GoSportsPure Putt Challenge Putting Cups 3 Pack - Practice Putting Indoors & Outdoors

By far the best and most fun putting cups I have used. My use case was not so much to have a training aid, but rather something to take a putting break during my work from home days. If you are looking for just a putting trainer, the SKLZ Golf Putting Cup Accuracy Trainer or the PuttOut Pressure Trainer would be better options as they have micro target areas to help improve your accuracy. I am also using a GoSports "The Classic" Golf Putter.Pros: Cleverly designed and inexpensive, with the green color, inside design that emulate actual holes, and the adorable flags, which gives me the "putting on the green" feeling without actually using a putting mat. They come packaged with inserts to help keep their shape if you need to store them. They hold/deny real golf balls depending on the putting accuracy and power, so no need to use foam balls. I set them up as a putting range and use the numbered flags as point values depending on their distance away, to see how many points I can rack up from a dozen putts in a single go without resetting any balls until I have putted all 12. This makes for some fun ricochets and adds some strategy. I think 3 cups is just the right amount for a mini course rather than a 9-hole set, but GoSports also has that option.Cons: My only quibble is given they are so light, they slide ever so slightly on my carpet after a few rounds and need a little adjustment from time to time. I suspect they slide less on hardwood floors.

I just got these in the mail today, and put one up on either end of my living room, pulled out my putter, and started firing away.I had a set of the other ones, which lay flat, and look sort of like a green flower opened up on the ground.But the little "petals," or leaves, sometimes deflected a close putt, and you'd have to chalk it up as a miss, even though on a real hole it would have gone in.These might do the same thing, but maybe not as much.But these seem to flatten out well enough when the ball rolls over it, so that it won't deflect too many away from going in.I think I've got the idea now of how to do it, and did sink the last four in a row, so I feel like I've graduated, and have a better idea of what I'm doing.What's kind of funny is actually following through, and performing, or executing, the steps we come up with in our mind to make it happen. But it's just very easy to resort back to the old ways, or not do the new things we dream up, which when we do, actually work.I can't wait until spring so I can get out on the course and apply my new techniques and reap the rewards.I was already at least a decent putter, but just like all other aspects of our game, it's hard to explain, even to yourself, everything you do to hit it the way you want to, even when we can do it.Most people, when it comes to any aspect of the golf swing, from hitting the driver to any kind of fairway iron, even to putting - have no idea of precisely what they are doing, and couldn't explain any of it to you - they just do it.And that's not a put-down: It's just a fact. Maybe one person in a thousand can describe in detail exactly what he does in his swing.I know I couldn't. I never tried to explain what I was doing, because I never felt any need to.And therein lies the heart of the problem: The problem is, if you can't describe what you do, your subconscious mind really doesn't know precisely what you do, and you could very easily forget it - if you believe that or not.Almost everything we do, especially in the golf swing, is instinctive. Instinct is a wonderful thing, but it can abandon us at any time, and if we don't have what we want to do engraved on our subconscious mind, we're lost, and don't have a clue.And so you need to understand the mechanics of what you're doing, even just for yourself.However, it's not easy to do. You must dissect, or investigate, or try to deconstruct your swing, so that you can explain precisely what your arms, for example, are doing, and the sequence of movement, and actually describe what you physically do in your swing.Most people couldn't do this in a million years - and I was one of them.Every part of our body is doing something, every time we do anything, and to try to figure out exactly what we do is the hardest part of understanding our golf swing.But even if we don't get it all precisely right, just a general explanation of what we do should be enough for our mind to fill in the blanks to get the job done.You can buy a book, and there are thousands of them out there about the golf swing, but the best and most effective method is just trial and error. Try this, and try that, to see what effect it has on the ball, until you find something that makes the ball do what you want it to do.But the big caveat is to explain to yourself exactly what you did, and what that caused the ball to do. And do it on every movement you try, as soon as you observe what effect it has on the ball.The golf swing is sort of like backing up a semi: You do things the reverse of what you might think.If you play pool, you have a better idea of putting "English" on the ball, because the same thing happens in golf as in pool.If it involves a ball, it's all about which direction to make the ball spin.Now, of course, we can't reverse the spin on the ball in mid-flight; but what we can do is control the tilt of the axis, and this can have the net effect of reversing the spin. If we "flip" the axis, we can change the spin from backward (backspin) to forward, or overspin.This means many more yards on the ground, or a longer total yardage on our shot.The ball always spins: The big question is, "Which way is it spinning?"Even if we had a