At Pinehurst in the days before the US Open, players are stressed – just as the USGA would hope in the lead up to their championship. But it’s not the general sense of anxiety that makes this week at Pinehurst No.2 unique, it’s that players are all worried about the same thing: the greens. More specifically, putting balls off the green.

No, we’re not talking about players’ club selections around Pinehurst’s domed surfaces (though that is a point of concern as well), we’re referring to the near certainty that some players will hit solid approaches and putt the ensuing 30 or 40-footer off the green.

Not buying it? Here’s what Tiger Woods said during his Tuesday press conference:

“The past few days playing practice rounds – I’m guilty as well as the rest of the guys I’ve played with – we’ve putted off a lot of greens. It depends how severe the USGA wants to make this and how close they want to get us up to those sides. But I foresee just like in 2005 watching some of the guys play ping-pong back and forth. It could happen.”

Coming off a third-place finish at the PGA Championship at Valhalla, Viktor Hovland agrees:

“I miss it maybe a foot low side, with just a hair too much speed, the ball is off the green. It doesn’t just roll off the green, sometimes it rolls off the green and into the brush. Seems to me that some of those pins are a little bit close to the drop-offs.”

Reigning PGA champion Xander Schauffele sees getting on the green as only half the battle at Pinehurst:

“Leaving yourself in a really good position is A-1, but even when you do leave yourself in a good position, the hole is not over yet. It’s sort of half the battle.”

That players – nearly unanimously – agree on the danger of putting balls off the green dismisses the possibility of one or two curmudgeons are exaggerating the difficulty. So, why are they so worried about it at Pinehurst? Ralph Bauer, a top PGA tour putting coach, says that it’s a combination of severe slopes and the USGA’s willingness to place hole locations on the edges of those slopes.

US Open 2024: Wyndham Clark warns Pinehurst’s greens are already ‘borderline’

“This place is like if Augusta National and Royal Melbourne had a baby,” Bauer says. “There are slopes of more than 3 percent everywhere, and the USGA has no problem putting pins on them.”

Bauer explained that 3 percent slopes are a “little crazy” and “regular PGA Tour events are not going to use too many 3-percent slopes. They’re going to stick to 1s and 2s.”

At Pinehurst, however, the USGA may place hole locations on those 3-percent slopes, but even more difficult is that if players get their balls rolling on the wrong side of the hole, the slopes are even more severe, which is how you’ll get players putting balls off the green. Take the first hole, for example.

LPGA winner: If you’re trying to break 80, get rid of this club

During the final round in 2014, when the US Open was last held at Pinehurst, the hole location was roughly in the front-middle of the green. As you can see from the Stracka Line yardage book below, the hole was located where the green portion (2 to 4-percent slope) meets the red (more than 4-percent slope). This, essentially, is an extreme false front, with the hole located just feet away from the drop-off.

For reference, balls that find the red portions of the green will most likely fall off the green entirely – the slope is too severe. A putt, say, from the middle of the green that is carrying a little too much speed will hit that red portion of the slope and repel off the front.

As another example, let’s look at the second green, one of the most severe on the course. In 2014 during the second round, the hole was cut 23 paces on and 11 from the right. On paper, that’s a generous pin, but let’s look closer at the Stracka Line heat map. A putt from the middle of the green that breaks a little too hard can quickly catch that 5-percent slope the right of the hole and filter off the green.

The trick that players will use to avoid de-greening themselves? All week, you will see them opting for the highest line possible, with the ball dying at the hole. That’s essential, Bauer says, because putts that stay on the high line will roll out less.

“I’ve done a bunch of testing with Foresight, and one of the cool things that I found is if you hit two putts equally hard – one high and one low – the low one is going to run out much more,” he said. “The high one is going to be fighting the hill, and it’s not going to roll out as much. This low one is going to find that slope and run out. Both of those putts can be hit the same speed, but there can be a foot difference very easily based on the line you take.

“If we want to lag something, just take a higher line and then die it in.”

At times, it may look excessively conservative or even defensive, with balls struggling to get to the hole, but it’s a key strategy players will use to avoid the worst possible outcome.

