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GOLFTEC’s GOLF Top 100 Teacher Nick Clearwater, alongside pro golfer Hannah Gregg, run through a series of quick and easy drills you can do from home, that will help you do that. You can watch the video above, or keep scrolling.

And you can book your own lesson at GOLFTEC right here!

1. Dots (or a line)

If you’re trying to nail down your start line, the first thing you can do is to literally use a line on the ground. A series of dots works just as well, but either way, find a straight putt and draw a line on the ground. Then start hitting putts making sure your ball rolls down it, Cleartwater says. If the ball starts left, the putter face is closed. If it starts right, it’s open.

2. Ruler

If you don’t want to, or can’t, putt down a line, then you can use a yardstick ruler instead. Simply lay it on the ground and place a golf ball on it, then hit putts making the ball roll down the ruler. If you do that, Clearwater explains, you know you’re starting your golf ball where you want.

3. Gates

With either of these drills, or instead of them, adding a putting gate will ensure that your ball is starting on the intended line. If you’re pushing or pulling your putts, your ball will crash into the gate, and you’ll be able to tell your flaw immediately.

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The post Top 100 Teacher: This putting game is a ‘must’ if you want to make more putts appeared first on Golf.

The post Top 100 Teacher: This putting game is a ‘must’ if you want to make more putts appeared first on Golf.

The average make rate on the PGA Tour, for reference, from three-to-five feet is 90 percent. Once pros get to about eight feet, they’re statistically more likely to miss than make. The average PGA Tour player’s odds of making a 10-footer is about 40 percent — and they rapidly decline until you get into three-putt territory.

It leaves golfers in a situation where there’s no middle ground. The more putts from short range you make, the more ground you’ll gain on your peers. The more you miss, the more you’ll lose.

Which is why GOLF Top 100 Teacher Brady Riggs offers a putting drill he calls the 3-6-9 drill. Here’s how it works.

Your goal is to make 10 of these 15 putts — about 66 percent.

“Anything less, and you start over,” Riggs says.

You can watch the full video below:

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The post The pre-round drill this U.S. Open champ uses to sync-up his putting stroke appeared first on Golf.

The post The pre-round drill this U.S. Open champ uses to sync-up his putting stroke appeared first on Golf.

It’s something pros work on a lot before each of their rounds, and especially early in the week, before the action gets underway.

Think of it like a quick engine check on a car. Without it, golfers could start pulling putts left, for instance, without knowing they’re doing it. They could think they’re mis-reading putts — so they start aiming more right, which means they have to start pulling putts more left to start the ball where they actually want. It’s one small problem that creates multiple bigger ones that take hard work to undo.

Which is why they try to prevent it before those problems start piling up. They work on it in a variety of ways, usually with some combination of a string, chalk line on the ground, and a line on their golf ball. One drill along these lines that caught my eye, while roaming the ground of The Country Club on Monday came from 2020 U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau.

Bryson was one of the most recent players to defect to the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational Tour, a move he described purely as a “business decision.” But on the practice putting green ahead of the 2022 U.S. Open, it was business as usual. He was practicing the same sync-up drill he uses before he does before each of his rounds.

Once he’s all setup, he simply starts rolling putts. He’s looking for the line to roll end over end, down the line on the ground. The ruler you see is a separate tool he uses measure his backsroke.

“It just allows me to calibrate my start line, so I know the ball is rolling off the face the way I want it to,” he says.

And it’s a drill simple enough for you to use at home, too.

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The post How this training aid helped improve my key putting fundamentals appeared first on Golf.

The post How this training aid helped improve my key putting fundamentals appeared first on Golf.

I knew it was time for a change when a four foot putt was the only obstacle between me and a collegiate starting lineup. Cornell’s qualifying rounds determine the traveling squad, and players are often differentiated by a single shot. I lipped out a four-footer on the low side — the amateur side — and stayed in Ithaca instead of traveling to Princeton one Spring weekend.

Late that night, I found myself rolling putts in my dorm room with little to no consistency, and my frustration was building. 

For some reason, my putting stroke in practice did not translate into competition. When I used alignment sticks for my club path or tees for my starting line, it was only effective during the drill. I would take the aids away and the pushes and pulls crept back in.

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Then, I found something that worked for me — and I haven’t looked back since.

To say that everything changed would be a lie, but it was the first drill that continued improving my putting stroke even after I put it away. It’s called the Putting Stick, a training aid that is essentially a slightly longer yardstick with alignment marks and a sliding rubber piece at the end. Your ball rests in a small dimple on the stick, and the goal is to roll the ball, end over end, off the other side. 

Fixing the fundamentals

This simple drill brings together the components of every other putting drill or aid I’ve tried. It helps with aim, like alignment sticks; starting point, like gates; and adds one more feature unlike any other drill I’ve tried. It perfects the take away to follow through ratio — all the fundamentals present in all of golf’s great putters.

