May 6, 2026
Karl Morris — coach to 6 Major Champions — shares the golf putting tips that actually move the needle, from pace control and green reading to the mental side of the game most golfers ignore.
By Karl Morris | Mind Caddie
There is a stat I share with almost every golfer I work with, regardless of their level. A putt hit with just enough pace to send the ball three feet past the hole reduces the effective size of that hole by over sixty percent.
Let that sit for a moment. Sixty percent.
That single fact — from The Lost Art of Putting, the book I co-authored with Gary Nicol — tells you almost everything you need to know about why most golfers struggle on the greens. It is not their stroke. It is not their putter. It is their relationship with pace, and the fact that they have barely ever trained it.
These golf putting tips are not about a revolutionary new grip or a gadget from the pro shop. They are about understanding what actually matters on the greens — and why the things most golfers spend their practice time on are often the least important.
I have spent over thirty years working with golfers at every level — club players, tour professionals, Major Champions. And the most consistent pattern I see in putting is this: the moment the ball leaves the putter face, the golfer's attention has already left the shot and jumped ahead to the outcome.
They look up. They watch. They judge. And by moving their attention away from execution before execution is complete, they are actively undermining their own putting.
The stroke is a vehicle. Attention is the driver. Get your attention in the right place and your stroke will improve almost automatically — not because you have fixed a technical flaw, but because the brain and body work far better when they are given a clear, present-moment focus.
"More putts are missed because of poor attention than because of poor strokes. Get your attention in the right place and your stroke will improve as a consequence."
This is not a theory. It is what I have observed consistently working with some of the best players in the world. And it changes the way you should think about what to practise, and how.
Most amateur golfers are far better at reading the line of a putt than they think. And far worse at controlling pace than they realise.
This matters because pace determines line. A putt that dies at the hole will follow a very different path than the same putt struck firmly enough to roll 18 inches past. You could have read the break perfectly and still miss because the pace was wrong.
Yet when you watch golfers practise, they are almost always training line. They are working with alignment sticks, chalk lines, putting mirrors — all trying to groove a neutral stroke along a predetermined path. And while none of that is without value, it is working on the less important variable.
The effective size of the hole changes dramatically based on pace. A ball that arrives at the cup with enough pace to die just over the front edge can enter from almost any point around the rim. A ball that is too firm only has one point of entry — the back of the cup. That is the practical impact of pace on your putting, and it is why pace training should make up the bulk of your time on the practice green.
This drill was used by Harry Bradshaw, one of the great putters of his era. It is simple, it is effective, and it completely removes the distraction of outcome.
Take two balls to the putting green. Roll the first ball out to a random distance — no specific target, just send it somewhere. Now your task with the second ball is to roll it gently up to kiss the first one. Just enough pace to nudge it.
What this does is force you to truly observe how the ball behaves on the green. Without the hole as a target, your brain stops judging 'good putt or bad putt' and starts genuinely watching. And the more you watch the ball move across the surface — noticing the subtle breaks, the pace of the green, how the ball decelerates — the more your subconscious is learning cause and effect. Not from instruction. From observation.
Do this regularly and you will find your pace control improving in a way that no alignment aid can replicate.
Green reading is one of the most underworked skills in the amateur game. When most golfers miss putts, they blame the stroke. The reality, far more often than not, is that they misread the green — and they misread it because they looked at it from the wrong place.
The habit most golfers have is to look at a putt from directly behind the ball, down the line to the hole. This creates a fundamental problem: looking down the line foreshortens the perceived distance. Your eyes do not even make contact with the ground until 18 to 24 inches beyond the ball. Your brain calculates the required pace based on what it sees — and what it sees is a shorter distance than reality. Which explains, among other things, why so many putts come up short.
The fix is straightforward. Look at every putt from the low side.
Work out which side of the green is lower — the side your ball will break towards. Walk to roughly halfway down the length of the putt and stand a few paces back from the line. From here, you will see the putt in genuine three-dimensional perspective. You will see its true length. You will see the slope. You will see undulations you would never spot from behind the ball. And you will see where the ball needs to enter the hole.
"We cannot stress the importance of this aspect of green-reading strongly enough. You will see the full picture — the full length of the putt, the slope, the pace required. It is a game-changer."
Roger Chapman, a two-time Major winner on the Champions Tour, told us after learning this approach that he could barely get his head around how different putts looked from the low side. At that point he had been playing professional golf for over two decades. He then went on to finish in the top five in four of his next five events.
This takes no extra time during a round if you use your playing partners' preparation time wisely. And it will do more for your putting than any stroke-focused drill.
This is perhaps the most unusual putting drill I use — and one of the most powerful. It directly trains your attention and brings you into the present moment in a way that is difficult to achieve through technique alone.
