to do this way, isn't it the case that the Aim Point methodology uses only the side slope? 

Let's first talk about what the Aim Point methodology actually proposes to do, then we can discuss how it might be extended to do better after that.

AFAIK, Aim Point is the best technique there is for estimating slope by feel, and that is an essential skill for short putts, but I don't know if it is good enough.  A 9' putt with a 0.5% pure side slope will miss the hole at stimp 10 if aimed directly at the hole using optimal pace.  I think that a 0.5% side slope will be read as 0% by nearly all amateur golfers (this includes me), and I'm interested to learn how the pros do any better.  Are they naturally gifted at perceiving slope, or do they use additional information that we could learn to use?  Do they measure slope in their practice rounds using a digital level and take notes for all the known hole positions?

[TonyRo]

Tour Read gives an approximation that your read changes by X% per percent slope up or down. In the 30 feet/1.4% side slope case you've given, the tour read base estimate is around 27" from the pin or 25" outside the edge, and you'd adjust that up or down as needed for the up/down slopes.

[iacas]

25 minutes ago, JackTheRipper said:

That would be one way to adjust for uphill/downhill slope, but now you would need to do an extra up/down slope reading so that you can make an effective green speed adjustment.  Although it is theoretically possible and quite do-able, I've never seen anyone estimate the uphill/downhill slope this way using Aim Point, or convert to an effective green speed.  While it is *possible* to do this way, isn't it the case that the Aim Point methodology uses only the side slope? 

Almost all of that is wrong. 😜

 

at the end of the day it’s called Express because it’s a pretty accurate estimate. If you have an uphill putt, you move your fingers farther from your eyes. That’s the adjustment. You don’t take a separate measurement for uphill/downhill the same way you don’t take side slope measurements at every foot along a 20 foot putt.

 

When I was teaching AimPoint it was taught in every class and I still do it when I play.

[SNIPERBBB]

5 hours ago, iacas said:

@JackTheRipper, yes, you can move your fingers closer to or farther away from your eyes.

 

 

Closer for downhill putts, farther for uphill putts. For most slopes you don't need to adjust anything there, but for severe uphill/downhill putts, you do.

 

 

I don't know if you had a typo there or not, but they do need an adjustment. A severe downhill putt plays like a faster green and vice versa. This is also the adjustment you make for grain: into plays slower, down plays faster.

I don't adjust arm length. I will adjust where hold the edge of my finger to the cup. If things get too severe on a downhiller, in back to finding the fall line.

[JackTheRipper]

re: Closer for downhill putts, farther for uphill putts. For most slopes you don't need to adjust anything there, but for severe uphill/downhill putts, you do.

But unless you tell us how much to move your fingers in or out in this specific test case, you've said nothing other than by moving your arm closer or further then you get different answers.  It's just a qualitative relationship, but it needs to be quantitative for the golfer to use it on the golf course.  For this specific test case, how far away from your eye do you put your fingers, exactly?

 

re: Tour Read gives an approximation that your read changes by X% per percent slope up or down. In the 30 feet/1.4% side slope case you've given, the tour read base estimate is around 27" from the pin or 25" outside the edge, and you'd adjust that up or down as needed for the up/down slopes.

there were two cases: (1) 45 degrees down and a 2% fall line slope, which yields a 1.4% side slope, and (2) 45 degrees up and a 2% slope down the fall line, which also yields a 1.4% side slope. Both cases are 30' and stimp 10, both cases have a right-to-left break, but the amount of the break is different.  Which case is the 27" break for, and what is the estimated break in the other case?

Tour Read is based on physics and it measures slope both up and down and sideways, so it has the potential of producing a good estimate - better estimate than Aim Point - if its sensors are accurate enough and its physics model is correct, and very importantly, if the slope all along the putt trajectory is the same, which in this example, we have assumed it is.

But in any case Tour Read produces a specific quantitative result, whereas Aim Point does not.  Unless Aim Point can tell us exactly how much to trombone our arm to account for a 1.4% up slope and a 1.4% down slope (coincidentally the same as the side slopes since the examples use 45 degrees) in addition to the tromboning that is required for green speed, it fails to answer the question even when given the luxury of time.

[iacas]

49 minutes ago, JackTheRipper said:

But unless you tell us how much to move your fingers in or out in this specific test case, you've said nothing other than by moving your arm closer or further then you get different answers. It's just a qualitative relationship, but it needs to be quantitative for the golfer to use it on the golf course. For this specific test case, how far away from your eye do you put your fingers, exactly?

