Fewer three-putts: pace control for dewy mornings, firm links greens and the Himalayas

Count the three-putts on your next card. For most club golfers the figure is somewhere between two and five, and very few of them come from a bad stroke on the last putt. They start with a first putt from thirty or forty feet that finishes eight feet short or six feet past, followed by a nervy one that lips out. Fix the first putt and the rest largely looks after itself.

That first putt is a question of pace far more than line, and pace is the easiest part of putting to train. It is also the part almost nobody works on. A handful of minutes spent on long putts before you tee off will save more shots than an hour of hitting drivers.

From long range, the hole is wider than you think

Imagine a putt of 40 feet. If you finish within a couple of feet either side of the cup, you have a tap-in. In practical terms, the target is about four feet wide. Miss your line by a foot and nothing bad happens; misjudge the pace by six feet and the line becomes irrelevant.

So flip the usual order of effort. A long putt needs only a quick read, a few seconds to see the general tilt. The rest of your attention belongs to how far the ball has to travel, and how firm or slow the surface is today.

Give yourself a zone, not a hole

Push a tee into the green about three feet behind the cup. Your target on every long putt is the strip between the hole and that tee. Anything that stops in there counts as a success.

This does two useful things. It turns practice into something you can actually achieve, so you build confidence rather than a pile of near misses. And it cures the most common habit in club golf, leaving the ball short. A putt that stops before the hole had no chance of dropping from the moment it left the putter. One that rolls a foot past held its line through the final few feet, where the break bites hardest, and at least gave itself a chance.

Calibrate the stroke with a ladder

On the practice green, drop three balls at 20, 30 and 40 feet from one hole. Putt them in that order, then go back down, 40, 30, 20.

Holing out is not the point. You are teaching your body how long a stroke produces how much roll on today’s surface. Keep the rhythm the same for every putt and change only the length of the backstroke, like a pendulum swinging further. Pace that comes from a quick hit with the hands tends to fall apart the moment there is something riding on the putt.

The Rules help here as well. You may roll balls on any practice green before your round, and between holes you can putt on the green you have just finished, as long as you do not hold up play (Rules 5.5b and 13.1e). Some committees withdraw that allowance with a Local Rule, so check the card before trying it in a medal.

What you may not do while a hole is in play

The same Rules draw a clear line. During a hole you must not deliberately roll a ball or rub the surface of the green to test it; the penalty is two strokes in stroke play or loss of the hole in match play. And under Rule 10.2b(3) you must not make a mark to help with aiming or stance, which includes scraping a line in morning dew. On an early tee time in autumn, when every green is silver with moisture, it is a tempting shortcut. Leave it.

Let your feet read the slope

As you walk from your ball towards the hole, notice how your weight sits in your ankles and heels. Your feet will tell you whether a putt climbs or falls long before your eyes do, and uphill or downhill matters much more for pace than any sideways borrow.

On a green with a proper tier, the same thirty-footer can need twice the stroke in one direction and half coming back. Take this walk while the others are putting and it costs the group no time at all.

Try putting while looking at the hole

Take five balls to 40 feet and putt them with your eyes on the cup rather than the ball. Most people finish closer than usual.

The explanation is simple: a long putt is a judgement of distance, and we judge distance better while looking at the target. Nobody throws a ball to a friend while staring at their own hand. You do not have to putt this way in a round, though a few good players do. The value is in the comparison: the gap between these five and your normal putts shows how much your hands have been steering.

British greens change pace by the hour

Green speed is measured on a Stimpmeter, a simple ramp devised in 1935 by the American amateur Edward Stimpson that releases a ball at a known speed and measures in feet how far it rolls. You will not have one in your bag, which is exactly why the practice green matters.

In Britain the variations are large and frequent. A green heavy with dew at an 8am start is slower than the same green at 2pm. After autumn or spring hollow-tining, surfaces are slower and bumpier for a while. On a links, the firm, sandy turf that makes approaches run also makes a dried-out green in a breezy July afternoon far quicker than it looks from the fairway. Winter adds temporary greens, usually set up in the general area, which rarely roll like the real thing.

If you have not rolled a few putts on the practice green that day, your first three long putts are guesses, and guesses are expensive. The information is free with every green fee.

Treat the second putt as a real shot

The classic three-putt is a mediocre lag followed by a four-footer missed out of annoyance. That short one deserves full attention.

Mark the ball, read the putt from behind, and go through the same calm routine you would use on the first tee. The extra ten seconds convert far more of them than a frustrated one-handed stab ever will.

Where to practise this in Britain

The practice green at the course you are playing is the best option, because it is the only surface running at today’s speed. Arriving ten minutes early is the whole cost.

For a lesson in pace that no practice green can match, visit the Himalayas at St Andrews. The St Andrews Ladies’ Putting Club, founded in 1867 as the St Andrews Ladies’ Golf Club, runs a famously undulating putting course between the Old Course and the West Sands. It opens to the public at weekends in March and daily from April to October, at £4 a round for adults and £2 for seniors and under-16s, and booking ahead is advised in summer. Every putt there is a lag putt, and nobody can three-putt politely.

At home, a putting mat is good for short putts and start line, and poor for pace, since a mat has one speed and a course has dozens. On current prices at a UK online golf retailer, an 8ft PGA Tour Deluxe mat is £59.95 and a 12ft Odyssey mat £99.95. Use the mat for four-footers and keep the long work for real grass.

If you cannot tell whether your problem is pace or the stroke, a PGA professional can usually spot it within one session; The PGA’s PGA Play site lists around 8,000 of them. A putter fitting that measures face angle and start line answers the same question with numbers. Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any retailer, club, coach or facility mentioned here.

When the problem really is the stroke

Most amateurs lose shots on pace. There is one exception worth ruling out.

If your long putts finish the right distance but consistently on the same side of the hole, the ball is starting off line. That points to the face being a degree or two open or closed at impact, something you cannot feel and which is huge over forty feet.

Test it in two minutes. Push two tees into the green a foot in front of the ball, just wider than a ball apart, and putt through the gap from ten feet. If the ball keeps catching a tee, the face is not square, and no amount of pace work will cure it. That is the moment to book a lesson rather than buy another putter.

For your next round

• Write the number of three-putts on your card. It tells you more than total putts.
• Aim to finish every putt over 25 feet just past the hole, never short.
• Use your ten minutes on the practice green for putts of 20 feet and longer.
• Walk the line while others putt and let your feet judge up and down.
• Give the second putt the full routine, and leave the dew unmarked.

Nobody holes forty-footers on demand. Leaving them within a tap-in on demand is a skill, and it is the cheapest two or three shots a round most golfers will ever find.

How this page was put together

Putting mat prices were taken from Golf Online (UK). Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with this retailer.