This is a factoid (does anybody use that word anymore?) I have mentioned before, but I want to develop the point today. There is a break-even distance in putting. That is the distance from which a golfer averages 2.0 putts.

From farther away, the player would average more than two putts (three-putt more often that one-putt). From closer in, the average would be less than two putts.

The break-even distance for the average recreational golfer is 15 feet. For touring professionals, the distance is just over twice that, about 32 feet.

What I get from this comparison is to try to push that break-even distance out as far as I can. I will never have a professional golf swing, but there’s no reason I can’t be nearly as good with a putter.

One of the putting drills I do occasionally is to hit ten fifteen-foot putts, without three-putting. Then I do the same from twenty feet, twenty-five feet, and thirty feet. Sometimes I do take three putts, but sometimes, one goes in!

If you try this drill, don’t putt from the same spot over and over. You can’t groove your stroke when you play, so you shouldn’t do it when you practice, at least not in this drill.

Oh, yes. You have to putt out. No fair giving yourself the leave. Sometimes you really blow it and leave your first putt four feet short. If you do it here, you’ll do it on the course, too, so you might as well get comfortable cleaning up your messes.

When you’re finished and have hit your forty putts, test yourself. Put one ball on the green at each distance and putt them out in this order:

Twenty feet,
Thirty-five feet,
Fifteen feet,
Twenty-five feet.

As you do this drill, and start to get good at it, you’ll find yourself thinking deeply about how you putt from distance, looking for how to make long putts accurate and repeatable. That will only make you a better putter.

What I get out of this drill is when I have a long putt, I feel confident I can leave it close to the hole, and sometimes luck will take over.

That takes a lot of stress out of being on the green. Not to mention, it lowers your score.

I was at the range a while ago fooling around on the putting green. I like to try different things out there to see what happens.

In the 2015 British Open, Irish amateur Paul Dunne*, co-leader after three rounds, had this putting grip where both hands were side-by-side.

I thought I’d try that, but I couldn’t make it work. Dunne’s putter had a thick grip, and mine didn’t. There wasn‘t enough of the putter grip in my fingers to hold the club the way he did. But I didn’t want to give up, so I tried an interlocking grip with my left forefinger between my right middle and ring fingers.

That didn’t work. I still didn’t have control of the grip. There’s one more finger to go, I thought, so I put my left index finger between my right index and middle fingers. Bingo.

That brought my hands neatly together and put the grip in my fingers the way I was looking for. I call it the Forefinger Interlock grip. (You heard it here first.)

Notice in the second photo how close together my thumbs are. The left thumb nestles into the pocket of my right palm, and the pad under my right thumb fits right on top of my left thumb. The effect is that you hold the putter entirely in your left hand. The right hand provides stability.

Both thumbs point directly down the shaft.

Notice also how square my hands are. I don’t try to do this, it’s just what happens when I take this grip. That’s where my hands end up.

One of the problems with a standard putting grip, where one hand is lower on the shaft than the other, is that you have two hands that you have to keep working together so one hand, usually the right, doesn’t run off and do its own thing.

That problem disappears with the Forefinger Interlock, because all you have down there is one clump of hands — one thing moving the club, not two. In this way the putter face does not twist out of square. You get a swinging stroke, not a hitting stroke. Your hands are taken out of the stroke entirely.

Results? I’m putting just as well on average days as I did on good days. Because my hands are not involved in the stroke, I’m more relaxed mentally. That gives me more confidence, which leads to better putting.

So. Is the Forefinger Interlock the grip of the future? The grip that will take five strokes off your score? The grip that will take the Tour by storm? Maybe.

But it is definitely something for you to try. Can’t hurt, and it might help. A lot.

* Dunne collapsed in the fourth round, shooting a 78 and finishing in a tie for 30th place. He turned pro later that year, and in 2017 won the British Masters by three strokes over Rory McIlroy.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke, “95% of all putts that come up short don’t go into the hole,” so I don’t have to say it here. Oh, wait… I just said it. Sorry.

If this is you, if you have a bad case of the Shorts, let me give you a cure.

You don’t leave thirty-foot putts short because you don’t judge distance well. If that were the case, you would be leaving them long, short, and in the middle. But they all seem to come up short.

What is likely going on is that you fear the putt going past the hole. You feel safer sneaking up on the hole. Even though you know five feet short is the same as five feet past, you are more comfortable with five feet short. The prospect of going five feet past just gives you the willies.

That’s fine. We don’t need to change that feeling. All I’m going to ask you to do is change the way you stroke the putt.

Even if you have the speed perfectly judged, at the last instant you flinch and pull back, hitting the ball softer than you had planned. What I want you to do is change the point of impact to take out that flinch.

You think now that the putter hits the trailing edge of the ball, the one next to the putter when you address the ball. And that’s true, it does.

What I want you to do instead is look at the leading edge of the ball, the one closest to the hole, and think about hitting that edge. Think that the ball is transparent to the putter and you will hit that edge when you hit the ball.

By doing that, you will hit the ball before you expect to. You won’t flinch because by the time you mind is ready for the “hit” sensation, the ball has already been struck.

