Putting Distance Control

There are two elements to hitting a successful putt, getting your line right, and getting your speed right. Even if you miss the correct line by a little bit, you can all but guarantee a tap-in if you nail the speed. However, mis-judging the speed leads to those nervy knee-knockers and dreaded three-putts. 

Check out these expert putting distance control lessons and drills and take the stress out of your long putts.

One of the things that I think that you should think about in your putting, particularly if you have distance control problems, is don’t think about acceleration because this many times gives us flash speed, the putter moves to quickly and gains to much speed in a short space. You really need to think about the putter head gaining momentum through the stroke, not accelerating.

I am going to have Kim putt a ball and what I want her to do is just take the putter back and allow the putter head to gain momentum through the stroke. If she just lets the putter head gain momentum, there will be just a very slight sound and I will barely hear it.

Now I want her to putt one where she accelerates, where she actually has a very rapid change of speed in her putting stroke. That was much louder.

Tests have shown that 17 inches by the cup is the optimum speed to make the maximum amount of putts. If you hit it farther than that by the cup the putts start lipping out, and obviously if you do not get it to the cup you have no chance at all.

When it comes to long putts you really want to pay attention to your distance control.

I am going to read this putt and then take a minute to look at the slope, but then I am going to line the label up with the direction I want it to go and kind of forget about it and focus on distance.

All you need is three golf balls, three tees, then go to a putting green and pick two different lengths of putts.

• The first one I have set up is a 10-foot putt and the second one is a 20-foot putt.
• All I am going to do is put one tee in the ground to illustrate my starting point, then I am going to go over to the 10-foot putt and put my putter in the back of the hole, and put the second tee in the ground right at the end of my grip to give me my safe zone.
• Then I go to the second hole which is the 20-foot putt and I am going to put the putter down and put the tee in the ground for my safe zone again.

The objective to this exercise is that you want to alternate your putts, so I am going to go one to the 20-footer, then to the 10-footer, then back to the 20-footer. I am going to pick a target score and I want to get seven consecutive points in a row, and also you want to pick a number of makes that you are going to get.

You learn speed control on the putting green so the next time you go out and practice take three golf balls, pick a hole, and your goal is to make the putt but if you miss it I want every ball to end up past the hole, let's call it a foot past the hole.

Distance control is the most important part of putting and it is the thing you really want to practice the most. This is a simple drill that you can use that will help develop a little bit of touch and a little bit of feel for how hard to hit putts.

• Start maybe 30 feet away with the main goal on the first putt just to get the ball half way to the hole.
• I am not actually using the hole as a target, I am using it as a destination. I am creating a game.
• Now with the rest of the balls you have left you want to get the next ball a little bit farther, the next one after that a little bit farther and see how many you can get in between the first ball and the hole.

I am going to ask Luke to take three balls and set up to the first ball and wherever you hit the first ball I want you to follow it up by hitting the other two balls the same distance. Wherever he hits the first ball his goal is to hit the other two balls the same distance. If he does that for a while he will start to develop a feel for the different distances.

 have come up with a little game I call “Bump the Fringe” which illustrates exactly what you are trying to do to learn to control your distance.

the objective is to get the ball to bump that fringe. When doing this we want to play what we call the “10 Percent Rule,” so that if I have a 30 foot putt I want to finish within a foot and a half of the fringe short to within a foot and a half of the fringe long. Thus putting the ball within that 10 percent range.

The neatest thing about this is that we are really not concerned with aim, other than hitting the putts right up there next to the fringe where every putt is going to leave me nothing but a tap in.

I have a penny that I am going to put on the back of my putter. Now I am going to makes some strokes back and through, and the idea is not to have the penny move. If I swing the putter back and have a big rate of acceleration I lose the coin. So your job is to make some strokes back and through where you do not change the rate of acceleration, but you have constant acceleration at a constant rate of speed, not something where you are making it accelerate too fast.