Practice Your Putts With These Routines
Unfortunately for a lot of us, we barely have time to practice putting. Some of the less zealous golfers are lucky to even just finish with one round per week. However if you really want to enhance your putting results, you want to put your time in and work on your stroke. Putting truly has no quick fix, and if it probably did, everyone would do it and the game would lose its charm.
Improving your score all relies on your ability to play the putting game. Every golfer knows that you’ve got to make a putt on each single hole (excepting the rare occasion of hitting a chip in or hole out). If you need to improve your score, then why not improve as much as you can on the strokes that you’re going to be taking on the course. Here is the putting practice routine I use.
Short Putts
To start with, you need to hole out all of the putts that you should make. These are the putts that are inside six feet or less of the cup. There are a few drills that I usually do to work on this length.
The very first thing you must do is to discover a straight putt and put a tee down at three feet, 6 feet and 9 feet. The objective is to make nine putts in a row, three from each location. Start by making three three-footers. If you miss one then you have to start again, but if you make 3 straight shots then you can progress to the next location. If you miss on a six-footer or a nine-footer, then you have got to go back to the beginning and start at the three-foot mark again.
Another drill that will help you with the makeable putts is the six-foot circle. Put 4 tees around the hole making a box or a wheel. Each tee should have equivalent distances apart and this drill can help you make putts of different levels of problems like the uphill, downhill, right-left and left-right putts. Like the first drill make three from each spot before heading off to the next.
Reduce Three-Putts
Now that you’ve practiced your makeable putts and are sure you can make more from three-feet, six-feet and nine-feet, you’re now able to take a large amount of pressure off of the others aspects of your game. It is going to be much more tricky for you to three-putt if you don’t miss the short ones. However another aspect that needs practice is lagging putts longer than 20-feet. This way you can dump the added shots taken by 3 putts by making sure you leave yourself a tap-in from the long lengths.
Two drills can be used to practice your distance control. First thing is to put a tee down three feet directly behind the hole. Then go out to 20 feet from the hole and place a tee down every three feet. Dependent on how much green there is to use, you can travel out up to 44 feet or so. Then proceed to hit your putts from each location, making absolutely certain that all 3 putts make it past the hole but within the tee that’s placed 3 feet behind the cup. If all 3 shots don’t finish up in that area then begin from that length again.
Playing a game with yourself is also another drill that may be used to work on your putting. Take a single ball and putt to different holes on the putting green, making sure that each putt starts out at 25 feet or more. After making your first putt, make sure you finish and make your second putt as well. Score yourself a (-1) for each shot you make in one putt and a ( 1) for each hole you 3 putt. The aim is to get to (-3) before you reach ( 3).
An extra tip for discovering your feel as quickly as possible is to hold your finish. Rather than watching the ball roll to the hole after your putt, maintain your follow through as you watch your ball come to a stop. It’ll be easier for your subconscious to ingrain how far the last stroke made the ball roll so that you can adjust your shot to how soft or how hard you’ll hit the subsequent putt. You can quickly find that with a little work, you can discover your touch on the green.
Jamie Faidley not only helps with how to practice putting, but also writes articles on putting drills so golfers know what to work on. If you want golf-related content on your site, contact him at Easy Pars.