A seasoned player leaves a 35-footer six feet short and immediately starts looking for a putting stroke answer. A pretty ordinary speed mistake turns into a putting lesson.

I have done enough of that myself.

There is another way to work on it. Put one ball on the green and use that ball to tell your eyes where the next one should finish. That is essentially what leapfrog putting does. The previous ball gives you a distance problem. It does not tell your hands how long the stroke needs to be.

That difference is why I like it.

You roll one ball. The next needs to finish a little farther away, or just past the first one. Then the next goes a little farther still. Your eyes see a changing finish, and the stroke has to respond.

There is no ruler beside the putter. No six-inch backswing for one distance and eight inches for another. Just a new place for the ball to stop. But there is a weakness in the way this drill is often practiced. Seasoned players get pretty good at adding speed because the whole exercise keeps moving in one direction. Short, longer, longer again. After a few balls, you start anticipating what comes next.

Golf does not work that neatly. Sometimes the next putt is longer and sometimes it is shorter. You might have a 45-footer on one green and a 22-footer five minutes later. You have to take speed away just as often as you add it. That is why the reverse ladder matters just as much as the forward one. And once both directions start feeling comfortable, I want to take the order away completely.

Before you get into the full session, try a simple version:

• Roll one ball to a comfortable spot.

• Roll the next one so it finishes a little beyond the first.

• Do the same with a third.

• Then reverse it.

Start from your longest reference and see if the next ball can finish a little shorter, followed by another one shorter still.

Do not measure your stroke and watch the space between the balls. You may find one direction feels almost automatic while the other takes considerably more attention.

That is useful information.

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I know that sounds backwards, but stay with me. Put a cup in front of a seasoned player and pretty soon the whole drill becomes all about making the putt. The ball catches an edge and drops, so it feels like a great putt. Another one rolls right over the center but runs 4 feet past, and somehow that one feels surprisingly good too because the line looked nice.

Meanwhile, the thing we were supposed to be training—speed—gets pushed off to the side. I have done plenty of that myself. Hit a 30-footer, watch it scare the cup, and start moving the line a little bit just to see if I can make it.

A ghost hole changes the picture because there is nothing to make. You give the ball a place to roll through and, even more important, a place to finish. That last part is what I want you paying attention to in this session.

When you walk onto a different practice green, or a course where the greens are a little quicker than what you are used to, you need some way to get your eyes and your feel lined up with the surface. You do not need another technical thought about your putting stroke.

You need a way to build a picture, and the ghost hole gives you one.

What is a ghost hole? It is a flat, thin target disc placed on the green that simulates a real cup without obstructing the ball’s roll. You can make your own using four flat plastic markers; place one at the top, bottom, left, and right. The hole is 4.25 inches, anything close to that is perfect. You simply want the ball to roll through the ghost hole so you can measure finish distance.

Before you get into the full session, try this simple baseline drill. Make a ghost hole somewhere on the practice green and place a tee 3 feet beyond it. Go back about 20 feet and roll three balls.

Do not worry about “making it.” Simply watch what the ball does after it reaches the ghost hole.

• Does it die before it gets there?

• Does it arrive with good pace and settle in the window?

• Does it run through the whole thing like the green surprised you?

Three balls will tell you quite a bit. The question is not whether you can hit the ghost hole.

Can you picture how much speed the ball should still have when it gets there?

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On the practice green, the first putt you hit from 30 feet might finish 6’ or more from the hole. Hit another with a much better roll on the ball, a little closer. Roll a third one and now you are somewhere around the hole. By ball five or six, you are starting to look like you have the speed figured out.

You know what I’m going to say. The problem is golf does not give you six cracks at it, you get one. You walk onto a green you have not practiced on, find yourself 32 feet away on a little downhill left-to-right breaker, and that first ball counts. The next hole might give you 18 feet straight uphill. Then 40 feet across a ridge.

You never get the same lag putt twice on the course, so I have never understood why so much green-speed practice is built around hitting the same putt over and over again. I get it, repetition has a place, but repetition can also fool you.

By the fifth ball, you are no longer solving the original problem. You are adjusting to what the last four balls taught you. That is different from walking onto a green and figuring out the speed with the first and only ball.

This session is built around training that first ball. The idea is simple: six putts, six different problems. All with different distance, different slope, and different line. One ball at each station and no mulligans just because you did not like the first one.

Before you get into the full session, try a quick baseline the next time you are on a practice green:

• Pick six genuinely different putts.

• Roll one ball from each location.

• Keep only the first result.

• Do not fix the stroke between balls.

• Do not go back and replay the one you left short.

Just pay attention to the distance control and ask yourself one question:

Am I learning the speed of this green, or am I normally just learning from the ball I hit before?

That is what this session is going to find out.

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