Why We 3-Putt (And How To Fix It)

Your putter is the only club you use on every hole.  For both recreational players and professionals, putts account for about 40% of total strokes which I never realized until I started doing research regarding putting.  Besides adding distance off the tee, for recreational women golfers eliminating a few three-putts every round is a sure-fire way to reduce your score.

When I heard that putts were such a significant percentage of any round, I asked my coach, Mario Bevilacqua, and custom club fitter, Brendan Bergin, of HPGI here in Las Vegas, what the key issues were when it came to putting.  Both work with recreational, collegiate and professional players on tour.  They both agree that:

— Most players, far more than 50%, have the wrong putter.
— Most players don’t align their putter properly when they set up.
— Most recreational players will severely misread the break on a green, maybe several greens, during their round.

In this post I will address the first two points.  In my next post I will discuss how to eliminate, yes eliminate, misreads.  No longer will you think the putt was going break one way but watch it go the other way.  No longer will you discover a putt you thought was going to break, say, six inches, break three feet setting you up for a three-putt.  This second post also will answer the question of what pros on both the PGA and LPGA tours are doing when they hold up several fingers at arms length in front of them as read break.

Finding The Right Putter

Let’s go back to making sure you have the right putter to start with.  I think all of us would admit we have purchased a putter because we liked how it looked.  I know one of my first putters was a shiny Scotty Cameron.  It wasn’t fit for me but I loved how pretty it was. Unfortunately, the beauty wore off when I couldn’t make any putts. Hence, the real beauty of a putter lies not in looks but whether it helps you get the ball into the hole!

There are two kinds of putters.  If you putt using a pendulum-like stroke (you take putter straight back and come back straight through the ball, like a clock’s pendulum swings) you need a so-called “face-balanced” putter.  If your putting stroke is an arc or like a swinging gate you need what is called a “toe-balanced” putter.  Brendan and Mario say half the players with whom they work had the wrong type of putter when they first met.

To determine which type of putter you now have place your putter lengthwise (so the shaft is parallel to the ground) across your index finger.  Move your finger back and forth along the shaft until you find the balance point where you can balance the putter there across your finger.