“Normally you’re not more than four or five inches outside the cup on most greens,” defending champion Wyndham Clark said. “Here you’re maybe playing 10 to 12 inches just so that you’re not getting below the hole and having it run away.”

MORE GOLF DIGEST US OPEN COVERAGE

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It’s all about how you start on pressure putts.

Putting under pressure can be a grind mentally. Like most golfers, I find that the more I focus on what the putt means for my score, the harder it becomes. That’s why I like to set my attention on something small, like the first six to eight inches of the putt. 

Generally, every putt is a straight putt within the first foot. Instead of trying to focus all my energy on holing an eight-footer to win my match, I make it my job to hit a straight putt for those first six to eight inches. That way, the ball starts on my intended line and rolls true. Provided I read the putt correctly and hit the ball with the proper speed, it should take the break and find the bottom of the cup.

The next time you have a five-footer to break 80 for the first time, think about nailing the first six to eight inches of the putt and nothing more. To practise your start lines, find a relatively straight putt on the practice green, determine your line, and focus on a spot six to eight inches along the chosen track that the ball has to pass over. Then set up two tees slightly wider than the width of the ball at that spot and putt the ball through the gate. Do this several times, then find a putt that breaks slightly from left to right, then right to left, and repeat.

The more consistently you hit your start lines, the steadier and more clutch you’ll perform under pressure.

LEONA MAGUIRE is the only Irish-born player to win on the LPGA Tour. She has a 7-2-1 career record in two Solheim Cup matches.

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We spend a lot of time trying to hit the ball with the centre of the clubface. But sometimes, a situation on the golf course calls for a part of the club other than the sweet spot to make contact with the ball. Rose Zhang encountered one such scenario during the US Women’s Open at Lancaster Country Club. Her ball came to rest on the fringe, but right up against the collar.

This type of lie can happen when the rough around the green is very dense, says Joanna Coe, a Golf Digest Best Young Teacher and the director of instruction at famed Merion Golf Club. The ball sitting against the longer grass of the rough makes solid centre-face contact difficult – even for the pros. So instead of using the centre of the putterface, Zhang used the toe.

To hit this shot, Coe says: “Flip the putter so that the toe is positioned behind the golf ball, with the entire putter in line with the target. The toe will be slightly down, and the heel slightly elevated. Grip the putter as you normally would, even though the top of your grip will be on the side (left side for right-handed players and right side for left-handed players).”

The ball should be in the middle, or slightly forward, in your stance, Coe says. From there, make a normal putting-stroke motion.

“While this setup may look unconventional, you’ll be surprised at how easily the putter glides through the thick rough with minimal resistance,” Coe says.

By using only the toe of the putter, there’s less material to get caught up in the rough. You’ll get cleaner contact than you would if you tried to use the centre of your putterface. Next time your ball is up against the collar, give Zhang’s trick a try.

The post The secret to Rose Zhang’s sideways off-the-toe putt appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

It’s US Open season, which means greens are crispy, lightning fast and, in the case of Pinehurst Resort’s famed No.2 course, shaped like turtle shells.

With balls rolling around, over and through the greens easier than when they settle on the surface, Pinehurst severely tests players’ ability to putt well.

So that’s what we explored in the most recent of our video series:

The easiest way to understand how pros navigate around the greens is to divide the space around the hole into three different circles. I call them scoring zones, and as we explain in the video, here’s what you need to know about each.

Scoring Circle No.1: Three-shot zone

The first scoring circle is the distance furthest away from the hole. Generally speaking, it’s anything outside about 50 feet, which usually encompasses chips and pitches. From here, it’s more likely that you’ll finish in three shots than in one shot. The goal from here, as Eduardo Molinari explains, is to hit the green and avoid disaster.

Golf Twitter Hall-of-Famer Lou Stagner had a great stats thread recently explaining how, more often than not, that means looking for an excuse to use a putter.

Putting wins in all but one situation.

Lower handicaps have options, but for most, the putter is the go-to choice.

For most you should Texas wedge your way to lower scores!

(All data from @ArccosGolf – use code DATALOU15 to save 15%)

— Lou Stagner (Golf Stat Pro) (@LouStagner) May 31, 2024

Scoring Circle No.2: The black hole

We call this the black hole because this is where two-putting is the most likely outcome. The exact distance of each of these scoring circles depends on ability level, but for pros, the black hole starts at about nine feet and stretches to about 50 feet.

