[Fourputt]

Never. You can spend 5 minutes doing whatever and really irritate the people you play with, but in the end you still have to hit the putt, and success comes from feel and practice. The only way to get a feel for distance is to simply hit putt after putt in every kind of situation until "feeling" the distance in your mind is as natural as touching your nose with your eyes closed.

I will sometimes look at a putt from the side, but I usually just look from behind, get the line in my mind, setup to the ball, and then I look at the hole just once to get that final "feel" for the length of the putt, and then I stroke it.

I'm a pretty good long putter, meaning that I rarely 3-putt, and I've never paced off a putt in my life.