It’s time to eliminate three-putts on the green for good.
Eliminating three-putts can make the largest difference when it comes to reaching that next milestone with your scores. Three putts typically occur in the five feet and under range around the hole.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates three simple tips to help master short putts. These tips will help amateurs combat common habits and mistakes.
Say goodbye to anxiety or the yips around short putts and get ready for your scores to drop.
If you’re interested in any of Averee’s fitness content, click here.
If you’re looking for more instruction, click here.
Surprisingly, the creator said, developing this skill is easy.
Eight-foot putts are not typically stressful for PGA Tour pros, but the 8-foot par putt that Max Homa faced on Friday morning on the fifth at Augusta National had to be made if he was going to stay tied for the lead at the 2024 Masters. On the outside, he looked calm, but on the inside, he had to be feeling the pressure.
After both Tiger Woods and Jason Day finished the hole, the dance floor was Homa’s. With one foot on either side of his golf ball, he bent his right arm at about a 90-degree angle and held up his index finger and middle finger while staring at the hole. After backing up four paces, bending to take another look toward the hole, and then getting into his address position, Homa set his putter behind the ball. No practice strokes. He made a quick glance toward the cup, made his stroke and buried the putt.
“I mean, that is special,” said Colt Knost on the ESPN+ broadcast before Billy Ray Brown added, “That’s what champions do.”
Max Homa lines up a putt on the no. 9 green during the second round of the Masters Tournament. Mandatory Credit: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Network
But what was Homa doing with his fingers, which appeared to be what Will Zalatoris, Viktor Hovland, Keegan Bradley, Tommy Fleetwood, Collin Morikawa, Adam Scott and a growing number of other PGA Tour pros are doing? Like those other pros, Homa uses AimPoint Express. This green-reading technique was developed by Mark Sweeney, the man who created the AimPoint putting line that broadcasters like Golf Channel, NBC and CBS used to show viewers a virtual path a ball needed to travel to finish in the hole.
“AimPoint Express is a dramatic simplification of what is a very complicated computer program to figure out how the ball goes from Point A to Point B and goes into the hole,” Sweeney said. “AimPoint Express takes about 100,000 lines of code and converts it into the player feeling how much side tilt there is in the putt.”
What television viewers did not see during the broadcast of Homa’s putt on the fifth hole was that he had not only straddled his golf ball before he putted, but that he also stood halfway between his golf ball and the hole for a few seconds and tried to feel the tilt of the putting surface. Through practice and some training, Homa and other golfers can feel the difference between a one-, two- and three-percent slope to one side or another using their feet.
Then, standing over their golf ball, they extend an arm and hold up the number of figures that correspond to the estimated number of degrees in the tilt they felt — one finger for a one-percent slope, two fingers for a two-percent slope and so on.
Viktor Hovland and Will Zalatoris both use AimPoint Express. (Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports)
Sweeney accidentally discovered the relationship between the slope of a green, the length of a golfer’s arm and the width of a person’s fingers.
“I had a much more complicated method of reading greens prior to AimPoint Express,” said Sweeney. “But then I was teaching some young kids, 7- and 8-year-olds, and I had them put their thumb on the high side of the hole, just to get them aiming somewhere above the hole. It turns out that your thumb is perfect for one’s and two’s, it will get you close, but then we started experimenting with one finger per percent. We tested those reads against the math and it was insane how accurate it was. Like, it was within an inch or two every single time (from 20 feet).”
Knowing that, and seeing Homa on the fifth hole holding up two fingers, viewers familiar with AimPoint Express would know that Max was estimating that halfway to the hole, there was a two-perfect tilt in the green. From Homa’s perspective, his target on that putt was two fingers’ width to the right of the hole (probably about 4 inches right), and assuming he hit the putt directly at that target, he was right because the ball went in the cup.
Every week, pros can be seen practicing AimPoint Express and developing their sense of feel for slopes on the practice greens at PGA Tour events. Many of them bring a digital level, and as they stand along an intended putt line, they call out a slope percentage like one, two or three while their caddy looks at the level.
Surprisingly, Sweeney said, developing this skill is easy.
“Within about 15 minutes, most people are picking up half-degrees of slope,” he said. “People are much, much better at feeling slope than they think. Nobody is ever off by more than one percent. Like, it’s almost unheard of that a player is off by more than one percent. No one calls a one a three or a one a four because they are so dramatically different.”