The goal here is to not be drawn into silly mistakes by trying to make the putt. Going high and soft gives you the best chance of making it – and leaves you in an ideal spot if you don’t.

Scoring Circle No.3: ‘I should make this’

Once you get inside about eight feet, you’re in the ‘I should make this’ zone. The key to this zone is making a lot of putts, because that’s how you’ll be able to gain the most on your peers. Obviously that’s easier said than done, so this zone comes down to, above all else, making sure your putterface is square at impact.

Once again, you can watch the full video right here:

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I love when new trends start creeping through the tour, and I think I’ve spotted a new one brewing.

You can see it here…

and here…

and also here…

And right here!

If you guessed that the trend had something to do with players’ putting grip, you’re correct. If you guessed that it had something to do specifically with players’ left-hand putting grip, then you nailed it.

Traditionally, most golfers putt with a conventional, reverse-overlap grip. They curl their lead finger over the pinky and ring fingers of their right hand. Like you see Gordon Sargent and Rory McIlroy using below…

But more and more players I see on tour seem to ditch the traditional overlap, and extend the lead finger of their lead hand (left finger for right-handed golfers) straight down the grip, like you see Matt Fitzpatrick and Matt Wallace demonstrating below.

I’m still workshopping a name for it, but the current clubhouse leader is the “Fitz Grip”, because Matt Fitzpatrick was the first player to use it, and also has my favourite putting stroke of all time.

Look at this thing. It’s like a metronome.

Anyway, here’s a list of players I’ve noticed using the extended left finger “Fitz Grip”:

• Matt Fitzpatrick
• Alex Fitzpatrick
• Justin Rose
• Tommy Fleetwood
• Nick Taylor
• Danny Willett
• Matt Wallace
• Megan Khang (left-hand low)

How it helps

The main benefit of the Fitz Grip is that it locks the putter into your left palm, which means your left arm and putter move as one. It can also improve the alignment of your forearms, as Golf Digest Best in State putting coach Bill Smittle explains.

“It tends to firm up that lead wrist, which will reduce hinging and promote better putterface control,” Smittle says. “It also brings both your hands closer together, and your wrist joints into alignment. It means your forearm plane is more neutral. When one hand is lower than the other, whatever hand is lowered is usually more extended. Which then puts your forearms out of alignment.”

I’ve been playing around with the Fitz Grip and it’s the firmness of the left wrist that I’ve noticed the most.

I tend to get a little wristy with my putting stroke, which causes me to pull putts. When your left finger is extended down the grip, it activates the extensor muscles in your left forearm, which makes that wrist breakdown much harder. Your left wrist starts to feel like a wall – you can release your right hand as much as you want, and it’s never in danger of taking over. It’s the left hand that is in control of the stroke.

It’s why, once you have that extended-finger left-hand grip, you see so many variations in what players do with their right hand. Some adopt a claw. I’ve been clasping my right hand, which is what Fitzpatrick does. But honestly, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever feels most comfy; the right hand is just along for the ride.

The post The Fitz Grip: Why this putting grip is trending way up on tour appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

You’ve got the biggest putt of your life in front of you. The putt that, for Xander Schauffele, would land him his long-awaited major, and shake all the doubters.

What goes through your head?

That’s what hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stolz of GOLF’s subpar podcast asked. And Schauffele gave a pretty interesting answer about his PGA Championship-winning putt.

“My hands were shaking. I just told myself like, big muscles, stop reading this thing so much, let’s just hit this and commit to it. Don’t call [my caddie] Austin in. Let’s not get all these opinions and freak yourself out. I didn’t want to sit there and psych myself out about an uphill, six-foot putt. I was like just keep it simple, you have done this all day, just smoke this thing and I made it.”

There’s a bunch of interesting stuff in there, so let’s break it down.

1. “Big Muscles”

Schauffele works hard to take his hands out of his putting stroke as much as he can. His unique putting grip is specifically designed for that task, and by reminding himself to use his “big muscles”, he focusing on rocking his chest back-and-forth rather than relying on inconsistent timing with his hands.

