Pro missed life-changing putts. So he turned to ‘something rock solid’

Q-School, final stage. 

Portland Open.  

Jimmy Stanger says 2018 was “fun,” but those two events were most decidedly not. They were tortuous. At Q-School, he says he missed a putt to miss his card by a shot. At the Portland Open, he says he missed a 6-footer that would have kept his card. 

“I was like, I need to become a better putter,” he said. “I need to know what’s going on.”

He was speaking recently in front of a Korn Ferry Tour social media person, and near him were an alignment rod, some tees and a ball. Here, you probably know what happened. Yeah, he became a better putter, and yeah, he figured out what was going on. After all, they don’t shoot videos of dudes who don’t. 

Here’s how Stanger did it, though, should you be interested in such a thing yourself. 

Putting, we know, is a game of variables. We have no control over the speed of the green. The slope of the green. The wind. But some things we can corral. Feet position. Ball position. Putter position. 

So Stanger went to work there. Below is the video. Below that are some words. 

In 2018, @jimmy_stanger missed a putt at Final Stage of Q-School to miss his card by one.

Now he is #TOURBound thanks to his consistent putting preparation. pic.twitter.com/Z6x7V6vbe5

— Korn Ferry Tour (@KornFerryTour) November 14, 2023

As told in the video:

— He places an alignment rod two putter heads away from the inside of his ball. 

— He places his toes to the edge of the alignment rod. 

— He marks the position of his feet with tees.

— He also sets up a “tee gate” on both sides of the ball to dial in his stroke. 

“So what that does is every single day you have a baseline,” Stanger said on the video. “You’re doing the exact same thing every single day and you can figure out what’s wrong then if you’re missing putts and it’s not in your setup.”

At that point, he can work on green reading. Or speed gauging. Of course, he can also adjust his setup, then lock it back in. 

Notably, you’ve maybe seen other players with similar setups, with various degrees of alignment, and the concept is not exactly new. But all of it has been wonderful to Stanger. 

He finished 15th on the Korn Ferry Tour’s season-long points race. Next year, he’ll play on the PGA Tour. 

“When you get nervous and you don’t know what’s going on,” he said on the video, “you got to have something rock solid to lean back on.”