Reading a green or more accurately reading your putt.

Putting is the smallest and the biggest part of golf. How can that be? A one inch putt counts the same as a 300 yard drive. On the other hand, if you hit all the greens in regulation and two putt every green, what percentage of your shots will be taken on a green? You're right, 50%.

Thus it is both the biggest and the smallest part of golf.

Our egos yell that we must hit the drive long, really long. And without doubt, there is some satisfaction in hitting a long drive and some advantage. And how many drives do you hit during a round of golf? Right, only about 14.

I don't want to dwell on the mechanics of putting but on something rather completely unmechanical; how to read a green or actually how to read a putt.

At one point in the history of golf, golfers actually walked when they played the game. Golf is a walking game. It gives one much-needed time between shots, a little light exercise, an opportunity to see the golf course and the game from a walker's perspective.

One of the advantages of walking is to see the green from the front. All its undulations and subtleties are visible as you walk to the green from the fairway. Try it sometime! You'll find the view of the front of the green as you're walking to it, is quite different than the view from the cart and the cart path.

Knowing the ups and downs of the green from a distance is valuable information. It gives you a general sense of the green and what you are dealing with.

There are two important parts to putting: line and speed. Most golfers, especially ones on TV, seem to spend all of their time on the line. That is trying to get a the line just exactly right. That's a big mistake!

The reality is, the line of a putt is dictated 100% by the speed of the putt. You can make any putt straight, if you will hit it hard enough. That's not necessarily the way to make lots of putts, but it is a very true statement.

The point I'm trying to make is that the speed is the most important part of putting and dictates the line. You can get a pretty good line on a putt in about a second. Getting the right speed, takes a bit longer. And with the correct speed you will make many putts.

The question really is, how hard do you hit a putt? We don't get a practice putt to figure out how hard to hit our real putt. That means we must properly calculate the speed before we putt the first time.

You must know the speed, feel the speed and experience the speed before you putt. Is the putt uphill or downhill? That's usually quite easy to determine. But how fast is the grass?

You spent some time on the practice putting green before you went to play. You should have some idea of the speed of the greens. The putting green will be faster than most of the greens on the golf course because it gets such high traffic. Consequently, you should hit uphill putts on the practice green before you play.

But all greens and all putts are a little bit different. It's your job to study the grass and know if it is fast or slow. If it's long, wet and fuzzy, it will be slow. If it's short, dry and sparse it will be fast. When I say wet and dry, I don't mean water outside of the grass blades. I'm talking about the moisture inside the grass blades

Only experience will tell you the speed of the grass. Practice putting extra putts on the golf course if time permits. That will help you gain the awareness you need. What I'm telling you is that you need to be aware of the speed of the grass. With awareness comes learning and expertise.

I was playing with Dave Hill and Ray Floyd in a tournament in Houston, Texas. That area had had too much rain, and then too much very hot and very humid weather. Short grass does not like that combination. The greens were not totally dead but there was a crunching sound, as we stepped on whatever was on the greens.

All three of us had hit our shots on a par 3 to the left and slightly above of the hole. I was the farthest away by about a foot. It was a 15 foot putt with a left to right break and all downhill. I studied that putt and studied that putt, trying to figure a way to keep the ball within about 10 feet of the hole. I saw Dave and Ray watching me intently.

I very carefully putted my ball. It ended up about 8 feet below the hole. Nice putt! After David and Ray putted, my ball was the closest one to the hole! We all did tell the putt was extremely fast, but there was nothing we could do to keep the ball from going considerably past the hole.

Now the rest of the story - we all made threes. The moral of the story: try to always have your second putt be uphill, and then make it.