How to Stop Three Putting
If you want to know how to stop three putting, you first need to accept an uncomfortable truth: it’s rarely about your putting stroke. Most three-putts come from one of two things — leaving your first putt so far from the hole that any golfer would struggle to get down in two, or rolling your second putt with so little commitment that it barely reaches the hole. Fix those two problems and the three-putts disappear. This article explains how to do exactly that.
Why three-putts happen in the first place
Before you start drilling specific techniques, it helps to understand what’s actually going wrong when you three-putt. There are two main culprits, and they’re different enough that the fix for one doesn’t help the other.
Culprit 1: Poor distance control on long putts
The most common cause of three-putts is leaving your first putt too far from the hole. From 30, 40, or 50 feet, most club golfers are trying to hole the putt rather than get it close — and the result is a putt that charges six feet past or dies eight feet short. From either of those distances, a two-putt is no longer a given.
Distance control is about pace, not aim. You can be perfectly aimed at the hole and still three-putt if the ball rolls eight feet past it. The stroke mechanics matter far less from long range than your ability to judge pace consistently.
Culprit 2: Missing the second putt under pressure
The second cause of three-putts is the short one that should be easy. You’ve left yourself three or four feet and now you’re standing over it with the memory of the first putt still fresh. This is where deceleration creeps in. You try to steer the ball rather than stroke through it, the face closes or opens through impact, and what looked like a straightforward putt catches the edge and lips out.
This isn’t a distance-control problem — it’s a face-angle and confidence problem. And the fix is very different.
How to fix long-putt distance control
The golfers who rarely three-putt aren’t the ones who hole 30-footers — they’re the ones who consistently roll long putts to within two or three feet. That skill is called lag putting, and it’s almost entirely about pace.
The clock face drill
Pick a hole on a practice green and place balls at 20, 30, and 40 feet. Your only target is to get each putt to stop within an imaginary three-foot circle around the hole — not to hole it. Ignore whether the ball goes left or right; focus entirely on whether the pace is right. Count how many balls out of ten finish inside that three-foot circle. Track the number over several sessions. As your score goes up, shrink the circle to two feet.
The reason this works is that it teaches your brain to compute pace as the primary variable, not direction. Most club golfers aim and then adjust pace as an afterthought — this drill reverses that.
The ladder drill
Set up five balls at 10-foot intervals, starting from 10 feet and working out to 50 feet. Putt each one with the goal of leaving it closer than the last — so the 50-footer finishes within a foot of the 40-footer’s resting spot, and so on. This exaggerated distance range forces you to adapt pace across a wide spectrum in a short session, which transfers quickly to the variety of long putts you’ll face on the course.
Use a putting mat for consistent feedback indoors
The PERFECT PRACTICE Putting Mat has printed distance markers that make it easy to run the clock face drill indoors. Roll putts from 6, 7, and 8 feet and track where they stop relative to the hole. The ball return system keeps the session flowing. It won’t replicate the green speeds you’ll face at your course, but it trains the stroke mechanics and pace calibration that transfer.
How to fix the short second putt
Fixing the short putt that follows a long one is mostly a confidence and repetition problem. You need a stroke that accelerates through the ball, a face that stays square through impact, and enough practice repetitions that the stroke feels automatic under light pressure.
The gate drill for face control
If your second putts are consistently missing to one side, the putter face isn’t square at impact. The quickest fix is a putting gate — two posts placed just in front of the ball that the ball has to pass through cleanly. If it clips a post, you know which way the face was open.
The PuttOUT Pro Putting Gates are built for exactly this drill. Three progressive gate widths give you immediate, objective feedback — start wide and narrow the gate as your face control improves. Ten minutes a day with a gate is worth more than an hour of undirected practice.
The pressure trainer for pace and confidence
Deceleration on short putts comes from uncertainty about pace. If you don’t know how hard to hit it, you slow down through impact to “control” the ball. The result is a putt that doesn’t have enough pace to hold its line.
The PuttOUT Premium Pressure Putt Trainer trains you out of this habit by giving you clear feedback on whether your putt had the right pace. The parabolic ramp sits at the end of your putting line. If your putt has the right line and the right pace, the ball rolls up the ramp and comes back to you — saving you from fetching it. If you hit it too hard, the ball overshoots and the ramp shows you how far past the hole it would have run. Hit the micro-target at the top of the ramp (which requires pace of roughly 18 inches past the hole on a perfect line) and the ball stays — that’s your “perfect putt. That trust is what eliminates the steering, guiding, and decelerating that causes most short second putts to miss.
A simple practice routine to stop three putting
You don’t need to spend hours on this. Three-putt elimination is a specific skill, and fifteen minutes of targeted practice four days a week beats two hours of aimless putting once a week.
Days 1 and 2 — long putt pace (outdoors): Clock face drill from 30 and 40 feet on your practice green. Target: get 7 out of 10 inside three feet. Don’t worry about holing them.
Days 3 and 4 — short putt commitment (indoors): Twenty putts on a putting mat with a gate from 4 to 6 feet. Then twenty putts on the pressure trainer from the same distances. No ambiguity about whether the stroke was good or not.
Give this four weeks. The results on the course won’t be immediate in week one — you’re rewiring habits, not just trying something new. By week three or four, you should notice that the putts you were leaving six feet past the hole are now finishing inside two, and the ones that were lipping out are finding the bottom.
Frequently Asked Questions
What causes three-putting most often?
For most club golfers, it’s poor distance control on the first putt — leaving the ball 5–8 feet from the hole rather than inside 3 feet. Aim and stroke mechanics matter much less on long putts than pace. Fix the pace and the second putt becomes manageable.
What’s the best drill to stop three-putting?
The clock face drill is the single most effective drill for three-putt elimination. From 30–40 feet, focus entirely on pace — aim to finish every putt within a 3-foot circle around the hole. Once that becomes routine, shrink the circle to 2 feet. Track your percentage over time.
Should I aim to hole long putts or just get them close?
Get them close. Trying to hole 30-footers leads to aggressive, poorly-paced putts that either shoot past the hole or die well short of it. The tour professionals who three-putt least aren’t the ones holing long putts — they’re the ones whose first putt almost never leaves more than 3 feet.
How much does putting practice at home actually help?
Considerably, if you do it deliberately. A putting mat and a pressure trainer give you enough feedback to fix pace and face-angle habits without leaving the house. The key is structured drills with a specific target — not just rolling balls aimlessly at a hole.
Is three-putting a mental problem or a technical one?
Both. The first putt is usually a technical problem — poor pace calibration. The second putt is usually a mental one — deceleration caused by nerves. Fix the technical issue first (with drills), then address the mental side by practising under pressure, setting yourself “make ten in a row or start again” challenges that introduce mild consequence into practice.
Struggling with a specific putting problem? Our guide to why you miss short putts breaks down the three root causes and how to diagnose yours. For our full round-up of training aids that fix these problems, see the best putting training aids on Amazon.co.uk.