This is the page the card in your box points to. Everything below is how to actually use what you own, in the order that matters. If you own the Truth Prepare, skip the section marked Trainer only — those parts are not in your box.
1. Level it first. This is the step everybody skips.
What has to be level is not the green. It is the short stretch of ground between the ball and the Truth Gates. You need roughly fifteen inches of flat. Once the ball is past the Gates, the slope does not matter any more.
That is why you do not need a practice green at all. A hallway, a carpet, a dorm room, an apartment floor, or the corner of a practice green nobody is using will all work.
On the Trainer: decide which bridge you are putting through and watch only that bridge's level. Slide the Ball Pad to the middle. With the device flat on the ground, move it around until the air bubble sits dead centre between the marks. Then slide the device forward so the Ball Pad is sitting on the flat spot you just found, and check the bubble again. If it has moved, start again.
On the Prepare: exactly the same, with one bridge instead of two.
It is fiddly. Our own instruction booklet admits it is fiddly. It is also the difference between feedback you can trust and feedback that lies to you, so it is worth the two minutes.
2. The Truth Gates
The job is simple: putt the ball through the Gates without touching either one. That is your start line, measured, with no opinion involved.
Important, and it is the thing people get wrong first. The Gates do not drop in from the top. They go in and come out from underneath the bridge. To put one in, take hold of the pointed end, push it up through a slot, twist it slightly, then pull it down into the resting slot. To take one out, push up, release it from the slot, twist, and pull it down through.
You have two sets, and they are how you change the difficulty:
- Yellow Gates are thinner. They also glow in the dark.
- Red Fat Gates are thicker, so the window is wider and the putt is easier.
3. Aim for about seven or eight out of ten
This is the single most useful thing on this page, and it applies to every setup you will ever build.
Work at a difficulty where you are succeeding roughly seventy to eighty percent of the time. Below that, you get frustrated and you lose confidence, and frustration teaches nothing. Above that, you are not being challenged and the skill stops growing. Research on athletic performance keeps landing in the same place: learning and transfer are at their best in that window.
So if you are making nine or ten out of ten, narrow the Gates or slide the Ball Pad further back. If you are making four, widen them or move the ball closer. You are hunting for the setup where you miss two or three.
4. The Ball Pad
The Ball Pad is optional, but it is useful, and it does two jobs.
It makes your aim a fact instead of a feeling. One or two degrees of open or closed is invisible to the human eye, and from ten feet one or two degrees is the whole miss. Set the ball in the Pad and square the putter against the back edge of it, and your aim is the same every single time.
It tells you when you are bottoming out early. The Pad is 1/32 of an inch thick, which is thin enough to work as a sensor. If your putter is clipping it on the way through, you are reaching the low point of your stroke before the ball instead of at it. Most golfers do this sometimes and almost none of them know, because nothing on a green would ever tell them.
Position changes difficulty. The further back from the Gates the Ball Pad sits, the harder the putt.
On the Prepare the Pad slides back about seven inches, and when it is fully extended it clicks into place with a button on each rail popping into the holes. On the Trainer it arrives installed; to put it back on, line it up over the rails and press one side down and then the other, then check that it slides smoothly. To take it off, gently unclip one side and then the other.
You can also practise with the Pad removed, setting up to the ball the way you would in a round. Be aware that the margin between the Gates is millimetres, so a ball sitting a millimetre off centre will give you feedback that is not true.
5. The Ghost Hole, and why it beats a real hole
You have two Ghost Holes, and they are the exact dimensions of a golf hole. They are in both boxes.
The rule they teach: as a rule of thumb your pace should be carrying the ball about a foot past the hole.
Here is the part that surprises people. It is impossible to judge your pace against a real cut hole, because the moment the ball drops in, the information stops. The Ghost Hole lets you watch the ball cross the hole and see where it finally came to rest. That is the whole point.
How to set your target properly. Hit a couple of putts through the device that do not touch the Gates and let them run out to the length you want. You will see the line and you will see whether it breaks. Now put the Ghost Hole where those putts would have finished. That is your target, and you built it.