2. “Keep it simple”

It was interesting that Schauffele chose not to bring his caddie in for advice on this putt. It’s not that he doesn’t trust his caddie’s advice – he does – it’s that he didn’t want to contemplate too much information when his mind was already racing. That helped him do the final thing…

3. “Commit”

A good final piece of advice for everyone. Embrace the moment, and understand that you can’t control what happens next. Your best chance of success is to put your all effort into the shot at hand. That’s exactly what Schauffele did.

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[PHOTOS: J.D. Cuban]

Putting – it’s the one facet of the game even beginners feel like they can manage without looking silly. That’s what makes missing the short ones so infuriating. How can something so simple sometimes be so difficult? Although you might want to put the blame on being nervous, the more likely issue is what you’re doing during the stroke.

If you’re frequently missing short putts, especially ones where the ball doesn’t even catch the edge of the hole, there’s a good chance you’re moving your body too much. Have a friend put your mobile-phone camera to use and video you while you putt. Pay close attention to your body action, not the stroke.

RELATED: More from David Leadbetter on putting

Do you see any movement in your lower body? Bingo! That’s the culprit on so many of those short misses. Any movement in the lower body is a putting killer. When you can’t stay still from the waist down, you’re likely affecting your ability to keep the putter’s face square to your line of putt. (I’m assuming your ability to read the break on the short ones is pretty accurate.)

What’s going on when your body is too active? My theory is that you’re probably anxious to see the result (like I’m demonstrating above in the main photo) so you come out of your posture. Or, the expectation of making the short ones prompts you to try to steer the ball into the hole. Neither will help you make a smooth stroke with a square putterface, which is key to sinking these putts.

To fix this problem, grab a regular bath towel and pin it under your arms and across your chest. Keep it there as you practise hitting putts, using your abdomen to control the stroke [photos above]. Now here’s the key: feel like your lower body is perfectly still as you practise your stroke with the towel. This drill works because it calms all that extraneous movement.

When you have this feeling grooved, remove the towel and re-create the same stroke like you’re facing a four-footer to win the Masters. When you hear the putt rattle in the bottom of the cup, you can then picture yourself slipping on the green jacket.

The post This simple drill with a bath towel can solve your short-putting woes appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

Swing coaches, statisticians and mental coaches can all try and decipher what made Tiger Woods so great, but what does the man himself say?

Every now and again, Tiger will drop little hints that help explain his success (see: “playing aggressively to my spots”, the “Tiger 5” stats he diligently tracked, etc.), but it was what he told two former Stanford University golfers that stands out the most.

Course-management expert Scott Fawcett shares two interactions he had with Maverick McNealy and Joseph Bramlett. Both former Stanford players turned tour pros asked Tiger what made him so great, and his surprising answer was the same to both: lag putting.

Inside a Tiger Woods practice session: A minute-by-minute guide

The importance of lag putting

According to Fawcett, who worked with McNealy on course management in college, McNealy asked Tiger, “Why are you the best player of all time?” to which Tiger responded, “Well, because I’m the best lag putter ever.”

Tiger explained to McNealy that it has never mattered how much trouble he gets into, he always feels like he can dump an approach somewhere on the green and leave himself 40 feet. Since he knows he can always two-putt from anywhere on the green, there is less pressure on his iron play.

Tiger’s excellent lag putting is one of the main reasons why he led the PGA Tour in bogey avoidance during his early-career peak from 2000-2002.

What’s the takeaway for the rest of us? Think of how many times you hit the ball inside 10 feet in a round. For a scratch golfer, this is maybe two or three times all day and even less for mid and high-handicaps. The significant majority of your first putts will be from mid to long-range, meaning one of the quickest ways to lower your scores is to get really good at speed control and cut down on your number of three-putts.

As Fawcett also explained a player who averages 79 makes only one more birdie a round versus someone who averages 95. What’s the rest of the difference? The 70s shooter makes far fewer bogeys, double-bogeys and others – and many of those come from three-putts.

“This game is just not about making birdies. This game is about avoiding bogeys,” Fawcett says.

