What’s the key to mid-range and long-distance putting? One of the PGA Tour’s best from that length has a simple tip to guide your next practice session.
Max Greyserman has only 27 career PGA Tour starts under his belt, but in the 2024 season (where he made 26 of those starts) he finished runner-up three times and was a finalist for PGA Tour Rookie of the Year (an award eventually won by Nick Dunlap). Greyserman didn’t win his first year on Tour, but he notched six top 10s and missed just six cuts all year.
His season ended at the BMW Championship (he was T28) but his year was good enough to finish 48th in the FedEx Cup standings, meaning he qualified for all of 2025’s lucrative Signature Events.
A key to his success was his putting. Greyserman ranked second on Tour last season in Strokes Gained: Putting, gaining .749 strokes on the field. But it was his mid-range and lag putting that set him up for success. (If you are a good lag putter, you’re going to three-putt less often.)
Greyserman led the Tour in putting from 20-25 feet, and he ranked second in putts from 10-15 feet. His secret? Speed control.
“I watch all these guys practice with starting the ball on line, and I’m just like, putting is actually 50 percent speed, 40 percent green-reading and 10 percent starting on line,” Greyserman said in a recent appearance on GOLF’s Subpar podcast. “So I rarely practice start line. I practice speed almost entirely. So I won’t even putt to a hole a lot of the time. I just think a lot of guys have it backwards.”
As GOLF.com’s managing editor, Berhow handles the day-to-day and long-term planning of one of the sport’s most-read news and service websites. He spends most of his days writing, editing, planning and wondering if he’ll ever break 80. Before joining GOLF.com in 2015, he worked at newspapers in Minnesota and Iowa. A graduate of Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minn., he resides in the Twin Cities with his wife and two kids. You can reach him at joshua_berhow@golf.com.
