Aimpoint: savior to tour pros or intrusive putting process?

Many folks are puzzled by watching tour golfers shuffling both feet along their putt line and squinting while holding up one or more fingers. They are looking at a growing trend in reading the greens called “AimPoint.”

AimPoint is a structured green-reading system they say helps golfers determine the correct aim point for their putt by feeling the slope with their feet and using fingers to gauge the break. Mark Sweeney, a former Boeing engineer and professional golfer, is credited with developing the initial software for the early version of AimPoint.

Starting in 2003, using green maps and physics models, Sweeney’s system was also used by television broadcasting people to display the probable line of putts during pro tournaments for viewer audiences. The early AimPoint pie charts and map books were too technical and complicated for the public’s use, so in 2014 Sweeney simplified the process, calling it AimPoint Express, which is the predominant version used today.

AimPoint is based on three principles: slope (a putt’s break) is more important than speed, gravity dictates ball movement and feel with feet and toes enhances accuracy. The basic process involves straddling your ball and putt lines so that you feel the slope with your feet while estimating the slope as a percentage from 1% to 5%.

Using your fingers to find the aiming point, align your ball to start on the break line you have diagnosed. That is a simplified description. The reality is that it requires considerable instruction, coaching, practice, and experience on the golf course to become proficient in using AimPoint Express. Expensive teaching clinics are offered around the country.

Among the pro tour golfers that use AimPoint: Adam Scott, Keegan Bradley, Justin Rose, Lydia Ko, Suzanne Peterson, Colin Morikawa, Sam Burns, Victor Hovland, Padraig Harrington, Max Homa, Brook Henderson and Jennifer Kupcho. Major college golf programs are now using AimPoint.

Despite its growing popularity, AimPoint is, however, highly controversial. Among the severest critics of AimPoint is Brandel Chamblee, one of the main analysts of the Golf Channel. Posting on X in December 2025, Chamblee had this to say: “On the short list of things that are tough to stomach in golf, AimPoint is near the top of that list. AimPoint may work, although it’s hard to quantify, but personally I think it interrupts the flow of walking, looking and feel … and shifts the narrative of skill. Great putting has been about mystery, genius and touch … imagination, intuition and feel. AimPoint ‘aims’ to turn green reading into a science when putting has historically been about interpretive art and empties the intuitive of putting and fills it up with instruction.”

Known as the “voice” of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters (also CBS Golf), Jim Nantz has said that seeing golfers with their backs towards the hole, trying to feel the break, drives him crazy. When he sees pros starting their finger routines, he calls the process “maniacal.”

Lucas Glover stated, “Statistically, AimPoint hasn’t helped anybody make more putts” (golf.com 07-26-06).

Alex Miceli, writing for www.si.com (04-03-2023), noted that kids competing in the finals of the Drive, Chip and Putt competition at Augusta National during Masters week were using AimPoint.

“Having learned to putt by walking along their line and the line of other players, all in hope they will make a putt that otherwise might not go in is, in a word, unconscionable,” Miceli said.

I don’t use AimPoint. I side with the detractors of AimPoint. I think the ruling bodies of the sport should ban AimPoint (and anything similar) for the same reasons they banned anchored-style putting methods and green-reading books, reasoning that the process is not “golf-like.” Moreover, it adds thousands of footprints on putting greens and slows the already slow game down.