Want to improve your lag putting? Stop worrying about the hole, says instructor

If you’re looking to make big gains quickly in terms of improvement, there’s one area of the game that can make a huge difference to your score: lag putting.

Turning four-putts into three-putts and three-putts into two-putts will have an immediate effect on your scoring, saving a ton of shots per round. But what’s the best way to practice this important skill?

At GOLF’s recent Top 100 Teacher Retreat in Scottsdale, Ariz., I asked instructor Tim Gillis, who teaches at John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Fla., to weigh in. Gillis suggested employing an innovative tactic: forget about the hole while you’re practicing.

“When my students are struggling with lag putting, I like using the edge of the green instead of the hole during practice,” he said. “Trying to get the ball to stop on the edge of the green is useful because it enables to student to actually work on the skill in a process-driven way, rather than worrying about the results, like whether the ball goes in the hole or not.”

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How to practice your lag putts without using the hole

The first step to practicing lag putts without worrying about the hole is pacing off the distance you’re struggling with from the edge of the green.

“Once you’ve selected the distance, put a tee in the ground to mark your starting point and use three golf balls,” Gillis said. “From there, the goal is to create the tightest dispersion you can on the edge of the green.

Putting

“Once you find yourself in a tight basket with your golf balls on the edge of the green, that’s when you can start to move around and see at what distances you’re really struggling,” Gillis continued. “When you’re just starting out, some might fly off the green, others are going to be 10 feet short. The key is to wait until that dispersion is really tight before you start to move on to other distances.”

The reason for ignoring the hole is simple: “If we can’t control our speed to the edge of the green,” Gillis said, “there’s no sense in putting to a hole.”

Give Gillis’ advice a try before your next round, and enjoy your newfound putting prowess.

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.

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