Putting is a vital part of a good golf game. The stroke and other fundamentals are only half of the picture. A good putting stroke will not help you make putts if you do not know how to determine where to aim the ball.

Reading a green involves three basic factors. First, there is the slope of the ground between you and the ball - whether you are going uphill, sidehill, downhill or over flat ground. Second, there's the speed of the green - how fast or slow the surface is. Finally there is the grain of the grass, or the direction in which the grass grows.

There is little that can be taught about how you play an uphill or downhill putt other than you hit the ball harder going uphill and easier going downhill. However if you have difficulty hitting these kinds of putts I would suggest using your imagination. On an uphill putt imagine you are putting for a hole actually farther away than the actual hole and vice versa for a downhill putt.

When the ground slopes to the right or left, you should read the break of a putt one time only, by squatting low behind the ball, head erect, and looking directly down the line of the putt. "Reading" the putt twice often produces confusion as the longer you look at a putt the more likely you are to see different things and question your initial read which is most often the correct one.

Once you have determined the direction of the break you must determine the amount of break. What many golfers forget to consider is that the amount of break is determined by the speed of the putt. The harder you hit the putt the faster the ball rolls and the less it will break, all of which are important factors in determining the line of the putt.

Once you have determined how much to allow for any sidehill slope, pick out a spot on the green along that line. This should become your new target, rather than the hole, because to get the ball to roll into the hole you must get it to roll over your spot along its intended line.

Judging the speed of the green is the most important portion of hitting a good putt. This is far from an exact science, but some important factors you should pay particular attention to are the firmness of the green and the grain. When walking onto the green pay attention to how firm the ground feels under your feet. The harder the ground the faster the ball will roll. Determining grain is more difficult, but some clues to keep your eye on are the color of the grass and the direction in which water will drain from the green.

When playing in sunny condition look at how "shiny" the grass appears, if it looks silver then you are putting "downgrain" if it appears dark then you are putting into the grain which will slow the roll of the ball. If the sun does not provide a color difference, then look around the green for low areas or drainage basins. The water has to go somewhere… and that is also the direction the grass will grow, producing grain.

Reading greens is an art unto itself, and like all other areas of this game it requires experience to be good at it. This was a very brief explanation of that art, and I hope it provided some help, but by far the best way to get good at reading greens is to do a lot of it… or in other words PRACTICE.