Guest post from Nicky Bord from golfbox.com.au

When you want to drastically improve your scorecard you need to get a lot better, but if you try to get better at everything you will fail. When learning something it's better to focus on one thing otherwise you are spreading out your energy over too many projects. It's better to be a master of one thing rather than a jack of all trades and I know you've heard that before. Common sense tells us we should get good at the one thing that is going to make the biggest difference to our game.

That is why you must do your best to become great at putting. As people get better they find it easier to get the ball closer to the green, but once they are there they can seriously damage their score by missing the hole about a dozen times. Once you become the master of putting your one aim is to get the ball onto the green then everything will take care of itself. But how do you become a better putter? Here are a few tips you can start testing as soon as you're next on the green.

Find a level green

When you begin practicing you want a green that is really straight forward. You must learn to hit the ball in a straight line before you get into all the fancy stuff. If you find one that suits your needs to can just keep practicing until you are sinking the ball every time. Don't think you're too good for this step because jumping ahead before you get the basics right will slow down your progression. Even Tiger Woods had to go through this.

Work on your distance

You can now strike the ball cleanly and it actually goes into the hole. What do you do now? It's now time to start working on your distance and to do this you're going to use the same green. If you were practicing a few feet away from the hole in the beginning you should now move back another foot. Do the same thing again and keep practicing until you're sinking a lot of the balls then keep moving back a little further after you've mastered a particular distance.

Get the right putter

Sometimes the putter you use can affect your game and it's why you will see most people using a different one. To find one that suits you it will mean spending a good few hours in a golf shop testing each one out. Any good shop should have its own putting green inside and you need to physically test each putter if you want to find your perfect one. Don't worry about how much they cost because the most expensive one isn't always the best one for you.

Record yourself putting

You can practice putting a thousand balls, but if you're doing something wrong it means you will never know about it. The easiest way to deal with this problem is to ask someone to record you putting. They can shoot you from different angles and when you view the video footage you can pick up on any subtle things you are doing wrong. The best thing about video is that you can watch it in slow motion and it makes the mistakes much easier to spot.

Get someone to teach you

There are many professional golf coaches out there that can help you improve your game and the only downside is that you have to pay money for the pleasure. It's not really a lot when you consider how much you already spend on the game and if they can improve your scorecard by a few strokes in a few sessions you now have a chance of beating your friends. Just make sure you choose someone who is great at their job and the best way to ensure this is to ask around for recommendations.

Tackling difficult greens

You can't practice on level greens forever and sooner or later you will have to become an expert on them all. There is no real way of knowing everything about a green unless you practice on it first and that is the reason why there are practice rounds before competitions. That doesn't mean you won't learn a great deal about the way the ball reacts by practicing on different slopes. You should just do the same as you did before and keep putting the ball from different spots on the green until you're hitting a lot of them into the hole.

Nicky Bord is a professional blogger and a webmaster at golfbox.com.au. He loves writing about his golf experiences.