When you want to hole more putts on a short putt on a fast green, quite often golfers get caught in two minds what to do. You can imagine one minute they’ve got this sort of fear of, Oh My God what happens if I hit it too hard, and then end up not hitting it so they come up too short or go in the opposite, do what they say – charge like a buffalo and a challenger — but from there all of a sudden they get a bit too much roll on it and all of a sudden its like, “Oh My God, we’ve gone meters past the hole”. So when you are on fast greens and you got to hole more putts the first thing is, is to think to yourself, right, they’re fast greens – they’re fast green wait all winter for fast greens and now if the ball is going to roll, so we’ve now got to think about our tempo of the swing, this is the most, probably the most crucial element, the tempo and the length of the swing.

The first thing is, if you have a flat putt, so is a straight putt, its pretty simple in the sense of the – the actual pre shot routine, is over a couple of practice swings feel the length swing, and from here feel the sort of, what sort of pace will you have to let go to get that ball there. It’s almost, trickle the ball down – remember these are fast greens we are not having to hit them like we do in the winter. But just feel the length of your putt and just feel the tempo, you know, so tempo should just be going, tick, tock not tick tock. Nice and slow, think about the tempo, think about the length of your swing. The second thing is, we got a putt, there’s a big break in it. Now if you’re own fast greens this break is going to break much, much quicker and its going to be faster.

So take that information in, in which case again, we are back into this trickling mode. Look at the break, look at where you want to aim for and then just trickle that putt up towards that marker. And again just trickle it. So you might be thinking well that’s great I only get a couple of chances to – to practice on this. But if I’m sure most of us have got a floor at home, maybe like a shot to the carpet or better still a hardwood floor. And it would be great practice to actually put a ball down and just put a coin on the floor where – for once we are not trying to hole it but trying to just roll the ball down the floor to that coin to stop it as close as possible.

It’ll be like curling you are just trying to get it all the way down there it’s not case of, you know, how fast it is, it’s just a case of just rolling it down. So think about fast greens, take the information in, trickle the ball, think about the length for your swing, think about the tempo. Shorter swing yes, slower tempo, yes. And again look at the break and if it’s a break, it’s going to break faster. In which case there’s more likelihood of you having to trickle it, but of course, if it’s uphill, you have to readjust. So if you want to improve on those short putts on fast greens, practice on a hardwood floor or practice on a lino floor, anything or a tile floor that gives you that practice that feel. And from that you should improve. But again this isn’t a quick fix overnight, you’ve got to make the adjustments, you’ve got to make that commitment and put that practice in. Fast greens are tricky – tricky greens, to do that we have to treat them with utmost respect and just go about it. Go do some practice and feel that putt.