Putting has been the hot topic lately. It seems as though the recent events on both the PGA and LPGA tours have had drama on the greens. And the reality of putting as it relates to total score is huge! It can be over 40% of your score! In fact, let’s just for a moment describe the perfect round of golf as the scorecard describes.  It’s the perfect day at the perfect course. You do everything…well…perfectly. You play each hole just as it is designed. You hit every fairway off the tee and every green in regulation. When you arrive at each green, you roll the ball within in inches on your first putt and have a tap in for the second. The score in the end… 72…even par! This would give you a putt total of 36 which would be 50% of your score! Take a minute and think about that one. Golf, played exactly as designed and you would shoot even par with 50% of your score in putts. The funny thing is, the best putters on all the tours, the LPGA, PGA, Champions Tour etc., average way below 36 putts per round. In fact, the best putters average just under 29 putts per round! Of course, they should average well below 36 putts per round because they play golf for a living and should be very good at putting. So what does that mean for the rest of the non-professional golfing population? It means we too can lower our putts per round and  improve our scoring average just by spending a little more time on the practice putting green. If we look at how we spend our time practicing, it never seems to portion out the way it is reflected in our score. We spend the majority of time trying to conjure up the perfect swing, trying to make corrections for even the slightest missed shot while on the range and repeating to ourselves what we “just did wrong”. After the range session, we go to the putting green for a few strokes before heading to the tee, and only if the putting green is close to the first tee box. What is the moral of the story?  Putting is important! So evaluate how you spend your practice time and make sure you are spending enough time on your putting. It is by far the quickest way to lower your score and bring more confidence to your game.