Putting's False Proxies

Every day, golfers lie to themselves about their putting. Not intentionally, but because they're measuring the wrong things.

"My stroke looks good."

"My alignment is perfect."

“My warm up felt good.”

We tell ourselves these stories while practicing putting for hours, but your scores aren't improving. Sound familiar?

In a game that can beat you up mentally and emotionally, it's easy to miss what your putting is really trying to tell you. Golfers habitually subscribe to false proxies instead of identifying real improvement markers.

A false proxy is when we measure something that's easy to track but doesn't actually reflect our real skill. We need indicators that truly show improvement, not just make us feel better.

I often listen to the Tim Ferriss Show and stumbled on an older episode featuring one of my favorite guests, Seth Godin. He details this concept as it relates to hiring practices:

"The thing about false proxies is that they lead to caste systems…to prejudice… because we are quickly making decisions… based on clues that aren't actually related to whether the person can do the job or not."

Godin further elaborates on examples like hiring based on attending famous colleges or not having typos in a resume. Both are easy things to highlight as a reason a person would be a good fit at a job, but don't necessarily equate to performance.

With that concept in mind, what are some of the false proxies in putting? My favorite example is a conversation that goes something like this:

Player: "My speed is good inside 20 feet."

Me: "Why do you say that?"

Player: "Because I don't 3-putt."

That right there is a prime example of a false proxy.

While a player might not 3-putt from that distance, that doesn't necessarily equate to owning the skill of having good speed on the greens.

There's the obvious example of hitting a 20 foot putt 4 feet past the hole and making the come back putt. 4 feet remaining for a second putt from that distance is poor at best, but is overlooked because the net result wasn't negative - the player still 2 putted. The player in this scenario read the back cover of the book instead of its contents that results in a quick, but ultimately misleading assessment.

More subtle examples include ensuring that person's dispersion is small enough from 10 feet to reliably predict capture speed. In the below picture, none of the player's putts in the first grouping (pink) would result in a 3 putt. However, that dispersion would not be sufficient if the putt had slope. The second grouping (green) would be much more predictable and allow players to select better targets more often instead of needing to adjust their target selection based on an unreliable capture speed.

The green dispersion is smaller, thus allowing players to pick better targets rather than needing to adjust based on unpredictable capture speed.

What are your false proxies?

What are you observing instead of what really matters?

We'll detail this example and other false proxies like short putt troubles and putter selection in a future segment of The Putting Plan, my self guided course to help you become a more proficient putter.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​