The Putting
Framework
Three skills every good putter must own. A physical assessment for each one. This is how we approach putting at The Strength Caddie.
Most golfers practice what they like.
This guide shows you what you're missing.
Putting is trainable. It's not a feel you're born with. It breaks down into three skills, and all three can be measured, practiced, and improved. The golfers who actually get better on the greens know which skill is broken before they start drilling. Most people skip that step.
We agree with how Phil Kenyon — coach to Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, and Tommy Fleetwood — thinks about putting. No single method. No prescribed stroke. Just three outcomes every putter has to own. He put it this way:
"Whatever techniques you're working on, fundamentally you've got to master three skills. Those skills are your ability to control the starting direction of the ball, your ability to control the speed, and your ability to predict the break."
— Phil Kenyon, Specialist Putting CoachNo single required grip. No universal stroke shape. Just three outcomes you have to produce. The path to get there is yours.
We agree with that. And we add one layer on top: your body is the hardware. Before you can own those outcomes, we need to know if your body can actually produce the movement they require. That's what this guide is for.
The Three Fundamentals
Where the ball goes when it first leaves your putter face. Face angle controls 83% of this.1 Path controls the rest.
How far the ball rolls. This determines whether you two-putt or three-putt from distance. Most people never deliberately train it.
Predicting how much the ball will curve. Broadie & Shin (Columbia) found this accounts for 40% of strokes Tour pros lose on the greens2 — more than stroke or distance errors combined.
Start Line
Face angle at impact controls 83% of the ball's starting direction.1 The path your putter takes controls the rest. Most golfers chase path when their real problem is face angle. That's backwards.
The test we use is the dual gate drill. You set two gates: one for the putter, one for the ball. The putter gate is two tees placed just wider than your putter head, right at the ball — tells you if your path is on track. The ball gate is two tees placed just wider than a golf ball, about 12 inches out along your intended start line — tells you if the ball actually goes where you aimed. Clear the putter gate but miss the ball gate: face angle is the problem. Clip the putter gate: path is off.
The Strength Caddie Lens
In our clinical experience, start line problems come down to one of three physical causes. Knowing which one is yours tells you exactly where to practice.
Physical Drivers of Face Angle Error
- Wrist cupping at impact — opens the face and pushes the ball right
- Wrist bowing at impact — closes the face and pulls the ball left
- Lead shoulder dropping at impact — when it dives down instead of rotating up to square the face, the face stays open and the ball starts right
If you consistently miss right (open face), check your lead wrist first. In our clinical experience, shoulder external rotation restrictions and wrist mobility limitations are frequently the underlying physical drivers in golfers with persistent start-line errors. Don't drill a compensation pattern — fix the pattern.
The dual gate drills and wrist check are in the Practice Tracker. Step-by-step instructions, per-putt rep logging, live tendency tracking, and your scored results.
Open Practice Tracker →Speed Control
Speed determines whether you two-putt or three-putt. Scott Fawcett (DECADE Golf), backed by PGA Tour ShotLink data, puts it this way: get the ball within 5 feet on a slightly wrong line and you two-putt. Miss the distance on a perfect line and you can still three-putt.5 Tour data: PGA Tour players make about 20% of putts from 18–20 feet. From distance, the goal isn't to make it — it's to not three-putt.
The instruction to “accelerate through the ball” is wrong. Phil Kenyon puts it directly:
“Trying to avoid decelerating is a big myth. The best putters actually move more toward decelerating the putter at impact. It can be much more difficult to control pace when you're rapidly accelerating through impact.”
— Phil KenyonPeak energy should happen at the end of the backstroke, not the follow-through. Your tempo target is a 2:1 ratio — backstroke takes twice as long as the downswing — at roughly 90 BPM.3 When you need to putt farther, make the stroke longer. Don't change the tempo.
The Strength Caddie Lens
At The Strength Caddie, we break speed problems into three layers that build on each other. You have to work from the bottom up — skipping a layer rarely sticks.
Stable path. Consistent low point. Neutral grip pressure. If these aren't in place, tempo training is premature.
Consistent beat and 2:1 ratio. Adjust stroke length for distance — never change your tempo to hit it harder.
Intuitive distance calibration. Built through deliberate variability practice — not mindless reps at one distance.
