Short putts will always be easier than lag putts, but they also come with more expectations. When you’re closer to the hole, you expect to make more putts, so when you don’t it can seriously mess with your psyche.
Once you miss a few shorties, your confidence will plummet. Self-belief is everything in golf — especially on the greens — and keeping it high is a must.
GOLF.com’s own Jessica Marksbury knows this fact well. Despite being a former collegiate golfer, her confidence on short putts has been shaken in recent years, and it’s had a detrimental effect on her putting — and her scorecard.
To help get her confidence back on the short ones, Marksbury teamed up with LPGA pro Angel Yin for a quick lesson to improve her short putting. Check out the video below, or continue reading for more.
1. Find the line
This might seem obvious, but sometimes when we get closer to the hole, it’s easy to ignore. Even when you’re within three feet of the hole, your line is immensely important. Short putts can have plenty of break to them, so you want to make sure you’re starting the ball on the correct line. Yin suggests standing behind the ball first to read the putt and then going into the rest of your routine.
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“Maybe just outside of [left edge],” Yin says. “Because it’s downhill, it’s gonna be a little faster so it’s gonna break a little more.”
2. Aim club down the line
Once you find the line you want to start the ball on, you need to aim your clubface properly. Even if you have the correct read, if you can’t aim correctly, it won’t matter. Yin explains that she likes to get her clubface aimed first and then step in and get her body aligned after that.
“I address first,” Yin says. “And then I square up my body.”
3. Focus on stroke
Instead of zeroing in on the hole, Yin likes to focus instead on the apex of the break on the putt. The intermediate target allows her to free herself up and make a committed stroke. From there all you need to do is focus on rolling the ball over the intermediate spot and watch as the ball breaks toward the hole.
“I will focus on that part and the speed it needs to reach [the apex],” Yin says. “So instead of looking at the hole, my point of focus is going to be a little further back.”
If you can follow these three steps, it should make holing the short putts much simpler.