How to Master Putting in Golf

Sinking more putts is the fastest way to slash strokes from your scoring average, full stop. Most amateur golfers spend hours at the range trying to perfect their driver, but a 300-yard bomb counts the same as a missed 3-foot putt. The single most effective thing you can do to lower your handicap is to become a confident, reliable putter. This guide will give you a complete roadmap to becoming that player. We'll cover everything from building a rock-solid foundation in your setup to reading greens like a pro and practicing with purpose, giving you practical, actionable steps to finally master the flatstick.

The Foundation: Grip and Setup Non-Negotiables

Before you even think about the stroke, you need to get your foundation organized. A poor setup forces you to make unnatural compensations during the stroke, which is a recipe for inconsistency, especially under pressure. Top players might have different looking strokes, but they almost all share the same fundamental setup principles. Let's build yours.

Finding Your Perfect Putting Grip

Unlike the full swing, there isn't one "correct" putting grip. The entire goal of the grip is to quiet your hands and wrists, allowing the bigger, more stable muscles of your shoulders and torso to control the motion. You want your hands to act as a single, unified unit.

Here are a few popular styles to try:

• Reverse Overlap: This is the most traditional grip. You hold the club like a normal full swing, but instead of interlocking or overlapping your pinky, you lift the index finger of your top hand (left hand for a righty) and lay it across the fingers of your bottom hand. This helps unify the hands.
• Cross-Handed (Left-Hand Low): By placing your dominant hand (right hand for a righty) on top, you effectively take it out of an active role. This is wonderful for players who get too "handsy" or "flippy" and tend to pull putts.
• The Claw: Popularized by players like Phil Mickelson and Justin Rose, this grip also minimizes the influence of the dominant hand. The top hand holds the club normally, while the bottom hand is turned so the palm faces inward, and the club rests between the thumb and index finger. It looks odd, but it can be incredibly effective.

Don't be afraid to experiment to find what feels most stable and natural for you. The most important factor, regardless of style, is grip pressure. Don't strangle the putter. Imagine you're holding a tube of toothpaste and you don't want any to squeeze out. Hold it just firmly enough to have control, but light enough to let your arms hang freely and maintain feel.

Building a Solid Stance and Posture

Once you've settled on a grip, your posture will put you in position to make a pure stroke. This part is less about personal style and more about physics.

Follow these steps to build a repeatable setup:

1. Start with Your Feet: Plant your feet about shoulder-width apart. This provides a stable base without restricting your ability to rock your shoulders. Your weight should be distributed evenly, maybe even favoring your front foot slightly (60/40) to encourage a downward strike on the ball.
2. Bend from the Hips: Keep your back relatively straight and tilt forward from your hips, not your waist. You will feel your rear end push out slightly. This creates space for your arms to hang directly below your shoulders.
3. Let Your Arms Hang: From your tilted position, just let your arms relax and hang down. This is where your hands should grip the putter. If you have to reach out for the ball or pull your arms in close, your posture or ball position is off. Letting them hang naturally promotes a pendulum motion governed by gravity.
4. Eyes Over the Ball: This is a classic checkpoint for a reason. Once you're in your stance, let a friend hold a golf ball from the bridge of your nose. It should drop right on top of, or just slightly inside, your golf ball. This alignment ensures you're seeing the line of the putt without distortion.

When you put all this together - feet stable, hips tilted, arms hanging, eyes over the ball - you’ll be in an athletic, balanced position ready to make a smooth, repeatable stroke.

The Putting Stroke: Your Pendulum of Power

The putting stroke should be the simplest motion in golf. Think of a grandfather clock’s pendulum swinging back and forth. It’s a rhythmic motion, free of excess movement and guided by momentum. That’s what we want to create with our shoulders.

Shoulders, Not Wrists

The engine of the putting stroke should be your shoulders. Imagine a triangle formed by your shoulders and arms. The goal is to move that entire triangle back and through as a single unit, rocking your shoulders. There should be almost no independent movement in your hands or wrists. Under pressure, your small, twitchy wrist muscles are the first things to betray you. Your larger shoulder and back muscles are far more reliable.

To feel this, try this drill: Tuck the grip of your putter up against your sternum a few inches below your neck. Grip down on the steel shaft with your hands split apart. Now, make a stroke by simply rocking your shoulders. You’ll feel how your upper body, arms, and the putter all move together. This is the feeling you want to replicate in your normal stroke.

