The pros are better than the average golfer in everything; of course. Well, almost. They can hit drives over 300 yards, knock towering 3-iron shots that stop dead on the green, play perfectly clipped bunker shots; in short, they excel at all in golf that involves hitting. However, all golfers can become Tour players on the green. The actual act of putting does not take the kind of strength and flexibility a Tour pro has. All that is needed is spending more time thinking about and especially practicing what is, in a sense, a universal art. Surveys have shown that Tour pros spend 30 percent of their golf time practicing their putting, while the average golfer goes at it around 5%, sometimes less. It’s not uncommon for a weekend golfer to throw three balls on the putting green five or 10 minutes before tee-off time, casually hit them a few times, then go off to the first tee. Which is understandable, in its way. Putting, compared to hitting a golf ball, is comparatively boring. It’s not nearly as much fun as sending a ball in the air, no matter where it goes, and especially gratifying when the shot is on target. However, if you would really like to shoot lower scores and commit yourself to that goal, putting can make an immediate impact.
In our coaching, we look at putting through three priorities. Distance control is the most important skill. Green reading is second. Stroke mechanics are a distant third. If a player cannot control speed, nothing else matters. But once distance control is reasonably developed, the next major opportunity is improving how well they read greens, and this is where many players lose strokes without realizing it.
It begins with learning to read greens. Reading doesn’t only mean finding the right line to the hole when there is some undulation to deal with. It includes feeling and understanding the speed of the green you are playing on. Indeed, the speed of a putt comes first and foremost in this aspect of the game. And it is something that cannot be entirely taught. It is a matter of feel, which in large part is making yourself aware of the speed of a green by simply walking on it. If it’s very firm it will be fast running; soft, not so much. You will feel it through your feet. But there is also observation. Watching the putts of your playing partners offers a clue, and over time you begin to calibrate how far the ball will roll with a given stroke. In addition to looking from behind the ball and from behind the hole, there is a third look, from the side of the putt that is below the ball and the hole. That perspective often reveals how much break is actually present. Players can also begin to feel the slope more directly. Standing near the line and paying attention to how your body tilts, or where pressure builds in your feet, provides useful feedback. Systems such as AimPoint formalize this, but at its core it is simply learning to match what you feel with what you see.
The next step, of course, is to pick the line that you think will put the ball on track to the hole. You can’t be absolutely sure; you make a calculated guess. And here lies the biggest issue. Much more often than not, golfers underestimate the degree of break and their ball finishes below the hole, the so-called “amateur side,” while a putt that finishes above the hole is called the “pro side.” Which is to say, pro golfers will generally play for more break, although even the best will occasionally finish on the low side. In part this is because putting away from the hole is counterintuitive. It is the nature of us to think that if you want to hit a ball in the hole you go right at it. Putting away from the hole doesn’t seem to make sense, and you have to get past that notion. Given human nature, even if you read the break in a putt you are not going to aim your putt as far to the left or right of the hole as you need to.
Here is where the difference becomes critical. A breaking putt that is played too low will continue on the downward slope and come to a stop some three times farther from the hole than one that is played too high. Run the experiment yourself and you will see that the calculation is true. Even if a putt is played too high, it will almost invariably leave you with a simple tap-in, not a tricky, slippery three-footer. An under-read putt continues to move away from the hole, while an over-read putt is always working its way toward it, and over time that difference shows up clearly on the scorecard.
An anecdote that proves the point. Prior to the 2004 NCAA Championship, Jeff Hood, one of the top players on the Cal men’s golf team was not playing enough break on left-to-right putts. I was the assistant coach at the time. He worked diligently in the weeks leading up to the Championship, committing to playing more break, and on the final hole of the event, with the team title on the line, he made a 20-foot left-to-right putt that sealed Cal’s first NCAA National Championship. At that level of the game, seeing the correct line and trusting it makes all the difference.
Playing the break successfully also means having a good sense of the speed of the putt, and again, that comes with practice. Distance control is developed through repetition and awareness. Simple drills such as ladder drills, or even rolling the ball into a defined zone around the hole, help players calibrate speed. Practicing at home on carpet or hardwood can also be useful, especially when trying to simulate different green speeds. The key is frequency. The more often a player trains speed, the more reliable it becomes.
Is that all there is to it? No, there is basic putting technique to consider. There are many ways to hold and move a putter, and different players will find success with different styles. Conventional, cross-handed, claw, all can work. What matters most is not the style, but the outcome. At impact, the putter face must be square to the intended start line. That is the single biggest factor in where the ball begins, accounting for 90% of start direction. From there, the goal is to create a motion that can deliver that face consistently. Players can use simple feedback tools to train this. Devices such as the Pelz Putting Tutor or Putting sword provide immediate feedback on whether the ball is starting on line. If it is not, the face is not square. From there, it becomes a process of experimentation. Try different grips. Adjust setup. Observe what produces the most consistent start line and the tightest dispersion. As we often tell our players, those who do the work, do the learning.
One of the most interesting things we see in coaching is how the read and the stroke influences one another. When a player consistently misreads putts, especially by under-reading break, the brain will often create compensations in the stroke to “fix” the result, and over time those compensations can look like mechanical flaws. But when the read improves, the stroke often cleans up. There are also measurable differences in how elite players control the putter face. Data shared at the PGA Show showed that the best putters keep the putter face square to their path for a much greater portion of the stroke than their peers. In practical terms, that means less manipulation and more consistency in starting the ball on the intended line.
Putting is not just about feel, and it is not just about mechanics. It is about matching an accurate read with a stroke that can deliver the ball on that line. Distance control sets the foundation, the read defines the task, and when those are in place, the stroke has a way of taking care of itself.
Bio: Gene Bakkum has been coaching golf for over 25 years, and is especially involved in coaching junior golfers. Among his many teaching awards he won the 2024 NCPGA Professional Development Award, and in 2024 and 2025 he was a Top 50 U.S Kids Coach. He co-founded the Elevate Golf Academy for juniors and adults that operates out of Walnut Grove and the Metropolitan Golf Links in Oakland.
