Putting can feel like the most complicated part of golf, but it really boils down to two simple skills. Forget the dozens of conflicting tips you’ve heard. If you can master just two fundamental concepts, you can become a fantastic putter, save yourself countless strokes, and eliminate the frustration of three-putts. This article will break down those two essentials - start line and speed an and give you actionable drills you can take straight to the practice green to start improving today.
Here’s a truth that can change your entire approach to putting: the angle of your putter face at impact is responsible for over 80% of your putt’s starting direction. It’s not your path, your stance, or your eye-line. If your ball starts offline, the problem - almost every single time - is that your putter face was not pointing where you intended when it met the ball.
Think about the last time you lipped out a perfectly read putt. You picked the line, you committed, and the ball horseshoed around the edge. You probably blamed the speed or a footprint. In reality, it was most likely an aiming error. The face was just a fraction of a degree open or closed at impact, starting the ball on a collision course with the lip instead of the center of the cup. The first step to making more putts is taking absolute ownership of where your ball starts. And that begins with having a square putter face.
Most amateur golfers have a routine that sets them up for failure before the stroke even begins. They walk up, place their feet, take their grip, settle in, and *then* they try to aim the putter face. The problem is that your body is now locked in a position that may or may not support a square clubface alignment. You end up making tiny, subconscious manipulations with your hands or shoulders to get the face pointed at the hole, introducing inconsistency right from the start. We need to flip that process on its head.
Building your putt around a properly aimed face is a game-changer. It makes your setup more repeatable and your start-line more reliable. Here’s a simple, step-by-step process:
By aiming the face first, you’ve made it the foundation of the entire putt. Your body is now in a position to simply rock the shoulders and execute the stroke, trusting that your alignment is already perfect.
This is the best drill for receiving instant, honest feedback on your face angle control. It trains you to ignore the hole and focus solely on what matters most: starting the ball on你的 intended line.
Once you can reliably start the ball wherever you want, the second pillar of great putting is speed control. A perfect line means nothing if the ball dies five feet short or screams six feet past the cup. In fact, bad speed is the number one cause of three-putts. Lagging a 40-footer to tap-in range is a stress-free outcome, while banging it way past the hole and facing a nervy come-backer invites disaster. Good distance control is all about creating a repeatable stroke, not a forceful hit.
Watch golfers on the practice green, and you’ll see the most common ault in distance control. On a short putt, they take a tiny backswing and give the ball a little “pop.” On a long putt, they take a similarly short, jerky backswing and then create a huge, accelerating “hit” through the ball. This mentality of *hitting* the ball a certain distance requires immense talent and timing. It's inconsistent because you’re trying to manually control the amount of energy you transfer to the ball on every single putt.
Great putters don’t hit the ball, they stroke it. Think of a grandfather clock’s pendulum swinging back and forth with a consistent, unhurried rhythm. The only thing that changes to make it swing higher or lower is the length of its arc. Your putting stroke should feel the same. Your tempo - the time it takes to go back and through - should remain consistent regardless of the putt’s length. The only thing that changes is the length of your backswing. Longer putt? Longer, smoother backswing. Shorter putt? Shorter, smoother backswing. This simple mental shift from “how hard should I hit this?” to “how far back should I swing this?” is fundamental to developing elite speed control.
This drill is exceptional for calibrating your brain to the feel of distance. It teaches you to groove your tempo and learn organically how different stroke lengths produce different distances.
Improving your putting doesn't require a secret move or a magic piece of equipment. It comes from dedicating your practice time to the only two things that truly matter: starting the ball on your intended line and controlling its speed. By focusing a square face at setup and developing a pendulum-like stroke for distance, you build a foundation that will hold up under pressure and turn dreaded three-putts into simple two-putts.
Of course, mastering your fundamentals on the practice green is one thing, applying them on the course, with all its subtle slopes and grain, is another challenge entirely. We've found that one of the biggest sources of putting anxiety is the uncertainty in reading greens. That’s why we built Caddie AI. It acts as your personal tour-level caddie, giving you a confident read on break and speed for any putt. When you remove the guesswork about the line, you are free to commit fully to the fundamentals you've built a solid, confident stroke toward your target. It's about giving you the clarity you need to simply trust your stroke more - a feeling that can change everything.
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