We would strongly discourage setting the device up against a real cut hole. You lose the pace feedback entirely, and you are stuck practising wherever the green is not busy instead of wherever you want.
6. Trainer only: Eye-Line Strings, Path Perfectors and Stroke Guides
These three components ship with the PUR Truth Trainer. They are not in the Truth Prepare box. If you own the Prepare, nothing in this section applies to you.
Eye-Line Strings
White is the top string. Blue is the bottom string. Both are removable and can change slots.
- Eyes directly over the ball. Put both strings in the middle slot, white on top. When you can see only the white string and the blue has disappeared underneath it, your eyes are exactly over the ball.
- Eyes over the inside edge. Move both strings to the nearest slot, white on top again, and look for the same thing.
- Stroke height. Raise or lower the blue string to get feedback on how high your backswing and follow-through are travelling.
- Steeper or shallower. Slant the strings to work on a steeper backswing with a shallow follow-through, or the reverse.
The closer the two strings sit to each other, the less precise the eye-placement feedback becomes. On a windy day, if they start to chatter, grab one end and pull them tighter.
Path Perfectors
The goal is a square clubface at impact, delivered the same way every time. There are four ways to use them.
- One Perfector. Put it on the rail opposite the side you are standing on, so the club head cannot travel outside your path line. Almost every putting philosophy agrees on this one.
- Two Perfectors, straight back and straight through. Attach both with the grey sides facing in, between the aluminum rails. There are two notches, giving you a wide or a narrow setting depending on how much clearance you want around the putter head.
- An arc'd stroke. Position them with the blue arc guides between the rails. Tighten or loosen the screw heads to build whatever arc you want. Use one closest to your feet, or add a second with a matching reverse arc on the opposite rail.
- On its own. Put a single Perfector on the green, hold it down with two tees, and work on your arc without the rest of the Trainer.
Stroke Guides
These refine the length of your stroke. Drop the two blue Guides into any hole on the Path Perfectors, and change the gap between them by sliding the Perfectors up and down the rails. Without the Perfectors, push the Guides straight into the grass along the edges of the aluminum rails.
Flip the Stroke Guides over and they become foot markers, so your stance is in the same place every session.
7. Packing it back up
Trainer. Take off any accessories you added. Gates and the Ball Pad can stay on. Push the bridges in and down until they are flat against the rails. Lift the Trainer until the rails are vertical with the narrow rails down, press the buttons on the bottom of each rail at the same time, and gently push the rails together until fully compressed. One warning: make sure the Ball Pad is not resting on the black screws of the Path Perfectors.
Prepare. If the Ball Pad is fully extended, turn the Prepare over, press the buttons on the bottom of each rail at the same time, and gently push the rails together until fully compressed.
Setting the Trainer up again. When you pull the bridges apart to slide the rails out, turn the device over and confirm the buttons have popped securely into the holes.
8. What is in each box
PUR Truth Trainer
- 2 Bridges, collapsible, each with a built-in Level
- 2 Aluminum Rails, collapsible
- 2 PUR Truth Ball Pads, one installed and one spare
- 2 PUR Truth Eye-Line Strings, white on top and blue on the bottom
- 4 PUR Truth Gates, yellow, thinner, glow in the dark
- 4 PUR Truth Fat Gates, red, thicker
- 2 PUR Truth Ghost Holes, glow in the dark
- 4 PUR Truth Stroke Guides, blue
- 2 PUR Truth Path Perfectors
PUR Truth Prepare
- 1 Bridge, collapsible, with a built-in Level
- 2 Aluminum Rails
- 1 Adjustable PUR Truth Ball Pad, glows in the dark
- 3 PUR Truth Gates, yellow, thinner, glow in the dark
- 3 PUR Truth Fat Gates, red, thicker
- 2 PUR Truth Ghost Holes, glow in the dark
Both boxes contain small parts and are not suitable for children under five.
Still stuck?
Email me directly at david@pur.golf and tell me which part is giving you trouble. I answer these myself.
David Swan, Founder, PUR Golf