Golf: Playing The Game, Part 3

In this blog I am going to discuss the most important part of playing the game, putting. Putting can save your round or destroy your round. This will not be a how to putt article. There has been more written about putting than any other aspect of the game. I am going to look at 2 mental aspects of putting. One that I am very good at and the other that I am very bad.

The first one is you should expect to make every putt you attempt, no matter how difficult or long the putt is. If you don’t make the putt you should feel the disappointment. You don’t need to go ballistic over it but you need to really feel disappointed when it does not go in. This legitimizes your expectations. I do not advocate trying to get the ball in the 3 foot circle on long putts. In my view the more you are trying to make the putt the closer you are going to get the ball to the hole. I make my fair share of putts over 20 feet and that is because I expect to make it every time I’m over the ball.

Now we come to the dreaded short putt. Let’s define short as any putt that is 18 inches to about 6 to 7 feet from the hole. There are two things that make short putts unique. We not only expect to make the putt but we add that dreaded word should to the process. Ah, that word should. Like we should exercise more, eat better, sleep longer and make all putts between 2 and 6 feet. The 2nd unique thing about short putts is you have choices. You can try and bang the ball in the back of the cup, die the ball over the lip, or just try to find a happy medium. Even though longer putts can go in using all 3 speeds, no one is standing over a 20 foot putt thinking I am going to bang this in the back of the cup. Most of the time on long putts you are thinking of dying the ball in the cup or just going a short way by the hole. For whatever reason we rarely think of dying the ball in the hole on short putts. There was only one tour player who advocated dying the ball on short putts and that was Cory Pavin. Getting back to the dreaded word should. Why is it so bad? Because as soon as you start thinking should, it creates tension in the stroke, which leads to disastrous results. When you combine should with the perceived importance of the putt your chances of making the putt drops to well under 50%, no matter how short the putt is. As I wrote in the beginning of the blog, I am terrible at all of this and miss more than my share of short putts. I do not have any permanent solution. For me, if I make short putts early in the round then I will usually go on to have a good day. On the other side of the coin, if I miss them early then I have a hard time turning it around. All that I see on TV, I’m not the only one having this problem.

There will be one more post on playing the game and that will be on the short game. This post may be awhile because I am working on some things and with winter I may not be playing all that much to evaluate them. If I ever come up with a short putt solution I will pass that along also. All I can say until then, is get out and play, it is the only true measure of how good your golf game is.