Ask most golfers how they control putting distance, and they'll tell you: a longer backstroke for a longer putt. That's one legitimate way to do it. It's just not the one I teach most players — and once you understand why, your speed control gets a lot more reliable.
Two Ways to Control Distance
There are two mechanisms for controlling how far a putt travels. One is Time — controlling the length of your stroke, letting a bigger swing produce more distance. The other is Force — keeping the stroke shorter and controlling distance through the acceleration and force you put into it.
I prefer Force control for most players, for a simple reason: a shorter backstroke limits how much the face can open and close along the way, which keeps your arc more consistent and produces a more compact, repeatable follow-through. A longer stroke gives the face more time — and more room — to wander off track.
Why Face Angle Is Almost Everything
Here's a number worth sitting with: roughly 90% of a putt's initial direction comes down to face angle at impact, not path. That means the single highest-leverage thing you can control in your stroke is keeping that face square — and a shorter, more compact Force-controlled stroke is simply easier to keep square than a long, sweeping one.
The sensitivity is smaller than most players assume, too. A half-degree of face misalignment still holes a straight 20-foot putt. At 1.5 degrees off, you start missing from just 7 feet. At 2.5 degrees, you're missing from 3 feet. That's how little room for error you actually have — which is exactly why I build practice around face control first, everything else second.
Setup Comes Before Stroke
Before we ever talk about the stroke itself, I check three things:
- Arms: forearms in line with the putter shaft, elbows bent 30–45°, triceps connected to your torso, grip placed in the lifeline of your palm — not under the heel pad like a full-swing grip.
- Posture: elbows pulled in, hinge from the hips with a flat back, knees relaxed, so your eyes sit over the ball. Test it yourself: hold the putter's butt end between your eyes, toe turned toward the hole — the putter should cover the ball if your eye line is correct.
- Ball position: forward in your stance, ahead of the low point below your left shoulder. A putter only carries 3–4° of loft and wants a slight upward launch — play it too far back, and you get a downward strike, a hop, and an inconsistent roll.
Most Players Aren't Aimed Where They Think
Here's a statistic that surprises almost everyone I share it with: roughly 90% of players think they're aimed at the target when they aren't — driven by the putter's shape, offset, loft, lie, and length. Players who tend to aim left usually compensate with an arcing stroke, which opens the face and then blocks the finish. Players who aim right tend toward a straight-back stroke that pulls left. The fix isn't more stroke practice. It's getting properly fit — matching the putter to how you actually see the line, instead of forcing your stroke to fit a generic putter.
Putting is roughly 40% of your strokes in an average round. It deserves more than "hit it and hope."
In-2-It Golf's putting-focused training aids are built around exactly this system — real-time feedback on face angle and stroke path.