“Never Up, Never In.” Is That Even True?

Welcome back to this MyGolfSpy series where I take a hard look at the golf clichés you have heard a thousand times and figure out if they hold up.

The goal isn’t simply to label each one as true or false. It’s to break down what has been oversimplified and get back to the original lesson golfers were supposed to take from the advice.

Next up: “Never up, never in.”

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What does “never up, never in” mean?

On the surface, this one barely qualifies as “advice.” It’s closer to a law of physics. If a putt doesn’t have enough speed to reach the hole, it cannot go in.

A ball that dies inches short is a ball that stays out no matter how perfect the line was.

Get the ball to the hole and give it a chance. Leave it short and you already know the answer before it stops rolling.

The real question for me isn’t whether a short putt can go in. It’s whether trying to get every putt to the hole, especially the long ones, is the smart way to play.

Is it true?

Golf data analyst Lou Stagner ran the numbers on this exact question using PGA Tour putting data and the results depend on how far away you’re standing.

From 20 feet, PGA Tour pros get the ball to the hole 76 percent of the time. From 30 feet, that number drops to 62 percent. In other words, even the best putters in the world leave more putts short as the distance grows, and they do it on purpose.

Here’s why. Stagner looked at where 30-foot putts finish. Most cluster in a window that stretches from about 31 inches short of the hole to 48 inches past it, a gap nearly seven feet wide. He then asked a simple question: Is that the right window or would a different one score better? The answer surprised him. Pros would shoot lower scores by taking a little pace off those putts, roughly four inches less speed than what they average.

Speed control isn’t about reaching the hole every time. Once a putt gets long enough, the smarter play is to accept that half of them may come up short (but at least makeable). The goal was never to make a 30-footer. It’s to avoid the three-putt that follows a bad one.

Where the cliché holds up

Inside 10 feet, the story flips and the saying earns its keep. This is the range where Tour pros do get almost everything to the hole because at that distance a putt that dies short is pure waste. You have a real chance to make it and coming up short forfeits that chance for no reason.

This is also the range where most amateurs underperform relative to pros. Most amateurs get nervous about making a putt. A tentative stroke that leaves a makeable putt short is the scenario the cliché was built to fix.

So the corrective version of “never up, never in” is real and useful. Just not for every putt on the green.

Final thoughts

Inside 10 feet, get the ball to the hole. Don’t leave a makeable putt short out of fear.

But once you’re standing over a 25- or 30-footer, chasing the hole on every putt is not what the best putters in the world are doing and the data suggests it’s not what you should be doing either. The goal shifts from making the putt to not three-putting it.