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.

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

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.

Dave Stockton has become the putting guru of the moment. One of his bits of advice is to not take a practice swing. Get your feel for speed as you make your read and go with it.

I tried that yesterday and putted like I’d never played golf before. All my approach putts stopped short and left. Way short, like 3-4 feet short.

By the seventeenth hole (I don’t give up easily) I’d had it. I went back to making practice swings, and what do you know? I left approach putts on the last two holes less than two feet past the hole!

Just goes to show you. Be real careful with what you read in a golf magazine. You can trust whatever is in this blog, though.

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

I was out at the range yesterday. I hit my usual small bucket (30 balls) in about 20 minutes, then went to the practice green. Truth be told, I would rather spend all my time on the practice green, but I’d feel guilty about not paying anything to use the practice facility, so I always buy a token.

Every time on the green there’s a new lesson to be learned, and yesterday’s was good one. I find it hard to read downhill breaking putts. The contours don’t stand out like they should. So I walked around once behind the hole and took a look. Wow!

I could just see the putt rolling down and curving into the hole, and I could see how fast it would be rolling on its way. Line and speed in one glance.

I got my starting line, walked back to the ball parallel to it, put my putter down square to it, and was ready to go.

Now I‘m not going to say I made everything I looked at, but I was much more at ease over difficult putts, and I did make more than my share. I tried lining up from behind the hole for every putt, and got much better results.

Another advantage of reading from behind the hole is that you get a clear picture of what’s happening around the hole, which is a key factor in leaving the ball close.

Try it yourself. Just because everyone reads the green from behind the ball doesn’t mean you have to. Whatever works.

Being a good green reader means entering into a partnership with the green. Instead of seeing the green as an adversary, an obstacle course that you have to navigate to get the ball into a tiny hole, look at the green as a helper that’s showing you exactly where and how firmly the ball should be sent off. Thinking outside yourself like this makes putting much less stressful. It will let you see clearly how to hit this putt.

So think not how am I going to sink this putt, but how are we going to sink this putt. You do your part, the green does its part. Your part is to start the putt with the right speed on the right line so the green can carry the ball to the hole. Give the green what it needs to work with so it can do its job.

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In the interest of keeping my putting practice fresh, I invent new drills from time to time. This one is my latest.

I practice in my back room, which is covered with deck carpet. The lid of a can of whole tomatoes, which is 4” across, acts as the hole that I putt to. I put a dozen golf balls in an old quart-sized cottage cheese bucket, stand over the lid, and gently roll them out of the bucket. They’ll end up anywhere from two feet to six feet from the lid.

The drill is to putt them all out from where they end up. You might have to move one or two out of the way to hit another ball. The catch is that if you miss one you start over. Don’t quit until you’ve putted out all twelve.

In addition to working on your stroke, this drill teaches you to putt under pressure. Every putt counts, so you have to take every putt seriously. By the time you’re putting those last few balls from five to six feet, you’re teaching yourself how stay composed when you face the same putt on the course.

See more at www.bettergolfbook.com.

You had a six-footer all lined up and you missed it. You thought you had it in the bag and it just didn’t happen. What went wrong? Did you make a bad read? Was it your stroke? Maybe a bit of both? How do you know which?

Well, you can’t know, but you can make sure it wasn’t your stroke by getting your stroke schooled to the point where every putt directs the ball exactly where you want it to go. Let’s mention a few little things that will help you get it right.

Posture. Stand up to the ball, bent over comfortably at the hips, lower back straight. Hang the putter straight down with the end of the putter grip in front of your left eye. The shaft should cover the ball. This ensures your eyes are directly over the line of the putt.

Aim. Find a no-break putt on the practice green. Lay a club down in front of the ball, pointing at the hole. Lay another club down parallel to it, about a foot away on the side where you’ll be standing. Pick up the first club. Line up your feet and shoulders parallel to the second club. Your stroke is now aimed at the hole.

Alignment. Draw a line around a golf ball’s equator. Put the ball on the ground with the line running right through the pole of the ball, i.e., not tilted to one side. Putt the ball. If the line does not wobble, your putterface was square and aligned at impact. This is a critical point.

Sweet spot. Impact on this spot transfers all the energy of the putt to the ball, in line with the stroke. Tap the putterface with your fingertip rapidly back and forth along the face until you find the spot were the putter does not rotate when tapped. Practice hitting the ball on the sweet spot. When so hit, the ball will leap off the face, your hands will feel no shock of impact, and the ball will make a distinctive sound.

Path. The putter should be swinging along your starting line for short putts. Rock your shoulders back and forth when you putt, and have a feeling of the right upper arm continuing forward on the follow-through.

Stroke. If you think of the putting stroke as a movement back and a movement through, that’s two things, and your mind can stop in middle. Even though the stroke changes direction, think of it as one movement, not two. This is calming to the mind and body.

One Correction. I see golfers all over breaking their left wrist in the follow-through. None of ‘em can putt worth a lick. Enough said.

After you get your stroke fixed up, getting the ball in the hole is up to your read and the vagaries of the imperfect ground the ball rolls over, but that’s another lesson.

See more at www.bettergolfbook.com