Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to identify the difference of overall putting accuracy and/or distance control among three visual conditions; executing putt focusing vision on the near target(ball), focusing on the far target(hole), and with no vision. In order to satisfy ecological validity, the test was held not on the synthetic putting green in a laboratory, but on the outdoor real putting green. Methods: A putting green with slight slope and minimal break was selected as the test site. The test was held at 8.5m uphill, 13m uphill, 8.5m downhill, and 13m downhill. Twenty participants were asked to putt the ball as close to the target as possible. They were also asked to adhere to their own pre-putt routine having enough time of visual fixation toward the hole to get distance and direction cues. Each Participant putted a total of 12 balls putting 3 balls on each distance-slope experimental condition. Overall putting accuracy score represented actual distance (in meter) from the far target(hole) to the ball rest. Distance control score represented it from the near target(original ball position) to the ball rest. Repeated measure ANOVA was used to verify the raw data. Results: Putt from 8.5m uphill and putt from 13m downhill were revealed to have statistically significant difference only in distance control by visual focus conditions. Putt focusing vision on the ball was the best at 8.5m uphill. Putt focusing vision on the hole was the best at 13m downhill. However, there was no significant difference in overall putting accuracy by visual conditions. Discussion & Conclusion: The results of our study are interesting and valuable from two aspects. First, the presumption is that overall putting accuracy on the real putting green has no significant difference by visual conditions because it is affected by various factors, i.e. memory of distance, slope, break, turf condition, impact quality, body alignment, etc. Second, no consistent evidence was detected that specific visual condition, especially executing putt focusing vision on the hole, was the best for distance control.
