How to Putt: Coach Harvey's Complete Putting Method

The single biggest mistake amateur putters make is gripping the putter too tightly. Tension in the hands kills feel, and feel is what controls distance — and distance, not direction, is what causes most three-putts. Ben Crenshaw, the most natural putter who ever lived, said it best: hold the putter like you'd hold an injured bird — firm enough that it can't escape, gentle enough that you don't hurt it. That image came from Harvey Penick (the original), and it is still the best grip-pressure cue ever written.

Set your grip pressure between 3 and 4 on a 10-point scale. Most amateurs grip at 7 or 8 without realizing it. Brad Faxon, who set the all-time PGA Tour record for putts per green in 2000, said his arms should hang like rope. Loose forearms, loose shoulders, loose hands. The putter swings; you don't push it.

Use a grip style that takes the dominant hand out of the stroke. The traditional reverse-overlap is fine. The cross-handed (left-hand-low for right-handed golfers) grip is excellent for golfers whose right hand fights the stroke. The claw grip — popularized by Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia — neutralizes the dominant hand even more aggressively. Pick one and commit. Switching grips weekly guarantees you never get good at any of them.

A great putting stroke is a pendulum. Arms, shoulders, and putter move as a single unit — the wrists do nothing. Steve Stricker is the modern reference for this: his left wrist stays cupped from address through impact, the putter heel sits slightly off the ground, and his shoulders rock the entire system back and through. There are almost no moving parts. Fewer moving parts means fewer things that can go wrong under pressure.

Backstroke and forward stroke should be the same length, or the backstroke should be slightly longer than the forward stroke. The deadly mistake is the opposite — short backswing, long lunge through the ball. That's deceleration, and deceleration is the engine behind almost every short putt missed inside six feet. If you have to ask whether you're decelerating, you probably are. Film yourself.

Keep the putterface square through impact. The face is responsible for roughly 85% of where the ball starts; path accounts for the rest. If you're missing on the same side over and over, the face was open or closed at impact, not the path. Most amateurs misdiagnose this and spend hours chasing path issues that don't exist.

Brad Faxon's tempo was the same on every putt — short, medium, or long. Only the stroke length changed, never the speed. This is the single biggest distance-control unlock in putting, and almost no amateurs do it. They take a faster, jerkier stroke on long putts to generate distance, and a slower, tentative stroke on short putts to avoid running them by. Both are wrong. Same tempo, different lengths.

Set a metronome to 76 beats per minute and putt 20 balls. Take the putter back on beat one and let it return to impact on beat two. Don't push, don't pull — let the putter fall through the ball like a pendulum. After a hundred reps the rhythm becomes automatic. After a thousand reps, your distance control transforms.

Dave Pelz's research showed that the average amateur under-reads break by 60 to 70 percent. Not a stroke problem — a reading problem. Phil Mickelson built his entire putting strategy around this insight: play more break than you think, because you almost certainly aren't playing enough. If you keep missing on the low side, you're not reading enough break. Double the read on your next three putts as a calibration test and see what happens.

Read the green with your feet before your eyes. Walk to the midpoint of the putt and stand still — feel which foot bears more weight. That foot is the low side, and the ball will break toward it. This is the core idea behind the AimPoint system that Adam Scott, Justin Thomas, and Lydia Ko all use. You don't need certified AimPoint training to use the principle: feet first, then eyes.

Once you've read the putt, aim at the apex of the break — not the hole. Bobby Locke, the four-time Open Champion, never aimed at the hole on a breaking putt. He picked the high point of the curve and rolled the ball straight at it. The break does the rest. Aiming at the hole on a breaking putt forces you to unconsciously curve the ball, which introduces doubt mid-stroke. Aim at the apex and your stroke can be a straight, committed roll.

Bob Rotella's central thesis on putting is that the stroke is reactive, not calculated. Look at the target. See it clearly. Let the body respond to the image. The same way you'd toss a ball to a friend — you don't calculate force and angle, you look at where you want it to go and throw. Putting works the same way. The quality of your visual image of the target determines the quality of your stroke.

Build a routine and never break it. Two looks at the target. Two practice strokes. One breath. Then putt. The same routine on a six-foot tester for the club championship and a six-foot tester at the practice green. Sian Beilock's research at the University of Chicago showed that golfers who maintain identical pre-putt routines under pressure perform near practice levels, while golfers without routines collapse. The routine is what holds you together when consequence thinking tries to creep in.

Love the putt you have. Pressure putts are not threats — they're privileges. This is the putt you've been practicing for. Reframe before you step in, and the consequence thinking that tightens your grip never gets started. Coach Harvey's pressure-intervention sequence is: name the pattern → reframe the situation → redirect attention to the target → anchor to routine → stroke.

Harvey Penick had the best practice rule ever written: never practice long putts before a round. Start with 3-footers, make ten in a row, walk away while the last sound in your head is the ball going in. The last memory before the first tee should be a made putt, not a missed one. If you have to hit longer putts in warm-up, do it before the short ones, never after.

Penick also said putt to a tee, not a cup. Push a tee into the green and try to roll the ball over it. The tee is much smaller than a 4.25-inch hole. If you can hit a tee consistently, the cup looks enormous on the course. This is a confidence-and-aim drill that works on any practice green in five minutes.

On the course, reset after every putt. The putt that just happened doesn't exist anymore. Next putt is the only one that matters. This is the discipline that separates good putters from great ones — the great ones live entirely in the next stroke.