Is 36.0 Putts Per Round Holding Me Back?

[bortass]

I'll also add that you need to look at your entire game to see what's holding you back. 36 putts is a symptom. Question is why? If you hit 18 GIR, it's pretty good. If you miss 18 greens, it's bad. You need to start thinking about the why because improving that is what what will help your score drop. You miss a lot of greens, so your irons/wedges need some work. Your short game probably does too if you aren't getting the ball close. Putting can probably be improved as well but may not have as big an impact as the other areas.

 

This is just my experience but irons, wedges, short game putting in order of importance and difficulty. I left driving ( par 4/5 tee shots) out of the mix since you were focused on your putting stats but it's #1 in importance. The ROI in improving my irons is higher than improving my putting but there's the difficulty/time equation. My irons will take more work to improve but will drive GIR up and take pressure off my short game since I should be missing closer to the green. My putting will probably take the least amount of practice time to improve but won't have as big of an impact at the end of the day.

 

So step back and look at your game. It'll tell you want needs work. Improving short game and putting will help you drop your scores but it's unlikely they are what's holding you back. I'd consider working on putting and short game to get whatever quick wins you can while doing the long term work of fixing your irons and wedges. Just my opinion.

 

A simple putting drill is to take an alignment rod/driveway marker and put it through the front belt loops of your pants/shorts and putting. You need to keep your waist/hips still, so you do not want to see that rod moving when you putt. It's a pretty common putting flaw and doesn't take long to fix, just looks goofy.

 

You might want to look at the reading green videos that Padraig Harrington has on his Youtube channel. I found a couple things he talked about really helped me start reading putts better and it took no practice, just the time to watch.

 

Good luck.

Edited August 2, 2023 by bortass

[jpboi9837]

On 8/1/2023 at 12:43 PM, Shankapotimous said:

OP, I am kind of in the same spot as you. One thing I didn't see you show us is the 1st putt distance? 

 

You need to get rid of those 3 putts and be able to generate some 1 putts in your round. 

 

Granted this is only from one round, but I started tracking first putt distance and this is my data so far:

[iacas]

1 hour ago, jpboi9837 said:

 

Granted this is only from one round, but I started tracking first putt distance and this is my data so far:

 

So you had three three-putts? In one round?

[jpboi9837]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

 

So you had three three-putts? In one round?

Yes

[Shankapotimous]

What you need to also track is the distance of your first putt. This will tell you how bad your wedge game is. 

[jpboi9837]

1 hour ago, Shankapotimous said:

What you need to also track is the distance of your first putt. This will tell you how bad your wedge game is. 

This is first putt distance, separated out by how many total putts taken

[Shankapotimous]

Yes, but how many of each distance you have per round?

[jpboi9837]

2 minutes ago, Shankapotimous said:

Yes, but how many of each distance you have per round?

I don’t think I understand the suggestion well enough to do the math / make a formula?

[GoGoErky]

16 minutes ago, jpboi9837 said:

I don’t think I understand the suggestion well enough to do the math / make a formula?

I don’t think he’s telling you to math or make a formula. It’s basically tracking how far away you are when you make your first putt.

 

so hole 1 example 18’

hole 2 22’

hole 3 10’ and so on

 

you can the track your average proximity to the hole 

Edited August 7, 2023 by GoGoErky

[North Butte]

Basically if you dont track where your first putt lies relative to the hole, there are two questions you can never answer:

 

1) How well did I putt?

 

2) How well did I hit my approach shots?

 

There is one additional piece of info that is helpful and that is an indicator of whether your first putt followed an approach shot versus a short game shot. 
 

But to use extreme examples, three putts from 80 feet is almost entirely to be blamed on the shot that hit the ball so far from the hole. And three putts from 5 feet is entirely down to bad putting. Most holes are somewhere between those extremes, which is why riding down the distance is important.

[jpboi9837]

I am tracking my first putt distance…

 

That’s how I got the above averages.

 

are y’all saying it’s more helpful to have it in list form vs an overall average?

[North Butte]

3 minutes ago, jpboi9837 said:

I am tracking my first putt distance…

 

That’s how I got the above averages.

 

are y’all saying it’s more helpful to have it in list form vs an overall average?

Yes, that is correct. You were averaging across the wrong dimension.
 

The questions you should be looking at is how often do you one, two or three-putt from 40 feet. And how often do you face 40-foot putts. 

[jpboi9837]

2 hours ago, North Butte said:

Yes, that is correct. You were averaging across the wrong dimension.
 

The questions you should be looking at is how often do you one, two or three-putt from 40 feet. And how often do you face 40-foot putts. 

 

Ahh thanks for explaining. I did a different analysis (excel nerd here, don't worry about that part)

[North Butte]

I think those are the percentage of all putts that fall into each distance-by-number of putts category.

 

What you want to report are the row percentages.

 

For <10 feet what percent were 1-putts and 2-putts?

For 11-20 feet what percent were 1-putts and 2-putts?

For 21-30 feet what percent were 2-putts and 3-putts?

