You're Correct!

One of the most neglected areas of the game is putting, and practising putting in particular. Many golfers believe that they are good putters yet when they count up the number of putts in a round they are in the high end of the 30s rather than the low end.

If you think that a regulation round in level putts would see you use your putter 36 times, yet this is not the statistic of a good putter because you are not hitting all 18 greens in the regulation number of shots.

You need to spend as much time as you possibly can on practising your putting, even if you can only squeeze in 15 minutes before your tee off as this is better than nothing. While practising, you should split your time between firstly getting a feel for the length of stroke your think you are going to need. Rather than hitting putts towards a hole, try putting into a space on the practise green. Pick out a spot that you want to hit your putt to and see how close you get to it. Hit five or six putts to this spot as you get a feel for the speed you need.

If you only have 15 minutes then spend around 10 minutes working on the feel for the distance. This will help you control your length of backstroke when you get out on the course. Then spend the last five minutes trying to hole as many putts as possible from two feet, then three feet, four feet, five feet and finally six feet. This is because you will potentially have more putts from these distances than from anywhere else on the green and if you hole a couple then your number of putts per round will start to decrease rapidly. The biggest thing to bear in mind is that if you dont practise then you wont get better.

Whether or not you feel a little nervous when your on the first tee or not, spending a small amount of time on the putting green before you tee off will not stop you getting nervous. In fact, if you only get to spend five minutes on the practise green then your putting stroke and confidence will end up being shot to pieces as you will not get enough time to either get your feel or hole some putts.

As nice as it would be to spend all of your spare time before your round on the putting green, you do need to allocate some time to your full swing too. If you get a happy medium between the time you spend making full swings to working on your putting stroke, you will see a big change in the number of putts you take with more control over your stroke and the fact that youre hitting your iron shots closer to the hole.

Many golfers do actually get out of their cars and walk on to the first tee, yet if you watch the worlds best players, they all spend lots of time each round they play on the practise ground, then a little bit of putting before they tee it up. Why not follow this routine so that you dont get half way through your round before you start hitting good shots and putts.