miniature space craft that would allow us to ride beside the ball as it sails through the air, we wouldn't be able to determine which way the ball was spinning.But we can easily do it, even from the ground, just by observing which way it turns, or curves, in the air.And we control this, in the milli-second's time that the clubface makes contact with the ball.That's why your swing is so important: Your swing plane, inside-outside, follow-through - all of this controls what the ball does. And it all happens in a fraction of a second, as you hit the ball to send it into the air.All we can do is try to control the tilt on the ball, and thus, the direction of the spin.There are things we can do, when we learn how to do them, which result in magical results on the course.It's called "managing your subconscious mind," and you could liken it to a little brother, whom you love, but who occasionally needs a little prompting to make him do what he should do.That's where learning precisely what you do in your swing comes in. You can make certain things happen, but you have to learn how to do it.It's not enough just to do something until you have mastered it, you must also remember it, and the only way to do that is to talk to yourself.That's right - just talk to yourself, as if you were tutoring another person, and explaining to him what you have learned, as you learn it, even though you are actually learning it yourself through trial and error.Have you ever forgotten something, and weren't able to remember precisely what you did? That's because you did it, but you didn't record it in your conscious mind, or spell it out, step-by-step, and your subconscious mind never knew about it, and consequently, you don't remember it.You only remember something if it was recorded in your subconscious mind. And the subconscious mind learns everything from the conscious mind. If the conscious mind was not aware, or was never informed, of something you did, you can't expect your subconscious mind to know about it.Even when we try many different things to learn how to do something, and finally do succeed in finding something that works, if we never actually go through a thought process of what it was that we did, in the physical mechanics of it all, our conscious mind was never made aware of it, because we did it silently - behind the back of our conscious mind, so to speak.If we could watch ourselves, we wouldn't have any problem, because our subconscious mind would remember everything we saw. But if we just do something, and our conscious mind is not informed - either visually or verbally (even just through thought) it will not know what you did.And so, as you learn something, just silently think what each movement you did was, by mentally talking your way through it. (I took it back only about waist high, and kept my head steady, and pulled through with my left arm, and powered through with my right arm, while I rolled my hands to the left, with the face being perfectly squared to the ball at impact, and finished with my hands high in the air, and came around behind my head, etc. etc. etc.)Sounds crazy, but that's the only way I know to explain what actually happened to me.I never thought of it as being important to be able to explain what you do in the golf swing, until I launched into a big effort to teach myself how to lose my slice, when I didn't know anything whatsoever about the swing.I applied myself to it for many months, and did finally achieve some success, not only in losing my slice, but even learning to hit a draw.But I never bothered to try to remember the particular mechanics of any of it. It never even occurred to me to imagine that I wouldn't remember everything I did to learn to hit a draw; I just assumed that I would.Much to my chagrin I found that much later, I had actually forgotten almost all of the things I had so painstakingly taught myself to do, and this came as a complete surprise to me.I just blithely assumed that when you went to all the trouble of trying to figure something out, and went through months of trial and error, that you had surely learned whatever you had ended up accomplishing, and that you would always remember it, but I found out differently.Don't be surprised if you suddenly get an idea, and try something, just out of instinct, and it works out just like you hoped it would, but you later can't remember exactly what you did.You didn't bother to verbalize it in your mind, or spell out everything you did, so that your conscious mind heard it - which means that it was not available for your subconscious mind to remember, and you promptly forgot it.Your subconscious mind is a marvelous thing, and will remember everything, but it only learns from your conscious mind.Consequently I found, to my total astonishment, that you must actually teach your subconscious mind, like teaching a child, what you want it to know, and that it will not just automatically learn and store away in its memory, everything we do.Hence, we must actually have a dialog in our head, of talking about the things we are doing, such as a precise description of what we do, so that your subconscious mind hears it, and therefore will remember it.If you just do something and expect your subconscious mind to always remember it, you may be disappointed.I was totally surprised to learn this, but it's true.That puzzled me, but then I thought that we do so many different things, as we try this and try that, that we can't really expect our subconscious mind to decide what's worth retaining, when the vast majority of what we tried didn't work.I've had to learn to actually almost talk to myself, to explain the mechanics of what I'm doing, so that I can remember them and do them