About five years ago, I had a streak of 48 consecutive holes without a three-putt green. Now unfortunately, I like to play around with golf and go astray from what works. That’s why I write down what I’m doing when things go well so I can always go back to it.

What I was doing then, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why I ever stop doing it, it this:

My upper arms rest firmly, but not tightly, against my torso.

This does several good things:
– my hands get taken out of the stroke
– my arms don’t wander
– I stay relaxed, since it’s the big muscles that are moving the putter.

Two other fine points that seem to make a big difference are:

I keep the putter low to the ground on the follow-through.


I don’t look up with my head or my eyes to follow the ball for about two seconds after the ball has been struck.

I believe that if you try these three things, which can be installed in your putting game in a few minutes at most, you will putt better.

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“Silly question,” you say. “They should all go in.” Well, yes, but the question is really the title of a book by Clyne Soley, who collected extensive data on amateur and professional putting the the mid-1970s and published his findings in 1977.

Most of what he found confirms what you might think about putting, but here are some facts that might surprise you.

The number of putts per round varies directly with a player’s handicap. Scratch golfers, he found, average 30.8 putts per round, and 20-handicappers average 34.7. That’s not a surprise, but that means putting is a greater part of the scratch player’s score (42.7%) than it is for the 20-handicapper (34.7%). You might not have thought of that before.

When a player who is 20 strokes better overall is only four shots better on the green, this is further evidence of what many golfers believe, that the key to improvement lies in becoming a better ball-striker. Good putting starts making a difference only when you get good.

Soley’s next finding is truly amazing. The number of two-putt greens does not vary with a player’s handicap. A scratch golfer averages 11.67 two-putt greens per round, and a 40-handicapper averages 11.59. That’s a difference of one two-putt green in 225 holes, over 12 rounds.

The difference in total putts, then,  comes in the breakdown of one-putt and three-putt greens. Scratch golfers average 5.31 one-putt greens per round, and the 40-handicappers average only 2.42. When it comes to three-putt greens, the averages are scratch, 0.90 per round, 40-handicap, 3.60.

Soley then goes on to ask how good professional golfers are at putting (pretty darn good, actually). As you would expect, pros are better from any distance than amateurs are, but here’s something about short putts that you might not have guessed. For any given distance, Soley found that the success rate (sinking the putt) for professionals for putts of five feet and under is lower if it is a first putt than if it is a second or third putt. It is lower by almost half.

The probable explanation is that a four-foot second putt is left over from an initial putt that went by the hole, giving the player a chance to see what the break coming back would be. Amateurs, take note. Missed putts that go by the hole had a chance to go in, and they give you an excellent indication of the line coming back, if you watch the ball until it stops. Putts left short will never go in, and you might still not be sure of the line.

A final note is on sidehill putts. Most right-handed golfers feel that putts breaking right to left are easier to make than putts breaking left to right. Soley found no difference favoring the right-to-left putt. Putts breaking in either direction are made, and missed, at the same rate.

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No one expects to make 10-foot putts all the time. Probably the major reason we don’t make as many putts as can be made is that we don’t align ourselves properly. The read was right, the pace was right, but the ball didn’t go in because we didn’t set up in the right direction. Here’s an easy way to get this fundamental down pat.

Any golf ball manufactured today has an arrow drawn on it, off to the side of the manufacturer’s label. This is an alignment arrow. You see the pros lining up their ball with this arrow, even on short putts. It allows the player to see the starting line of the putt better, and provides a baseline on which to square the putterface and align their stance.

Using that arrow is a simple matter, but not a haphazard one. Here’s a procedure that works.

Your ball marker is on the green, and it’s your turn to putt. Put the ball down in front of the marker with the arrow pointing directly at the hole, and leave the marker there. Read your putt. Bend down, pick up the ball, and hold it out at arm’s length so the arrow points along the line you want the ball to start on. No carefully lower your arm so the arrow stays pointing along that line, and place the ball on the ground in front of the marker.

Stand up and step back from the ball. Check to see that the arrow is pointing where you want it to. Correct if necessary. Now you can pick up the marker and take your putting stance. Align your putterface square to the arrow and step into your stance, in that order.

Here are three bonus tips that will help you sink that putt you are so precisely aligned to.

One, look at the hole and visualize the ball falling straight in. Don’t try to see it running all the way to the hole. What the ball does on its way to the hole means nothing. You want the ball to fall in, and that’s all you need to visualize.

Two, you will make more putts that you dreamed possible if you hit them all on the sweet spot. The ball rolls true and the right distance.

Three, set up on a tile floor occasionally to make sure that what you think is a square putterface, really is. I tend to leave mine open a few degrees, which is enough to miss an eight-foot putt on the right edge, so I check this all the time.

See also Knit Your Way to Better Putting

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

Good putting is all about speed. True, you need to have the right line, but after a certain distance away from the hole, getting the line close enough is all you need to do. Getting the speed right is what makes the difference between two putts and three.

