How To Putt In Golf…Especially When It Counts

How to putt in golf is a topic that has been debated for years. Through my journeys of playing professional golf, I have seen all different kinds of putting strokes. There’s long putters, short putters, belly putters, blade putters, mallet putters. Then there’s short strokes, long strokes, quick strokes, smooth strokes, cut strokes, and the list goes on and on! I’ve seen them all work so how do you know what’s the correct putting stroke for you?

I’ve had many putting lessons and what I gathered from these lessons was that my stroke was not perfect. I had a tendency to cut across the ball. So I made the decision to perfect my stroke. After that, I struggled with my putting for a very long time.

It wasn’t until I met my friend Troy on the Golden Bear Tour that I really understood putting for the first time. Over the next couple of years, I got to play with who I think is one of the best putters in the world!!! Now the reason he never made it on the PGA Tour was his ball-striking. This guy can putt with the best of them. Lets put it this way. If my friend could strike the ball as well as Dustin Johnson he would win 85% of the tournaments he entered. He’s that good on the greens.

Troy didn’t have a perfect stroke ether. This factor alone had me puzzled as this is what I had been couched up to think: you need a perfect stroke! Work on your stroke, work on your stroke, perfect that path.

It took me about a year of denial before I finally asked him, “How do you do it? How do you make everything you look at? It doesn’t matter if the greens are slow, bumpy, grainy you putt well everywhere! How do you do it?”

This is what he told me…

First, he said when he gets to the green he relaxes. The pressure is a lot less because even if he hits a terrible putt the penalty is only one. It's not like jacking it out of play which is 2 shots and counting. Now, most people have the opposite reaction to putting. They will get more and tenser the closer they get to the hole as the expectations to make the putt goes up. I didn’t expect him to say this.

Second, he said there is one thing he focuses on during his putts and he got it from Dave Pelz’s Putting Bible. Without getting too much into the book here, Dave Pelz started asking all the players on tour what they were working on at the practice putting green. One for one they said their stroke (path of the putter head). Dave went off to do some research to see if this was the correct thing to be focused on during practice and to see if there was more to put. And there was!

Dave Pelz used a mechanical robot to simulate a perfect stroke and his research found that you can have a perfect stroke pointed down the correct starting line for the putt and yet miss the putt every time. I mean every time! How could that be?

The most senior rule for putting is not a stroke. It’s clubface square to the target line at impact.

See…with the mechanical robot you can have a perfect stroke down your target line and if the clubface is slightly off square to that line, the putt will miss every time. Every time! Now the opposite is also true. You can have an imperfect stroke like Troy. Troy’s putter path cut across the line but as long as his face was square to the line a good percentage of his putts still went in!!! THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF PUTTING IS NOT STROKE BUT CLUB FACE SQUARE TO YOUR TARGET LINE AT IMPACT.

“That's all I try to do,” Troy told me.

Don’t get me wrong the better the stroke path,in addition to your golf club, gives you the best chance of making the putt but its not the most important part.

To sum this up the next time you’re practicing your putting don’t work on your stroke, its imposable to have a perfect stroke. So when it comes to learning how to putt in golf, work on getting your clubface square to your target line at impact and start having more fun by making more putts!

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