all the time, because if you don't, you will not remember, and will not be able to do it.There is actually nothing wrong with doing this, and in fact, it serves to reinforce what you are thinking, as you actually spell it out, and describe, step by step, what you are doing. It sort of confirms to yourself, the wisdom of the things you are thinking, and almost as proving to yourself that they are valid.At least when you can talk your way through it, you know what to do, and it's just a matter of reminding yourself to always do it.I just thought of a method, which might work: Just imagine that you are working with a buddy, or partner, on trying to learn something new, and you want to help each other, and contribute any thoughts you might come up with to solving the problem, and he also does the same thing.If you just discuss any ideas you come up with, between the two of you, your subconscious mind will remember it.Never mind that there was only one person - yourself - in the conversation. Just the fact that you have a conversation at all, where you discuss that you did this, and then this, and then that, will suffice for your subconscious mind to remember it.It's probably not a good idea, though, to let other people hear you talking to yourself. They might not understand.In fact, I've found that even discussing this whole subject tends to fall on disbelieving ears, which tells me that most people never set out to solve anything for themselves. If they did, they'd find out that what I'm saying is true.The biggest problem is just forcing yourself to think through everything you are doing, and actually verbalize it - if not out loud, at least in your mind, in a structured sentence, as if explaining to someone what you do. That's a problem, because we usually just do it, and don't even try to think about the mechanics of what we do.Just envision being out on the course, and coming upon a hole that presents a bit of a problem, and you have to stop and think about precisely what you want to do.Look at it this way: Anything we do, we've done before, and we know what happens when we do A, as well as what happens when we do B. But if we only rely on "feel," or "instinct," we do something in the moment, but may not remember exactly what we did.That's precisely what I did in learning to lose my slice, and I subsequently forgot every bit of it.It would be extremely comforting to have a trusted caddy or swing coach standing alongside you to figure out the shot you want to hit, and that's how verbalizing (either silently, or out loud) exactly what you're trying to do, and nailing down precisely your strategy for this particular shot, can help you immensely.It may not always work, but then many things can intervene, so that whatever we do could work, if everything goes off just right.The important thing is that we did try to develop a plan, and attempted to execute what we decided, but we first must know what we want to do, and how that will affect what the ball subsequently does.What is amazing to me is observing the actual results, of hitting the top half of the ball, for example, (when you're putting) to introduce forward roll - which it does - and then see it roll much further than when you forget to do it.Plus, that's what creates momentum, and that also makes the ball track straight, and eliminates the break, and that equates to going straight into the hole.The only thing that remains is to observe, on some real greens, which do actually break, to see how much you can rely on momentum to negate the break, or I should say, how much of it it will negate.The key thing to remember - which I certainly didn't know, but which I finally found out through my own trial and error - is that forward momentum trumps the break. This may be one of the most important things to ever learn about the game of golf, because every hole involves putting, and every putt is a stroke.The other thing that is extremely important to know is that hitting the ball hard is not what creates momentum.You can have momentum on the ball, no matter how slowly it is rolling.It is Following Through, which creates momentum. Just continue the stroke, toward the hole, even after you have made contact with the ball, and you have created momentum.What we have become so accustomed to doing, is to deliberately confuse the issue, of trying to decide how hard to hit the ball, and how wide, or high, to play it, and how hard to hit it so that as it runs out of gas, it will start to break, and, hopefully, die in the hole.We're trying to manage momentum, without really understanding what it does, and how to use it to our advantage.By hitting the ball forcefully toward the hole, and most especially, by Following Through, we will create momentum, and enable ourselves to just line up and putt directly at the hole, and expect it to go in.But forcefully doesn't mean hard. We want to hit it just hard enough to reach the hole, and go maybe six inches past the hole, in case we miss.That's always the big bugaboo about putting: If we could sight our putts like sighting down a rifle barrel, we would be a lot more accurate.All the more reason to set ourselves up so that our swing is directed straight at the hole. Try a few practice swings, and adjust your stance - not your swing - so that your swing is lined up toward the hole.The only decision should be how hard to hit it so that we won't overpower the hole, or hit it too hard so that we hit the back of the cup and pop up, or ring the cup and spin out, flipping the ball three or four feet away.But my suspicion is that it's going to make a dramatic difference in the number of putts I make, compared to trying to finesse the ball into the hole, and trying to figure out how