The result? The ball gets to the hole and goes in. If it misses it goes maybe a foot or two past. And you didn’t hit it any harder. You might have hit it exactly as you had planned.

Give this a try. You have nothing to lose but four strokes.

I’ll tell you what got me from being an average recreational putter to a very good recreational putter. I practiced sinking putts. That’s what we’re trying to do, so that’s what I practiced.

To be sure, I changed my grip, my stance, and my stroke in order for my mechanics to allow me to hit the putt where I want it to go. You have to have the technical points down or you’re not going to get anywhere.

I also got better at reading greens, though that is an ongoing project.

But beyond that, I trained my mind to see a putt as a ball going into the hole. I did this by sinking three-foot putts all over the place on the practice green. Dozens and dozens of three-footers, all going into the hole. By now it’s hundreds and hundreds.

You might say, it’s pretty easy to sink three-foot putts one after the other, and I would say, You’re right. But …

Because I’ve done it so often, and continue to do it so often, with such frequent success, my subconscious mind doesn’t know anything else about a putt except that it goes in the hole.

Your subconscious mind is not subtle. It is black and white. All it knows is the putt went in the hole or it stayed out. When the ball goes in all the time, the mind comes to believe that’s what the ball is supposed to do, and does not question it.

My teaching pro said the best putter on his college golf team, hands down, practiced mainly one-foot putts. One foot! Somebody said to him, “You’re making a lot of putts, but they’re only one foot long!” The guy replied, “Yes, but my putter doesn’t know that.”

Believe me, sinking putt after putt changes everything. The body starts executing the stroke on that basis, and Voila! Putts in the hole all over the place.

Oh, I know, you have to read the green and get the pace right for the ball to have a chance. But when it comes time to hit the ball, it all comes down to believing in what you’re doing. Having sunk oceans of putts creates that belief.

Don’t just practice putting. Practice sinking putts.

Most of putting is mental. A good stroke is vital, but technique alone is not enough. It’s the little things that make the difference, and those little things are in your mind.

These are notes I have made to myself in the past month around the practice green.

1. Downhill putts can be scary because we fear the hill taking the ball away from the hole if we miss. While that can happen, think of the slope differently. Think of how it will help you feed the ball into the hole. When you line up your putt, think of how you can make the slope your partner in sinking the putt.

1. I do not like my putts to die slowly at the hole. For every one that lipped from the side, two have gotten knocked off their line in the last few inches. I like to hit a putt that rolls in positively into the hole instead of apologizing its way in.

1. When you take a last look you take before you start your putter back, firmly feel the ball going in. This connects your putter with the hole. Then stay out of the way and let this feeling of connection guide your body to making it happen.

1. Make every putt under twenty feet threaten the hole. Never up, never in.

1. Your entire putting process must be based on how to make the ball go in, rather than how to avoid missing. We do the latter more often than we think we do.

1. Don’t let slope intimidate you on short putts. Up to about two feet, forget the slope and knock the ball straight in. From three or four feet, look at the part of the hole where you know the ball will be entering. Give the ball to the green and let the slope do the work for you.

1. However, unless the green slopes severely, there really isn’t any break in an uphill putt of four feet or less. Just ram it in there.

1. Leaving longer uphill putts short? That’s because the slope is pushing the putt back toward you. Just think of pushing back at the hill and the ball will get there.

1. You might think you have to hit long putts (>40 feet) hard. If that makes you add a little extra with your right hand, that will throw off your stroke. Instead, think that the ball is transparent to your putt and that you will first contact the ball on the inside of its leading edge. You will hit the ball smoothly and with much better distance control.

1. If you know the putt is going in, it will. If you think you’re going to miss, you will.

The main reason you have three-putt greens is that you leave your first putt too far from the hole. That has to do with touch; some days you have it, and some days you haven’t a clue.

There is a way to always have it, though. When you move the putter back, your body changes shape. Some muscles contract, other muscles flex, and if you are aware enough, you can feel all this. The trick is to identify the physical sensations that are related to a certain size of backswing, which is the regulator of distance in putting.

I will describe my own sensations as an example. Yours might be different.

I keep my upper arms close to my body, but not touching it, at address. When I take the putter back and feel my right upper arm start to press against my right side, that is the length of backswing for a putt of about 15 feet.

When I take the club back farther than that, and feel a stretching on the right side of my torso, near the hip, that is a backswing for about a 30-foot putt. If I continue to take the putter back beyond that sensation, I will eventually feel the same kind of stretching in my torso on the left side. That is the backswing or a 40-foot putt.

There’s one I left out, because it’s subtle. When I take the putter back past the pressing of my upper right arm, but before I feel the stretch on my right side, there is a point of what feels like ease, like a natural place to stop swinging the club. That backswing hits the ball just over 20 feet.

With these longer putts so calibrated, I never have to guess how hard to hit a putt. I just read my own body.

I developed these indicators on the practice green at my driving range. Most golf courses I play on have greens faster than that one. All I need to do is re-calibrate each sensation on the practice green at the course, before I tee off, and I’m ready.

Relying on your mind to “feel” the length of the stroke leads to inconsistency from round to round. This method gives you something that is tangible and repeatable to gauge its length. The more of that you can put in your golf, the better.

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