Pádraig Harrington Shares Ingenious Way to Reduce Three-Putting

Three-time Major Champion Pádraig Harrington shared an ingenious way to reduce your three-putting and produce better lag putts, leading to lower scores.

Three-putting is one of the easiest ways that high handicap players give up strokes during a round of golf. All too often, these players do not focus on fundamentals for lag putting. The goal should be to get the golf ball in a range where the second putt is makeable. In his Secret of the Short Game instructional video, Phil Mickelson references a drill he learned from Jackie Burke, the winner of the 1965 Masters Tournament and PGA Championship.

The drill led to Mickelson becoming one of the best and most consistent short game specialists in the world, and it all came from Burke’s three-foot circle drill. 

The idea is this: PGA Tour pros would make between 97 and 100 percent of putts from within three feet of the hole. If you were to back the ball away just one additional foot, that percentage greatly decreases to less than 90 percent.

Phil Mickelson reading a putt at the 2023 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. (Credit: New York Post)

The goal should be the same for amateurs: get the ball within three feet of the hole on your first lag putt, make the second putt as easy as possible, and drain the putt. This will reduce scores.

The problem is that getting the ball within that three-foot circle is easier said than done. Harrington’s drill seems to iterate that by making the simple move of adding 1-2 additional feet of break in your long putts, you will leave the ball above the hole more often, and you will funnel closer to the hole more often than not.

A simple lag putting tip. You don’t have to practice anything just remember the last line. @europeantour @pgatour #golfathome #staysharp @wilsongolf #paddysgolftips pic.twitter.com/UndzTVgc9J

— Padraig Harrington (@padraig_h) May 8, 2020

Harrington explains that amateurs tend to under-read long putts by a factor of 0.3. This means that, more likely than not, the putt truly breaks three-times as much as an amateur will read. Mickelson also explains this same theory in his instructional, stating that he has never played a Pro-Am where the amateur he was paired with reads the correct amount of break in putts (see below, the video will play from his lag putting section).

Phil Mickleson Secrets Of The Short Game-Part 1 FULL

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The drill is simple and can be enforced and applied to your game immediately. Simply pick your line and aim roughly 1 to 2 feet further, as a rule of thumb.

Harrington believes this will eliminate lag putting errors and lower your scores.

Give it a shot, and let us know if you have any success with it.

Cover Image via Golfweek