Mastering Pace Control (Where It All Happens)

Good putting is less about making everything and more about avoiding three-putts. And the absolute heart of avoiding three-putts is pace control. If you can consistently cozy the ball up to the hole, lags inside three feet every single time, you'll eliminate those costly mistakes.

Pace control is a product of rhythm and stroke length, not "hitting" the ball harder. A longer backswing creates more momentum, which translates to the ball rolling farther. Here are two fantastic drills to dial in your distance.

The Ladder Drill

This is the gold standard for developing feel for distance.

1. Find a relatively flat section of the practice green.
2. Place tees in the ground at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 feet.
3. Start at the 5-foot tee. Your only goal is to roll the ball so it stops perfectly at the tee, not short and not past it. Pay close attention to how long your backstroke needs to be.
4. Move to the 10-foot tee. Do the same. Feel how the stroke needs to get slightly longer.
5. Work your way up and down the ladder. The goal isn't to make the "putt," but to get the speed perfect. You are training your brain to connect the length of your stroke to the distance the ball travels.

Putting to the Fringe

Pick a hole on the practice green. Now, instead of trying to make the putt, your goal is to have the ball roll past the hole and die just as it touches the fringe. This forces you to be aggressive with your speed while still maintaining pinpoint control. It eliminates the tendency to leave putts short while teaching you what a "confident" stroke feels like.

Green Reading 101: Learning to See the Slope

You can have a perfect stroke, but if you're aiming at the wrong spot, the ball will never go in. Reading greens can seem like a dark art, but you can simplify it by gathering information systematically.

The Two-Read System: Big Picture and Fine Details

Don’t wait until you’re standing over the ball to read a putt. Your read should start the moment you step onto the green.

• The Big Picture Read: As you walk toward your ball, look at the entire green. Which way does the whole surface seem to tilt? Where are the major ridges or tiers? Where would water run off the green if you dumped a bucket on it? This overall impression gives you the primary direction of the break.
• The Fine Details Read: Once you're a few feet behind your ball, crouch down low. Getting your eyes closer to the ground exaggerates the slope and makes the break easier to see. A pro tip is to also walk to the low side of the putt and look back up at the line. The break is often most apparent from this vantage point. Finally, trust your feet! As you walk around, you can often feel subtle slopes that your eyes might miss.

Picking Your AimPoint and Committing

Once you’ve determined the break, don’t just vaguely aim "outside the cup." You need to pick a precise starting line, or AimPoint. For a breaking putt, find the apex - the highest point of the break - and visualize your ball entering the cup from the "high side."

One trick that helps immensely is to pick an intermediate target. Look for a discolored blade of grass, an old pitch mark, or any small speck just a foot or two in front of your ball that lies on your intended starting line. Your entire focus now is to simply roll the ball over that small target. This simplifies the task from "making a 15-foot breaking putt" to "rolling the ball over a spot one foot away." It makes it much easier to commit and make a confident stroke.

Drills That Actually Make You Better

Consistent practice is what separates good putters from great ones. But mindless practice won't do much. You need to practice with intention. Here are a couple of drills to add to your routine.

The Clock Drill for Short Putts

This builds confidence on the putts you absolutely should be making.

• Place three or four balls in a circle around the hole, each about 3-4 feet away (like the numbers on a clock).
• Go around the circle trying to make every single putt.
• Don't leave until you've managed to make every putt consecutively. This simulates pressure and gets you comfortable over those nervy short ones.

The Gate Drill for a Pure Roll

This is the best drill for grooving a consistent stroke path and solid contact.

• Find a flat 8-10 foot putt.
• Place two tees in the ground just in front of your ball, forming a "gate" that is just barely wider than your putter head.
• Place a third tee about a foot past the first gate, creating a second gate.
• Your goal is to strike the putt so the putter head swings cleanly through the first gate without touching either tee, and the ball rolls right through the second gate. This tells you that your path was on line and your strike was square.

Final Thoughts

Mastering putting boils down to owning these fundamentals: an athletic and repeatable setup, a pendulum stroke powered by your shoulders, and a simple process for reading greens. By dedicating time to purposeful practice with drills that build real skill, you can transform the putter from a source of frustration into the most reliable club in your bag.

Building skill takes repetition, and knowing what to work on can be difficult. On the course, when you’re facing a deceptive double-breaking putt, figuring out the line and speed can feel like pure guesswork. That's why we built our app, to be your on-demand expert. You can use Caddie AI to get an instant virtual read of your putt, helping you see the line and commit to the stroke with confidence, transforming those uncertain moments into makeable a opportunities.