The Most Important Putt Length to Practice
Most golfers spend their putting practice inside six feet because those misses hurt the most. The strokes gained math says the money is somewhere else entirely, and it is not close.
Walk onto any practice green an hour before a round and you’ll see the same thing: golfers in a circle of tees three feet from the hole, rolling in short putts. It feels productive because a missed three-footer is the most embarrassing shot in golf, and nobody wants to hit one in front of their group. But if you rank putt distance by how many strokes it actually costs the average amateur, the short-putt circle barely registers.
The most valuable putt distance to practice is the one that combines two things: how far behind the scratch benchmark you are from that range, and how often you face it. Miss either half of that equation and you end up practicing the wrong thing.
Why Short Putts Feel Expensive but Aren’t
The strokes gained baselines that golfity uses come from the same framework Mark Broadie built for his research. They tell you the expected number of putts from every distance, for every skill level.
Here is the gap between a scratch golfer and a 15-handicap, putt by putt:
| Distance | Scratch | 15-handicap | Gap per putt |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 feet | 1.08 | 1.17 | 0.09 |
| 6 feet | 1.44 | 1.50 | 0.06 |
| 10 feet | 1.70 | 1.80 | 0.10 |
| 15 feet | 1.84 | 2.02 | 0.18 |
| 20 feet | 1.92 | 2.11 | 0.19 |
| 30 feet | 2.03 | 2.25 | 0.22 |
| 50 feet | 2.24 | 2.50 | 0.27 |
A 15-handicap is essentially a scratch golfer from six feet. The gap is six hundredths of a stroke. From 30 feet the gap is nearly four times larger, and it keeps growing from there.
This surprises people because short putts are memorable. You remember lipping out from four feet on 17. You don’t remember running a 35-footer eight feet past and grinding in the comebacker, even though that sequence cost you more.
Putting Frequency Changes the Answer Again
Gap per putt is only half of it. A distance you face once a round can’t cost you much no matter how badly you putt from there.
Take a representative round for a 15-handicap who takes 32 putts. Multiply how often each range comes up by the gap per putt from the table above:
| Range | Putts per round | Gap per putt | Strokes lost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0-3 feet | 11 | 0.04 | 0.44 |
| 4-8 feet | 6 | 0.06 | 0.36 |
| 9-15 feet | 5 | 0.17 | 0.85 |
| 16-25 feet | 5 | 0.19 | 0.95 |
| 26-40 feet | 4 | 0.22 | 0.88 |
| 41+ feet | 1 | 0.27 | 0.27 |
Total damage: about 3.75 strokes per round against the scratch baseline. Roughly 2.7 of those strokes, about 72 percent, come from putts between 9 and 40 feet.
The 0-3 foot band, where most practice time goes, accounts for less than half a stroke. You could go perfect from inside three feet and pick up 0.44 strokes a round. Cut your 16-to-25-foot deficit in half and you pick up roughly the same amount, from a range where there is far more room to improve.
The Answer: Roughly 20 Feet
If you have to pick one number, practice from 20 feet. It sits at the intersection of high frequency and a large gap, and speed control from that range is trainable in a way that reading a 50-footer on an unfamiliar green never will be. A twenty-footer on the practice green is the closest thing putting has to a repeatable rep.
Twenty feet is also where the three-putt starts to appear. From six feet a bad putt costs you a stroke at worst. From 20 feet a bad putt leaves you five feet coming back, and now you need the short putt you were worried about anyway.
That is the part most golfers miss. Lag putting is short-putt practice. Every 20-footer you leave inside two feet is a short putt you never have to hit.
What Changes if You Are a Better Player
The math flips as the handicap comes down. Compare a scratch golfer to a 5-handicap:
- 3 feet: gap of 0.07 strokes per putt
- 6 feet: gap of 0.02
- 20 feet: gap of 0.09
- 40 feet: gap of 0.11
The long-range gap shrinks dramatically. A 5-handicap already lags well. What separates them from scratch is a cluster of short and medium putts, and at that level the 4-to-10-foot band earns real practice time because there is very little left to gain from 40 feet.
Advice like “practice your three-footers” is not wrong. It is aimed at a player who has already fixed the thing costing everyone else three strokes a round.
Stop Guessing and Check Your Own Numbers
Everything above is the average case. Your own distribution might look nothing like it, which is exactly why tracking putts beats counting them.
golfity’s putts by distance analysis breaks down your one-putt, two-putt, and three-putt percentages by starting range, alongside your average putts to hole from each band. Two numbers to look at:
- Putts to hole from 20-25 feet. The scratch benchmark is about 1.98. If you’re at 2.15, you are giving away a stroke every five or six rounds from that range alone.
- Three-putt percentage from 26-40 feet. Anything over 15 percent points at speed control, not stroke mechanics.
The strokes gained putting calculator does the same arithmetic for a single putt if you want to sanity-check a specific hole. And if you want the full picture of how putting fits alongside the rest of your game, the strokes gained breakdown shows whether the flatstick is even your problem. For plenty of golfers it is not, and three-putt trouble turns out to be an approach-play issue in disguise.
A Practice Session That Matches the Data
Sixty balls, thirty minutes, weighted toward what actually costs you strokes:
- 30 balls from 15 to 30 feet. Don’t count makes. Count how many finish inside a three-foot circle. Target: 22 of 30.
- 15 balls from 8 to 12 feet. The make-or-two-putt zone where the gap starts opening up.
- 15 balls from 4 to 6 feet. Enough to keep the stroke honest, not enough to eat the session.
Then go track a few rounds and see whether the numbers moved. That feedback loop is the whole reason to measure putt distance in the first place.