Ben An doing slope detection exercises with his caddie at Riviera Country Club. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Sweeney claims that anybody, with a bit of practice, can accurately estimate to a half-percent. He also encourages golfers to calculate the slope along their putt’s length twice around halfway between the ball and the hole and use the bigger of the two estimations for their read. Some players, like Homa, take one reading and then turn around and repeat the estimation facing toward the ball to confirm their first reading.
In a Golf Channel interview, Homa said, “Your eyes can lie to you a lot, but your feet, typically, will never lie.”
Tiger Woods does not use AimPoint Express, and neither does Jordan Spieth or Jason Day. Brad Faxon, Loren Roberts and Ben Crenshaw never used it either. Some golfers have a great feel for green reading, spotting slopes and contours on the putting surface and understanding how putts will roll. However, many golfers are not blessed with this ability. Sweeney hates hearing that the skill will come with time and experience.
“As a coach, you have to take someone who doesn’t have a skill and give them that skill,” said Sweeney, who works with several tour pros and teaches lessons at Waldorf Astoria Golf Club in Orlando, Florida. “How do you teach someone green reading if they don’t naturally see what a good green reader sees? I thought ‘Just go do it and you’ll get better,’ was a really crappy answer. It’s like a full-swing instructor saying to someone, ‘I know you’re slicing it off the tee, but just go hit a lot of balls and you’ll get better.'”
Tom Kim and his caddie practice reading greens with a digital level before the start of the Genesis Invitational. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Aimpoint Express removes the need to walk around a hole and see your intended putt from multiple angles, so for Sweeney, it does not slow play as some people think.
Sweeney postulates that the better a golfer gets at reading greens, the more time they can spend working on improving distance control and developing the quality of their putting stroke.
“It’s really helped me to read the greens, obviously, but it’s turned a lot of that into better speed,” Homa said on Golf Channel. “I’m shocked more people don’t do it, if I am being honest.”
Valenzuela called putting her “nemesis” in recent months.
Albane Valenzuela called putting her “nemesis” in recent months. Well, that changed in a mighty way in Thailand, where she needed only 19 putts in a career-low 9-under 63 on Sunday. The Swiss player’s solo second to Patty Tavatanakit at Honda LPGA Thailand marked her career-best finish on tour.
Last month at the LPGA Drive On in Bradenton, Florida, the 26-year-old Valenzuela had 10 three-putts, calling her speed “totally off.”
On Sunday at Siam Country Club, Valenzuela went on a dizzying streak with the putter after holing out for eagle on the par-4 fifth.
“From No. 7 onwards I only had one-putts,” said Valenzuela. “For all the people that told me I could not putt, there you go.”
Amy Yang was the last player to record 19 putts in a round on the first day of the 2022 Amundi Evian Championship. Only one player has registered 18 putts in a round since 1980, and that was Minea Blomqvist at the 2008 Fields Open in Hawaii at Ko Olina Golf Club. Valenzuela is the seventh player to record 19 putts since 1980.
The late Joan Joyce holds the LPGA record for fewest putts in a round, needing only 17 at the 1982 Lady Michelob.
Albane Valenzuela celebrates after making a putt during the final round of the 2024 Honda LPGA Thailand at Siam Country Club in Thailand. (Photo: Thananuwat Srirasant/Getty Images)
Valenzuela, a former Stanford player and two-time Olympian, said the week in Thailand was huge for her confidence, proving to herself that she has that competitive fire in her heart.
“I think I’ve never enjoyed playing a Sunday as much as I did today,” she said, “just because of how calm I was. I told my dad, I finally got out of my way and I really understood a lot about myself today.”
“Bad thoughts seem to go out of my brain,” he said.
PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. – Former University of Washington men’s golf coach Matt Thurmond’s scouting report of Nick Taylor from the team’s 2009 media guide has aged well 15 years later.
“I’ve never coached anyone that can raise his game so much in difficult conditions and high-pressure situations,” Thurmond, now the coach at Arizona State, wrote all those years ago. “Nick can hit the best shot at the biggest moment.”
“He’s tough when he gets the chance, it’s just getting him there,” said Mark McCann, Taylor’s swing coach since 2018. “Every time he gets a sniff, he’s going to win, it’s getting him to that sniff.”
Taylor notched his fourth career Tour title in the Valley of the Sun, the Canadian native’s adopted hometown. His first win came at the 2014 Sanderson Farms Championship but then he had to wait more than five years to get back to the winner’s circle. When he did so, at the 2020 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Taylor stared down Phil Mickelson in the final round. There was also the time in 2018 when Taylor shot a final-round 63 at the Wyndham Championship to keep his Tour card.
How does he do it when his back is against the wall or the tournament is on the line?
