Written by Michael VanDerLaan
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Putting is theoretically the easiest part of the game of golf. The simplest stroke, the shortest shot, yet it produces the most maddening results. Every golfer who has ever played the game has wanted to putt better, and it is one aspect of the game where any level of golfer can see the most dramatic improvements.
In this article we’ll take a look at what makes a good putter, and some skills and techniques to refine your approach and focus on what is actually going to shave strokes and provide long-term results on the greens.
10 Putting Tips To Help You Improve Your Score
The thing about putting is that, more than any other shot in golf, there are a wide variety of approaches that can work. When driving the ball, for example, there are some techniques which will severely limit your power and ability to stay balanced, swing hard, and control the face or path.
With putting, you see players have lots of success even with supposed “flaws” in their technique. As long as they are able to make the same flaw every single time, they have a chance!
Here are some putting tips that will get you on the right track.
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Find The Right Grip For You
One of the first things people tend to notice when putting is the variety of putting grip styles that are used by successful putters, some of which are extremely unorthodox. Again, since we are not trying to generate power like in the full swing, none of these grips are a barrier to success.
Almost all putters land on their grip of choice through experimentation. A few grips to try if you want to experiment are the “lead hand low” putter grip (a la Jordan Spieth or Nelly Korda) or the “claw” putter grip (a la Sergio Garcia or, at times, Phil Mickelson).
Matching up the physical grip that you put on your putter to the way you hold the club will also enhance your feel. It may come as a surprise, but there are all kinds of different grips for your putter!
Proper Grip Pressure
According to many top coaches, grip pressure is one of the most overlooked and most common mistakes they see in amateur or poor putters. While there is some room for personal freedom and perception here, almost all the advice tends towards gripping the club lightly.
One notable exception is Cameron Smith who says he is very different from his peers, and grips the putter at a “6 or a 7” out of 10. Meanwhile Ben Crenshaw puts himself at about a 4. Naturally, this is a bit subjective, but you can see that even a player like Cam Smith who considers himself a strong outlier amongst pros is “only” at a 6 or a 7. It is common for some players to feel like they are just barely gripping the club hard enough so that it doesn’t slide out of their hands.
Obviously this is somewhat subjective, but the key is in all cases that the player benefits greatly from being able to feel some responsiveness in their fingers and hands. This lets the player feel the tempo and transition points of the putter as it swings in a natural pendulum stroke.
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Find The Right Stance For You
The stance is another area where we’ve seen some very dramatic and seemingly odd approaches - like Jack Nicklaus or Michelle Wie - have great success. The key to finding the right stance for you is to make sure you are comfortable. This will allow you to get into the same posture repeatedly and also allow you to practice putting without feeling fatigue or pain, and take a relaxed approach on the greens.
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Use Good Posture
The key here is to learn your proper posture first without holding a putter. You can do this by standing straight up and down, unlocking your knees slightly, feet shoulder width apart, and then bending forward at the waist/hips solely until your armpits are over the balls of your feet or your front of your shoulders are directly vertical over the tips of your toes (these should be the same posture just with different reference points).
The result is that your weight will be centered on the balls of the feet - not the toes or the heels - and you would feel like you’re in a good position to where somebody could not easily push you over or knock you off balance. From here keep the arms loose and let them unfold at the elbow while keeping the triceps on your ribs and find a putter that is the appropriate length and lie angle to fit this setup instead of trying to crouch or bend into a setup that fits a given putter.
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Eyes Over The Ball
Given the above setup parameters, with a relaxed neck most players will find that with a putter of a relatively normal lie angle, everything will naturally align so that their eyes are looking straight down on top of the golf ball. This is a great checkpoint and you will often see PGA TOUR pros using a putting mirror to verify this fact during their practice routines.
A common problem we see with amateurs is standing too close to the golf ball.
It should be noted that many great putters also prefer to have their eyes slightly inside the ball instead of directly over it. If this is the case for you, typically you will match up with more of an arc putting stroke since you are standing slightly farther away from the golf ball.
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Use Your Shoulders
With a good setup, a putting stroke can be as easy as simple shoulder-rocking motion with a relatively stable lower body. Even if a player likes to feel some hands or release through their putt, it will be built on top of this baseline pendulum motion in almost all cases.
A good putting drill to work on this is to put a towel under both of your arms and hit putts like that. If the towel falls out, you used too much of your arms.
Fully Committed
They say that golf is 99% psychological, and for many players who struggle with putting, even at the highest levels, it’s not a technique issue or even a skill issue so much as they start to get in their own heads on the putting greens, and it is a very hard spiral to get out of.
There is an old saying in golf along the lines of: if you hit the wrong shot with 100% commitment it always works out better than being uncommitted to the perfect shot.
Even the best putters mis-read a putt all the time. They also will miss-hit or pull or push putts or get the speed wrong. But one of the best things you can do for your putting routine is to make your read, pick your speed, pick your start line, and then 100% commit to that even if you are unsure, and hit the putt.
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The best putters will often comment that on their best days the hole “looked really big” or something along those lines. The best putters can under-read a putt or have bad speed and still catch the low side of the hole and make the putt. Also they can have a short putt that they pull, but they hit it fully committed and put a good roll on it at the right speed, and it will go in the left side of the cup anyway.
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Green Reading
The first part of the process is properly reading your putt. It’s imperative that you have a system or routine for reading the speed of the putt and apply it consistently so you can make adjustments throughout your round and continue to refine your feel the more golf you play.
