Putt or chip from off the green?

I always want my players feeling confident while playing on the course, but the one place I see consistently poor club choices is just off the putting green on the “fringe”. This area known as the collar, fridge, or where the flat surface of the putting green transitions into the continuous fairway, provides many options for players to execute their recovery. For most, they are faced with the decision to chip with a lofted wedge or have a more extreme lag putt, to advance their ball back near the cup. When deciding between the putter or the wedge, use the following tips to help make the choice for you.

When playing competitively or among your friends during a weekend round, added nerves will try to creep into our short game efforts from this awkward distance. Unfortunately, this produces the mistake of our hands taking over our motion which results our ball finishing on the complete opposite side of the green, or our divot traveling further than the ball. Both situations could have been evaded by taking those options out of play. While trying to maintain focus in our shoulders, using the putter will always help preserve a stronger pendulum and will guarantee avoiding most severe mishits. The only time in which it becomes a must to pitch the ball in the air, is when forced to carry some sort of rare impediment in route to the cup. For those that tend to pick the wedge over the putter even when not faced with any rare obstacle, is from a lack of putting tempo control. This because putts dependably resulting in an erratic dispersion to the cup, due to a lack of overall distance control.

This control would be gained after practice in similar positions, but with this type of shot being so infrequent, we need to have just one swing thought to help when faced with this irregularity. The main objective while putting should always be to think about maintaining the SAME tempo, but when faced with a shot from the fringe, the key calculation is just adding a sense of “uphill” change of elevation. The key in putting from grass of longer length, is the ability to better predict the needed distance to add in your putts while rolling back onto the putting surface. With my players we rehearse our normal routine of finding the distance of our current putt, then practice adding the extra arch in our stroke to properly counter act the non-green start.

Rather than hitting the ball firmer, always use the same tempo with a longer takeaway to have the ball travel a longer distance. This visualization of the putt having an uphill elevation rather than the different surface to travel through, will add confidence in our impact as well as focus more on the speed. By focusing on the speed rather than the than the lack of accuracy the putt might is important because the longer turf has no guarantee the putt will stay on our desired line anyways. This adjustment to your on-course management is a great way to reduce the amount of shots around the green and great way to enhance your consistency from round to round. Avoiding immense mistakes is the key to holding each round together, so next time you are just off the green choose wisely in taking off the putter cover and not relying on your wedge bounce.