 

So for instance you might report something like this:

 

From <10 feet (9 putts): 1-putted 7 times (78%) and 2-putted 2 times (22%)

From 11-20 feet (16 putts): 1-putted 2 times (13%) and 2-putted 14 times (87%)

From 21-30 feet (6 putts): 2-putted 4 times (67%) and 3-putted 2 times (33%)

From 50+ feet (5 putts): 3-putted 5 times (100%)

 

The object is to compare your performance in each distance bracket to either your own previous or future performance or to some standard, published statistics from scratch golfers, Tour golfers, etc. 

 

For instance, by any absolute rubrick, in the above example 3-putting 5-out-of-5 times from 50+ feet is poor (unless most of them were much, much longer than 50').

 

But from 21-30 feet 3-putting 2-out-of-6 times isn't the worst thing in the world. Probably about like you'd expect a double-digit handicapper to do.

 

 

[pingfool]

Short answer to OP is yes.

lot of good info in replies relative to proximity to hole and GIR

 

Saturday i had 34 putts w/ (2) 3putts) - and had my best score of the year (73) - and was happy w/ my putting. 

 

Sunday I did not 3putt once and finished w/ 30putts & 77.

 

[North Butte]

I always (almost) keep stroke by stroke stats on my rounds. I have to fight the temptation to experience each round in terms of what it's going to look like in the stats. For instance, if I have a string of several holes in a row with putts in the 7-15 foot range and I don't make one, I know my putting Strokes Gained will go up. Not that there's anything wrong with a double-digit handicapper making five pars in a row but in SG terms that looks bad. 

 

Then on the next hole maybe I hit a bad approach 70 feet from the hole but managed to lag it close and make my 2-footer for par. I'm thinking "Woo-hoo, that's a plus on the putting stats!" which it was really just another par. It all averages out in the end, though. 

[jpboi9837]

Thanks, @North Butte -- your explanation was super helpful. I think this should align with your suggestion.

 

This is from one round (I had two holes where I took net-double-bogey and didn't get putting stats).

[PracticeSwinger]

14 minutes ago, jpboi9837 said:

Thanks, @North Butte -- your explanation was super helpful. I think this should align with your suggestion.

 

This is from one round (I had two holes where I took net-double-bogey and didn't get putting stats).

Excellent breakdown, only thing I do also is track every putt distance (i.e. your leave distance) because you'll see over time that you'll want to know about your 3putts - to get better at avoidance. A 3putt from 50 feet where your first putt gets to 3 feet and you missed that one is very different from a 3putt from 50 feet where you left your first one 12 feet short

[North Butte]

21 minutes ago, jpboi9837 said:

Thanks, @North Butte -- your explanation was super helpful. I think this should align with your suggestion.

 

This is from one round (I had two holes where I took net-double-bogey and didn't get putting stats).

That isn't an awful putting round by any stretch but if it were me I'd probably be hoping to do a little better next time.

 

If you were to track this kind of approach for a while I think you'd have a good idea when you're getting better or worse. 

[jpboi9837]

11 minutes ago, North Butte said:

That isn't an awful putting round by any stretch but if it were me I'd probably be hoping to do a little better next time.

 

If you were to track this kind of approach for a while I think you'd have a good idea when you're getting better or worse. 

Agreed!

[jpboi9837]

17 minutes ago, Varry_Hardon said:

Excellent breakdown, only thing I do also is track every putt distance (i.e. your leave distance) because you'll see over time that you'll want to know about your 3putts - to get better at avoidance. A 3putt from 50 feet where your first putt gets to 3 feet and you missed that one is very different from a 3putt from 50 feet where you left your first one 12 feet short

Very true. Like @North Butte said earlier though, I do worry about my golf games becoming too stat-tracking focused. But maybe not enough tracking is why I’m only playing to a 17 😅

[Patnachts]

2 minutes ago, jpboi9837 said:

Very true. Like @North Butte said earlier though, I do worry about my golf games becoming too stat-tracking focused. But maybe not enough tracking is why I’m only playing to a 17 😅

I don't think that it is too much about stat-tracking. Now if you go crazy and start recording every detail about every putt then maybe you are heading in that direction, but collecting the distance of the putts help build context about your game. Like many have said, this could be a putting problem or it could be a "not hitting it close enough" problem.

[North Butte]

12 minutes ago, Patnachts said:

I don't think that it is too much about stat-tracking. Now if you go crazy and start recording every detail about every putt then maybe you are heading in that direction, but collecting the distance of the putts help build context about your game. Like many have said, this could be a putting problem or it could be a "not hitting it close enough" problem.

It doesn't become a problem until you walk up on the green and see your 8-iron ended up 5 feet from the hole but it's pin high and has a foot of break so you think, "Doggone it, if I miss this it'll cost me half a stroke on my putting stats!". 

 

Then you have a problem. 

[Moonlightgrm]

I would need more information to reach an educated conclusion. What is your percentage of fairways hit, percentage of greens in regulation, percentage of up and downs, etc…36-putts per round seems a little high, but without more information, there may be other aspects of your game that are holding back.

[SNIPERBBB]

46 minutes ago, jpboi9837 said:

Very true. Like @North Butte said earlier though, I do worry about my golf games becoming too stat-tracking focused. But maybe not enough tracking is why I’m only playing to a 17 😅

You really shouldn't need shot tracking to get better unless you're the kind of person that have to have your shortcomings laid out in detail for you realize what's going on.