I’ve just come back from the practice green where I spend the better part of two hours putting and chipping from the fringe. If you are serious about getting your handicap down then this is the fastest way to do it (if you aren’t serious then continue to smack big slices around on the driving range with all the other turkeys).

Love him or hate him Dave Pelz has put a lot of time and thought into a number of differences between pros and the rest of us. Pelz is percentages kind of guy who works players short games and as much as it may take some of the romanticism out of the aura which surrounded Phil Mickelson, one of the feelingist feely type of players, their work together paid off big time for Phil. So, one of these differences Pelz targeted is pros will miss the majority of their putts past the cup whereas the rest of us leave them short. Why? Probably because pros are attacking the hole under the old adage “never up, never in” and the casual golfer if so scared of whacking the ball past the hole they decide somewhere in their brains that sneaking up on the hole is less scary than trying to put the ball into the damn thing. More surprising (and I’m sure true) is that for every ten putts going past the hole two or three will fall in (of course opposed to zero putts falling in if you miss them short).

I concentrated on chipping the ball from the first cut placing it slightly back in my stance and pushing the follow through 20% further than the backswing. I also concentrated on making every chip count. I then putted from 10 feet to 20 feet lining up every ball in the same way and checking the break from behind the ball and from behind the cup. Every time. I probably hit only about 30 or 40 balls per hour.

I was joined on the practice green at one point by a couple who slapped their putts from one side of the green to the other, one after the other in a frenzy of putting which lasted about seven minutes for about fifty balls putted and sinking precisely 0% of putts hit.

I quietly continued my routine making sure my chips left me with gimmes and my putts ran either into or past the hole. It’s zen and it’s useful. Suddenly I started to hear the birds singing again and knew the golfing gods were smiling down at me.

Try it.