Steps for putting improvement:

1.      Use drills and techniques to improve your distance control on long putting.

2.      Improve the success rate on the 4-10 foot range.

3.      Build confidence in the 3 footers and closer putts.

I realize this sounds awfully easy but don't make it more complicated than it is and the facts support these findings. You can't argue with the fact that if you were to putt as well as a pro from 24 feet you'd improve. And if you were to putt as well as a pro from 6 feet you'd improve. And the 3 footers were about the same.  So doesn't that prove to you that the most important thing is distance control first, accuracy second?

Most people get so caught up in getting the right line and maybe that's why the results are so close in the 3 feet range. But obviously the pro's have seen the light and found through long hours and experience they need to master the distance they hit their putts if they want to improve.  Because no one hits it to inside 3 feet all day.

Now the next question is, "how can you improve your distance control?"

There is a hundred and one ways to do it but the best way I've found to do it is by.....practice. Wow, what a revelation, "you mean I have to practice my long putting before my touch will improve?"

You got it in one.  But just don't think you can go and hit long putt after long putt and you'll get touch because you won't. You'll get good at hitting a putter into a golf ball but that's not touch.

So what is touch?

Touch is assessing the conditions around you, deciding on the weight and line that you need to get the ball close to the hole after taking in all the elements that effect the speed of a putt, i.e. the speed of the green, the direction of the grain, the time of the day, whether your putt is uphill or downhill, etc., etc...

Do you want to know the magic formula for calculating all of these factors so you can putt every putt within a 3 foot radius of the hole?....you do....OK, wait for it, it might shock you but here it is anyway....."EXPERIENCE!"

You might be saying, “experience, yeah right I've been playing golf for years and I've hit thousands of putts and I'm still 3 putting, how much more experience do I need??”

Well I'm here to tell you that what you've been doing is not experiencing putting but merely hitting a ball. If you were to truly experience putting you would be aware of every single putt you hit as to what happened and how you can improve it next time.

Now this is not paralysis by analysis but it is being aware of what happened on the last putt and what you can do differently next time in a similar situation to make sure it doesn't happen again.

A lot of people think they do this when they hit a putt too hard and so next time they think they learnt from this shot so they hit the next putt a fraction easier and we all know the result and that's the key word "result." These golfers are so concerned with the outcome that they forget the process.

The question they should be asking themselves is, "what did I do that caused the ball to go too far?"

Maybe it had nothing to do with how hard you hit the ball, instead it could be that you were down grain with a downward slope to the hole that was steeper than you realized.

So after figuring this out to ensure this doesn't happen again and you learn from the mistake the next time in a similar situation, you'll realize that when the green looks shiny it's down grain. You'll also take a closer look at the slope of the green as you're walking to the green, not just when you're on it. Now that's experiencing putting.

So you see there's no magic formula apart from learning from your mistakes and mistakes are extremely beneficial ONLY if you learn from them. Most people keep making the same mistakes over and over again and then wonder why they keep getting the same results.

You have to change your approach to long putting so you become more aware and it all starts by asking yourself good questions about what just happened. Good questions lead to good answers and good answers lead to improvement and more enjoyment.

Here's a quick drill that you can practice to improve your awareness skills and to learn from experience much faster than normal.

On the practice green put about 5 balls on the green 30 feet away from a hole. Now putt those balls to the hole trying to hole them with your eyes closed.

As you putt feel all the movements and hear the ball leave the putter. At the completion of your stroke with your eyes still closed, guess as to how close the ball is to hole (e.g. it's 3 feet past on the right side and it's a foot to the right of the hole). Once you've made your informed decisions from feeling your movements then look to see where the ball did in fact end up.

All you have to do is keep practicing like this until you can tell by your stroke where the ball has ended up. I would say about 99.9% of golfers see where the ball has gone and then decide what went wrong.

Another great way to improve your long putting touch is by hitting putts to the fringe of the green instead of the hole. This forces you to focus on distance control.

I guarantee that if you did these two drills for only 10 minutes a day from different distances not only would your scores dramatically improve but your confidence and enjoyment would as well.  Because you will be learning through experience not through results.