The three-footer Doug Sanders missed: holing short putts when the card is on the line

On the Saturday evening of the 1970 Open at St Andrews, Doug Sanders stood over a putt of about three feet on the 18th green of the Old Course. It was downhill, it was for par, and holing it would have made him Open champion. He missed. Jack Nicklaus beat him the next day in an 18-hole play-off, 72 to 73, and a putt a child could hole on a carpet has been part of golf’s folklore ever since.

Every club golfer knows a smaller version of it: the three-footer for a net birdie in the monthly medal, the four-footer to halve the match on the 17th, the tiddler that decides whether a Stableford card reaches 36 points. Physically there is almost nothing to it. What makes it hard is that you know, with total clarity, what a miss costs.

Your real numbers from inside six feet

Television makes short putts look automatic, so start with some honest data. Shot Scope, whose tracking tags record ordinary golfers’ rounds, has published make percentages by handicap from its database. From 0 to 6 feet, scratch players hole 92.8 per cent. Five handicappers hole 90.2 per cent, ten handicappers 89.3, fifteens 84.4, twenties 84 and golfers off 25 hole 82.5 per cent.

Those gaps look modest until you count. A typical round produces a dozen or more putts inside six feet, because most second putts and most up-and-down attempts end there. Missing one extra in ten is a shot or more on every card. Shot Scope’s own comparison for tour players is 96.7 per cent from inside five feet on the PGA Tour.

Why three feet frightens people who hit 200-yard drives

A missed drive leaves a recovery. A missed short putt is simply a shot gone, with no second act, witnessed by three playing partners who have nothing else to look at. That exposure is part of the difficulty.

The other part is how we practise. On the putting green before a round, short putts are knocked in one-handed while chatting, with no consequence at all. On the course the same putt arrives after a fluffed chip, with irritation still hot. A stroke rehearsed loose and performed tight is not one you own.

Fifteen seconds, in the same order, every time

The golfers who hole these consistently are rarely braver than anyone else. They run the same sequence whether the putt wins the club championship or ends a practice round in the rain, so the anxious version of them gets the same instructions as the calm one. Ours has five parts, and the order matters more than the content.

1. Look from below the hole, briefly. Crouch behind the ball and study the low side of the cup for around eight seconds. A putt this short has one break at most. Staring for half a minute produces doubt, not information.
2. Choose a precise entry point. Left lip, right lip or dead centre, and say it silently. Striking a putt without a named target is striking it in hope.
3. Make one rehearsal stroke beside the ball, eyes on the hole, feeling the length. One only. You are calibrating distance, not rebuilding a technique.
4. Square the putter face to your line before your feet move into place. Most amateurs do it the other way round: stance first, face adjusted inside it, and the putt is pushed before the ball has moved.
5. A single glance at the hole, then go. Eyes back to the ball and start the stroke. The second look is where doubt gets in.

The sequence sits comfortably inside the 40 seconds The R&A recommends in Rule 5.6b as the normal maximum for a stroke once it is your turn to play.

Aim at a blemish, not the cup

The hole is 4.25 inches wide. From three feet that is a large, vague target, and vague targets encourage vague strokes. Find something on your line roughly a foot in front of the ball instead: a darker blade of grass, a repaired pitch mark, a speck of sand from the bunker next door. Rolling the ball over that spot is a task your eyes can check with your head still, and for many golfers it is the one change that fixes short putting.

The backswing that is too long

The usual mechanical fault is a long backswing, followed by the body sensing that the ball is about to be hit too hard, followed by the hands easing off through impact. A putter that is slowing down tends to twist, and over four feet a twisted face is a miss.

Shorten the backswing until it feels slightly inadequate and let the follow-through be longer than the takeaway. A ball struck by an accelerating face holds its line through the last 18 inches, which is where a dying putt wanders off on every footprint and tuft.

British greens give firmness a second advantage. On an exposed links in a stiff breeze a putt trickling towards the hole can be moved by the wind, and on a parkland green late on a Saturday the surface around the cup has had dozens of pairs of shoes across it. A ball rolling with some pace takes less break and brushes through that damage rather than being steered by it.

Break inside four feet, and the putt that breaks the rule

From four feet and closer on an ordinary green, you can usually take most of the break out of the equation. Hit it firmly enough to hold the line and aim just inside the edge rather than outside it. A putt aimed at the lip and struck a fraction too hard slides past. A putt aimed at the middle and struck a fraction too hard usually still catches the hole.

