How Davis Thompson transformed his putting to cash in on his talent

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – A casual round on a par-3 course may have changed the course of Davis Thompson’s career.

Thompson had impressed at the University of Georgia, having reached No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, won the SEC’s Player of the Year Award in 2021 and ranked second in that year’s class of PGA TOUR University presented by Velocity Global grads.

As an amateur, he separated himself with his strong ballstriking. The margins are much smaller in professional golf, however, and his putting struggles were proving too costly.

After missing the cut in the Korn Ferry Tour’s Nashville stop last year – his fourth missed cut in five starts – Thompson played a local par-3 course with a friend and started tinkering with his putting grip. Admittedly a creature of habit, the Korn Ferry Tour rookie was reluctant to depart from a traditional grip. But, as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures. Thompson decided to try the cross-handed, or left-hand-low, style of putting.

“I was in a bad place mentally with my putting. … I needed to make a change,” he said recently at Sea Island Golf Club, the venue of this week’s RSM Classic and a course Thompson knows well. His father, Todd, is the RSM’s tournament director and Davis Thompson makes his home in St. Simons Island.

He has already played the RSM three times, but this will mark his debut as a PGA TOUR member. He arrives home at 54th in the FedExCup thanks to two top-15 finishes, and credits his mid-season putting switch with making him a TOUR member at just 23 years old.

He relied on two drills to get accustomed to the new grip, and they bore almost immediate fruit. He finished fifth in his second event with the new grip – before the final round, he watched putting highlights of Jordan Spieth, the gold standard for the left-hand-low grip – and won his next start. A month later, he’d earned enough points to officially clinch his first TOUR card.

The drill: Thompson would hit putts from 3, 6 and 9 feet, requiring himself to make all five 3-footers he attempted, four of five from 5 feet and three of five from 9 feet. He had to start the drill over if he failed to hit all three benchmarks. He’d perform that drill from a variety of angles to the same hole to work on putts with different breaks. Thompson also would hit nine putts of 30 to 40 feet with a goal of averaging two strokes per hole.

He said the cross-handed grip has made it easier for him to start his putts on their intended line and keeps his left shoulder from rising too early in the through-stroke.

“It kept my left shoulder down—my shoulders are more level,” he said. “One of my flaws when I was putting traditionally was that my left shoulder was up and out of it pretty quickly.”

A change to the tempo of his stroke accompanied the grip change. Thompson used to have a “pop” stroke, a la 2012 FedExCup champion Brandt Snedeker, but he found it difficult to control his speed on faster greens. Now his tempo is more even throughout the stroke. He practices while using a metronome app on his phone to dial in his tempo. He also counts in his head, a habit that has the added benefit of clearing his mind before he strikes his putts.

“It gives my brain something to trigger the stroke and something besides the result to think of,” Thompson said. “I’m more focused on my counting instead of the line or speed or anything like that.

“It’s one, look at the hole. Two, look back at the hole. Three, start my backstroke and four, make impact with the ball. It’s really helped create more positive energy on the golf ball. I used to take it back quick and decelerate coming through (impact) because I was trying not to kill it on fast greens. Creating more positive energy, you don’t see as much break because you’re hitting it solidly and the ball is rolling well.”

Positive energy in his putting moved Davis Thompson’s career in a positive direction, straight to the PGA TOUR.