Hi Geoff, I appreciate very much your work and your site; since I've practiced yours tips&drills i've increased my putting performance so much that my ppr have deceased from around 38 to 31/32. Thank you a lot for this but i have still a trouble: you would be thinking as i put well scoring 32 but you must know i take around 4/5 gir so i chip in 13/14 greens and so my ppr have to be under 30.
In practice i put very well but on the course i lost completely the sense of speed for the put. I've tried to put "stone cold" but i'm not able to stick with it and i always accelerate/decelerate the put instead of letting it flew at natural pace.
What can I do?

Thanks a lot

Dear Francesco,

If you regularly play the same course, I would suggest this exercise to get dominance over the greens:

Identify the longest dimension of each green, and putt two balls from one fringe to the far fringe, walk across the green, and putt two balls back across the green to the far fringe.

This exercise is to help you dominate the green, so you can relax with your ability to control distance on any "shorter" length within the confines of the green. This goes hand in hand with learning the green speed, which I have suggested can be done with the "Core Putt" exercise. When you know the maximum stroke that covers the green from fringe to fringe, you have an easier time managing any shorter putt.

Also, remember that distance control or touch is informed all during the time you are on the green (walking onto the green to mark your ball, waiting for others to putt, scouting the putt from different perspectives, entering your routine proper to sight the line from behind the ball, etc.). The "stone cold" technique is only the last piece of the puzzle, sort of a coup de grace for touch.

Also, it helps if you treat the greens on the course no different than the practice green, except a little different in shape and contour. This attitude helps you have less worry about your touch, and this lets your natural instincts work like they're supposed to.

Thanks for letting me know, and keep me posted on your progress so we can get it right!

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
The PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.

Tanks a lot, i'll keep practise the "core put" drill and i'll let you know about my progress.
I'm sure I'll be better soon

Today i tried to putt from distance hearding only what my istinct was tolding me and it works very well (I trhee putted only 1 time having a lot of long putts).
It seems that for me consider the green like the practice green and putting by istinct is the best way for making long putts, but I know you think this kind of putting is not so right.
Can you tell me what you think?

Dear FB,

I'm not sure what you mean that I don't think using instincts for long putts is right, since that is what I teach. I want to explain to golfers how instincts actually work so the golfers can know when they are using instincts well and when they are not.

I would encourage you to rely upon your normal instincts for how to roll the ball the right distance on long putts. Adult instincts are very good for that.

Cheers!

Geoff Mangum
PuttingZone.com
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.

I quote your tip about stone cold putting:

...targeting and tempo establish the backstroke length automatically, and this is much better than "touch and feel," "muscle memory," or any sort of "trying" to get the "hit" or "pace" of the putt just so.

I was intending that I can't visualize the backstroke lenght before I take almost one practice put so I think my feel for making long putts is based upon a sort of muscle memory memory or sense of "pace".

I've found a strange technique that allow me to "visualize" better the pace of a long putt:
when making my routine's 2 practice putts I swing the putter associating to the movement a sort of mental (but also emitted at very low volume) sound, something like a tuuuuuummmmmmm, with the temporal lenght of this sound longer on longer putts and viceversa.

I don't know that ther's some scientific explanation to this but doing it I feel more more confortable and the results are very good.

Can U tell me what you think

Dear FB,

I think there is something to your "strange" technique for distance control, with the sound corresponding in time to the size of the backstroke. But there needs to be a little clarification.

The making of the sound is in effect a pattern of exhaling. The exhaling / sound continues while the chest turns back in the backstroke, os the turn is longer on longer putts and the sound goes on for a longer time too. I would bet that your breathing stops when you make the downstroke (you don't inhale during the downstroke).

I have recently been experimenting with using breathing to coordinate with touch. What I do is look down at the ball and then as I turn the head from ball to target, turning as if following a real putt's rolling ball in real time, I breathe in thru the nose to get a lung full of air, and time the filling of my lung with how far I have to turn my head to get to the target. No matter how far off the target is, I always end up filling the lungs with breath just when the look along the ground concludes at the target. This expansion of the chest and the amount of time for the inhaling then both correspond to how far back my backstroke will go. Once inhaled and looking at the target, I then reverse the head turn, this time exhaling as I turn from target back to ball, and timing the exhalation so it finishes right when my gaze is getting back to the ball. I then start my backstroke, and repeat the timing of the inhalation as the backstroke rises to its fullest extent. In this way, the breathing and chest expansion teaches me how far back to go with the backstroke, just as the neck turn to and from the target also helps set the backstroke length instinctively.

The point of caution is that the backstroke is not really part of the pendulum-like down- and thru-stroke, but is independent. So the "tempo" of the down- and thru-stroke may be slightly different than the timing of the movement back from the ball to the top of the backstroke. So, I would not take the sound's length of time as a strict indicator of how the downstroke ought to go -- just the backstroke.

What you describe is fairly similar to the technique I am working on.

Thanks for letting me know about this.

Cheers!

geoff Mangum
The PuttingZone.com
http://puttingzone.com
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.

Hi Geoff thank you very much for your attention, maybe you'll be glad to know that i'm noticing some good improvement in my putting technique, having re-read some of your tips.

For the "magic sound" we was talking about I have to make some specifications: the sound I make is a fading sound, something that is going away from me, is the sound of the ball that start running away from the face of my put and begin to decelerate inn its way to the target.
To make an example the sound will be fading very quikly if I'm putting uphill and will be fading at a very slow rate when I'll be putting downhill. It is the vocal version of the ball rolling to the target.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts, I'm becoming a better putter day by day.