For the game within a game...

Drive for show and putt for dough.

It is undeniable that you can recover from a bad tee shot or approach shot or even poor chip or putt but once you've missed a short putt it counts just as much as your best drive. No matter how good you are - wasted opportunities on the green can't be recovered easily.

Is your practice routine going stale?

If you just practice by going round your club's practice putting green then try these putting drills "line them up" and "confidence builder" to spice up your practice sessions and improve your putting stroke.

Do you have the right kind of putter for your putting stroke?

Developing a case of the yips?

If you lack confidence on those short putts or are developing a case of the yips then see our

Want to hole more putts? Then read these tips and suggestions.

If you want to improve your putting then first of all assess your current performance. Start out by recording some statistics such as:

 

How many putts do you take in a round.If you hit the green in regulation (i.e. 3 shots for a par 5, 2 shots for a par 4 and 1 shot for a par 3) how many putts do you take to hole out.

You need to know what your strengths and weaknesses are and then work on improving your weak areas.

Once you know a bit more about your own performance then you need to set yourself objectives such as to reduce the number of putts you take per round and to improve your average putts for greens in regulation.

As a rough rule of thumb, high handicappers should aim to break 36 putts per round, mid handicap players around 32 - 34, low to mid-handicap players should be close to averaging 30 or better and very good players should be breaking 30 putts per round. So if you are a mid handicap player around 12 to 16 and you are averaging 36+ putts per round then you've got potential scope to reduce your handicap to 8 to 12 just by improving your putting slightly. However, if you are a high handicapper averaging less than 36 putts per round then perhaps you need to focus on other areas of the game at this stage. However, this measurement needs to be taken into context. For example if you miss a lot of greens then your chip shots are likely to end up closer to the hole than your approach shots from the fairway. You are therefore likely to have more difficult or longer putts if you hit a green in regulation compared to someone chipping from the edge. Therefore total putts per round is not the only measurement you should monitor. Hence the suggestuion to track how many putts you take on average for greens you hit in regulation - aim for less than 2.

Are you reading too much break into your putts?

Sometimes we can read too much break into a putt and forget to actually hit the ball. If there's not much break aim right at the hole and focus on distance. Visualise the ball rolling up to the hole and rolling straight in before you take your stroke.

Trouble judging distance?

Visualise the ball rolling from your putter face right up to the hole - imagine how fast it sets out to reach the hole - try to reproduce that speed with your real putting stroke. Review the result? Watch it roll - especially those first ten feet - did it match the speed you visualised and did it end up short or long? Re-assessing the result and your visualisation will help sychronise the two.