 

No, it doesn't, and I think that's your main sticking point. It's not like you're sticking your phone down on the green to use Tour Read during a round. It's all an estimate, it's all relying on the golfer to actually do the read (the legal things one can do).

 

AimPoint Express, like Tour Read, just helps you make a much better estimate than "using your eyes" or something.

 

49 minutes ago, JackTheRipper said:

re: Tour Read gives an approximation that your read changes by X% per percent slope up or down. In the 30 feet/1.4% side slope case you've given, the tour read base estimate is around 27" from the pin or 25" outside the edge, and you'd adjust that up or down as needed for the up/down slopes.

 

I don't think Tour Read is doing anything that AimPoint didn't do 15 years ago.

 

49 minutes ago, JackTheRipper said:

there were two cases: (1) 45 degrees down and a 2% fall line slope, which yields a 1.4% side slope, and (2) 45 degrees up and a 2% slope down the fall line, which also yields a 1.4% side slope. Both cases are 30' and stimp 10, both cases have a right-to-left break, but the amount of the break is different.  Which case is the 27" break for, and what is the estimated break in the other case?

 

And how are you arriving at these numbers on the golf course in a tournament round?

 

49 minutes ago, JackTheRipper said:

Tour Read is based on physics and it measures slope both up and down and sideways, so it has the potential of producing a good estimate - better estimate than AimPoint - if its sensors are accurate enough and its physics model is correct, and very importantly, if the slope all along the putt trajectory is the same, which in this example, we have assumed it is.

 

That's almost never a good assumption.

 

And again, I'm seeing almost nothing that AimPoint didn't do 15 years ago. Mark Sweeney won an Emmy for the "AimPoint putting line" with Scott Pool's green maps (mapped to the mm in 1 cm squares). Mark developed a VERY accurate physics model. AimPoint became AimPoint Express because… you've gotta do this stuff on the golf course, and nobody can realistically take a reading every foot along a 20' putt and do all the computations.

 

49 minutes ago, JackTheRipper said:

But in any case Tour Read produces a specific quantitative result, whereas Aim Point does not. Unless Aim Point can tell us exactly how much to trombone our arm to account for a 1.4% up slope and a 1.4% down slope (coincidentally the same as the side slopes since the examples use 45 degrees) in addition to the tromboning that is required for green speed, it fails to answer the question even when given the luxury of time.

 

I think you're unaware of what AimPoint used to be. 😄  And golfers don't have the luxury of time.

[TonyRo]

10 hours ago, iacas said:

And again, I'm seeing almost nothing that AimPoint didn't do 15 years ago. Mark Sweeney won an Emmy for the "AimPoint putting line" with Scott Pool's green maps (mapped to the mm in 1 cm squares). Mark developed a VERY accurate physics model. AimPoint became AimPoint Express because… you've gotta do this stuff on the golf course, and nobody can realistically take a reading every foot along a 20' putt and do all the computations.

I think this is an important point to make. I don't think a lot of people know at this point that Mark Sweeney (this is directly from him on a variety of podcasts) wrote 100,000+ lines of code to pretty much perfectly predict and display the putting lines for TV broadcasts first. They'd LiDAR the greens ahead of the tournament and then he was frantically calculating the exact putts based on 3D slope maps, grain, wind, measured stimps for that day, etc. It wasn't even a product for players first. Then it was just "Aimpoint" in a variety of forms, including charts, and now it's Aimpoint Express. My understanding is that evolution has been driven to give players something that's close enough to make some putts whilst still being practical for a golf course. Aimpoint feels very qualitative, but that is by design. Tour Read feels more physics based because it's a mathematical formula instead of holding up your fingers, but they both revolve around the same physical coincidence - that putt break is (approximately) linear with % slope, e.g. a 1% putt will break about half as much as a 2% putt. I am not certain about how Tour Read was developed other than during COVID Ralph and a student, who happened to be an engineer of some kind, decided to make an app. It could be ripped directly from Aimpoint or Puttview charts, they could have painstakingly trudged around a practice green with a Perfect Putter, who knows? But as far as accuracy goes, I doubt Ralph Bauer has the computational power that Sweeney does to actually build a system around accurately predicting putt break. 

