Become a better lag putter with this soccer strategy. Here’s how

Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.

Lag putting is one of the most crucial — yet often overlooked — skills in golf. But if you want to take stress off your game and reduce your three-putts, it’s absolutely essential.

The key to lag putting is having great speed. Yes, your line is important, but your dispersion from left to right will always be much tighter than your dispersion back to front. For this reason, it’s imperative you dial in your speed if you want to become a great lag putter.

Once you start to doubt your speed on the greens, though, things get tricky. It’s then that you start questioning your feel and if you really know how hard to hit a putt. This leads to inconsistent putts from distance that leave us outside of gimme range more than we’d like. Naturally, the three-putts follow.

If you ever find yourself in this situation during the round, don’t panic. Instead, take a page out of soccer players’ playbooks and trust your instincts. Here’s how.

Use a soccer strategy for better lag putting

Golf is an inherently mental game, and that’s especially true on the putting green. For whatever reason, once we get closer to the hole, we often start thinking too hard and get in our own heads. But this is no recipe for success.

When this happens, try relying more on your feel than your analysis. What’s the best way to do this? By using techniques from other sports and being more reactive.

“Sometimes when I’m giving a putting lesson I will relate to another sport,” says instructor Kelan McDonagh. “You’ll notice David Beckham or Lionel Messi, they never run up beside the ball and take a practice stroke or a practice kick before they react to what the job is at hand.”

In other words, when soccer players are taking a free kick, they stand behind the ball, choose a direction to kick and go. There’s no standing around and over-thinking. Instead, they allow their instincts and athleticism to take over.

“When it comes to putting, I like to teach it in a way where we’re a little more aligned on our instincts,” McDonagh says. “We’re just gonna be a little bit more reactive in relation to the ball and the target.”

McDonagh recommends getting your read on the putt and then standing behind the ball while looking at the hole. Then, as you step up to the ball, keep your eyes locked on the hole and take a couple of seconds to get set. Take one last look at the hole and then pull the putterhead back and stroke the ball.

“[It gives] a lovely flow to your stroke,” McDonagh says. “There was no tension. No overthinking. You don’t give yourself time to [overanalyze]. You just let it flow towards the hole.”

If you find yourself struggling to lag the ball close to the hole, give this technique a try. When we stop thinking and instead start reacting, our instincts take over and guide the ball close to the hole.

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