much it will break, and very often just barely missing.Like they say, "Close, but no cigar!"Just remember, "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."When you think about it, putting is very difficult, to try to figure out how much the ball will break, and then how hard to hit it so that it dies in the hole.Very often, like over and over, we just miss, and think about how tough putting is.But did you ever think that we may be deliberately making it more difficult than it needs to be?As I have thought about it, momentum is the key. When we hit straight at the hole, with enough speed to get the ball there, we are eliminating the break, and the ball should go in.But when we hit the ball just hard enough to almost get there, but play it high so that it will come down and die in the hole, we are counting on the lack of momentum. The lack of momentum means that there is no forward force having any effect on the ball, and we are just hoping we have played enough break, to dive toward the hole at the precise time it should.This is risky business, and leads to many putts that look good, but just barely miss.Good Luck!It does work, sometimes, and when it does, we look like a genius.Almost every putt has some break in it, and I have always - all my golfing life - played the break, and considered myself fairly adept at doing so.In fact, I must confess that I have routinely putted the ball with the break in mind, and never really thought much about just shooting straight toward the hole, and counting on momentum keep it going straight.I knew that's what they advised on short putts, but I couldn't imagine it would also apply on long putts.And it doesn't, really. On a very long putt, sometimes it's impossible to read which way the ball is going to break, and when we hit straight for the hole, and it breaks left - big time - we feel like a fool, because we didn't see any break at all.That's why the pros spend so much time trying to read the green, and walking around from all sides, to try to see which way the break is.One thing that does help is using the putter for a pendulum read: It does help, if the green slopes off to the side, and we don't see it at all.But what about if we just confidently hit the ball straight toward the hole, and saw it go straight in? Slam dunk, without any hesitation!It's strictly a judgement call. My gut feeling is that beyond six or eight feet, we're not going to be able to have enough momentum to carry the ball straight, if there is a significant break.Probably the biggest problem for the average golfer is that we don't study the break - especially on a long putt - and really put our mind to figuring out the break.Adopting the mind-set of always just lining up and shooting straight at the hole would certainly make the game a lot easier, and simplify what has always been the most difficult part of it; our putting. It will be interesting to start out the year with this technique in mind, and see how it works out.I do have a suspicion that it will work better than what I have been doing - just common sense seems to indicate that.That's the plan, and the goal, but it will take confidence, and determination, to make it happen.Of course, the big no-no in putting is leaving the ball short. It won't go in the hole if you don't get it there!There is, however, one situation which will call for all the past experience we can muster, to try to get the ball in the hole, and that is the pure side-hill putt.This is one time when we definitely need to figure the break, and how hard to hit it, because gravity is too strong on a side-hill put to enable us to rely on momentum. Gravity will pull it down, and we have to go back in our memory to try to figure out how high to hit it, and how hard to hit it, and exactly how to work it out.This is one time when, if you make it, you can take your hat off and take a bow.But, bottom line - it takes guts to gun straight for the hole, when you see a break between you and the hole.Only time and experience will tell how successful you will be in counting on momentum to carry you straight to the hole.

These work better than the metal versions I've tried in the past. These will trap the ball if putting speed is not too high.

Worked out really well. The material is so pliable it’s almost like it’s not even there. Great for indoor putting practice!

Due to COVID we had an Intex pool in our back yard this summer and when we put it away this fall... there was a giant 12" circle of dead nothing in the back yard. We had a crazy idea to buy some astroturf, cut it in a circle to match the dead spot and make a mini putt-putt course out of it. We didn't want to put an actual HOLE in the ground or in the Astroturf so I found these as a good price. We tested them out side which was fun for my little ones and then move them around outside. They are light very flexible and unless you hit the ball really hard they will say in there. But that happens in real putt putt too right?!? Great uy that exceeded our expectations.

Needs to be played on a flat surface not real grass.

I purchased it to use in my home office. It's soft to touch silicon and durable. It easily traps up to 3 foam golf balls each. The green color with the little flag in red is easily visible on my tan carpet.

These work really well. The packaging is great, as there is a card board insert that keeps the shape. Nice to throw them down and putt back and forth. Sure some fast and slow putts that would have gone onto a real hole don't end up in the cup but you realize that. However if you hit putts that would maybe go by the hole about a foot, on the course, they will stay in the cup. Great for some fun when getting together with friends and family too.