Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro

How can you putt from off the golf green? And I think this is a really good question, it was a question I wish I was asked an awful lot more because some people don’t even think you are allowed to putt from the green. I often get people asking me “Am I allowed to use my putter from the edge? I thought I had to chip.” Maybe this is because when you watched golf on the TV the guys are often chipping the ball from the fringe of the green back onto the surface, but actually the chip shot from here is a lot riskier than the putt and the best players in the world are chipping quite regularly from off the edge because they are really good at chipping but if you are not very good at chipping and occasionally you thin one or you fat one then putting is absolutely the shot you should try, depending on the lie and a couple of other variables that we will talk about from here But absolutely you can and you probably should be using your putter when you are off the green.

Here this first putt I mean this is just a couple of feet from the edge, and the edge of the green here is pretty flat and smooth, its not really long rough grass. So I have assessed the situation, I have assessed the lie; everything is going in my favor. What I would notice here, is the ball will generally roll slower as it comes out to of this area. So I would consider, well how far and how hard do I need to hit it from here to get it to the hole, and then how hard can I hit it from here to get it to the hole. It’s going to need a little bit more pace just to push it through this slightly longer grass, but if I can run it out to that slightly longer grass I can have a good go at rolling it down towards the hole. As I move back up this hill now I’m now maybe seven, eight feet from the edge of the green, a good a couple of paces. I’m also on a slight slope, but the lie is still okay, the ground conditions in front of me haven’t changed too much. I think this is still quite a good opportunity to putt, not only because it’s actually quite a difficult opportunity to chip having the ball on the down slope and chipping could be quite difficult.

So again I’ll take my putting stroke, I know how hard to hit it and thereof increase the distance back I am going to have a slightly longer putting stroke to this one. First one a bit fast I’ll take it a bit out of this and push it down, and roll it down there quite nicely and it just leaps out on the edge but its only rolled a foot past it’s a bit of a nice easy tap in coming back. Moving back a little bit further now, now what are we? We are one, two, three, four maybe five paces off the edge of the green, so quite a good distance away. There is now quite a lot of longer grass and a few leaves and twigs to roll through between me and the surface. So if I had a good lie and I was confident with my chipping I’d start to consider chipping from here, but as it is we are going to have a little putt, the grass doesn’t look too awkward. So it will have a little roll, it might bobble and break a few times as it bounces — as it bounces down the hill. But again it’s come out really nicely and rolled and nearly leapt out. I am getting back to the further away I keep going, I might keep walking further back, but I think if we look at those three shots particularly the latter two and the proximity to the hole. If I was to chip the ball from here down towards the hole I’d be getting a round of applause, people would be saying “Pete that’s amazing that’s great chipping from there.”

Because it was putting it looked pretty simple, it was simple stroke, bumped it forwards and it rolls down nicely to the hole. And I think that’s the point, is that your putts when you hit them well, will look pretty good but your putts when you hit them badly will still look okay. If I was to chip well from there, nice result but if I was to chip badly I’d have a horrible result maybe 10-20 feet away from the hole, but my putts be them good or bad are always going to be okay when I am putting from off the green.