By improving your speed control and becoming a great lag putter, you will not only trim a few shots off each round from fewer three-putts, but you will, as Tiger says, take the pressure off your iron game. Since you know you can get down in two from anywhere on the green, you won’t feel like you need to fire at tricky hole locations. You can simply hit it on the green, 40 or 50 feet away, two-putt and move on.

Tiger says it’s the reason he was so good – maybe there is something to it.

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Lag putting is perhaps the most under-appreciated skill in golf – it’s also one of the most important to scoring. We hardly notice when our speed is great and we leave ourselves easy two-putts, but the second we hit a 50-footer five feet by, we’re chastising ourselves over the terrible speed.

The problem is that we’re bad at judging whether we’ve hit a nice lag putt. Why does it matter if we perceive a putt to be good or bad? Well, if we’re fuming over leaving ourselves a four-foot comebacker when it was a good putt in actuality, we’re going to lose focus on that second putt.

I analysed 1,353 shots from Scottie Scheffler’s historic streak – these are the secrets to his success

Luckily there is a simple 8-percent rule that pros use to judge whether their first putt was a good one – and we can use it, too.

The 8-percent rule

Bill Smittle, a Best in State teacher in Westchester, New York, and putting specialist, recently told us about this easy rule that tells pros whether or not they have hit a good putt:

For a pro, a good lag putt is one that finishes within 8 percent of the total distance of the putt.

Here’s how that shakes out for first putts of various distances:

• 30 feet: 2.4 feet
• 40 feet: 3.2 feet
• 50 feet: 4 feet
• 60 feet: 4.8 feet

Keep in mind, these are benchmarks for the best players in the world. For the rest of us, however, this seems encouraging, considering many of these goals feel attainable. If a tour pro would consider lagging a 60-footer to five feet a good putt, then we should be happy with getting it inside five or six feet.

In fact, we can adapt a tour pro’s 8-percent rule for our own skill level by bumping it up to 10 percent. So, any lag putt that we hit that finishes within 10 percent of the total distance is a pretty good putt. It’s a quick benchmark that we can easily keep track of:

• 30 feet: 3 feet
• 40 feet: 4 feet
• 50 feet: 5 feet
• 60 feet: 6 feet

When we start to expect less of ourselves on lengthy putts, we’ll free ourselves up and actually start to hit better lag putts. When we inevitably leave ourselves four and five-footers, we won’t be as frustrated if we understand the first putt was pretty good.

The post This ‘8-percent rule’ determines whether you’ve hit a good (or bad) lag putt appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

Trying to break 80 can start as a fun journey, and sometimes turn into a painful roadblock. If you’re trying to shoot in the 70s for the first time, sometimes outside help is necessary. We asked two-time major winner Brooke Henderson what she thinks amateurs wanting to break 80 should work on. And the answer might surprise you.

“I feel like one of the biggest things with amateur golfers trying to get to the next level is distance control,” Henderson says. “Not only with your irons and wedges, but even putting. A lot of three-putts happen when your speed is bad, not necessarily the line. So if people can just work on distance control on all aspects of their game, I think they would see a big improvement.”

This is a nuanced piece of advice. Getting a handle on your distances in your long game is probably something you’ve thought about in your quest to break 80. Understanding how far your irons travel is key to being able to hit greens. And knowing how to hit wedges from varied distances within 100 metres is also necessary to making par, or at least bogey.

But the putting portion of Henderson’s advice is not discussed as much. If you don’t have a good feel for distance with your putter, it doesn’t matter how good you are at reading greens, you’re not going to make enough putts necessary to break 80.

Henderson said before your round, make sure you hit some long putts on the practice green. Only hitting a few short putts won’t give you as much information about how fast or slow the greens really are.

“On the putting green before you go out, hit some at 30 feet, some at 45 feet,” Henderson said. “You can just kind of get a feel that way and then when you’re out on the course, you kind of know what to expect.”

While you’re on the course, Henderson says there is a simple thing you can do to get a better understanding of each putt’s distance – walk from the ball to the hole.

“It just gives your mind a little bit of extra information that you can use while you’re over the ball,” Henderson says.

As you continue your quest to break 80, keep Henderson’s advice in mind and don’t ignore the importance of distance control in all aspects of your game.

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