The exception is the one Sanders faced: fast and downhill. Rammed at the back of the cup, a downhill three-footer can finish farther away than it started. Play the break, and choose a pace that would carry the ball about a foot past if it missed. A seaside green baked firm in a dry August turns quite a few putts into that shot.

Gimmes, concessions and holing out

In a friendly Sunday four-ball, putts inside a putter length tend to get picked up. In match play that is legal: Rule 3.2b lets your opponent concede your next stroke, and a concession is final. It cannot be declined or withdrawn, so a conceded putt stays conceded even if you would rather hole it.

Stroke play is different. Rule 3.3c says you must hole out on every hole, and a player who fails to do so and does not correct it before teeing off on the next hole, or before returning the card after the last, is disqualified. That is why a first medal competition often goes wrong on the greens. Somebody who has been handed every two-footer since spring suddenly has to hole them, in front of a marker, with a card in play.

What the Rules allow you to fix on the green

Rule 13.1c lets you repair damage on the putting green, and that explicitly includes ball marks and shoe damage such as spike marks, as well as scrapes from equipment or the flagstick. It does not let you repair aeration holes or the natural wear of the hole. If the group ahead has scuffed your line, you can tidy it before a short putt.

Two restrictions catch people. Under Rule 10.1c, you must not make a stroke from a stance deliberately straddling or standing on your line of play or its extension behind the ball, though there is no penalty if it happens accidentally or to avoid another player’s line. And under Rule 10.2b(4), once you have begun taking your stance, your caddie, or a partner in a four-ball, must not deliberately stand behind you on that extended line.

Between holes, Rule 5.5b allows a little putting or chipping on or near the green you have just finished, provided it does not hold up play. Many committees remove that permission with Model Local Rule I-2, so check the local rules on the back of the card before knocking a few three-footers in on the 9th green.

Where to practise short putts in Britain

The putting green at the course you are about to play is the best practice surface you will find, because it runs at today’s speed. Arrive ten minutes earlier than you planned, spend them inside six feet, and you will have tuned your stroke to the only green speed that matters that day.

For a practice session with a sense of occasion, St Andrews has the Himalayas, the St Andrews Ladies’ Putting Club between the Old Course and West Sands. The club was founded in 1867 and its undulating green is open to the public at weekends in March and daily from April to October. A round costs £4 for adults and £2 for seniors and under-16s, putters and balls are available, and booking online is advised in the summer.

At home, a mat is genuinely useful at this distance, unlike for long lag putts, where a mat runs at one speed and a course does not. Four or five feet on a mat trains start line and stroke length, and both carry over. In mid-September, a UK online golf retailer listed the Odyssey 8′ x 1′ Putting Mat at £39.95, the PGA Tour Deluxe Putting Mat (8ft) at £59.95 and the Odyssey 12 FT Putting Mat at £99.95.

If a gate drill keeps telling you the face is open or shut at impact, that is a mechanical fault rather than nerves, and it is the one short-putt problem worth paying a coach to look at. The PGA’s PGA Play directory lists around 8,000 PGA Professionals you can search by location, and a putter fitting will also check whether your putter’s loft and lie are working against you. Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any club, retailer or coach named here.

Three drills that manufacture consequence

Two tees, one gap. Push two tees into the green a foot in front of the ball on your start line, a little more than a ball’s width apart. Putt through them from four feet. Clipping a tee tells you the face was not square, a fault you cannot feel and one that is huge over a short distance.

The run of ten. Same hole, five feet, and the count goes back to zero on any miss. By the eighth or ninth putt your hands will feel roughly what they feel on the last green of a medal.

Around the clock. Six balls in a circle three feet from the hole, then six at five feet. Hole every ball in a ring before moving out. Each putt needs a new read, which is far closer to what the course asks than a repeated stroke from one spot.

Twelve minutes of these, twice a week, takes more shots off a card than an hour on the range with a 7 iron. And once a month, play a round with nothing conceded and count what you really miss from inside six feet.

Make percentages are from Shot Scope. The account of the 1970 Open is from the championship’s published record. Rules references are to The R&A’s Rules of Golf and its Model Local Rules as they stand in 2026. Himalayas details are from the St Andrews Ladies’ Putting Club; mat prices from an online golf retailer and PGA Play figures from pgaplay.co.uk, all read in September 2026.

How this page was put together

Putting mat prices were read in September 2026 at Golf Online (UK). Panxis has no commercial link with this retailer.