From Minnesota heat to Scottish wind and sprawling heathland greens, this week’s best putters will be the players who recalibrate fastest.
Compiled weekly by multiple-award-winning PGA Professional Brendon R. Elliott, PrimePutt’s Director of Instruction and Lead Writer.
A 25-foot putt is never just a 25-foot putt.
Its real distance changes with slope, moisture, wind, grass, time of day and the speed a player chooses to deliver the ball. That becomes especially clear this week, when the professional schedule moves between three courses that ask almost entirely different questions of a golfer’s touch.
The PGA Tour’s 3M Open brings bentgrass, considerable water and potentially oppressive heat at TPC Twin Cities. The ISPS HANDA Women’s Scottish Open returns to the exposed, undulating ground of Dundonald Links. At Gleneagles, the ISPS HANDA Senior Open will be played across some of the largest greens competitors will see all season.
The common requirement is not a specific putting stroke. It is the willingness to keep updating what that stroke must produce.
TPC Twin Cities: Bentgrass Under Pressure
TPC Twin Cities will play as a 7,431-yard par 71 for the 3M Open. Its bentgrass greens average 6,500 square feet and are maintained at a listed height of 0.100 inches. Water comes into play on 15 holes, with 27 water hazards across the property.
That water does not directly change the putting stroke, but it changes where approaches are played, how flagsticks are positioned and how much aggression a player can afford. A golfer who attacks the wrong portion of a green can turn a realistic birdie opportunity into a defensive first putt across a large section of putting surface.
The more interesting variable may be what Joseph Rolstad and his agronomy team have managed before tournament week. A long 2025-26 winter produced winter injury across the area, and the GCSAA fact sheet notes that the Twin Cities growing season has been running about three weeks behind normal. Rolstad’s team has continued working to return the course to tournament condition.
Now comes a forecast that could turn sharply warmer. Temperatures are expected to climb from the low 80s Thursday to around 95 degrees over the weekend, with a chance of thunderstorms Sunday. That puts moisture management at the center of the putting story. It does not guarantee firm or exceptionally fast greens, but it may create meaningful differences between morning and afternoon pace as the turf responds to heat, irrigation and tournament traffic.
Players cannot assume that Thursday’s speed will still be available Saturday afternoon. At TPC Twin Cities, the smartest adjustment may come before a putt is ever read. Watch the first few balls roll, notice how quickly they lose energy near the hole and let the surface tell you what it is doing that day.
Dundonald Links: Read More Than the Green
The ISPS HANDA Women’s Scottish Open returns to Dundonald Links in North Ayrshire, Scotland. The Kyle Phillips-designed layout is a modern links with generous landing areas and notably undulating greens set near the Firth of Clyde.
The official 2026 materials reviewed for this article do not identify the championship greens’ exact turfgrass composition, so we will not make a regional assumption and label it as fact. What can be documented is the nature of the architecture. Dundonald’s width can make the course appear inviting from the tee, but that width often increases the importance of approach position. Finding the green and finding the correct section of the green are two different accomplishments.
The forecast could make that distinction even more important. Temperatures are expected to remain in the mid-60s, with showers possible Friday, wind and rain Saturday and additional showers Sunday morning. Those conditions may add moisture to the surface while also making balance, start direction and pace harder to control in exposed areas.
Putting in wind is not only about whether a gust can move the ball. The larger problem is what wind does to the player. It changes balance, encourages tension in the hands and can rush the routine. On longer putts, golfers may begin steering the stroke because the environment feels unstable.
The best players at Dundonald will continue to make committed strokes without pretending the conditions are constant. They will read the green, then widen the read to include wind direction, moisture, exposure and the likely pace of the ball during the final few feet.
Gleneagles: A Long-Putting Examination
The King’s Course at Gleneagles provides a third and very different test for the ISPS HANDA Senior Open. James Braid’s 1919 heathland design will play as a 6,859-yard par 70, with Poa annua and bentgrass greens maintained at a listed height of 3 millimeters. The average putting surface covers approximately 9,000 square feet.