Many people think that speed is a matter of feel alone. You can see the line. The contours, or lack of them, are right there in front of you, but you have to feel speed. Not true. Speed is right in front of you, too, if you know how to look.

In addition to the length of the putt, there’s the height of the grass, the direction of the grain, the firmness of the green, the amount of moisture in the grass, and slope of the ground, that all affect how hard you will hit the putt. All these can be noticed and taken into account.

Your putter is a variable, too, There’s one place on the putterface to hit the putt, called the sweet spot, that allows your stroke to give you a predictable distance response. Many of the times that you left a putt short was not because you didn’t hit it hard enough. You had the right stroke but missed the sweet spot.

That said, there is a feel element to finding the right speed. You have to, through practice, know how hard to hit a putt that in general goes 20 feet, or 40 feet, or ten feet. These three basic strokes can then be modified when the length of the putt is different and other variables factor in.

But all this comes down to feeling what the right speed to hit this putt is. It doesn’t end with the calculation based on the physical variables. That calculation has to be translated into a feel that your body can use to hit the putt with the right force. How is this done?

It’s a mystery, really. Practice will help you get better at it, but feel is elusive on the course because it is affected by the condition of your mind. On some days you can be standing over a 35-footer and just know how hard to hit it. You’ve had days like that haven’t you?

But on other days the feeling doesn’t come and it’s just a guess. You’ve had days like that, too. Understand that you do have a feel for distance every day you play. On some days you just have to work harder to get it out.

When you can’t feel how hard to hit that 35-foot putt, move in closer to the hole until you find a range from which you do feel the speed. Maybe it’s half that distance. Let that feeling come through your mind into your body, and latch onto the confidence it creates. Then go back to your ball and look at the putt you face, with that feeling of confidence still in mind. The right force to put on the ball will come to you right away.

Finding the right speed begins with technical factors that are easily learned. What counts is the control you exercise over your mind to turn those factors into the correct physical movement. Once you know how to do this, every day on the green can be a good day.

A few weeks ago, I teed off on a rather difficult par 4 hole. Goes uphill a bit, angles to the right. The green is guarded by two well placed bunkers on the left and there’s bad ground on the right. My drive splits the fairway, and my approach from ~170 starts off to the right and curls to the left, toward the flag tucked behind the bunkers.

When I get to the green, I see the flag is all the way back left in a little corner that has to be nearly impossible to get to, but there’s my ball only twelve feet away. Wow. Getting a birdie with the pin here would be the accomplishment of the year.

I get the putt lined up, put a good stroke on it, the ball is rolling dead toward the hole, and it stops a foot short. Par.

You know why it stopped short? The putt was slightly downhill and I didn’t want to blow it by and have a four-footer coming back and turn a possible birdie into a bogey. Maddening. And you know what? I found out this morning I’m not alone.

A study by Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitz of the Wharton School, titled Is Tiger Woods Risk Averse? Persistent Bias on the Face of Competition, and High Stakes , shows that PGA pros do the same thing. They will make identical putts 3.3% less often if it is a birdie putt than a par putt.

Why? Because they are risk averse, just like you and me. They consider the risk of getting a bogey and dropping a shot to be greater than the reward of gaining one by sinking the birdie putt.

I’ll bet this applies to you, too, though maybe on a different level. I would bet you make more eight-foot putts for bogey than you do for par. You’re used to getting bogeys, but those doubles just cannot happen. So you bear down more to get that par putt in the hole.

It would be nice if a putt is just a putt. Whatever score it is for, we would treat them all the same. But maybe a bit of reverse psychology would be in order. The next time you have a birdie putt, pretend it is for par. That might help you give the ball the extra oomph it needs to go in.

This seems to be the week for putting tips. That’s what happens when I have a terrible day on the green and start working on making things better.

Because the stroke is longer, it’s harder to keep the putter on line when you hit a 30-foot putt than a 6-footer.

We all know that we concentrate on speed rather than line when we hit that 30-footer, but there’s nothing wrong with keeping the ball on the line you chose so it can go in.

Practice this at home by setting up a tin can lid as a hole and a block of wood a foot or so behind the lid to act as a backstop.

From about eight feet away, put your 30-foot swing on the ball and make sure it goes right over the center of the lid. There’s no reason it should not.

The longer stroke makes it easier to miss hitting the ball off the sweet spot. Since contact on the sweet spot is vital for consistently gauging speed, and direction is affected, too, that is essentially what you’re practicing with this exercise.

When you get to the practice green you can practice hitting the putt different distances, but get your stroke down at home first.

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I was out at the range this morning for my weekly practice session and noticed something that I started doing unconsciously while hitting short putts. I was gripping down.

I found myself gripping down about an inch, to get more control of the club, and man, did that work great.

I miss short putts, see, and anything that will help me make them I’m all for. This is a pretty good discovery. Everything about the stroke stays the same, just grip down an inch or so and that seems to give me a feeling of great confidence.

Maybe it will help you, too.

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.