Stroke Drills, a note before you start.

 

Before you can start to work on your putting you need to know what your fault(s) are. No point spending hours working on stroke mechanics if you can't aim, No point just concentrating on aim if your stroke is all to pot.  No point working on green reading before these two things are sorted.

 

A first check of Aim and Stroke

If you want to try and check your aim for free then you can try this test.

Firstly you need to see if you can aim and hit the ball on-line. This can't be done on the course, there are too many variables of break & surface irregularities. My first advice is to buy one of the Laser Putterface Alignment systems, however if you want to check this for free try this.

Do this indoors on the carpet, and a carpet that has no lines or visual help to get you lined up.

Spread 8 balls around on the floor say 8ft from  a coffee cup and hit them to the cup one after the other, count how many hit the cup. Then repeat the exercise but this time hit them all from the same spot. Do this 3 or 4 times until you can see if you're better from one spot or from random positions. I'll bet you hit the cup more often when putting from the same spot ? Why ? because you have the putt you just hit giving you feedback, you can see that one missed to the right, so you aim a bit left for the second one and hey presto, it's in ! Sadly the real world isn't like that, you have one chance to aim and fire, if you miss it's a putt too many, forever !.  So back to the feedback, the business of learning by our mistakes doesn't work on the golf course and it's made even worse by the fact we now have the added variable of not knowing if it was aim, stroke or a misread of line or speed that caused us to miss.

 

Break it down

So on the course or the practice green we're often looking at 3 possible causes of missing a putt ( forget fear for the moment), that's (a)aim, (b)stroke or (c)a misread. What we need to do is firstly check a & b before even thinking about c. To do this think about having two parts to your putting practice:

• Stroke drills, performed on a good flat surface using feedback devices.
• Putting drills, performed on the practice green.

 

Stroke Drill No 1: Aim

This is stage where you will need to buy or borrow a training aid that gives you feedback about your ability to aim when you have no visual clues to help. The Laser Putting Alignment system LPAS does exactly this. It attaches to the putter and sends a laser beam straight out from above the putterface in the direction you want the ball to travel. The light is off until you press the button on the grip. So with this you can practice aiming at numerous thing around your living room, table legs, coffee cups, the doorframe, each time you will have to aim, press the button and see where the laser tracks to. At least 80% of the people I've tried it on couldn't square up the putterface within 3" of a target 10 ft away, that means hit a perfect putt and you'll miss !.

Remember what I said about seeing the target right of where it is? well the majority of golfers using this have the laser beam going to the right of target. Try some putters with alignment help, such as a two ball or a mallet with a long line at 90 degrees to the face, see if this makes an improvement. When you have feedback like you have with the LPAS your brain becomes rewired and your aim improves.  

 

Stroke Drill No 2: Do you Putt in-line ?

An in-line straight back and straight through putting stroke is the best stroke for the majority of golfers because you can practice and perfect it.

Logic says Dave Pelz and Harold Swash are on the right track. The gating ( inside to inside) advocates will be saying the square in-line stroke isn't natural, well what's so good about natural?, first time you picked up a club and took a swipe at the ball it was "natural" and I'll bet that wasn't the best shot you ever hit, by a long way. You have to learn to swing a club and it's the same with putting, you have to "learn" to swing the putter on-line. The good news is that it's pretty easy to learn when you know how to learn and you're convinced square in-line is the way to go.

Be convinced about the square, in-line stroke, why ?

• You can practice and perfect it
• You will be sure that your putting stroke isn't the cause of missed putts
• It keeps the blade square throughout so requires less co-ordination than a gating stroke
• It reduces skid and gets the ball rolling with topspin along the intended line keeping the ball on-line.
• You'll like left to right putts as much as you like right to left putts
• You can spot stroke errors as you play
• -ve point, it's a different shoulder movement to the full swing.

So what's wrong with a gating stroke ?

• It's difficult to get feedback on what's happening with the face angle and putterhead when practicing.
• The blade is only momentarily square to the intended aimline.
• The putterhead is wanting to go left, even at the moment of impact.
• A small amount of body movement will cause you to push or pull the putt.
• +ve, it feels comfortable because it's similar to the shoulder motion of the full swing.