That number should get every golfer’s attention.
Large greens can improve greens-in-regulation totals, but they do not automatically produce easy scoring. They also create more 40-, 50- and 60-foot first putts. At that point, putting becomes less about conversion and more about preventing the next putt from becoming uncomfortable.
The GCSAA notes also indicate that the green dimensions have been expanded by approximately 2 meters since the Senior Open was last played at Gleneagles in 2022. The course has no water hazards, but it contains 108 bunkers, which means approach placement and the angles created by Braid’s design remain critical.
Scott Fenwick has spent 46 years at Gleneagles, including 35 years as superintendent, and the buildup has included favorable growing conditions. The weather is projected to begin warm and mostly cloudy Thursday before becoming cooler, with a chance of showers later in the week.
On greens this large, a player can hit a perfectly respectable approach and still face a putt that demands exceptional distance control. The visual challenge can also become deceptive. A target looks farther away across a broad green, subtle contour can disappear within the scale of the surface and players may add unnecessary hit to the stroke.
The winning putter at Gleneagles is unlikely to hole every long attempt. He will repeatedly leave the ball in places from which the second putt feels routine.
What the Greens Are Asking
TPC Twin Cities asks players to track changing pace as heat and moisture management become more significant. Dundonald asks them to interpret the entire environment instead of reading slope alone. Gleneagles asks them to control distance across unusually large putting surfaces.
All three courses reward the same underlying ability: calibration.
Golfers tend to talk about touch as though it is something a player either possesses or does not. In reality, good touch is largely the ability to collect information, make an adjustment and reproduce the required speed before conditions change again.
That is why approach position matters so much this week. The easiest putt is not always the shortest one. A slightly longer putt from below the hole or from the correct section can be far more manageable than a shorter attempt played across a ridge, down a slope or through a wind-exposed portion of the green.
The PrimePutt Read
Before deciding how much a putt breaks, decide how you expect the ball to arrive.
A ball dying near the cup will be affected by more slope during its final feet. A firmer delivery holds its starting line longer but reduces the effective size of the hole and increases the potential comeback distance. Neither choice is automatically correct. The mistake is choosing a line without first choosing a speed.
This week, watch how often the best players appear to read from the hole backward. They are not only seeing the initial line. They are identifying the final entry point, the section where the ball begins losing speed and the pace required to connect the entire picture.
The PrimePutt Drill: The First-Putt Calibration Test
This drill recreates one of the hardest parts of tournament golf: judging a surface when you only get one attempt.
Place markers at 20, 30 and 40 feet from a hole. Create one uphill putt, one downhill putt and one putt with noticeable side slope. You will have nine total stations and use only one ball from each.
Score each putt as follows:
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3 points: Ball finishes inside 18 inches.
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2 points: Ball finishes inside 30 inches.
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1 point: Ball finishes inside 4 feet.
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0 points: Ball finishes outside 4 feet.
A score of 18 is solid. Twenty-one or better shows excellent first-putt adaptability.
Do not hit rehearsal balls from each station. Read the putt, make one practice stroke and play. That forces you to observe the surface and commit without building feel through repetition. The drill works on a practice green or a PrimePutt mat by changing distances, directions and finish-window targets.
PrimePutt Takeaway of the Week
Do not ask your stroke to solve a surface problem that your eyes have not identified.
Spend the opening minutes of every practice session learning how the ball is rolling rather than immediately trying to make putts. During the round, treat every putt as additional evidence. A ball that finishes 3 feet short is not simply a failure. It is information about slope, friction, moisture and your current speed calibration.
The best putters this week will not carry one unchanging feel from Thursday through Sunday. They will keep listening to the ground beneath them and adjust before the scoreboard forces them to.
‘The Greens This Week’ drops every Wednesday and looks at the putting surfaces the best in the world from the PGA TOUR, LPGA Tour and DP World Tour will face in the coming week. Got a putting question or drill request? Drop us a line.
