Dear Mark,
At your handicap level, you can best profit most quickly from two skills: distance control on putts over 20 feet and putts inside 5 feet. To get a handle on what I teach about this, try a few tips of mine addressing "touch" and "stroke." Here are a few of the more important ones for what I teach:
Distance Control, Tempo, and Lag Putting
The trick about distance control is that all humans have great skill at this in an instinctive way, but golfers don't know much about tapping into this, and create lots of unnecessary problems for themselves by trying various, concoted "touch and feel" approaches OTHER than the instinctive approach. What I teach is HOW the instincts work and can be used every putt. It is mostly tempo plus a way to target with the movement of the head and neck to program the brain in its usual way for instinctive distance control, plus an appreciation at the instinctive level for green speed, and a familiarity at an instinctive level with how your putter sends your ball rolling. The definition of "touch" is the ability to STOP the ball at the end of the putt WHERE on the green you intend it to stop.
One (Slow) Tempo Fits All Putts For consistent and accurate distance and line control, start with a single slow tempo or timing from start to finish for all putts regardless of length of about two full seconds, a nice easy "one potato, two potato" stroke -- your brain relies upon it!
The Core Putt Tune your stroke to green speed for superior touch and reduced "hit" by relaxing and slowing your body and mind down to optimal activity level with your most basic stroke, used as a personal Stimpmeter -- just push the putterhead back until you feel you have to lift it to go further, then drop the putterhead through solid impact to see how far the ball rolls.
Hickory Dickory You already HAVE a metronome with you on every green you play -- your putter! Just let it swing in your fingertips back and forth to remind yourself of a pro tempo for all your putts.
TEMPO & TOUCH -- Count the Tempo -- The green speed is objective, as are all elements of putting touch EXCEPT the "subjective" sense of timing, which makes the stroke tempo susceptible to speeding up under pressure or slowing down under muscle tightness. The cure is to learn a basic "one .. two" count that is always the same -- that is, that has the same timing and spacing between the one and the two. The "one" is casually completed as the backstroke completes itself fully coasting to the top, and the "two" is when the stroke reaches the exact bottom of the stroke. On long lags especially, assess green speed, uphill-downhill adjustments, and distance to target, then just count the stroke for great touch.
Making Long Putts versus Avoiding Three-putts -- Don't Confuse Apples and Oranges Substituting a big, fat target as a way to avoid three-jacking is not a good way to get better distance control, which is the real problem, but there is a way to avoid long comebacks while trying to sink monsters by keeping sharp targets for top distance control and supplementing this with some reasonable boundaries.
Zeno's Lag Ladder Long putts that cause concern about coming up too short often cause the golfer to blow the ball too far past the hole, and a useful approach is to take a practice stroke to a target merely halfway to the hole, then take another practice stroke to a second target halfway between the first target and the hole, and then make the real stroke not shorter than the second practice stroke and with the same size increase in the stroke -- one big step halfway there, then two halfsize steps the rest of the way.
Straight Stroke for Short Testy Putts (hey -- long putts, too)
The trick about the stroke is ALWAYS putt / roll the ball wherever the putter face is aimed -- look down at the setup to see the line on the grass away from the putter face where the face is aiming, and make a stroke that rolls the ball down that SAME line (only), every time. Once this basic idea is firmly implanted, then you will learn HOW to move so that this happens accurately and consistently. For this, the thru-stroke coming forward between the feet is the acid test, not the backstroke, and not even the follow-thru.
Roll the Hoop for True Putts Visualize the ball as only a solid disk vertical on its edge in the plane of the putt, with only one dimple on the back equator, one dimple on the front equator, and a central dimple on the top, and roll this hoop or disk to the hole with your solid putting stroke.
The Battering Ram Stroke In order to "flush" your putts for pure, straight rolls, think of the stroke as swinging a battering ram suspended beneath two handles or ropes straight and level thru the ball.
The main thing about the backstroke is that almost all golfers use the wrong muscles to start the putter back from the ball (hands and arms) and this sends the putter head out across the line of the putt going back to the top of the backstroke, creating a "loop" in the stroke path that is difficult to recover from. The better way is this:
The Shoulder Move Plus a Stockton Tip for Straight Strokes Cut strokes, pulls and putterface twists come mostly from the use of hand and arm muscles to start the backstroke, as this casts the backstroke out beyond the line of the putt, and using a simple shoulder push to start the stroke keeps the hands dead while giving you a good start on the backstroke.
