New study explains the phenomenon behind putts that don’t fall

The sheer shock of a putt going out is enough to distract from the truth. We are so immediately and regrettably forced to accept a bogey while feeling like we deserved a par that most of us never really bother to ask a natural follow-up question:

What on earth just happened?

Turns out, lip launches offer great lessons in arcane physics, as evidenced by a new study published this week in Golf Magazine titled “The Mechanics of Golf Lip Launches.” Royal Society Open Science.

Authors John Hogan and Mate Antali know more about math and physics than anyone swinging Scotty Cameron, but their latest study analyzes the forces exerted by putters as they approach the edge of the hole, hit the rim, and sometimes appear to defy gravity.

In the most basic sense, your putt is simply acted upon by various forces, such as velocity and angular motion, that determine the outcome based on where the ball enters the hole. Hogan and Antali divided the area of ​​a golf hole into segments and found that the expected action of the golf ball at the absolute edge of the hole and the area just below the edge produced two different types of edge exits:

– Rim lip outwards

– Orifice lips protruding

Edge rim breakout is more common because hole rim breakout only occurs when the ball’s center of gravity (its center) is below the ground, i.e. it begins to disappear into the can. Of course, they do happen, just not as frequently, as we’ll boldly explain below.

The easiest to understand part of their study comes in the form of the two charts above. On the left is a colored curve showing velocity (y-axis) versus position relative to the edge of the cup (x-axis). Anything above the blue curve is moving at enough speed that the ball loses contact with the edge of the hole and falls into it. Anything below the blue curve remains in contact with the rim (if ever so briefly) and is prone to lip-out.

For those who haven’t taken advanced calculus, the right is a clearer picture. You have numbered areas 1, 2, 3, and 4. Putts involving conditions in Zone 2 are expected to fall into the cup – possibly because they are not moving too fast, and/or into holes closer to the center of the cup (rather than the edge). But zone 3—faster and closer to the edge—is expected to experience “edge edge protrusion.”

The authors arrived at these results using a spin-free motion, which makes sense considering that most putts roll around the hole. This study evokes esoteric terms like separation, potential energy, dry friction, etc. that may not mean much to you, but are the trickiest part of this diagram: Region 4.

Without spin, zone 4 will almost always result in the ball falling into the cup (mainly because a standard cup is about 10cm deep), but because the ball may spin when it reaches the edge of the cup and start turning and When the drop begins, a putter moving under certain conditions can see the ball drop below the horizon and use that spin to find zero pitch (in this case, downward motion), causing them to spin around the can and pop out of the hole very quickly.

In zone 4, the ball can undergo a “pendulum-like” motion, rolling around the cup wall. It’s rare, but Hogan and Antali call it “death golf”: it’s truly a golfer’s worst nightmare. (To understand it better, watch this video.) Although the name may seem dramatic, it’s simply a nod to the state of steady motion, similar to the famous circus show “Wall of Death,” in which motorcyclists tear up apparently perpendicular to the ground, using wrestling to stay upright in an enclosed environment. (Yes, that means you’ve got a new name for the worst lip-reader you’ve ever seen—just make sure you use it correctly. It doesn’t happen often!)

Now here’s the thing: golf courses don’t exist in a vacuum. These models are determined by standardized shapes on the PDF, rather than by the contours and architecture we find outdoors (with varying grass grains, moisture levels and weather conditions). Any number of these factors can influence the willingness to drop a putt in the hole or shirk responsibility and bounce out. It just comes from nature. Hard plastic cups always have internal cuts in the holes, this is not always Perfectly perpendicular to the green.

Alas, whether or not this study solves the mystery, there’s one bottom line we can all agree on: The more your putter moves in the center of the hole, the better. Because the basket taught us a painful lesson.

To read the entire research report, click here.