Do You Know The Right Way To Fix a Pitchmark?

Imagine this: your record score sits one makeable four-foot putt away. Maybe it's breaking 80, maybe par, who knows, but it doesn't matter. That putt does. You carefully read it from every direction, pick an aim point rehearse the putt and say to yourself "See it, roll it, hole it." You're confident...you know you are going to make this putt, and your stroke is as smooth and confident as your thinking. The ball rolls towards the cup.

It's good every inch of the first two and a half feet. Then inexplicably, the putt moves offline as if flicked by an invisible finger. Your eyes widen as it rims around the edge of the cup and comes back towards you. Sick now, you watch the ball stop.

You stare for a second where fate seemed to turn the ball away, and you see it -- an almost cured pitch mark a few days old that wasn't smooth. Some son-of-a-biscuit eater didn't repair his mark correctly and left that spot of the green lumpy where it should have been smooth.

It may have happened to you already. Maybe it will on your next round. Thing is, it doesn't have to happen at all.

Or maybe it will happen to a friend. That's worse, isn't it? Messing up another golfer by being lazy or not knowing the right way to do something simple?

Don't be that child of the biscuit lover and fix your mark correctly. Here's how:

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Artwork courtesy of the Golf Superintendents Association of America