“Bad thoughts seem to go out of my brain,” he said.
Taylor’s third win proved that Pebble was no fluke, winning his national open to snap a 59-year drought for Canadians at the 2023 RBC Canadian Open. With the pressure of an entire country depending on him to end the winless spell, Taylor calmly stepped up and holed an unforgettable 72-foot eagle putt to clinch the title in a four-hole playoff over Tommy Fleetwood.
And then on Sunday, he trailed Hoffman by three strokes with four holes to go but never panicked, electing to lay up at the par-5 15th and rely on his stellar wedge game. Taylor credited work he’s done with his mental coach, Chris Bergstrom, in helping him find his sweet spot for being so mentally tough.
“The chase mentality seems to be my best mindset where I have to do things,” he said. “Sometimes that means I need to birdie two holes on the back nine to make the cut. We have tricks to try to get into that mindset. I had to get into that mindset trying to chase down Hoffman … Why the ball decides to go in the hole at the right time in the last two years, who knows?”
What he does know is that two years ago he fell into the trap of projecting ahead to what it would be like to qualify for the International Team for the Presidents Cup and he applied too much pressure to achieving his goal of his first international competition. This year, he’s poised to make the team and play for Canada’s Mike Weir in Montreal, and with his world ranking climbing to a career-best of 28th, he’s in line to represent Canada at The Olympics.
“Those are huge goals of mine but also golf will kind of take care of that. If I’m looking week after week of where I am, what I need to do, it’s only going to be hurtful,” he said.
The International Team can certainly use a player who can raise his game in the most pressure-packed situations like Taylor has been doing ever since Coach Thurmond first laid eyes on him.
Morikawa has treated changes to his golf game during his winless streak like a state secret.
On Wednesday, ahead of the Zozo Championship in Japan, Collin Morikawa spent about 2 ½ hours on the putting green. That in itself isn’t unusual for a PGA Tour pro but on this particular occasion, Morikawa and his caddie JJ Jakovac found something that propelled him to one of his best putting weeks of the season and on Sunday when it mattered most, he couldn’t miss.
So, what did he find just hours before the tournament began that was the difference in helping him win for the first time on the PGA Tour since the 2021 British Open?
“Yeah, yeah, we found something and we’re going to stick to it,” he said. “Look, you never know whether it’s going to be right or wrong, but something was off. Something I just couldn’t figure out. JJ and I were just looking at each other very confused and trying a bunch of different things. You know, we weren’t changing too much, we were just trying to look at putts a different way.
“We stuck to it. It was nice to see putts roll in in the first round, and then that continued. Yeah, made a lot of putts this week, it was really nice.”
Sounds good, right, except Morikawa left out the details as to what he actually changed. Was it his grip, his alignment, using AimPoint or relying on his first instinct of his read? He didn’t share. So his questioner pushed for more and asked for any additional insights.
“No, no, nope,” Morikawa replied.
Next question.
Morikawa is never going to be confused for Rory McIlroy, who to our great delight may be an over-sharer. But this isn’t the first time this season that Morikawa has kept things close to the vest with a change he’s made, guarding it like a state secret. Back at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in July, he opened with 66 and was asked if he found something between playing in Hartford the week before.
“Yes, kind of,” he said. “I found probably the most important thing yesterday afternoon after my pro-am. It’s been a lot of work on the range, it’s been a lot of just playing on the course, seeing what the ball’s doing.
“Like I said, the good shots are good, so like it’s tough because like I can go hit five, 10 balls on the range, looks great and then you put it on the course and that’s where shots matter. It was something nice to find yesterday and kind of work from there. I won’t tell you, so…”
I was covering this event and I tried one more time.
“It’s in my golf swing,” he said, which did nothing to clear things up.
Given his reluctance to share, I tried a different tactic: Not asking you to tell me, but why do you not want to tell?
“Well, because it’s still a work in progress,” he explained, which is understandable, I suppose. “I think for me the swing thoughts and just basic things, like it’s nothing, it’s nothing complicated at all. Like, it is the least complicated thing.”
If it is the least complicated thing ever, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to share it with golfers who are always in search of their own fix.
One day later, after another good round, he was pressed for more details and answered, “It’s pretty simple, to be honest. I’m still not going to tell you, though.”
“I didn’t think you were,” I said.
“If I finish on top, I’ll tell you on Sunday, that’s a fair answer,” he said.
Unfortunately, he lost in a playoff to Rickie Fowler and so his secret stayed under wraps.
