This Simple Putting Stroke Is the Secret to Lower Scores

Think your putting stroke is as good as it’s gonna get?

I just helped a 70-year-old golfer make a serious breakthrough in his lag putting. And when I say “breakthrough,” I mean, he dropped three putts per round. He played nine holes after our lesson and shot 36.

That’s what I love about working on putting with my students. A little improvement on the green equals major advancements in your score.

And if you’re a golfer who struggles with distance control, the putting stroke techniques I taught my student will be game-changing for you, too.

Best of all, it’s a strategy you can master immediately. Let’s get into it.

The Perfect Putting Stroke: Key Takeaways

This game-changing putting stroke comes down to three simple techniques:

Make your backswing longer than your forward swing.
Maintain loft by ensuring that the butt end of your putter continues to move foward through impact.
Give yourself a chance to visualize the golf ball’s journey by looking at the hole when you make your practice strokes.
Bonus: Fine-tune your entire short game if you want to lower your scores faster.

Keep reading to explore these concepts in greater depth.

Lengthen the Backswing

In your current putting stroke, how does the length of your backswing compare to the length of your forward swing? When it comes to lag putting, this ratio can make or break your distance control.

Most amateur golfers unknowingly go with the “break” option. They shorten their backswing, which forces them to accelerate quickly on the forward swing in order to get the ball to cover enough distance.

This abrupt acceleration makes it really difficult to control the cadence of your swing, which, in turn, makes it difficult to control your distance.

To reclaim control, make your backswing longer than your forward swing. You want the backswing to account for about 60% of your overall swing length.

With a longer backswing, you have more time to naturally accelerate and to control the rate of acceleration.

I recommend doing a three-setter to practice this as part of your preshot routine. Make three practice motions, one right after the other, paying attention to your backswing-to-forward-swing ratio. Again, you’re going for about a 60/40 split.

After this three-setter, you should have a good feel for proper length. Go ahead and make your putt.

Maintain Loft on Impact

Amateur golfers rarely think about delivery loft, but it has a huge impact on distance control.

Delivery loft is the amount of loft on the putter face at the moment your putter makes contact with the golf ball.

Now, as you know, your putter already has some loft built in. Most traditional putters come with 3-4° of loft, but amateur golfers tend to unknowingly add loft at impact.

(That’s actually why we designed our amateur-friendly VLS G-Track putter with 2° of loft. It also happens to be the only fully adjustable putter on the market, but that’s a topic for another day.)

If you have a lot of trouble with the ball skipping or hopping off the putter face, you’re probably increasing your delivery loft. This obviously compromises your distance control, and it seriously interferes with your touch and feel.

Fortunately, it’s really easy to fix.

All you need to do is feel the butt end of the putter continuing to move forward through impact.

If you notice the butt end of the club working backward (away from the target), it means you’re hinging it and adding loft.

Look at the Hole

The two tips you just learned require direct adjustments to your putting stroke. They’re easy adjustments, but not as easy as this next technique.

In fact, this one is actually a preshot routine designed to help you successfully execute the strategies above. And it’s ridiculously simple.

When you make your practice strokes before the real putt, look at the hole.

That’s it. And how does that help with distance control?

Look at it this way:

You’d never shoot a basket without looking at the hoop. You wouldn’t pitch a baseball without focusing on the strike zone or stare directly at the puck as you hit it. But as golfers, we learn to keep our head down and zero in on the object we’re trying to move instead of looking at where want it to go.

This robs our mind and senses of a crucial opportunity to take in key information about the journey ahead.

By giving yourself a moment to look at the hole before your putt, you improve your ability to accurately judge the amount of speed you need to reach your target.

It’s going to feel awkward at first. You’re not used to staring at the cup during your putting stroke. But do it a few times, and I guarantee you’ll find your touch and feel gets a lot better.

Smash Your Handicap With a Stronger Short Game

I gotta tell you, the fact that you’re reading this article bodes well for your golf game. A lot of golfers get hung up on adding more yards off the tee. Don’t get me wrong: That’s also a worthwhile pursuit, not to mention a lot of fun.

But if you’re serious about lowering your scores, your short game is the best place to start. That’s especially true for “experienced” golfers who don’t have as much flexibility and swing speed as they used to.

Think how many strokes you could reclaim if you improved your lag putting, learned how to chip it within a few feet of the cup, and could reliably get out of the bunker in one shot.

And you can learn an amateur-friendly strategy for doing all those things in my bestselling book, The Easy Break: A Radically Simple System for Better Putting, Chipping, and Bunker Play.

This method allows you to finally do away with the over-complicated list of do’s and don’ts that have been plaguing your short game and drill down to the only techniques that actually make a difference.

The book is full of handy pictures, charts, drills, and practice plans to make the formula for a solid short game easy to understand and execute.

I’m proud to say it’s already been a game-changer for thousands of golfers, and I have no doubt it’ll be eye-opening for you, too. Grab your copy of The Easy Break here.

About the Author

PGA Teaching Professional Todd Kolb is a five-time Golf Digest Best-in-State Instructor, Amazon Best-selling Author, and Minnesota PGA Teacher of the Year. In over 30 years of coaching, he’s worked with from newbies to an LPGA major champion. He’s currently the Director of Instruction for VLS Golf and USGolfTV and dedicates his efforts to helping the everyday golfer cut through overcomplicated traditional instruction to find solutions that actually work for them.