The area where a single digit like myself can improve the most is in short game and putting… this blog is about how i have come up with making a boring activity like practice putting meaningful and add a little pressure that you will have when your on the course and you have one attempt at a putt… just figured i would talk about my mentality when i putt and practice my putting. I rarely have more then 30 putts a round… typically i run around 26-29… my highest lately was 32 putts…
first off I have a pre-putt routine that iuse,just like i have a pre shot routine that i use always for my full swing…
my putting routine is: when walking to my putt i look at the over all green (high points and low points that are around the green like mounds and water) and the grain of the green, (if it’s a shiny silver it is down grain, if it’s dark green it is into the grain), i then look at the putt from the ball to the hole, and picture the high point of the break, if i can’t figure out which detection it is going from behind the ball i look from the hole to my ball and try to read it picking out a spot in both directions to aim at… i then line up to the angle of my spot compared to the hole, take one practice stroke looking down then one looking at the hole, just to get a feel visually for the speed… i also picture when i look at the hole the ball rolling and falling in the hole, good mental image. i then step over the putt make my stroke and all i worry about is making a good stroke, once i have done that the result is out of my hands. I can’t be mad about a putt i missed when i made a good try at it, i can be if i made a terrible stroke and it had no chance at all…
with the drill i am going to talk about you can use training aids to help produce a correct putting stroke. I use the learning curve by Stan Utley’s Learning Curve to sometimes get my putting stroke on plane… great gift for the golfer in your life 😉
The other day I was on the practice green and thinking about fun ways to force myself to focus and treat my practice time like it meant something on the course. I decided to mix together a couple different putting drills that I have read/ seen/ done in the past… i took the 3 foot circle drill and the pressure putting drill and turned it into a new type of drill/ game… You mark off from the edge of the hole 3 different evenly space putts in four directions, place tees in the green to make there locations, once you are done it will form a plus sign with the hole in the middle and 4 locations with 3 tees each, i used 6ft, 12ft, and 18ft because mid range putting is where you can really drop some strokes along with short putting… Since i was working with mid range putts i had a goal to hole at least 6 of the 12 putts that were in the set, no you can’t retry each putt if you miss one you must move on to the next putt or set… set a goal for yourself mine was 6, im working to get that many 8 out of ten times, then the other 2 make 7 or 8… from 6 feet you shouldn’t miss very often, from 12 more so and 18 feet is a bonus… you can use this concept for 3, 4, 5 feet if you want, it depends on where your game is the weakest in putting, if you need to work on lag putting then make it where you want to hole 3 in 96putts (8 sets if you use 30, 35, 40 in 4 detections) and not 3 putt any of them… when i say lagg putting i mean longer then 30 feet 31-99 feet… when you are outside of 20 feet you simply don’t want to 3 putt majority of the time… lag it up to a 3 foot circle, the closer the bettor…
here is the catch to this drill/ game, you can’t stop the drill until you reach your goal, if you have a goal to make 4 out of 12 putts with distances of what i used 6, 12, 18 feet then do it until you make that amount of putts, if you make it through the first 3 sets and have your goal go through all for and make you total amount your new goal, so if you make 4 3 times in a row but make 5 1 of the 3 make 5 your new goal… if you make 5 3 times in a row but holed 6 once 7 once make 6 your constant goal, just keep working to make it one higher… just be honest with yourself and work towards your goals… drive for show putt for doe… 🙂
for a reference as to what you could work towards percentage wise for holed putts and number of 3 putts, I saw for PGA Your pros of holed putts (source: shot by shot’s software) 1-3 feet: 99%, 4-5 feet: 84%, 6-10 feet: 50%, 11-15 feet: 31%, 16-20 feet: 17%, 21-30 feet: 10%, 31 – 50 feet 3%. Majority of people will drop strokes simply meeting these number on each of there rounds… But I’m not done with putting stats i have averages for 3 putting as well (source: shot by shot’s software)… 1-10 feet: never, 11-20 feet: 2%, 21-30 feet: 4%, 31-40 feet: 5%, 41-50 feet: 20%, 51-99 feet: 16%
hope this is informative to someone, i enjoyed blogging about it…
until next time,
jmiller065
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