Lag putting: how to stop three-putting for good

Three-putts are not a stroke problem. They are a speed problem. A golfer who leaves every long putt within three feet will shoot better scores than one with a prettier stroke who runs the first one eight feet by, and speed is far easier to train than line.

It is also the area of golf where the smallest amount of practice produces the largest change, because almost nobody does any. Ten minutes on the practice green before a round, spent entirely on putts over twenty feet, is worth more than an hour on the range for most amateurs.

Line matters less than you think from long range

From 40 feet, the hole is effectively four feet wide as far as your second putt is concerned. Miss the line by a foot and you still have a tap-in if the speed is right. Miss the speed by six feet and the line was irrelevant.

Spend your practice time accordingly. The instinct is to read a long putt carefully and then hit it with whatever pace turns up, which is exactly backwards: the read on a 40-footer needs about five seconds, and the pace deserves the rest of the attention.

Train speed with a target you can hit

Put a tee three feet behind the hole and try to leave every long putt in the corridor between the hole and the tee. That corridor, rather than the cup itself, is the target.

Two things happen. You get an achievable objective, which means the practice produces success rather than a series of near misses. And you stop dying every putt short, which is the single most common amateur habit and the one that removes any chance of the ball dropping.

A ball that finishes a foot past the hole took the best line available to it, because it held its line through the last few feet where the break is strongest. A ball that stops short took none at all, and it was never going in from the moment it left the putter.

The ladder drill, ten minutes before you play

Drop balls at 20, 30 and 40 feet from the same hole and putt them in order, then reverse the order and do it again.

You are not trying to hole anything. You are calibrating how far back the putter goes for a given distance, which is the only variable that matters on a long putt. Keep the tempo identical and change only the length of the stroke, the way a pendulum works, because pace controlled by hand speed collapses under pressure.

Do it on the practice green of the course you are about to play, because today’s green speed is the only speed your hands need to know.

Read the slope with your feet

Walk from the ball to the hole along the line of the putt, and pay attention to your ankles rather than your eyes.

Your feet will tell you whether the putt runs uphill or downhill long before your eyes will, and elevation changes the pace far more than any borrow you can see. On a green with real slope, the same 30-footer can need double the stroke length one way and half of it coming back.

Do this while your playing partners are putting and it costs the group nothing at all.

Stop looking at the ball on long putts

Try five putts from 40 feet looking at the hole instead of the ball. Almost everybody finishes closer.

The reason is that a long putt is a distance-judging task, and the brain judges distance better when it can see the target. You would not throw a ball underhand to somebody while staring at your own hand.

You do not need to putt this way on the course, though some good players do. What you need is the feedback it gives you: the difference between those five putts and your normal ones is the amount your hands have been trying to steer the stroke.

Green speed changes everything, and it changes daily

Morning greens with dew on them are materially slower than the same greens at two in the afternoon. Greens in the first week after hollow-tining are slower again, and bumpier. Greens in the second week of a dry August are faster than anything you played in May.

If you have not putted on the practice green, your first three long putts of the round are guesses, and guesses on a golf course cost strokes. This is the cheapest information available in the game and it is free with every green fee.

Two American specifics worth knowing. Poa annua greens, common in California and the Northeast, grow through the day and get bumpier in the afternoon, so late tee times want slightly firmer long putts. Bermuda greens in the South have grain, and a downgrain 30-footer can run twenty percent further than the same putt into the grain.

The second putt is a technique, not a formality

Most three-putts are a poor lag followed by a missed four-footer, and the four-footer is missed because it was rushed by irritation.

Treat the second putt as a shot. Mark it, read it, go through the same routine you would use on the first tee. The golfer who takes ten extra seconds on the four-footer they should not have had converts most of them, and the one who slaps at it converts about half.

Where to practice this in the U.S.

The practice green of the course you are about to play is the entire answer, and it is included with your green fee at essentially every facility in the country. Arriving ten minutes earlier is the whole cost.

At home, an indoor putting mat is genuinely useful for stroke and start line, and genuinely useless for speed, since a mat runs at one speed and a golf course does not. Use the mat for the four-footers and the practice green for everything longer.

If you want to know whether the problem is speed or the stroke itself, the putting studios at some large golf retailers measure face angle and start line, usually as part of a putter fitting, and a PGA professional can tell you in twenty minutes which of the two is costing you shots.

Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any retailer, coach or facility mentioned here.

The one thing to check in your stroke

This article has argued that speed rather than the stroke is the problem, which is true for most amateurs. There is one exception worth ruling out.

If your long putts finish the right distance but consistently on the same side, the issue is where the ball starts rather than how hard you hit it. That is a face-angle problem: the face is a degree or two open or closed at impact, which is invisible to you and enormous over forty feet.

The test takes two minutes. Put two tees in the green just wider than a ball, a foot in front of the ball, and putt through the gate from ten feet. If the ball catches a tee, the face is not square at impact and no amount of speed work will fix the miss.

That one is worth a lesson, or twenty minutes in a putting studio where face angle is measured rather than guessed at.

Three things to try in your next round

• Count your three-putts. That number, not your putts per round, tells you whether speed is the problem.
• Aim to finish every putt over 25 feet past the hole rather than short of it.
• Spend ten minutes on the practice green before every round, all of it on putts over 20 feet.
• Walk the line from ball to hole while others are putting, and trust your feet over your eyes.
• Give the second putt the same routine as the first.

Nobody holes long putts on purpose. Getting them close on purpose is a skill, and it is the cheapest three shots a round available to most golfers.