When players start missing short putts, they immediately blame their stroke when, in fact, the fault may be allowing for too much break. A putt of three feet or less usually doesn't have enough time to break more than a couple of inches before reaching the hole. If most of your short putts are sliding by on the high side of the cup -- indicating that they haven't had time to break -- then this is likely your problem. Therefore, don't aim short putts anywhere outside the edges of the cup.

A good idea is to simplify things by breaking the cup down into five parts -- left edge, left center, center, right center and right edge -- giving you five possible places to aim, all within the cup.

There are two situations when you'll have to ignore the preceding advice and aim outside the hole:

1. Very sharp slope on an extremely fast green

2. Sharp slope on Bermuda grass, but only when the grain and slope run in the same direction.