How to Putt in Golf: A Step-by-Step Guide to Sink More Putts

To putt in golf, grip the putter lightly in your palms, stand with your eyes directly over the ball, and rock your shoulders in a smooth pendulum while keeping your wrists and lower body still. Distance comes from the length of your stroke, not a harder hit, and every putt starts with a read of the slope and speed. Putting is nearly 40% of the shots in an average round, so getting these fundamentals right lowers your score faster than anything you do off the tee.

The Putting Grip: Take the Wrists Out of It

Hold the putter in your palms, not your fingers, so your wrists stay quiet through the stroke. This is the opposite of the finger-based hold you use for a full swing, which is why the proper golf grip you use with your driver works against you on the green. Run the grip up the lifelines of both hands and let your thumbs sit flat down the top of the handle.

The most common putting grip is the reverse-overlap: take a normal grip, then lift your lead-hand index finger and lay it over the fingers of your trail hand. That single change locks the hands together so neither one can flip. If your hands still fight each other or your lead wrist breaks down, our guide to the proper golf putting grip walks through the cross-hand, claw, and pencil holds that fix it. Hold it softly, around a 4 out of 10 in pressure. A death grip is the fastest way to yank a short putt, so light hands let the putter swing and the face stay square.

Stance and Setup: Eyes Over the Ball

Set your feet about shoulder-width apart with your weight balanced or very slightly forward, and position the ball just ahead of center, roughly under your lead eye. The single most important setup checkpoint is eye position: your eyes should hang directly over the ball or a fraction inside the target line. Set up, hold a second ball at the bridge of your nose, and let it drop; it should land on top of your ball.

Get your eyes outside the line and you will push putts to the right; get them too far inside and you will pull them left. Let your arms hang naturally so your hands sit under your shoulders, and bend from the hips so your eyes look straight down. This posture, borrowed from the same athletic setup covered in our golf swing tips for beginners, gives the putter a straight path to swing along without manipulation.

The Pendulum Stroke: Rock the Shoulders

Make the stroke with your shoulders, not your hands. Picture your arms, hands, and the putter forming a triangle, then rock that triangle back and through by tilting your shoulders like a pendulum. Your wrists stay firm, your hands stay passive, and your lower body does not move at all. The clubhead should stay low to the ground on both sides of the ball rather than lifting.

Keep the tempo even, roughly the same time back as through, and let the stroke swing rather than jab. On straight putts the putter travels close to a straight line; on longer putts it naturally arcs slightly inside on the backstroke, which is normal and nothing to fight. Because this motion is so much simpler than a full swing, it needs less maintenance than your golf swing technique, but it still rewards the same unhurried rhythm.

The number one killer of short putts is deceleration. If you slow the putter down coming into the ball, the face turns and the putt wobbles offline. Make your follow-through at least as long as your backstroke so the putter is always accelerating gently through impact.

Distance Control: Length, Not Force

Control how far the ball rolls with the length of your stroke, never by hitting harder. This is the skill that separates good putters from three-putters, and it is almost entirely feel built through repetition. Think of your stroke like the hands of a clock or a pendulum: a short swing for a short putt, a longer swing of equal length back and through for a long lag putt, with the tempo identical every time.

For lag putts from distance, forget the hole and focus on rolling the ball into an imaginary three-foot circle around the cup. Getting your speed right on long putts eliminates the vast majority of three-putts, because even a putt that misses left or right will finish close enough for an easy tap-in. A great drill is to putt to the fringe without a hole at all, just trying to stop balls at the edge, which trains raw distance feel. For more structured work, our guide to golf putting drills lays out ladder and gate routines that sharpen both speed and start line.

How to Read the Green

Read every putt for slope and speed before you set up, because even a perfect stroke on a bad read misses. Start by looking at the big picture as you walk up: greens drain water, so putts generally break away from high points and toward valleys, ponds, or the lowest edge of the green. Crouch behind your ball to see the tilt of the land between you and the hole, and glance at the far side of the cup to see which way the ground falls.

Speed dictates break: the faster the green, the more a putt curves, and the harder you hit it, the straighter it holds its line. Once you have a read, pick a specific spot on your start line a few inches ahead of the ball and aim the putter face at that spot, then trust it. Uphill putts break less and can be struck firmly; downhill putts break more and demand a softer touch. If you want the full method — grain, plumb-bobbing, and feeling slope through your feet — see our dedicated guide on how to read greens in golf. On slick, fast greens, this touch matters as much as any part of the full golf swing you use through the rest of the bag.

Common Putting Mistakes to Avoid

Moving your head or peeking early. Lifting your head to watch the ball pulls the face offline before impact. Keep your head dead still and listen for the ball to drop instead of watching it go.

Gripping too tightly. Tension in the hands and forearms makes the stroke jerky and kills feel. Soften your grip pressure and let the putter’s weight do the work.

Decelerating on short putts. Getting tentative inside four feet is the most common way to miss makeable putts. Commit to an accelerating stroke every time.

Using your wrists. A flick of the wrists adds an unpredictable variable. Lock the wrists and let the shoulders run the stroke.

Ignoring speed. Golfers obsess over the line and forget that speed determines both distance and how much a putt breaks. Judge pace first, line second.

A Simple Putting Practice Plan

Short putts first. Spend the first third of your session on putts inside four feet. Make ten in a row before you move back a step; the goal is to build confidence and groove an accelerating stroke on the putts that most affect your score.

Lag putts next. Drop balls at 20, 30, and 40 feet and try to stop each one inside a three-foot circle. Do not aim for makes, aim for speed. This is the single highest-value putting practice for eliminating three-putts.

Finish on the course, not the mat. A flat indoor mat teaches a stroke but not green reading or slope. When you can, practice on a real green with breaking putts so your read and your speed develop together.

Putting and the short game are where amateurs save the most strokes, far more than chasing distance. Once your stroke is reliable, pair this routine with solid work around the green from our golf chipping technique guide, and you will turn loose shots into up-and-downs instead of double bogeys. Dial in these fundamentals, practice them with intent, and the putts start dropping.