For me now…the answer to that question is a straight uphill 2 footer on a perfect rolling surface 
RR
Personally I’d say hell yes, but on most of the muni’s I play the greens simply aren’t severe or fast enough to encounter too many of those situations. On the other hand I’m playing in an annual 4-ball at the end of the month on a Nicklaus designed track. They’ll have the greens running very fast and they’ll be putting the pins in positions that will bring up the situation you describe several times over 3 days.
robbo
robbo,
Good luck on that Nicklaus course.
Our muni practice putting green is in decent shape out here but neither it nor the greens on the course are ice slick or as treacherous as that Nicklaus course you described. The course greens here are abused as few people feel moved to bother using ball mark tools. That probably sounds familiar. Maybe premium courses have the same problem; I don’t know. At ours there are too many marks to repair beyond our own and one or two more if time permits. So there are usually some putts with unrepaired ball marks that make it more a gamble whatever our skill but they just don’t compare at all in character to what you’ll deal with on that Nicklaus course.
Any skill with the fall line stuff is handy nevertheless.
Good luck.
1teebox
1TB,
As far as a planned miss, I believe that Geoff Mangum advocates keeping your ball’s leave above the baseline which is defined as the straight direct line between your ball and the hole.
I’ve always felt breaking putts are easier to make than straight ones. Uphill of course easier than downhill.
With a breaking putt, you have a variety of options… hard and less break, soft and more break. When I have putted my best,
I had my stroke set up so that my errors could work into this in a positive way. It’s a freeing feeling thinking a less than perfect stroke still has a chance.
I find the idea that I have to read the putt perfectly, line the putt up perfectly, hit it perfectly online, hit is at precisely the right speed…then hope it rolls perfectly… all a bit paralyzing.
Lag,
I’m all ears…For me the hole is 4.25 inches wide, so I just pull it back and let it happen.
In the meantime, just wanted to pass on some other useful tools for Vector Putting…One is another way to quickly judge percent slope at close range. We all know that modern tracks can have more than one slope to them especially if the greens have a couple of tiers to them. So after you have got the 30 inch stride down, practice stepping roughly 3.33 paces. As you can calculate, this is just shy of 100 inches. Next take a couple of measurements on the height of your putter’s head. The face of mine is almost exactly an inch. Then see if there are any other nice spots on your putter that is maybe 3 inches from the ground like where the putter head meets the shaft etc…The last step is to take your best guess if the difference in height from where you stand vs. 3.3 paces away is a height of 1 putter face. If so, the you know you have a 1% slope over that 100 inch run.
A second useful tool are those little exponent type numbers in the corners of the first matrix I posted. The author calls this concept Elasticity…For example, if your putt is above the hole the little number 2 for the 4 pace putt on a 3% slope means that your putt could break up to an additional 2 inches…The minus 2 in the same box means that if you are below the hole your putt could break up to 2 inches less. The 10 inches of break is taken from the 3 or 9 o’clock position on the putt face clock.
Wanted to give this thread a bump. I had a chance to play a round with Mashie recently, and can’t say enough about how impressive his putting and chipping were that cold windy soggy, but enjoyable, day. He was basically ALWAYS either in or around the hole. I remember once, when his lag put cozied up close, but short, I said “nice putt”…but he remarked something about how to him it wasn’t really a good putt because he didn’t have the speed right!!
Anyway…he uses this system, it doesn’t slow him down, and I wish I had his game.
Thanks for the kind words Eagle…It was great to play with a Mod 8 student and enjoyed our time together.
Eagle’s right that I have used Vector putting for the past few years and have never looked back…It gets easier over time.