Denny McCarthy is the best putter on the PGA Tour – and how you can learn from him

Instruction
Denny McCarthy eyes a putt

This season Denny McCarthy was ranked as the best putter on the PGA Tour.

While he was losing shots to the rest of the field off the tee and in his approach play, the American was putting better than anyone else out there.

McCarthy averaged under 28 putts, his one-putt percentage was 44 per cent and, of all the putts that he hit inside 10 feet, he made 90 per cent of them.

He gained 0.7 shots on the field for every round which gave him nearly three shots over the course of a tournament.

Since earning his card in 2017 McCarthy has led the PGA Tour in SG: Putting twice as well as finishing inside the top three in two other seasons.

His first win is yet to happen but there have been two play-off losses.

Last year he was edged out by Viktor Hovland at The Memorial where he was almost five shots better than the next best.

This year Akshay Bhatia birdied the first extra hole in the Valero Texas Open after McCarthy closed with a 63 which included a closing run of seven straight birdies.

Denny McCarthy putts

He has been using a Scotty Cameron GoLo N7 putter since his days at the University of Virginia and it has helped him to a Walker Cup appearance at Lytham, a Web.com victory and now a place on the PGA Tour.

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“I have 10 different versions of this GoLo head, basically,” McCarthy explained. “The one thing I do keep very consistent is the black mallet style with the white line and the milled face.

“Then I might change the neck, or the weighting of it, depending on how fast the greens are, but I like to keep the head and how it looks the same.

“I used a blade putter for a little bit as a kid, and then I used an old Odyssey Rossie mallet for a little awhile. Then in college I used a white Spider for a bit, then landed on the GoLo.

“It was very trial-and-error. I putted well with a mallet, with the Odyssey and the Spider, and then really liked the GoLo and everything about it.

“That was kind of like, ‘this is going to be my putter forever’. It’s just the appearance of it. The way it sits on the ground.”

In a piece with Golf.com McCarthy explained what makes his putting tick and these are his key takeaways.

1) “There’s usually a low point or something that everything breaks towards. You’re always thinking of those things in the back of your mind. Most places have some sort of effect like that. There are some putts that I have a harder time reading and I’ll use my feet just to confirm my read basically.”

2) “I find a five-foot straight putt, put two tees in the ground and hit some through it (one-handed).” If it works for Tiger…

3) “A good test is to line them up when you practise. If you’re rolling it end over end, that’s a good indicator that your face is square. I’ve trained myself to get back to square pretty well. Obviously, it helps to have a pretty neutral or very simple path coming back. Using that line on the ball helps me see that I’m rolling it end over end.”

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