It’s not the most eye-catching skill in golf. Not like bashing a drive 300 yards down the middle, or sticking an iron shot to a few feet. But there are few things that will benefit your scorecard more than making more short putts.
The average make rate on the PGA Tour, for reference, from three-to-five feet is 90 percent. Once pros get to about eight feet, they’re statistically more likely to miss than make. The average PGA Tour player’s odds of making a 10-footer is about 40 percent — and they rapidly decline until you get into three-putt territory.
It leaves golfers in a situation where there’s no middle ground. The more putts from short range you make, the more ground you’ll gain on your peers. The more you miss, the more you’ll lose.
Which is why GOLF Top 100 Teacher Brady Riggs offers a putting drill he calls the 3-6-9 drill. Here’s how it works.
- Find a hole
- Drop one golf ball each at three, six and nine feet
- Hit those putts, keeping track of your score
- Once complete, find a new hole and repeat
- When you’ve hit 15 putts total (three each at five different holes), count up your makes
Your goal is to make 10 of these 15 putts — about 66 percent.
“Anything less, and you start over,” Riggs says.
You can watch the full video below:
Luke Kerr-Dineen
Golf.com Contributor
Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.
An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