Regardless, you will never be able to reach the level of precision you seek during a round. You're always going to have to ballpark it. No one is more depressed about this than me, but it's the hard truth. 😁
 

12 hours ago, JackTheRipper said:

there were two cases: (1) 45 degrees down and a 2% fall line slope, which yields a 1.4% side slope, and (2) 45 degrees up and a 2% slope down the fall line, which also yields a 1.4% side slope. Both cases are 30' and stimp 10, both cases have a right-to-left break, but the amount of the break is different.  Which case is the 27" break for, and what is the estimated break in the other case?

It's for neither. As I explained, the base read for 1.4% side slope on that stimp and distance is 27" - Tour Read provides a modifier for uphill/downhill reads and so either case would be a few inches on either side of that 27", more for the downhill putt and less for the uphill putt. But out of respect for the developers, I don't really feel like it's my place to just start spouting the full details of how the Tour Read functions. You should at least get a trial or pay for a month/year to get all that info. 

[Lefty_3Jack]

Sorry to throw out something other than Aimpoint or Tour Read, but wanted to give a plug for the WhyGolf putting charts.  I'm guessing they're a rip off of the initial Aimpoint, but don't know that.  Using them feels like cheating, still not 100% sure it's kosher to use the card in a tournament.  Same with Aimpoint, you need to determine the up/down and left/right slope and find where that matches with the distance of the putt to get where to aim.  They have a card from an 8 to a 13 stimp. 

[nosil]

33 minutes ago, Lefty_3Jack said:

I'm guessing they're a rip off of the initial Aimpoint

id say they are all based on H. A. Templeton's book "Vector Putting: The Art and Science of Reading Greens and Computing Break". 😁

[TonyRo]

32 minutes ago, Lefty_3Jack said:

Using them feels like cheating, still not 100% sure it's kosher to use the card in a tournament.  Same with Aimpoint, you need to determine the up/down and left/right slope and find where that matches with the distance of the putt to get where to aim.  They have a card from an 8 to a 13 stimp. 

Not that I really have to worry about this, but I'm pretty sure they're legal. I am guessing most people could benefit from just memorizing one chart at the stimp they most commonly play and then knowing how to adjust that up or down based on how the greens are playing that day. I haven't met too many average golfers that are playing 8 stimp all the way up to 13 stimp greens. 😁 If I had to guess my local  courses are all around 9 +-1 on most days! 

[YevKasim]

I tried Aimpoint but I use plumb bobbing now exclusively. I think they tell you pretty much the same thing. Plus it seems that the size of peoples fingers can put your actually aiming point off by a significant point.

[TonyRo]

4 minutes ago, YevKasim said:

I tried Aimpoint but I use plumb bobbing now exclusively. I think they tell you pretty much the same thing. Plus it seems that the size of peoples fingers can put your actually aiming point off by a significant point.

Ugh.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, nosil said:

id say they are all based on H. A. Templeton's book "Vector Putting: The Art and Science of Reading Greens and Computing Break". 😁

pretty much wholly untrue.

 

21 minutes ago, YevKasim said:

I tried Aimpoint but I use plumb bobbing now exclusively. I think they tell you pretty much the same thing. Plus it seems that the size of peoples fingers can put your actually aiming point off by a significant point.

No. Plumb bobbing doesn’t work at all. This has been covered many times in the last 20 years. I’m glad you think it works for you, but it makes no sense, geometrically or in terms of physics. It relies on you happening to stand in a place where the shaft indicates the right thing. Two points make a line.

[nosil]

53 minutes ago, iacas said:

pretty much wholly untrue.

 

 

I’d be interested to know why you say that.   The various green reading approaches are based on the physics associated with slope, speed, and gravity.  Some  of the approaches point you to a spot on the fall line and others to spots left or right of the hole.  The Templeton book seems to be the first that looked at what the defunct vector putting, aimpoint, aimpoint express, and tour read are doing.   The book provides similar charts to provide an aim point based on feet from hole, slope, and green speed.  
 

what am I missing? 

[iacas]

26 minutes ago, nosil said:

I’d be interested to know why you say that.   The various green reading approaches are based on the physics associated with slope, speed, and gravity.  Some  of the approaches point you to a spot on the fall line and others to spots left or right of the hole.  The Templeton book seems to be the first that looked at what the defunct vector putting, aimpoint, aimpoint express, and tour read are doing.   The book provides similar charts to provide an aim point based on feet from hole, slope, and green speed.  
 

what am I missing? 

