Marcel Siem last week at the British Masters.
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Marcel Siem, he of fist pumps and seemingly immovable enthusiasm, is frustrated. You failed. His ball hit the measuring stick.
Return to 20 feet.
“Okay,” he said, “so now I really have to start over.”
The 44-year-old three-time DP World Tour winner was speaking in a video recently posted on the tour’s social media channels, and the topic was the triple-avoidance and test that the Germans swear by. In fact, twice, in the one-minute, 46-second video, he called the job “a great job”.
So what does it look like? The video is below. Click it. We will wait.
The beauty is its simplicity to set up, and its focus on reaching the gimme range. To begin, Siem placed an alignment stick about a foot and a half behind the hole, and suggested placing a marker of some sort — he used tea — at the same distance in front of the hole. Consider that one-putt distance – any ball that lands in that spot is probably considered fair.
From there, Siem will place from 6 meters (about 20 feet), 7 meters (about 23 feet) and (about 26 feet) three times. Each ball must finish before the mark in front of the hole, before the guide rod behind the hole, or in the cup.
Erase the marker, start over. Hit the steering wheel, you start from the ground. In the video, Siem does.
The drill improves touch.
Siem’s full explanation of it, via video, is below:
“Hey, guys, now I’m trying to help you not three-putt,” Siem began. “So the drill I do every day is from 6 meters, 7 meters, 8 meters. Three balls each. You are not allowed to leave it short. And I put the alignment rod behind the hole, so this is the range where, you know, we can all cover this from this range every time. You know, if you go further than this, then you’re in three-putt territory. I mean, for professionals, I’m not allowed to leave it short. So you guys, I can tee off here, a foot and a half in front of the hole. Something like this.
“Then they made 6, 7, 8 meters and three putts each. And if you miss one shot or hit one too far, you have to start over. So this is the stress you have because it can take hours. But this is the best practice, the best you can do to get your touch on the greens and get that circle where you’re in two-putt range.”
In the video, Siem then made two straight putts in what appeared to be a 6-foot range.
“Easy, huh,” he said. “But no, if you do that every day, you start hitting these putts more often because you get more confident. It’s one of the best drills ever.”
Siem’s next putt hit the club behind the hole.
“Okay, so now I have to literally start over,” she said. “But yes, enjoy.”
Editor’s Note: To help keep the conversation going, below is an article written in January by GOLF’s Zephyr Melton titled “Data shows how likely you are to make 3-putts based on your handicap.” You can also read it by clicking here.
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The word of the game on the greens is to avoid three putts. Of course, you want to cover your first putt if you can, but your top priority should be avoiding three putts.
That mission can be easier said than done. Even for professionals, making putts from distance isn’t as easy as taking three swipes to get into the hole. According to data from 2021, the first putt from 33 feet had a rating rate of 5.8 percent on the PGA Tour. Three putt odds? The highest rate is 6.4%. That’s right, at just 33 feet, the odds of going bogey were greater than the odds of making a birdie – and that’s among the best players in the world! With that in mind, your first priority should always be to keep three putts on the card.
The rate at which recreational golfers three-putt varies slightly across skill levels. Players who scratch will be three putts under a five handicap, and five will be three putts under 15. What do the exact numbers look like across skill levels, though? Thanks to data-guru Lou Stagner, we have those answers.
As one would expect, 20 handicappers have a much greater chance of three-putting than players of higher skill levels. At just 10 feet from the cup, they three-putt about 7 percent more often than scratchers — and that gap only widens the farther they get from the cup. If the 20-handicap hits a range of 36-40 feet, three-putting is almost a coin flip. Players who scratch are also invincible. In that same range of 36-40 meters, three putts are just over 25 percent of the time, with five-, 10- and 15-handicap three-putts 33.8, 38.6 and 43.5 percent of the time.
You’ll also notice that the closer you get to the hole, the less likely you are to three-putt (duh). But what may surprise you is how close to the hole these three putts tend to bounce. A 20-handicap might be jumping for joy after hitting the green in regulation, but if he’s outside that 35-foot mark, bogey is still very much in play.
Don’t let these numbers discourage you too much, though. There are things you can do to reduce your chances of triple placing. The main one among them? Distance control. Yes, direction is important, but your dispersion will be much greater from front to back than from left to right. Improving your range control will reduce that front-to-back bounce and help you cut down on those three putts.
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