Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.
Putting might require the smallest strokes you’ll take on the golf course, but that doesn’t mean it’s a simple part of the game. Once you get on the greens, the real fun begins. Sometimes, it’ll take more strokes to hole out from 30 feet than it did to get the ball 350 yards to the putting surface. A 3-foot putt is worth the same on the scorecard as a 300-yard drive.
With that in mind, it’d be wise if you tidy’d up your skills on the greens. If you want to turn those bogeys into pars (and pars into birdies!) you’re going to have to learn how to hole putts.
One of the key traits of great putters is their ability to match the speed of their putts with the line they choose. What this means is that they hit the putt with the correct speed to get the ball to break right into the hole.
The video below from instructor Clay Ballard perfectly illustrates this — and shows why marrying your line and speed is so important for holing putts.
❗️Speed is everything ❗️
— Clay Ballard (@TopSpeedGolf) May 7, 2025
Focus on speed with breaking putts and make way more of them. There are several different lines that work but each one of them has a specific speed. Think speed control first and MATCH it with line for that speed. pic.twitter.com/K3DPrj1L4u
Why your putt speed matters
In the video above, Ballard shows us a standard left-to-right breaking putt. On the first example, he lets the ball roll down the ramp with plenty of speed. As a result, the ball does not break as much.
However, this speed is not the only speed the ball can be traveling to hole the putt. This is evidenced by the second example in which he lets the ball roll down the ramp with considerably less speed. As you can see, with this pace, the ball has tons more break — but it still finds the bottom of the cup.
With dozens of golf balls lined up on either side of the extremes, you can see that any putt hit on a start line that starts inside this “cone” can go in the hole. The trick is hitting it with the correct speed to match the start line you choose.
Holing putts might seem like an impossible proposition at times, but as this experiment shows, there are lots of different lines you can take and still hole putts. The key is hitting your putt with the speed that matches your line.
So next time you get out to the putting green for some practice, work on mastering your speed. Once you can control your speed better, it becomes a heck of a lot easier to choose the correct line — which means you’ll be holing more putts.