There was a lawsuit and everything. You said “based on,” not “also used physics.”

[nosil]

44 minutes ago, iacas said:

There was a lawsuit and everything. You said “based on,” not “also used physics.”

the lawsuit was about the Vector Putting system which was roughly 2010 timeframe.  The HA Templeton book that I was referencing was written in 1984 which was as far as I know before aimpoint and not part of the lawsuit 

Edited May 21 by nosil

[iacas]

46 minutes ago, nosil said:

the lawsuit was about the Vector Putting system which was roughly 2010 timeframe.  The HA Templeton book that I was referencing was written in 1984 which was as far as I know before aimpoint and not part of the lawsuit 

Not telling me anything I don’t know. 😀 And I’ll stick by what I said above.

 

AimPoint was not “based on” Templeton or Vector.

 

Edited May 21 by iacas

[TonyRo]

I'd guess there's a good possibility it's based off of this paper by Penner: http://www.raypenner.com/golf-putting.pdf 

[JackTheRipper]

re: Same with Aimpoint, you need to determine the up/down and left/right slope and find where that matches with the distance of the putt to get where to aim.  They have a card from an 8 to a 13 stimp. 

Ok, then let me distinguish Full Aimpoint from Aimpoint Express.  What you're saying is that Full Aimpoint used both up/down slope and left/right slope, and I am saying that Aimpoint Express uses only left/right slope.  Using only left/right slope is insufficient information to get the correct answers on the example problems I gave, because the break depends on both the up/down slope and the left/right slope.  It doesn't matter if you hold up fingers or not; it doesn't work because it always gives the same answer for the same left/right slope, regardless of the up/down slope.  Aimpoint Express gives you something that may be sufficient for an approach putt if the slopes are modest and the green has a constant slope, and you combine it with some other technique that you trust for distance control.

Full Aimpoint with the incredibly detailed green map that might be used for TV simulated putt trajectories sounds like it's just another name for "finite element analysis".  The rules of golf don't permit the use of such detailed green maps.

Finite element analysis / Full Aimpoint could be used with the level of green detail that you can get in a greens book, or coarser information than that, and that is evidently what golfers have found to be too difficult to use about Full Aimpoint.  There is of course no time to work with lots of vectors in a competitive round of golf, so Full Aimpoint must have simplified this for golfers in a way that could be used on the course (but even that simplified version was found to be too difficult to use for most golfers).

For a real putt on an undulating green, what information did Full Aimpoint require the golfer to estimate?

Edited May 23 by JackTheRipper

[ChaosTheory]

15 minutes ago, JackTheRipper said:

For a real putt on an undulating green, what information did Full Aimpoint require the golfer to estimate?

Original Aimpoint:  Distance, fall line location (6 o’clock line), location of the ball on the clock face, side slope in percentage, and stimp.  As far as undulations, no simple system can be exact. 
 

AE users:  As they advance, they learn to vary the distance of their aiming hand from their eyes, to adjust for the uphill/downhill that’s in play.  
 

It just works.  Even on side-angled up or down slopes.  It’s genius.  I say it just works within the context that there is a margin of error in any read of any putt outside of a few feet.  I’m not sure if I understand what are your expectations of a putt reading method.  Do you think AE can’t possibly work?  Or that it can’t possibly be as accurate as you would want?

 

From experience, I can assure you that it works.  The second question, you might be right.
 

 

[iacas]

[ChaosTheory]

On 5/20/2025 at 11:02 AM, JackTheRipper said:

I think that a 0.5% side slope will be read as 0% by nearly all amateur golfers (this includes me),

I can read a 0.5% slope with my feet.  I might be off a hair, but good enough.  Same would be true of visual methods.

 

The big skill is learning to read the slope.  The rest is gravy.   I have gotten better and better with that over time.  I’m pretty darn confident up to about 3%.  I don’t encounter many beyond that.  If I do, it’s more of a visual read for me.

 

 I’m not clear if you’ve tried AE a little and didn’t get it, or have not tried it and just don’t see how it can work.  

[SNIPERBBB]

6 minutes ago, ChaosTheory said:

I can read a 0.5% slope with my feet.  I might be off a hair, but good enough.  Same would be true of visual methods.

If you don't have the level that reads percent of slope, you can't do AE. 

 

A .5 slope is a very slight lean .

 

You can read uphill/downhill with AE. I don't know if they've formalized it as far as how to to add/subtract from the side to side reas.