Putting Better From Close Range to Score Better in Golf

“Drive for show, putt for dough.” I know it’s a cliche to say it, but that doesn’t make it less true. The easiest and fastest way to score better on the golf course is to improve your putting. The average weekend golfer hits 18 drives per round, and about 40 putts. You are a lot more likely to improve your putting, than you are to shave strokes off of your shots from the tee.

Looking at pro golfers, you’ll find that within 5 feet, pros hit 97% of their shots. In fact, it’s a shocker when someone like Tiger Woods misses a 4 footer to lose a championship, though it does happen. When you are already hitting 97% of your putts, there’s very little room for improvement. In fact, hitting these putts is a lot less about technique than it is about nerves and stability.

Now, lets go a little further from the cup. Putts of 5 to 10 feet have much more variability. The top guys are still hitting 70%, but if you exclude the top 25 pros, the number drops to about 55%. Beyond 10 feet, the numbers drop wildly, with something like 20% of all puts beyond 10 feet getting sunk. Of course, this includes the 100 footers than no one was ever going to sink.

So, what can we learn from this? That depends on where you are yourself. If you are hitting about 20% of your long putts, then you are roughly on par with the pros. You can work on getting better at this, but there’s probably not a whole lot of gain to be had. For most amateur golfers, the goal of a 15 footer (or longer) is to get it close, to try to be within 3 feet, to make a simple putt to close out the hole.

Now go one range in, how are you doing from 5-10 feet? Are you hitting about half of them, like the pros do? Or are you doing worse? These kinds of putts come up in every round, and shaving a few will certainly help you score better. But if you already are hitting 5 out of 10, then you may only be able to make marginal improvement. You aren’t supposed to make all, or even most, of these, but you should start keeping track.

Finally, the very short putts, the 5 footers. Be honest, are you truly hitting 97% of them? I’m certainly not. I don’t feel that I have the yips, but maybe I lose focus, or concentration. Sometimes I get frustrated because I had a 40 footer that was right on line, and I left it four feet short. Or I don’t take the time that I should. I’m not necessarily missing one of these every hole, but 5 feet and in is not a gimme for me, either.

Okay, so, in order to score better, I think we can see that we should be focused on the shorter range putts. Get our 5 footers up to 90%, and our 10 footers up to 50%. Why, then, on the practice range, do we always try the 50 footers, and practice those? We know that those don’t have that much bearing on our scores. It’s the 8 footer that comes after the 50 footer that matters.