Mark Broadie of Golf.com posted an article about some “Secrets of the World’s Greatest Putters“.

It’s a very interesting article about the what is more important, having more one-putts or eliminating three-putts.  The importance really depends on what is your usual game.

Here are a couple of things from the article:

• ” I compared the best putters on Tour today — that is, the leaders in Strokes Gained Putting — with the Tour’s average putters. The bottom line? The very best putters have 0.6 more one-putt greens (7.5 versus 6.9 per round) and just 0.15 fewer three-putt greens (0.40 versus 0.55 per round). The elite putters gain about four times as much from more one-putts than they do from fewer three-putts. (Granted, pros rarely three-putt.)”
• “Takeaway 1: Get short putts to the hole. The better-putting 80-shooters leave 12 percent of their 10-footers short, compared with 17 percent for 90-shooters. [For pros, it’s only 7 percent.]”
• “Takeaway 2: Short putts [say, three to eight feet] matter most. Better short putting leads to more one-putts and fewer three-putts.”
• “Takeaway 3: Distance control matters. As Pat Goss, Luke Donald’s short-game coach, has said, “I don’t think there’s a more important skill in golf than controlling distance in putting.””
• “Takeaway 4: Compare your putting with the benchmark: 80-shooters average about one three-putt per round, 90-shooters average about two, and 100-shooters about three. If you average more three-putts than your benchmark, consider a putting lesson.”

I think the biggest takeaway is that anyone who has more than 30 putts in 18 holes needs to work on their putting (I average 33 putts per 18 holes).