Holing six-footers: train your start line with a 70mm gate

Push two tees into the practice green 70mm apart, 18 inches (46cm) in front of a ball sitting on a straight putt. A ball that rolls between them without touching either has started on a line that would hole a six-footer.

How much error a six-foot putt allows

The Rules of Golf set the hole at 4¼ inches (108mm) across. A straight putt struck at a pace that only just reaches the hole will drop if its centre arrives within about 2⅛ inches either side of the middle. That is roughly 1.7 degrees either side of the start line from six feet, 3.4 degrees from three feet and barely one degree from ten.

PGA Tour players hole 99.4% of three-footers and 70.2% from six feet, according to tour figures published by GOLF.com. Shot Scope’s data on amateurs, published by MyGolfSpy, groups all putts from three to six feet: scratch golfers hole 76% of those, 15-handicappers 59% and 25-handicappers 48%. Inside three feet, the 25-handicappers make 88%.

At normal pace the ball has to catch more of the cup to stay in, so the margin shrinks. In robot tests by MacKenzie and colleagues, cited by Ian Sherwin and Ian Kenny in their study of standard, belly and long putters, a face only about 0.6 degrees from square started missing from four metres (about 13 feet), where a putt at dying pace has about 0.8 degrees either side.

The face does most of the steering

Research by Jon Karlsen and colleagues, also cited by Sherwin and Kenny, found that the angle of the putter face at impact accounted for about 80% of how consistently putts started on line. The path of the stroke accounted for 17% and the strike point on the face for 3%. Quintic, which makes putting-analysis systems, puts the face’s share of start direction at more than 90%.

It also grades golfers by how much their face angle at impact varies over repeated putts of the same length. Under 0.5 degrees is elite, 0.5 to 1 degree good, 1 to 2 degrees average and over 2 degrees poor. A face that varies by 2 degrees, the top of the average band, uses up the whole margin a six-foot putt allows, so that golfer will miss some six-footers however well the green has been read.

Setting up the gate

Find a straight six-foot putt on the practice green by rolling a few balls along it first. Put a ball down and, 18 inches along the line towards the hole, push in two tees with 70mm between them. That is a ball’s width plus a little over an inch. Hit ten putts at roughly the pace you would use to hole them, so the stroke is the one you take on the course. A clipped tee is a miss. Where the ball finishes does not matter; the gate checks only the line it started on.

The same arithmetic gives a gate for other lengths, always set 18 inches from the ball:

Putt length	Margin either side	Gap between the tees
4 feet	2.5°	83mm
6 feet	1.7°	70mm
8 feet	1.3°	63mm
10 feet	1.0°	59mm

Golfers who already hole most putts from three to six feet should start at 63mm, and those who miss nearly half at 83mm. Stay at each width until nine or ten of ten putts go through, then move to the next width in the table.

Stroke shape, aim and break

Path accounted for only 17% in Karlsen’s figures, so a stroke that arcs, with the face opening and closing, can pass the gate as easily as one that travels straight back and through. If the face returns square, leave the shape of the stroke alone.

The gate also takes aim out of the test, because the tees set the line for you. With them in place, take your normal stance, set the putter behind the ball as you would in a round, then step back and look along the face. If it points outside the tees, your eyes are misjudging aim from the address position, and putts that pass the gate in practice will miss to that side in play.

On a breaking putt, the gate belongs on the start line you have chosen, not on a line to the hole. In a study of almost 1,300 putts reported by GOLF.com, Eric Alpenfels and Bob Christina found that 96% of golfers under-read the break by more than 60%. If putts on a slope pass the gate and still finish below the hole, play more break before changing anything in the stroke.

Hit ten putts through the gate set for your length, then take the tees out and putt ten more on the same line to the hole.

If nine or ten pass the gate but fewer than seven of the second ten drop, the stroke is not the problem. Spend the rest of the session on the putter-face check above and on pace.

Sources

• The R&A: Rules of Golf, Definitions (Hole)
• GOLF.com: Just how often do Tour pros miss short putts? Here’s some context
• MyGolfSpy: Putting make percentage by handicap (Shot Scope data)
• Sherwin and Kenny: Putting movement and performance outcome using standard, belly and long putters (University of Limerick repository, PDF)
• Quintic: Ball Roll – Numbers Explained (PDF)
• GOLF.com: 96 percent of golfers make this mistake
• The Golf News Net: What size is a golf ball and a golf hole?