Dear 300Drive,
Your question is very fundamental, and that means important to everyone. Thanks for getting the focus on this topic.
At the very highest level, I think, one's "approach" to putting or one's philosphical perspective on one's own skills and performance in putting, is where the final touches of mastery come from. For example, what makes Brad Faxon a master putter is not that he is tremendously skilled, but that he is better than skilled -- he has pretty much matured into the right attitude and perspective about putting. That perspective is mostly about giving every putt its best chance of sinking by doing what you know and believe is the best way you know how to putt, and accepting the results and accepting that putting is just part of the greater endeavor of playing a game.
All the great putters that I most admire have a stability in their personalities that bespeaks having made peace with the ups and downs of the game of golf and also have pretty much sorted out what they believe works best in putting. Ben Crensahw, Bobby Locke, Billy Casper, Paul Runyan, Horton Smith, and Jack Nicklaus all share the trait of having sorted out their putting technique in a "once and for all" way. These people are all examples of fully adult, mature golfers -- centered individuals. Loren Roberts and Jim Furyk are pretty close to this as well, as was Payne Stewart. Phil Mickelson is in flux right now, headed that way. Retief Goosen is probably there. Ernie Els always seems to be right on the edge, very close.
This developed perspective of the master putter reveals itself by the golfer's reaction to misses. If the putt misses because of something not normally noticeable about the break or the surface (because just too subtle to expect golfers to notice it), then it's just a matter of "the rub of the green" and doesn't trouble the golfer in the least in terms of confidence and the steadiness in the belief in what works as the best way to perform in putting. The golfer just moves on. But if the putt SHOULD have been made, because what went wrong should have been seen in advance and avoided by the correct technique in reading, aiming, and stroking the ball, or controlling the body and mind, then the golfer has failed himself on this occasion. It's a foregivable failing, but a very serious one nonetheless. So reactions to misses by master putters are a mix of reaction to the meaning of the putt for the competition's course of events and the reaction of the golfer to whether he did what he expected of himself. Oddly, a master putter can get upset when he sinks a putt, if he does so with poor execution. The master putter minimizes but does not eliminate the role of luck in putting, and when he benefits from luck, it's nice only in terms of the first reaction (the competition), but it's not so nice in terms of the second reaction (personal performance).
Without this steadiness, the master putter would not putt with a top-ranking performance over the field day in and day out, year in and year out. Golfers who are streaky putters simply aren't master putters. Sergio Garcia, Tiger Woods, Darren Clarke, Adam Scott, Vijay Singh, Mike Weir, David Toms, and many others who have shown great skill on occasion with the putter, really aren't there yet and have quite a ways to go.
In the normal course of events, golfers en route to mastery progress thru skill to attitude. First, the movement of a straight putt that rolls where the putter is aimed is sorted out, and along with this, distance control. (The vast majority of golfers never get this far and get stuck in the chipmunk-in-the-rolling-cage syndrome of trying one magazine tip after another without ever learning a stroke that rolls the ball straight or good distance control that is ready to hand every day.) Then the routine and green reading mature, putting in tournament competition is honed, and then the philosophical perspective emerges last. It would be a lot easier if the philosophical perspective were the first to emerge, as this would make the entire journey more enjoyable.
Because of all this, two main and complementary approaches to mastering putting emerge: 1) an appreciation for the long haul of steady, slow, always-upward progress in performance with a belief in a basic technique for what is necessary to give any putt its best chance of sinking; and 2) the perspective that putting results in competition are partly luck and you can only control giving your best effort by doing what you expect of yourself.
Boiling this down to something to do:
To learn and become competent at what works best, you probably have to jettison the vast bulk of existing golf instruction, because it is either bad advice, slice-and-dice advice, conflict-ridden advice, or indifferent advice. In building your set of beliefs about technique that you really believe works effectively and perhaps as well as you could imagine any technique should work, you have to have a level-headed practicality that is utterly unimpressed by so-called "authority" or by what other golfers say is the best way. It's not the best way unless it trumps all other ways you already have learned about and convinces you personally, no matter who recommends it. Bad advice actively impedes good performance if you keep it hanging around in the mind as a possible answer to this or that situation. Take no prisoners in golf advice -- if you CAN kill the advice, then do so. What survives is worth paying attention to.
In my view, tempo and distance control is the foundation for straight strokes and good reading of putts. I would recommend paying heaps of attention throughout your golfing life to how to implement a good tempo with your movement skills -- how does the tempo interface with breathing and relaxation, how does the tempo survive pressure, what are the physical and mental cues that help tempo stay steady and optimal?
