Confidence is the Secret to Putting Well

By Dean Sklar, PGA Professional

Putting is the most important part of the game and you can only excel with confidence. The good news is that putting isn’t difficult, you know you can make a short putt. The bad news is you know how difficult it is to consistently make short putts. Once you start to miss the short putts, your confidence wanes. To start holing them again you need a boost to your confidence, and therein lies the problem. How do you regain your confidence? How do you conquer the game of confidence as putting is often referred to?

Repeatedly missing short putts is no fun and destroys the enjoyment you should have playing this wonderful game. Do you feel humiliated at missing another short putt? It’s simply embarrassing. No wonder it can feel like you are on a slippery slope as your game slips into an exercise of hitting and hoping. Putting with doubt and without confidence is a card wrecker, but I bet it hasn’t always been that way.

Your current putting is probably totally alien to how you played as a kid when there was no fear or tension. Can you remember the competitions you used to play with your friends? There was no room for thinking you would miss. You were all absolutely confident of winning the hole. I have great memories of playing 18 holes as a junior golfer, having something to eat and drink in the clubhouse, and then out for evening contests on the practice putting green. There simply wasn’t time for dwelling on the prospect of a three putt. Instead, thoughts were of how to hole yet another monster putt.

If you analyze what has happened over the decades, you may now find that the second you take your putter out of the bag, you are immediately in a love or hate relationship with the club. Quite simply, are you relishing the challenge ahead of you, or are you fearful of what might happen next? Are you fueled with positive or negative emotions? Even before you start to read the line of the putt, are you tentative rather than enthusiastic?

You definitely need the solid belief that stops you from being tentative. One that comes from having real confidence. The kind built on proper foundations. Because this is the part of the game where you mentally have to be at your toughest. The truth is, you need a strong mental game to putt well. The pressure builds up as you get nearer the hole because there is no longer any more room to recover. You can recover from a sliced drive with a good recovery shot to the center of the fairway. You can even recover from a poor approach shot with a well-played chip shot. But when it comes to putting, there is nowhere to recover except from duly holing the putt in front of you.

Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to building the confidence you need to putt successfully. Next month, we’ll examine some common misconceptions about putting and learn how to help develop the skills you need to putt confidently.

⊲ PGA Professional Dean Sklar is a member of the

Quarter Century Club of the PGA of America, an elite group of members who have served the

PGA with honor and pride for 25 years. If you would like to talk to Dean about your golf game, contact him at Dean.Sklar@FloridaMoves.com or the Rose and Dean Sklar Real Estate Group at

Coldwell Banker, 1760 Bell Tower Lane in Weston, 954-389-6197, or online at www.

WestonFloridaUSA.com.