A month later, at the Tour Championship, Morikawa surged into contention for the FedEx Cup trophy with an opening-round 61 and was asked by a reporter, “Is there something specific you found in your swing the last couple weeks that has allowed you to feel like you have so much control?”
“Yeah, we found it on Tuesday,” Morikawa responded, “and I’m not going to tell you.”
Morikawa re-upped that if he won, he would share the details Sunday with me but he faded on the weekend.
This time, however, he won and even in a jubilant mood still didn’t feel obliged to share with the reporters on hand.
Scheffler said he already feels more comfortable over the ball despite making only minor tweaks.
ROME — After another dismal putting performance at the Tour Championship in August, Scottie Scheffler had enough.
So, he sought help, first sending a text the night after the tournament and then calling one of golf’s leading putting coaches, Englishman Phil Kenyon, the next day. A few days later they began working in Dallas on his putting woes.
“Basically he just told me I sucked, he couldn’t believe I’d ever won a tournament with how I putted. That’s what you want to hear, right?” Scheffler joked of their initial meeting. “No, on a serious note, I had a feeling what I was doing wrong. It was something that — my suspicions were kind of answered. It was just I was trying to fix it in the complete wrong way. To get into the details of it would take a little bit of time, but it’s really very simple.”
We’re in no rush, Scottie. Please continue: “The way I moved the putter through the ball, I was kind of fighting the toe rising on the putter as I went through, and so sometimes I’d miss contact a little bit in the heel,” he explained. “In order for me to try to keep my putter head low, the way I would do it is I feel everything in my hands, and what I would do is I would lower my hands. But when I lowered my hands, it actually caused the toe of the putter to go higher and higher. So as the year went on, my hands are getting lower and lower, and the problem is getting worse and worse. It was something I couldn’t figure out, and it was preventing me from hitting as many putts on line as I should have. Like I said this year, I really did hit a lot of good putts. Now I feel like I’m much more consistent hitting my start line, especially my practice.”
Team USA golfer Scottie Scheffler works on the putting green prior to the Ryder Cup golf competition at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club. (Photo: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports)
Scheffler won the WM Phoenix Open in February and the Players Championship in March and had an incredible run of consistency during the season, good enough to hold the FedEx Cup lead going into the Tour Championship for the second straight year. The only thing holding him back was a balky putter. He ranked 151st in Strokes Gained: Putting. Scheffler has never worked with anyone other than longtime coach Randy Smith on any facet of the game.
“I called Randy. I said, ‘Hey, thinking about calling this guy named Phil.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know him, I think it’s a good idea, let’s do it,” Scheffler recounted.
Scheffler said he already feels more comfortable over the ball despite making only minor tweaks.
“Like even something as simple as lining up the ball, sometimes I would do it and sometimes I wouldn’t, and I wasn’t using the line in the right way. Phil kind of gave me a different perspective on using the line that’s been really helpful,” he said. “It’s just little things like that. I haven’t felt like I’ve made a huge change. I just kind of got my mind right. I feel like we made little changes to where I’m more comfortable over the ball and now I don’t have to think about my stroke. That’s pretty much all it is.”
Could Scheffler’s work with a coach who is a native from England impact who wins the 44th Ryder Cup?
“When he came to Dallas, I was joking with him,” Scheffler said. “I told him his stuff is going to work so well he’s not going to be welcome back at his home club when he gets home after the Ryder Cup.”
It’s common to not know how to practice putting intentionally before a round. We found a drill that will have you confident on the greens before playing every single time.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates the 3-6-9 putting drill to master the speed and break of a hole.
This is a great warm-up drill to do before you go play to get the speed of the greens down or when you are just trying to get some practice in.
If you’re interested in any of Averee’s fitness content, click here.
If you’re looking for more instruction, click here.
Scottie Scheffler was in the mix for what would’ve been a third win of the season Sunday at the 2023 BMW Championship.
With Viktor Hovland in the clubhouse lead at 17 under, Scheffler had a 26-foot putt for birdie on the 17th hole to tie the Norwegian, but instead three-putted for a disappointing bogey. That meant he had to hole-out from the fairway on No. 18 if he was to force a playoff with Hovland, who instead walked away with a two-shot win after Scheffler made par.
Scheffler was first in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, Approach to Green and Tee to Green on the week. In a field of 50, he came in 38th in Strokes Gained: Putting, where he lost 1.891 shots to the field. Round up, and there’s the two shots that could’ve forced a playoff.
The 25-year-old’s week at Olympia Fields Country Club’s North Course in Illinois was obviously nothing to scoff at with scores of 66-69-64-66. It took a career low and course record (by Hovland) to beat him, after all. But his performance at the BMW highlights a trend that we’ve seen all season from the World No. 1: the game overall is tight, but the putter is too loose.