Check grip pressure first. Brad Faxon — one of the best putters who ever played — taught that hands and arms should be completely relaxed so the putter swings freely.6 When your dominant hand grips too hard, it takes over. The stroke stops being a pendulum and becomes a hit. Also watch for limited upper and lower body disassociation — if the chest can't rotate independently while the lower body stays quiet, the whole system moves together and you lose control. And watch for head movement: the head should stay still while the chest rotates through. When those two things flip, the stroke breaks down.
The stop zone, ladder, lag, and coin drills are in the Practice Tracker. Instructions, rep-by-rep logging, and your scored results.
Open Practice Tracker →Green Reading
Broadie and Shin (Columbia Business School) found that 40% of strokes Tour pros lose on the greens come from green reading errors2 — not the stroke, not distance. The read. That's the variable that gets ignored most in practice.
Green reading is a skill with a system behind it — not a feel you either have or don't. AimPoint Express, which Phil Kenyon uses with his Tour players, teaches you to sense slope through your feet, assign it a number, and translate that directly into an aim point. Removes guesswork. We like it for exactly that reason.
James Sieckmann — Golf Digest's #1 Short Game Coach six years running, author of Your Putting Solution — breaks putting into four skills. Three match this framework exactly. His fourth is one most coaches skip: believing completely in your read.7 Not motivation talk. He frames it as a trainable skill, not a personality trait. We do too — which is why it's in the assessment below.
Your green read and your start line are connected. If you can't reliably start the ball where you aim, your read feedback is useless — you can't tell whether you misread the putt or just misaimed it. Start line comes first.
The Strength Caddie Lens
Green reading has a physical layer most coaches ignore. Your ability to sense slope through your feet — what AimPoint is built on — requires proprioceptive sensitivity in your feet and ankles, hip mobility, and the ability to stand evenly loaded on sloped ground. If your body can't do that, the system breaks before you even read the green.
Perception Factors
- Foot and ankle proprioception — your body's slope-detection hardware
- Hip mobility asymmetry — unequal weight distribution skews what you feel
- Perceptual errors in slope detection — research shows more than half of amateur golfers make visual-somatosensory errors when reading sloped greens4
Execution Factors
- Pre-shot routine consistency — variable routines produce variable reads
- Commitment — a slightly wrong read you commit to beats a correct read you second-guess
- Translation — knowing the break but aiming at the hole instead of the apex
If your dual gate drill shows clean results but you keep “misreading” putts, the read is actually the problem — not the stroke. These are diagnosable separately. Don't let a coach conflate them. If you sense slope differently on your left foot versus your right foot, that is a physical issue worth screening.
The break prediction, foot slope, aim point, and commitment drills are in the Practice Tracker. Instructions, rep-by-rep logging, and your scored results.
Open Practice Tracker →References
- 1Science and Motion GmbH. SAM PuttLab Reports Manual, Version 5. "Face angle is considered to contribute 83% and path direction contributes 17% of the ball's initial starting direction." scienceandmotion.com
- 2Broadie, M. & Shin, D.W. (Columbia Business School). Research indicating approximately 40% of strokes Tour pros lose on the greens is due to green reading errors. Broadie, M. (2014). Every Shot Counts. Gotham Books.
- 3Kenyon, P. (2024). Finding the Right Tempo for You with TempoStik+. Visio Golf. "The default core tempo is set to 90 BPM with a rhythm ratio of 2.0. These settings represent the average tempo and rhythm ratio used by PGA Tour players." visioputting.com
- 4Hasegawa, Y. et al. (2024). "Putting performance bias to the front-lower side of the hole on steep slopes." PLOS ONE / PMC. Found most amateur golfers could not accurately perceive slope and made visual-somatosensory errors at significantly higher rates than professionals. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- 5Fawcett, S. DECADE Golf. Presentation at GOLF Top 100 Teachers Summit (2021). Uses PGA Tour ShotLink data showing lag putting within 5 feet virtually guarantees a two-putt and that Tour players make approximately 20% of putts from 18–20 feet. golf.com
- 6Faxon, B. Via Titleist and Golf Channel Academy coaching content. Faxon — eight-time PGA Tour winner — teaches that hands and arms should be completely relaxed to allow the putter to swing freely. golfstateofmind.com
- 7Sieckmann, J. (2016). Your Putting Solution: A Tour-Proven Approach to Mastering the Greens. Gotham Books. Four essential putting skills: (1) choosing the correct line, (2) starting the ball on that line, (3) matching the line with appropriate speed, and (4) believing completely in yourself and your training.