How Long Should I Practice My Putting For Before Each Round Of Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
How Long Should I Practice My Putting For Before Each Round Of Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

How long should you practice your putting before each round of golf? And again tough question this one. It's really difficult to find a definitive answer. But I would say if I have to be pinned down on this, I would go for 15 to 20 minutes, something of that nature. Now what you’ll see with the best players in the world, if we take that as an example , some of those guys will spend half an hour, 45 minutes, maybe even up to an hour on the putting room before they play. Now those guys are the guys that aren’t confident with their putting. Some guys will spend 10, 15 minutes on the putting green and walk straight to the first seat. Those are the guys to watch because therefore are they guys that are going to feature in the tournament. It's because they are the guys that are confident with their putting stroke.

And I think what you’ve got to do here, is you're going to try and break it down into two categories. Because there is practicing your putting and there is warming up your putting for round the golf. And they are slightly different things. Practicing your putting would be ingraining your stroke. Like you may go to the driving range and work on your stroke with your PJ professional coach or PJ professional tutor. You might be working through different elements of your stroke grinding something and trying to change your ball flight. You know that’s practice, that was not warming up, that’s practice. And the same with putting, we may have a flow in our stroke that we’re trying to change. We might be trying ingrain distance control or read green better, and that’s practice. And that might not necessarily happen in the 20 minutes or 15 minutes before hitting off. That might happen in the middle week or even the week before, that maybe your practice on the putting green. But then before each round of golf we have to have an element of warming up. So you might hit 25 balls on the driving range, that’s not necessarily practicing your stroke, that’s warming up your stroke, there is difference. Likewise when we come to the putting green we might just drop a few balls down, have a few practice putts for speed, have a few practice putts for line, be confident that we can knock in a few shots once and then go to the golf course. That might be just a 10 or 15 minute warming session, it's not necessarily practicing. So trying to get out this thing you walk the different stream practicing, what's the difference between warming up. And ideally when you come to the golf course try and spare yourself 15 or 20 minutes before every single round of gold to a bit of practice but mainly warming up your putting stroke. And I say every single round even if this is a golf course that you play week in week out, the greens aren’t always the same. That’s the part of the challenge of playing golf. The different weather conditions, the different trim and the greenness out there, the different time of the year. We can spend a lot of time getting used to the speed of the green so that when we go out on the first hole, we’re almost treating the first hole like it's our ninth or tenth hole, we know how fast it's going to be and how far the ball is going to roll. If you will count to the first T, play the first green and you might have another putt on that green for a week or maybe even longer, you're pretty much guessing. And I often hear people say to me, you know I really got to grip with those greens on the back nine. And we’re taking nine holes of wasting putts before you go to grips with the greens, that’s the stuff you got to do when you're warming up in your practice before a round of golf. So how long should you practice for? 15 to 20 minutes before every single round.
2014-10-14

How long should you practice your putting before each round of golf? And again tough question this one. It's really difficult to find a definitive answer. But I would say if I have to be pinned down on this, I would go for 15 to 20 minutes, something of that nature. Now what you’ll see with the best players in the world, if we take that as an example , some of those guys will spend half an hour, 45 minutes, maybe even up to an hour on the putting room before they play. Now those guys are the guys that aren’t confident with their putting. Some guys will spend 10, 15 minutes on the putting green and walk straight to the first seat. Those are the guys to watch because therefore are they guys that are going to feature in the tournament. It's because they are the guys that are confident with their putting stroke.

And I think what you’ve got to do here, is you're going to try and break it down into two categories. Because there is practicing your putting and there is warming up your putting for round the golf. And they are slightly different things. Practicing your putting would be ingraining your stroke. Like you may go to the driving range and work on your stroke with your PJ professional coach or PJ professional tutor. You might be working through different elements of your stroke grinding something and trying to change your ball flight. You know that’s practice, that was not warming up, that’s practice. And the same with putting, we may have a flow in our stroke that we’re trying to change. We might be trying ingrain distance control or read green better, and that’s practice. And that might not necessarily happen in the 20 minutes or 15 minutes before hitting off. That might happen in the middle week or even the week before, that maybe your practice on the putting green.

But then before each round of golf we have to have an element of warming up. So you might hit 25 balls on the driving range, that’s not necessarily practicing your stroke, that’s warming up your stroke, there is difference. Likewise when we come to the putting green we might just drop a few balls down, have a few practice putts for speed, have a few practice putts for line, be confident that we can knock in a few shots once and then go to the golf course. That might be just a 10 or 15 minute warming session, it's not necessarily practicing. So trying to get out this thing you walk the different stream practicing, what's the difference between warming up. And ideally when you come to the golf course try and spare yourself 15 or 20 minutes before every single round of gold to a bit of practice but mainly warming up your putting stroke. And I say every single round even if this is a golf course that you play week in week out, the greens aren’t always the same.

That’s the part of the challenge of playing golf. The different weather conditions, the different trim and the greenness out there, the different time of the year. We can spend a lot of time getting used to the speed of the green so that when we go out on the first hole, we’re almost treating the first hole like it's our ninth or tenth hole, we know how fast it's going to be and how far the ball is going to roll. If you will count to the first T, play the first green and you might have another putt on that green for a week or maybe even longer, you're pretty much guessing. And I often hear people say to me, you know I really got to grip with those greens on the back nine. And we’re taking nine holes of wasting putts before you go to grips with the greens, that’s the stuff you got to do when you're warming up in your practice before a round of golf. So how long should you practice for? 15 to 20 minutes before every single round.