One great way to do this is to look at the putt from the side. If you want to be technical, the best way to do this is to go to a point that is at the midpoint of the putt, and stand the same distance away from the line as the length of the putt, thus forming a perfect “triangle” between you, the hole, and your golf ball. Always do this from the low side if there is a significant side-slope, and always get a feel for this and calibrate your speed before trying to read the break from down-the-line.
From here you have a chance of reading the uphill/downhill nature of the putt with your eyes, but also use your feet while you are walking to this spot and if the slope is subtle you can train yourself to get a feel this way.
Finally, if you don’t want to make two reads, then start reading your putt as soon as you can see the putting green. Look at the whole green as you are walking up to it and get a feel for the slope. Think about and watch the way the other players’ approach shots, chip shots, or lag putts move on the green. Take all this information in and get a feel for the speed of the putt you have upcoming.
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Choosing a Target
Many players suffer with speed on lag putts because they simply don’t choose the right target.
The right target is the one that will leave the ball closest to the hole, if it doesn't go in.
In fact, in order to have good distance control and be a good lag putter and 2-putt more often, you should be trying to die the ball right at the hole for anything outside of 15-20 feet. This gives you the biggest margin for error and will shave more strokes off of your score.
When you get to shorter putts, then you can afford to start aiming for your ball to stop rolling 1-to-3 feet past the hole, but no more.
The other part of picking a target, is that when we are lag putting, we are counting on the ball slowing down at the end of the putt, and we want the ball “always working closer to the hole.” While it’s true that 4 feet high and 4 feet low doesn’t really make a difference, the reality is that low misses can “get away from you” more easily with the ball tailing off at the end of the putt, where a shot that is too high that is losing speed at the end will continue getting better and better and can have that tendency to “cozy up to the hole” that we see with elite lag putters.
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Contact
Now that we have picked the proper target, it might seem that the pace at which you hit the putt is going to determine whether we actually have the right speed or not. But before we get to that, there’s something that is actually more important and an actual prerequisite before you start worrying about pace or tempo of your stroke, and that is: quality contact.
What constitutes quality contact on a putt is a golf ball that is hit near the center of the face i.e. not off the heel or toe, and not off the bottom of the blade, and that the ball starts rolling as soon as possible without hopping. Hopping off of the club face can result either from adding too much loft and launching the ball in the air or from de-lofting the putter and driving the ball into the turf.
There are some very forgiving putters available today that can help tremendously when you are missing the sweet spot.
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Tempo/Pace
Almost universally, we see that while different elite putters have different tempos and different lengths of their stroke, that their tempo doesn't change from putt to putt, no matter the length. This might sound counterintuitive, but what it means is that they are controlling the length of their putts not by changing their rhythm, but by changing the length of their backswing and nothing else.
It’s important to develop these skills so you do not drive yourself crazy on the greens. You should be able to pinpoint when you hit exactly the putt you wanted to hit, but you mis-read the speed because, say, the putt was actually more downhill than it looked or felt.
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You should also be able to tell when you had the perfect speed and read, but mis-hit the ball. This way you will not go about working on the wrong things or making the wrong adjustments and you can become a very high-level lag putter with great distance control as you efficiently hone your skills over time.
Distance Control on Short Putts
Matching line and speed is the name of the game, but putts hit at the proper speed make the cup much much larger and will lip out less often, as well as give all your putts a chance by not leaving too many of them short. Because of this, being obsessed with pace first and foremost is almost never a bad thing. Good things happen when you have the right speed on a putt, even on short putts.
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Remember that technology is your friend. There are new putters on the market that are zero torque and stay square to your target line throughout the putting stroke. We have tested these putters extensively and they can help you make considerably more putts from 5-15 feet.
Putters that performed very well in our testing are:
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Final Thoughts
In an average round of golf, you spend far more time and more shots with the flat stick in your hand than you do with any other club. This makes it one of the most important parts of the game, and it is one part of the game where anyone from children to seniors are all basically on a level playing field when it comes to physical ability and scoring potential. Because of that, it also is a source of frustration for many - making or breaking a golfer’s score and/or their psyche.
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One fantastic piece of advice given by Cameron Smith is that he sees too often amateurs focused on making a putt when they stand over it, while he says when he is standing over a putt he is “just trying to hit a good putt.” What this means is that he is very process-oriented instead of result-oriented. This is a great way to stay sane on the greens as well as improve your scores at the same time.
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In putting, you need to develop a process and repeat it every single time and stick with it. This includes reading the putting green, picking a target, maintaining consistent rhythm/tempo, learning to strike the middle of the face, and getting into the same setup every single time. This will allow you to pinpoint which part of the process broke down and refine the correct portions without chasing your tail trying to get better at golf.
If there’s one piece of advice to focus on it would be to always try to get the speed right. Having the right speed on the putt is the biggest factor in not three-putting, and having the right speed on the putt also gives you the best chance of making the putt even if your read or start line weren’t perfect. There can be a lot of complicated aspects to a simple thing such as putting, but above all else when it becomes time to execute, if you can get fully committed to hitting the putt center-face with the proper weight that you’ve read, and keeping it that simple when you’re over the ball, it will have the biggest impact on your scores and consistency.
Now it is time to head to the golf course, skip the driving range and head over to the practice green and work on improving your putting!