“The things that I’m working on right now I feel very excited about. I’m hitting a lot of good putts,” said Scheffler before the Open Championship in July while arguing his putting wasn’t a problem. “Pretty soon, a lot of those good putts will start falling in the middle of the hole instead of dodging around the side of it.”
Scottie Scheffler reacts after missing a putt on the ninth green during the first round of the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club. (Photo: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports)
That’s the kind of confidence that gets built up over four years of early success on the PGA Tour. In 110 starts, he’s racked up nine third-place showings, seven runner-up finishes and six wins with 91 made cuts. In 22 events this year alone, Scheffler didn’t miss a single cut and was in the top 25 in 20 of those starts, with 16 top 10s and a pair of wins and runners-up.
The fact he’s been so successful with such below-average performance on the greens makes Scheffler’s start to his professional career all the more impressive.
Here’s a look at Scheffler’s putting stats over his four years on the PGA Tour.
Scottie’s struggles
Scheffler had a bounce-back season last year in SG: Putting, but even then he was only ranked 58th and still managed four wins. This year is his worst SG: Putting on Tour since the 2019-20 season, not to mention his total putting ranking has triple digits for the fourth consecutive season. On top of that, his overall putting average (103rd) has gotten worse the last two seasons.
His one-putt percentage is drastically different (67th to 139th this year), which comes as a tough look seeing as he leads the Tour in SG: Approach to Green and greens in regulation and sits 12th in proximity to the hole.
The only distance putting category where Scheffler is inside the top 40 this year is putts from 25 feet or farther. Over the last three years he was top 40 in at least three distance categories.
Stat
2022-23 ranking
2021-22 ranking
2020-21 ranking
2019-20 ranking
SG: Putting
145
58
107
117
Total putting
115
120
101
114
Overall putting average
103
82
43
56
One-putt percentage
139
67
58
57
Putting from 20-25 feet
124
5
40
68
Putting from 10-15 feet
170
9
160
52
Putting inside 10 feet
135
155
81
161
Putting from 10 feet
183
25
91
144
Putting from 8 feet
174
159
163
121
Putting from 5 feet
164
174
62
75
Putting from 4-8 feet
172
180
102
126
Putting from 4 feet
131
107
142
171
Scottie’s successes
Despite some glaring concerns, Scheffler comes in 24th in putting average and 32nd in birdie or better conversion percentage (though both of those are worse than years prior). The 2022 Masters champion is third in birdie average and first in scoring average. Scary thought? He should be scoring even more.
The stats also show that Scheffler is putting significantly better in the final round compared to the first three, which hasn’t been the case over the years.
He’s down to 62nd in putts per final round from 122 and 124 in the last two years, but with that said, his numbers have inflated across the board from Thursday-Saturday.
Aside from his three-jack at the 17th on Sunday, Scheffler has done well to minimize his three-putt percentage and now ranks 13th on Tour.
Stat
2022-23 ranking
2021-22 ranking
2020-21 ranking
2019-20 ranking
Putting average
24
4
10
36
Birdie or better conversion %
32
8
12
13
Putts per round total
103
82
43
57
Putts per round 1
87
77
17
11
Putts per round 2
145
90
52
21
Putts per round 3
129
71
89
108
Putts per round 4
62
122
124
162
3-putt avoidance
13
80
49
113
Putting from less than 25 feet
39
50
33
14
Putting from 15-20 feet
56
145
47
25
Putting from 9 feet
50
120
58
146
Putting from 7 feet
70
143
56
100
Putting from 6 feet
84
159
129
167
Putting from 3 feet
77
132
42
169
It’s difficult to pick apart the game of a player who just made a record $21 million on the course and has a firm hold of the world No. 1 ranking. But with that skill and success comes scrutiny when you don’t perform at your best. Statistically speaking, Scheffler’s never been a great putter, and this season has been worse on the greens than the previous three. It’s also arguably his best season overall on Tour.
Just imagine the level of golf we’d be seeing if a few more putts fell.
We have all faced the decision of whether to putt or chip.
Your ball may have been near the green with a notable amount of distance to the actual hole, or perhaps the lie looked suspect or there wasn’t too much grass around the ball.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates how to settle the debate on when to putt or chip when you can’t decide.
A bad putt is always better than a bad chip.
When in doubt, putt it out.
If you’re interested in any of Averee’s fitness content, click here.
If you’re looking for more instruction, click here.
