On one side, we have Lucas Glover, who is not a big AimPoint fan. His thoughts? “Statistically, [AimPoint] hasn’t helped anybody make more putts since its inception on the PGA Tour. Statistics have borne that out. It’s also kind of rude to be up near the hole, stomping around figuring out where the break is in your feet. It needs to be banned. It takes forever.” Pretty stern, right? Then on the other side, we have Collin Morikawa, an ardent AimPoint user.

He believes that the technique has “1,000 percent helped” him. Morikawa acknowledged that it “does take longer if you’re not doing it properly.” “I think there’s a respect issue. I think some players might get a little bit too close to the hole and I get that,” he explained. “I listen to the announcers sometimes during play and they say why would you AimPoint this, this and that. It gets a basis of how I read a putt and how I start my lines. It’s just like reading something from behind the hole or behind the ball, that’s how I’m getting my general read for that,” Morikawa said. Now, coming to the announcers bashing Aim Point, one of them is Jim Nantz.

Nantz, who has been a Masters broadcaster for 35 years, and a fixture in the booth of many PGA Tour events for over 3 decades, has also been a very vocal adversary to the slow but widely used putting technique. “It really drives me crazy when you see their backs to the hole, and they’re trying to feel the break, and they walk another five feet and they do it again. They go through this process [but] where’s the feel in it?”Nantz stated. Given his experience, his words do carry some weight. Now, Aim Point is coming into the limelight again on the PGA Tour, yup, you guessed it, for the wrong reasons only.

During the 8 hole on the final day of the Mexico Open, Aaron Rai had the ball a few meters away from the pin. This was his shot for par. He was one shot away from the leaders Campbell and Potgieter. He needed to make this par to stay within reach. He seemed to take some steps to the hole and stand. Then proceeded to back up and then stand still again, measuring the incline of the route to the pin. He placed the ball and proceeded to look at the hole from where the ball was placed. And he finally hit the putt. The ball teasingly went around the hole before skipping ahead and stopping inches away from what was its destination.

Nantz was unsure if the process behind AimPoint, something that takes quite a large amount of time, is making any difference. Slow play has been a painful aspect of the Tour for some time now. Take Tom Kim’s recent waggling scenarios at Pebble Beach and WM Phoenix Open as instances. Aaron Rai’s case seems to prove his point further. Despite doing everything religiously, the British golfer missed the putt, albeit by mere millimeters. And fans were quick to criticize both the golfer and the method on social media.

Fans join Jim Nantz and call out controversial putting method

The situation prompted one fan to post the video and call out Rai and AimPoint stating on X, “I could miss that putt so much faster.”Another fan also did not mince words, indicating that the method is an exercise in futility.“That’s absolutely ridiculous.”

The time taken by Rai from the start of his technique to when he finally took a shot was nearly two minutes. This also came with walking in and around the hole and creating disturbances for other golfers.“1:50 to hit putt after shot began,” said one fan mercilessly. The rule clearly states, “Under the guidelines for Rule 6-7, a player is permitted 40 seconds to play a stroke. This 40-second time limit includes the first to play from the teeing ground, from the fairway and from around and on the putting green.” Well… Well…

The golfers that use AimPoint include Viktor Hovland, Max Homa, Dustin Johnson, Lydia Ko, Keegan Bradley, Stacy Lewis, and many more. Such big names mean that there are a lot of people who support the use of AimPoint. Many people argue that the method is very helpful and does not take as much time as people think they do. However, fans disagree. “But Aimpoint dude on X says AimPoint guys putt faster with less footprints.”

At the Honda LPGA Thailand, the third LPGA Event of the year, A Lim Kim was seen using the AimPoint method for a putt that was only about 18 inches long. The one-time major winner faced heavy criticism online for taking so much time for such an easy stroke.“That was the most painful thing to watch ever. Along with the LPGA Player doing Aimpoint on a tapin. This is ridiculous.”

Aaron Rai’s second putt was coincidentally in a similar place to where Kim did her AimPoint technique. But the British golfer went ahead with a normal and timely putt to make the bogey for the hole. While both shots were different, one fan hilariously called it out, in all probability reminiscing about the LPGA incident.“The 2 putt was much quicker and coincidentally went in.”

What do you think of the AimPoint method? Are you with Jim Nantz and want to ban AimPoint? Or do you think the controversy surrounding the technique is overblown and out of proportion?