CS2 Putting Aid Review

Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by.  Today we’re sharing with you an in-depth review of the CS2 Putting Aid by GreenActive Golf and endorse by Ian Poulter.  Let’s get to it! Pros The CS2 will teach you about your own putting stroke and allow you to repeat it consistently. For short to medium putts, this …

Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by.  Today we’re sharing with you an in-depth review of the CS2 Putting Aid by GreenActive Golf and endorse by Ian Poulter.  Let’s get to it!

Pros

  1. The CS2 will teach you about your own putting stroke and allow you to repeat it consistently. For short to medium putts, this guarantees more success.
  2. If you take the time, you can use the CS2 to learn the relationship between the speed of the putt and the amount it breaks. This will help your green reading and make you more confident on short breaking putts.
  3. Good price, lots of instructional videos, portable and useable indoors and out

Cons:

  1. In my view it is not designed to help judge the speed of lag putts. Sure you can use it to guide your stroke on long putts, so all you have to think about is weight but its strengths are alignment and swing path.
  2. To take advantage of the CS2 on a course, you have to monopolize a hole on the practice green. On a busy day, this will not make your fellow golfers happy so pick your practice times accordingly.
  3. The guide rails are locked in place with magnets, which are easily dislodged and the device includes a lot of little pieces which if you are not careful you will break or lose. These pieces all add to the flexibility of the device but be sure to pick them up and pack them away after your practice session.

The CS2 Putting Aid will make you a better putter. No question. But so will practice. The big question is whether or not you will use the CS2 to practice more effectively.  Most of us do not practice enough on the greens. It doesn’t matter that we know an extra putt per hole adds 18 shots to our score. Hitting long shots on the range, even pitching and chipping to a target are just more interesting than repeatedly missing that five-foot practice putt. Maybe if our putting practice produced positive results, perhaps then we would be willing to commit the time.

The CS2 is made by GreenActive Golf, based in Johannesburg, South Africa but is available at your favorite golf shop or on-line. It retails from about $90 to $100.00, which in the context of green fees, club costs and lessons, is pretty inexpensive. It arrives neatly packed in a green plastic case that is designed to fit into a large side pocket of a golf bag. The CS2 comes with an instructional DVD, and various paper guides to explain how to set it up and very importantly, how to pack it away. After about the fourth time I did not need to refer to the “How to” guides so don’t get frustrated by your first couple of attempts. This is a device that needs some explanation so don’t ignore the instructions. Take the time to watch the DVD and follow along with Ian Baker-Finch and Mike Shannon as they walk you through what the CS2 can do. Yes, it is an infomercial but it is helpful.

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The CS2 bills itself as the most complete putting aid because it addresses the five fundamentals of good putting: Aim, body alignment, consistent path, square face at impact and speed. The CS2 is designed to be used indoors and on the practice green.  I mentioned earlier that putting practice isn’t fun but when you can’t be outside, putting on your carpet while watching the pros play on TV is a great way to tune your game.

How does the CS2 help you with fundamentals? The Aim part is easy, you simply aim the CS2 on a line you think you need to make a putt and you discover quickly how your eyes or green-reading skills can be fooled. Once you have the device aligned, you can set adjustable guide rails to see how consistent your backswing and follow-through are. Herein lies a problem, advanced players know that there are different kinds of putting strokes – straight back and through vs an arc (inside the target line on the backswing, on target at impact and then back inside the target line) being the most common. The CS2 allows you to groove your stroke no matter how it curves but you need to know what makes sense for you, what you natural tendencies are and the type of putter you are using. If this is Greek to you, check out the numerous YouTube videos on putting strokes, you will be an expert in no time. The guiderails can be far apart or quite tight to your putter, if you are consistently hitting the guiderails on your backswing you know you do not have them set properly for your swing or like me, you discover your backswing is a wee bit inconsistent.

In my view, one of the best assets of the CS2 is that I know I am grooving a proper stroke when I use it. It gives me the incentive to keep practicing because I know I am learning about my particular stroke and what I need to do to reduce the errors that make short putts for birdie such a challenge.

Having your putter face square to the target line seems simple enough until the alignment guides on the CS2 showed me what that really looks like. I realized that my own set-up was never perfectly square to the target line. My slight forward press before starting my stroke made this misalignment worse. The CS2 reinforces good alignment and allows you to train your eyes to recognize what square looks like.

YouTube video

As the instructional material shows you or you can watch Ian Poulter present on YouTube, the CS2 can be minimized to a set of tees in the ground once all the alignment guides, and rails are removed. It is much harder to make a consistent stroke without the reinforcement of the lines on the device. Of course, this is what real putting is like.

In summary, we all know that the best way to cut strokes from our game is to become a better putter and we also all know this is what really distinguishes the best from the rest on the PGA tour. For the cost of a lesson the CS2 will give you years of follow up reinforcement on your putting stroke and alignment. If you want a better score, I say this is a good investment.