Crouch down on the practice green and hold a golf ball between your thumb and forefinger. Look at it closely. Notice the markings. Notice how part of the ball is in shadow and part is not.
Now snatch the ball away quickly and notice what you see.
You will see a blurred, circular shadow where the ball was. This is what is known as a retinal after-image.
You have probably hit millions of putts in your life and never seen it. And that tells you exactly where your attention has been going the moment you strike the ball — straight to the outcome, every single time.
Now take that to the practice green. Roll putts and make it your only task to see the after-image. Not to hole the putt. Not to judge the stroke. Just to see the image.
When your attention is focused on nothing but the after-image, remarkable things tend to happen. The mind settles into a single point. The body executes freely. The stroke becomes quieter and more natural. You will feel a sense of calm that is hard to manufacture any other way.
I recommend this as a warm-up drill before you play — especially on an unfamiliar course. It is one of the cleanest ways to shift your brain out of 'normal life' mode and into the present-moment focus the game requires.
One of the great illusions in putting is that it demands pinpoint accuracy. It does not.
Try this. Place three golf balls side by side in front of the hole and push them gently towards the cup. All three will drop. That is the actual width of entry available to you — a three-ball channel into the hole. You do not need perfect precision. You need good enough precision, with the right pace.
For most golfers, the chase for a perfectly neutral, mechanically correct stroke creates exactly the kind of tension that prevents a free, natural putting motion. Great putters throughout history have had wildly different strokes. Tiger Woods addressed the ball with his blade slightly open, then squared it at impact — a compensation by any technical measure. Seve Ballesteros would shape his putts, hooking right-to-lefters and fading left-to-righters. Neither man was following the instruction-manual stroke. Both were extraordinary putters.
The single thing they had in common was not technique. It was that they trusted what they had.
So question how much energy you are spending trying to groove mechanical perfection — and whether that energy might be better placed training pace, reading greens, and learning to keep your attention where it belongs.
Before every putt, your attention is going somewhere. The question is whether it is going somewhere useful.
For most golfers in most situations, their attention is on outcome. On what this putt means for the score. On the memory of the last putt they missed from a similar distance. On the mechanics of the stroke they read about last week. None of those are useful. All of them are happening right now in golfers all over the world, on every putt.
The work is to find where your attention serves you best. For some golfers, that is a strong visual picture of the ball rolling along its intended path and dropping into the cup. For others, it is a single, specific spot on the green where they want the ball to land. For others still, it is a feeling — the rhythm of the stroke, the softness in the hands, the pace they want to roll the ball at.
None of those is universally correct. But all of them have one thing in common: they are focused on this putt, right now, in a way that gives the brain and body something real to work with.
The thinking that produces consistent putting on the course is not complicated. It is the discipline to direct your attention intentionally rather than letting it wander to where it will inevitably go if left unguided.
Here is one of the most important things I can tell you about putting practice. The way most golfers practise putting is a near-total waste of time.
Hitting the same putt from the same spot over and over again is not preparing you to hole putts on the course. On the course, you never get the same putt twice. You have one chance, from a position you have never stood in before, on a green you may never have played, under a pressure that did not exist on the practice green.
To be a great putter, you need to train your ability to predict what a putt is going to do with only one chance to discover whether you were right. That is a completely different skill to grooving a stroke on a flat section of the practice green.
The best putting practice involves variety, consequence and genuine observation. Different distances, different slopes, different speeds. Putting to new targets rather than the same hole repeatedly. Introducing a small wager with a playing partner — even if it is just coffee — so that the putt carries some consequence. Watching what the ball does when you are wrong and learning from it rather than just reaching for the next ball.
The golfer who can step over any putt on any course and make a confident, committed, informed decision about how hard to hit it and where to start it — that golfer is the one who has trained putting the right way.
Putting is simultaneously the simplest and the most mentally demanding part of the game. No ball flight to contend with. No swing speed required. Just you, a flat stick, and a hole in the ground.
And yet it is where more shots are lost, more confidence is eroded, and more practice time is misdirected than anywhere else in golf.
The golfers I have worked with who putt best — and that includes players who have won Major Championships — share one common quality. They are present. They have made a clear decision about where they want the ball to go and how they want it to get there. And then they let it happen.
That is not a technique. It is a discipline. And like any discipline, it can be trained.
Start with pace. Start with the low side. And start paying attention to where your attention actually goes the next time you stand over a putt on the course.
The answers are usually closer than you think.
Want to work on the mental side of your putting?
The Mind Caddie app includes structured audio programmes on focus, attention and on-course performance — built around the same principles used with tour players and Major Champions.
Money back guarantee if you follow the app for three months and do not see an improvement in your game.
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