As automatic as you might think a three-footer looks, statistics show most of us still have room for improvement, even on the most basic skill in the game. And, when you do make a putt longer than 20 feet? Celebrate as wildly as you like. It’s a big deal.
If you watch enough golf tournament telecasts, it might be easy to assume that pros make a majority of the makeable putts they face.
TV producers are tasked with engaging viewers with peak action and all the critical shots that make the leaderboard shuffle. Statistics, however, tell us it’s far from a 50/50 proposition when a pro is staring down a crucial putt from 20 or 25 feet.
Earlier this spring, two-time major winner Justin Thomas ended an almost-three-year victory drought at the RBC Heritage with a thrilling 24-and-a-half-foot birdie putt on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff. Not long before that, he also holed a 21-foot putt on the 15th hole to move into the lead at the time.
Both of JT’s clutch putts were worthy of all the replays and highlight reels, but when you look at the likelihood of making putts from that range, they’re even more amazing.
The PGA TOUR average for putts holed between 20 and 25 feet is just slightly above 12 percent. Max Greyserman led the TOUR last year, dropping 23 percent of his exactly 100 tries from that range. JT’s probability on those two clutch bombs was just slightly better than a 1-in-10 chance. He beat the odds twice when the tournament was on the line, and it paid off handsomely.
While even recreational players like to view putts under 30 feet as makeable chances to pick up strokes on our playing partners, Shot Scope data underscores that the challenge of holing putts increases drastically the farther you move from the cup.
From the 18- to 24-feet range, of the golfers who track their performance with a Shot Scope tracking device:
Scratch players hole 12% of these putts
5 Handicappers make 13%
10 Handicappers make 10%
15 Handicappers make 9%
20 Handicappers make 7%
25 Handicappers make 6%
The moral of that story? None of us is early-career Jordan Spieth (when he was holing 1 in 4 of his 15- to 25-footers), so let’s all take more time on the putting green to practice lag putting to ensure shorter comebackers and fewer three putts.
While JT was raining birdies in South Carolina last spring, the PGA TOUR was also holding another tournament in the Dominican Republic, the Corales Puntacana Championship.
Fan-favorite Joel Dahmen was leading down the stretch before agonizingly bogeying each of the final three holes to finish in second by a single stroke. Heartbreak over this collapse has to be an understatement for the popular pro from the Pacific Northwest.
Announcers called his shocking lip-out miss on the 71st hole a two-and-a-half-footer. It looked even closer from the TV camera’s perspective with some news outlets calling it a one-footer.
PGA TOUR Shotlink and Shot Scope data both suggest that such a short miss is not only a gut punch, it’s even more brutal because it’s a statistical anomaly.
The make percentage on the PGA TOUR from inside three feet is 99.57 percent and 56 players haven’t missed at all from that range so far in the 2025 season. Eventually, a miss will sneak up on a pro inside the 36-inch circle, but it doesn’t happen often.
Of the golfers who record shot data in the Shot Scope app, their make percentages aren’t perfect, but are also extremely high from inside of three feet.
On 0’ to 3’ putts, Shot Scope data shows:
Scratch players make 98%
5 Handicappers make 96%
10 Handicappers make 96%
15 Handicappers make 93%
20 Handicappers make 90%
25 Handicappers make 88%
A simple way to incrementally improve your handicap – especially if you are in the 15 to 25 handicap range? While you’re practicing your lag putting from 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 feet on all sides of the hole, also practice making the second putts to dial in your speed and line.