I would practice distance control separately, and practice straight strokes separately. Then I would practice a straight stroke with good distance control. I would always be practicing touch and stroke. Aiming the stroke at a target is a fundamental skill also. But reading the putt to decide on a target to aim at or on how the putt as a whole will break is more of a competition-specific situation. Bcoming a great reader of putts is obviously required to master putting, but there really isn't any such thing as practicing to read left-to-right putts or right-to-left putts -- there is only reading a specific putt. The fundamental skill in reading putts is based on tempo, and seeing in real-time how your ball would really react and curve over the surface as it progresses thru its total path from start to finish. So for this, experience with many surfaces and many putts is added on top of a growing familiarity with a belief in your stable tempo to assit the reading. The more you progress in putt-reading skills, the more the final 2 or 3 feet of any putt begins to see exactly the same speed-pattern of the arriving ball.
I've written about the four basic skills of picking a target, aiming at a target, stroking straight to roll the ball where the putter and body is aimed, and putting with good touch or distance control in the MyTips section, and have devised dozens of drills for each of these four skills.
Working on these four skills is all fine and dandy, and in the process I certainly encourage you to love practicing putting for its own sake, but the attitude described above is perhaps even more helpful in advancing you towards better and better performance. Both are necessary, but the attitude seems to keep you on track and fully fueled for the trip.
The actual progress you experience should not be frustrating. If it is, you may not be judging your progress in the right way or with the appropriate long-haul perspective. I always judge first whether I used a good tempo and made a straight roll. Then I judge whether I picked a good target and aimed straight at it. This way, I blame the correct flaw or failure in the performance, so I know the meaning and significance of the putt's feedback in terms of executing the skills and what needs my attention moving forward. I never feel like I couldn't have made a miss (that didn't go in because I failed to execute like I knew I should have done) -- instead, I always feel like I could have made that putt if I had simply executed what I know is necessary, so long as the "rub of the green" didn't get me. I try to notice the main one or two aspects of a specific miss that shows me what I did poorly, and then I "get back in the saddle" for the next challenge. (What else are you going to do -- bemoan your fate or play the next shot?)
So misses are occasions for learning, correcting, moving forward to better performance. Once I diagnose the miss, I make a mental note and then forget the putt altogether. I like learning and doing better next time, so misses just don't trouble my internal sense of being a good putter. I don't get frustrated and I keep looking forward to the next challenge.
One possible reason for frustration is that you are lumping all putts together in the sense that you always want to one putt a green no matter how far of you start from the hole. Sinking putts from outside 20 feet is less than a one-every-five-times proposition, and is probably closer to less than one-in-seven. Sure, you want to sink the putt at the outset and do your best to get the sink, but you can't let a miss frustrate you in terms of the competition. But if you just blow the putt altogether with stupid or indifferent technique and focus, then that's a reason to react negatively. I think determination might be the better reaction than frustration to a performance failure -- determination to do better and avoid the lapse, or at least to get back on the focused track of steady performance.
Three-putting is a normal source of frustration. So you always want to have practice designed to keep long-lag distance control right at the top of your priorities. Even here, you need to judge your progress over the long haul. Collegiate golfers usually three-putt on average a couple of times in an event, and pros avoid three putting except about once every event (once every 4 rounds), on average. Eliminating three putts as much as possible is probably a more productive goal for most golfers than is sinking so-called "makeable" birdie putts or par-save putts. In general, almost all golfers at all levels need to work harder at getting to a no-bogey game than they do getting to a birdie-rich game. The low scores only come once you learn how to avoid bogey, and many golfers make plenty of birdies but don't score nearly as well as they could had they focused more on avoiding bogey. The avoiding of three putting is part of this overarching approach to the game and should have the same priority.
Missing short putts is a source of frustration, as discussed above, in two separate senses -- the competition and your personal effort on the occasion. Don't let the natural frustration of short misses confuse your assessment of your effort. In judging your progress in putting skill, you always judge only your effort and never the results, and you always try to diagnose what exactly you did poorly and what is needed to avoid a repeat. This keeps you on an upward path in skills development.
So, in the final analysis, liking getting better and liking practicing fundamental skills and taking a long-haul, relaxed attitude to the pace of performance advancement with putting just a part of the total game seems to me to be a healthy and mature and practical approach to mastery. If at times it seems a little like watching paint dry, then just enjoy something else about the day, such as the weather or the sounds of the birds.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
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