Dear Tom,
At 13.5, you're doing very well! The average golfer handicap is over twice that. And "scratch" golf is really the score for the field at the US Open that makes the cut! The concept of "par" golf is not exactly as straight-forward as it sounds.
Dr Clyne Soley in San Jose, California, authored a very interesting book in 1977 entitled "How Well Should You Putt: A Search for a Putting Standard (San Jose, CA: Soley Golf Bureau, 1977). He really doesn't conclude that higher handicap golfers avergae fewer putts, altghough it is true that on any given day, a golfer who misses more greens than usual or who misses more than another golfer with the same handicap will gereally have fewer total putts. The guys who set all the putting records for fewest putts on Tour are usually the ones who have trouble hitting the greens. Examples are Stan Utley (a leader of putting stats on the Nationwide Tour), Bob Heintz (who set the putting stat record in 2002 at 1.682 putts per GIR), and others. Arnold Palmer complained about this back in the 1970s, because the guys with fewer putts missed more greens. What this means is a) these golfers are chipping close a lot (and chipping in some) so the total number of putts is low, AND b) the greens they DO hit arer those they hit from short range, so they stick those close too and get a low stat for putts per GIR.
If you are talking about total putts, Soley concluded that total putts correlates with handicap, and that the total number of putts declines as the handicap get lowers. What he does say that is similar to what you ask about is that the PERCENTAGE of strokes that are putts out of the total score goes UP as the handicap goes DOWN.
So, according to Soley's stats, a -13 handicap male golfer takes about 32.8 putts and this is 37.4 percent of the total score of 87.8 (page 7, Table 2-1). In contrast, the +3 handicap golfer has an average score of 69.6, takes 30.6 putts, and this is 44 percent of the total. A "scratch" golfer at 0 handicap has an average score of 73.2, takes 30.8 putts, and this is 42.1 percent of the total. Over the range of handicaps from -18 to +3, the total number of putts declines from 34.2 to 30.6, but the percent of putts out of the total strokes increases from 36.6 to 44.0 percent.
The meaning of this pattern is that the golfer lowering his handicap is eliminating more wasted strokes from his game before he gets to the green, and is only marginally benefitting in total score from putting improvement. To drop 21 strokes in your average score, only 4 of those strokes are saved putts and 17 are saved shots from the tee, fairway, rough, and bunkers. Stay in the short stuff at ALL costs to get the handicap down, even if occasionally it takes 3 shots to get onto the green on a par 4, or 2 shots to get onto the green on a par 3. Most strokes are wasted hitting in the rough off the tee and not being able to handle shots from the rough or from the sand and by poor chips and pitches.
According to Soley's numbers, your handicap would have to lower from 13 to 8 before your average total putts would drop by 1 putt (from 32.8 to 31.7). Then your handicap would have to drop from 8 to +2 before your total putts would go down by a second 1 putt (from 31.7 to 30.7).
Pro putting stats on the PGA Tour range from 30.5 to 27.1 over a field of about 200 pros (3.4 putts range). The scoring average ranges from 73 to 69.3 (3.7 strokes range). So at this level, a little improvement in ANY area without a backsliding in another area moves the golfer up the competitive chain pretty good. But this is not really the standard for recreational golfers.
A better way to gauge putting performance is total putting footage per number of putts. If you have a putt of 24 feet and get down in 2, your number is 24/2 = 12 ft/putt. Over the total round, you might have 33 putts, but the question is whether the AVERAGE length of these putts is a decent number. On Tour, the number for the field average is about 4.5 feet. So a pro with this average and using 29 putts for the round has a total putting footage of 4.5 x 29 = 130.5 feet of putting. A LONGER number is better. I seem to recall that Arnold Palmer in the late 1960s and early 1970s had a fantastic number, and was the top putter, at something like 7 or 8 feet/putt. That means he was facing well over 200 feet of putting and handling it extremely well with 28-30 (or fewer putts) while his competitors were only facing 150 or so feet of putts because they couldn't drive as far or reach the green from far off with a long iron as well. The same is true today, as Tiger Woods on paper looks like a good putter this year, but that is mostly because he hits lots of greens AND sticks the ball close to the pin when he does, so he faces fewer total feet of putting per round than others. Outside about 10 feet, Tiger's putting ranks very low on Tour.
The way for someone in your situation, getting better from 13 handicap, to assess putting performance is to see in advance how your game will be improving in different areas as you get the handicap lower. Getting inside a 10 handicap (single digits) ought to be a reasonable goal for you over the coming year, but after that, getting the handicap to 5 or so and then to scratch or better is a very tough and much slower project, usually. During this time of change, you should set goals in terms of eliminating 3-putts and improving lagging and improving the length of putt you can sink at about 75% of your tries. The total number of putts should decline only slightly as the total percentage of putts per score increases, but your total footage of putts faced could initally go up as you hit more greens but just barely. This makes you face longer first putts, so your total footage of putts per round faced will increase as you hit more greens. Once you reach scratch, though, you will peak out on GIRs and then look to improve by sticking those same greens closer to the pin every time. Then your total footage of putts per round will decline. Through it all, you want your feet/putts number to keep rising.
Some goals would be:
to drop your average 3-putts from 3 per round to 2, or from 2 per round to 1 (pros average about 1 3-putt every 3 rounds and Ben Crenshaw recently went 281 holes without a single 3-putt -- almost 16 rounds!)
to improve your average lag leave on 30+ foot putts from 4-5 feet short or long to 2-3 feet short only, and later to 1-2 feet short
to increase your 75% makeable range from 3.5 feet out to 6 feet, so you only miss 1 out 4 from 6 feet on the course on average
to increase your average feet/putt number from perhaps about 4 feet to about 5 or 6 feet
As your long game and your chipping-pitching-sand play game shapes up, you will begin to face shorter putts, and then your skills in putting will start to show themselves. It's hard to see this, though, if you look to total putts or to putts per GIR only. These aren't the best measures, and the PGA Tour uses them only because it has been too hard to track total footage of every putt for every player. Now that ShotLink does in fact track these numbers, you can expect the PGA Tour to adopt a new measure of putting performance along the lines of this discussion. I would imagine the change will come in about 2-3 more years, unless Tiger and others who would not look good under this new measure block the change.
For you to track these measures, you will need to carry a pocket notebook and jot down the footage of each putt (just ballpark it). If you want to get elaborate, you can also note break, slope, and green speed. Something like L3U3-9 might be used to record a 9-foot putt with left-to-right break of 3 feet uphill on a 3 percent slope green (and the greens that day are Stimping at 8.5 feet). One green might have one putting entry and another might have three entries. At the end of the round, total the footage and total the number of putts, divide for the feet/putt number, and also note the number of one-putts, two-putts, and three-putts. You can also get an average of the length of your first (only) putt on each green, so you will see what sort of length you really ought to be worrying about in general.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
The PuttingZone.com
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.