There are two kind of things you can do to improve your putting (therefore your golf performance):
- Understand your putting ability (through historical data)
- Practice your putting stroke
All of our readers must likely already know that the putt is the most frequently used club in your bag and therefore it is critical to everyone to be as good as possible (but I just repeated it just in case ;-)).
If you are still not convinced. When we looked at the aggregated data of all of our golfers at TheGrint we found that avg putts per round and golf handicap index are two highly correlated numbers. Which in simple terms means, get better at putting and you will get better at golf.
But how do you get better at putting? Practicing putts.
Well, as in anything, practice is the key to getting better. One of my favorite books “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell talks how in order to become exceptional at anything you need +10,000 hours of practice. I think the number is just to give you an idea (there is no factual data backing up that exact 10,000 number) but it does emphasize the importance of practicing. (I highly recommend that book)
By the way, I thought it would be relevant to mention a video a saw recently on ESPN’s Sports Science that talked about the max speed that a ball can travel to be able to get in the hole. 3.65MPH was the answer (See the Video Here).
I don’t want to get in the how to practice putting discussion. I am no PGA professional.
How do I understand my putting strengths and weaknesses and apply that to my practice plan?
[like_to_read][/like_to_read]The first step is to break your putting in two areas 1) direction/accuracy and 2) lag. I talk about those two aspects in a previous blog post “How to use TheGrint putts graphs“. Use that post if you are not clear on how to use our graphs to understand your strengths and weaknesses.
Once you identify, your S and W then you should set up and plan how you will practice to get better at those. You cannot practice without a purpose and have to adjust your practice sessions accordingly. I always go back to one of my favorite quotes “Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” (some attribute this quote to Einstein, others attribute it to an author called Rita Mae Brown, who knows).
Make sure you visit TheGrint’s Trends section to analyze your own game.
Enjoy your golf!
