Approach & Upshots

Run It or Lay Up

Weigh the make against the cost of a bad miss.

Why it matters

This is a decision, not a skill, and it is probably the cheapest stroke saving available to an intermediate player. The question is never "can I make this?" — it is "what does a miss cost, and how often will I miss?" Answering that honestly turns a lot of bogeys into pars at no physical cost at all.

How to do it

Ask what happens to a miss. If it runs 30 feet past, or into OB, or down a slope, that is the real price of the attempt.
Be honest about your make rate from that distance. Use the number from your practice sessions, not your memory of the one you made.
Lay up to the distance you putt best from, which for most people is 15 to 20 feet and straight on.
Run it when the miss is cheap — flat ground behind, nothing in play, a comeback you would take anyway.
Decide before you step in, and then execute without revisiting it.

Common mistakes

Running everything because laying up feels passive.Laying up is a shot, not a surrender. The scorecard does not record how it felt.

Judging the attempt by the best case rather than the likely one.Multiply: how often you make it against what the miss costs. That arithmetic almost always argues for the lay-up outside the circle.

Laying up to a random distance rather than your favourite one.A lay-up should finish at the distance you practise most. Otherwise you have traded one hard putt for another.

Changing your mind mid-stroke.A half-committed run is the worst of both. Decide behind the marker and then commit entirely.

Key points

If a miss leaves a hard comeback, lay up to your favorite distance.
Run putts you make in practice — not hero attempts.

The drill

Drill · Count the cost — 20 putts from 45 ft, recording the comeback distance on every miss. Twenty putts from 45 feet. For each miss, measure how far the comeback is. Now you have two real numbers — your make rate and your average miss — and they are what the decision should be made on. Most players discover their average miss is far longer than they believed.

Watch: Disc Golf Putting Strategy: When To Lay Up or Go For It — Scott Stokely