Here are some
Drills for Skills to help with these Touch and Straight Putting:
TOUCH
Putt to a tee peg -- set a tee peg upside down on a carpet and putt a ball to the peg so that the ball touches and jostles the peg without knocking it over -- repeat from various distances
Putt to a teed-up Ball -- tee up a ball on the green in some lonely part of the green and then back off to various starting positions and roll your ball to arrive at the teed-up ball, just touch it and perhaps jostle it, but not knock it off the tee peg
Putt in the 6-12 foot range and try to have the ball stop right at the lip without going in the hole -- try to stop as many balls out of ten within 6 inches of the lip on a path that would actually go in if a little longer (and not headed outside the hole)
Lag drill -- setup to a long (35-55 foot) putt -- putt the first ball halfway -- putt the second ball 3/4th the way -- putt the third ball all the way -- start over but for the first and second balls substitute practice strokes -- practice stroke 1/2 way, then practice stroke 3/4th way, then putt a ball all the way to the hole
Lag drill - have the golfer focus only on last 5-10 feet of a 40-foot breaking putt - the golfer uses three balls and leave first ball about 10 feet short, second ball about 5 feet short, and third ball at hole and not long - practice visualizing the ending roll of the ball over the last ten feet so the movie is vivid and let that guide the stroke
Lag drill -- Elephant's Ear -- setup to a long breaking putt -- at the hole, note the direction the ball should enter the cup and extend a line straight away from the center of the cup out this entry point for about 2 feet from the lip -- treat this line as the diameter of a circle and either draw your finger thru the grass to mark it or lay a segment of string down in a circle to mark it -- back at the ball, aim sufficiently high and putt with enough slowness / softness that the ball climbs the hill, breaks downhill, and ends up just trickling into the circle and stopping short of the hole (the circle is the elephant's ear)
Stack 'em -- putt a ball to a far fringe -- putt a second ball as close as possible without going farther -- continue stacking balls back along this line until you fill the distance from you out to the stack -- if a ball goes farther than a previous ball, count your stack and start over
Rabbit and Dog -- putt one ball -- putt the second ball exactly the same to just bump the first (combine this with the initial Core Putt -- do the core putt, and then graduate to the Rabbit and Dog at variying distances)
STROKE
Popup Gate - Stick two tee pegs in ground so line across both is square to hole or target - rest ball in front of two pegs so that back of ball protrudes to rear side of two-tee gate - make a short lifting stroke to deliver putterface squarely into two pegs at same time - sends ball very straight and teaches that no matter HOW fast the ball is struck tempo-wise or with authority, the face still has to be square at impact and this is best done with a lift into back of ball - great confidence builder for short putts in 3 to 6 range (Don Pooley and David Leadbetter tip)
String Line -- use steak skewers and string to make an elevated string line above your putt line -- putt balls straight beneath the string
Doorframe strokes -- setup so the putterhead is on the line on the floor between the two sides of a doorframe -- make a backstroke that sends the putter sweetspot against one side of the doorframe and the a thru-stroke that sends the putter sweetspot against the other side of the door frame
Baseboard stroke -- setup with the toe of the putter about ? inch away from a baseboard of a wall or from a 2x4 on the green and make strokes that result in the toe of the putter not moving any closer to the wall
This should be more than enough to get you off to a good start! Good putting builds upward in sequence from solid fundamental skills: first, distance control on an in stinctive basis; once that is sorted out, you end up leaving putts all over the hole and get forget distance control and concentrate on sinking the bloomin" putts, so second, is putting where the putter face is aimed every stroke; once these two are sorted, you are a putting machine and just need a spot to aim at for distance and line, so third, is reading the putt to find a spot on the ground near the hole to aim the putter face at and to use as a "stopping spot" for distance / touch; and then fourth, is to be able to aim the putter face accurately down the line from ball to target spot, to be able to setup beside the putter face as aimed and check to see where in fact you have aimed the putter face, and then to setup the body in an address position and posture that will help you make a straight stroke the right distance. Then when you "pull the trigger," the "plan" is an imaginary straight putt on a perfectly flat and level surface from the ball only to the stopping spot, and in reality this putt at this speed "takes the break" you've visualized in selecting the target earlier and goes in the hole. Everything after getting this basic approach in mind is perfecting your ability to perform. So it is a steady, upwardly-progressing learning track on which you have the ability to "know" what you should be doing and know what in fact you are doing so you can "coach yourself" every day. Always upward getting better until you die!
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Coach and Theorist
PuttingZone
http://puttingzone.com>
Golf's most advanced putting instruction -- you're either in the PuttingZone, or not.
