Putting Accuracy

Putting accounts for about 42 to 43 percent of your golf score so it is important that you become a good putter. Try these drills and lessons to improve your accuracy on the putting green and make more putts.

I am going to show you a conventional set up where the hands are opposing. In a normal golf swing you want your hands working together so that you get a full release. Most great putters, but certainly not all will set up with the hands opposing.

I think that two areas of your golf short game that you should spend most of your time working on are the four-foot putt and distance control with your long putts.

Putting sometimes is a mystery, and one of the reasons is because of perception. Our perception which is sometimes inaccurate. One of the reasons is we might not see, we might be cockeyed right or cockeyed left.

Have you ever walked onto a practice green and seen a thin line of chalk extending from the middle of the cup back to where someone was practicing their putting. I don’t think this is a bad idea if you are just practicing getting your putter head to go back and straight down the line; however, when you go onto the golf course in competition and you are trying to make putts it is a much better idea to visualize a much broader path going from your golf ball to the cup.

Let's spend some time on putting right now and let's figure out what we can do to make you a better putter. The first thing is that when you have a little short putt like this you will not even bother to practice it on the putting green.

What most people do is they take three balls, they choose a target that is about fifteen or 20 feet away, they roll balls to that target, and then all they are doing is they repeat that process over and over again as they are just practicing missing putts.

I have got a way to help you nail those short putts. A few years back Paul Runyan, a former PGA Champion, called me over to the putting green and asked me to do this drill. He knelt down behind the cup and put a tee right at 12 o’clock in back of the cup and he wanted me to hit exactly at 12 o’clock. Not at 11, not at 10, one or two, but at exactly at 12.

It is not uncommon for new golfers to really struggle with their pre-shot routine in putting. They often are not very precise with it. For example I will not see the clubface very square to the line, their feet are not square and often do they not have the ball lined up with the sweet spot of the putter. By practicing with a yard stick you can really tighten your precision and routine out.

Do you ever wonder how well you putt compared to Tour players? We have a drill here that lets you tell exactly that without anyone else commenting on it. We have taken about half the cup away by placing two tees in front of it.

We are going to have Kim sort of die the ball over the left lip right into the center of the cup. She can’t touch either of the tees or else it does not count. Kim is a very good putter, so we are going to take another bit of the cup away from her by adding a third tee. We are going to make her die it right over the edge; there is not a lot of room for mistake here.