By providing immediate feedback, any stroke that isn’t perfect will roll off the side of the stick and miss by an exaggerated margin. Just like putting on a mini cup, once I found a consistent stroke with the training aid, putting without it gave me a boost of confidence. Putts I thought were pushed would still lip in, and it feels as though it’s cut my margin of error in half. I do it before every round now, and whenever I’m practicing at home. I still struggle with inconsistency at times, but that’s natural. My putting, on the whole, is in a much better place.

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The post This daily at-home putting station legitimately improved my putting appeared first on Golf.

The post This daily at-home putting station legitimately improved my putting appeared first on Golf.

But of course, I’m not a coach, or a professional golfer. I’m a journalist and an amateur, so I started doing the only thing I know how: Asking a bunch of people the same question.

I’m struggling with my putting, what should I do?

A variety of answers came pouring in, lots of them helpful, but one from upcoming professional golfer Hannah Gregg stuck.

“My putting really improved when I started doing the same few drills every single day,” she said.

Gregg is the inventor and founder of “Short Game Gains,” which creates a variety of putting training aids. Her business partner, fellow pro Fredrik Lindblom, agrees.

“You don’t need to do it for a long, but the right drills each day can keep your stroke and your aim in good shape,” he says.

Freddie and Hannah took a quick look at my putting stroke and quickly discovered a few small, but interrelated problems that were causing me consistency issues:

Sometimes I’d get it right, sometimes I wouldn’t, and when I missed putts I’d have no idea why.

The root cause, in a nutshell, was an alignment issue, so that’s what I set about working on. Over the past couple months, I’ve been dedicating 15 minutes a day, most evenings, to doing a quick sync up using the Short Game Gains’ Indoor Performance Pack” (which you can check out right here, or below).

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Using the putting mat in my garage, first I’d align the laser so I could see straight line of the putt, and practice visualizing it as I stood over the ball. Then I’d put a mirror on the ground to make sure my eyes were over the golf ball and aligned straight, rather than veering off to the right. And to make sure I wasn’t pulling putts left, as is my tendency, I placed a putting gate about a foot past where I’d set up the mirror.

The goal was to get aligned using the mirror, and roll putts through the gate so they tracked down the laser.

It didn’t take long for my putting stroke to feel like it was self-correcting, and when it was time to take it to the course, it felt more comfortable without me having to think about it. It’s still a work in progress, of course, but the signs of improvement are there. All it took was just a few minutes a day with the right setup.

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The post 5 times golfers should NOT concede a putt during a match appeared first on Golf.

The post 5 times golfers should NOT concede a putt during a match appeared first on Golf.

When should I give my opponent a putt?

Giving a putt on a hole, small as it may sound, can have ramifications far beyond the match at hand. It can represent an act of class and sportsmanship, as Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin proved in 1969. Or, as we saw in the 2021 Ryder Cup, a moment of contention and controversy.

Viktor Hovland, speaking on the matter earlier this week, has a pretty straightforward approach:

“I would say I’m fair,” he says. “If it’s a tap-in, I’m going to give those putts. But if there’s a chance the other person is going to miss it, then yeah, I’m going to have him putt it out. That’s what we do normally in a stroke-play event. If the other person takes that the wrong way, then so be it.”

With that in mind, let’s unpack a subject near and dear to my own heart: When not to give a putt.

1. When you don’t think your opponent will make it

This is a simple rule of thumb that, if you’re not sure what kind of player you are, is a good one to live by. If, beyond a reasonable doubt, you think your partner will make their next putt, then just give it to them. If you think your opponent is more likely to miss it, then don’t.

I probably wouldn’t extend that circle of trust beyond about three feet or so, but if you’re not one for gamesmanship, sticking to a system of essentially only conceding gimmies won’t cause too much drama.

2. When your opponent asks to be given it

Sometimes your opponent will look at their ball and ask to be given a putt (“Is this good?”). Other times, if you’re both facing similar length putts, they may offer a “good-good” situation — a deal where they’ll give you your putt if you give them theirs.

Unless you’re really struggling with your own putter that day (in which case you’re probably not getting offered that deal), the answer to both of those questions is “no.”

Asking for a putt to be given is a sign of weakness which, in a match play situation, you can capitalize on.

3. If it’s to win the hole

If your opponent has a putt to win the hole — or the match, for that matter — follow the simple rule of always making them putt it. Even if it’s a short putt.

The nice thing about this rule is that it gives you an easy out. It’s a putt to win! You earned this, so go ahead and finish it off.

And sometimes, they won’t.

4. If they’ve just hit an awesome shot

Because the nature of match play means each golfer hyper-focuses on every shot of every hole, sometimes, they’ll hit a clutch shot out of nowhere. They need to get up and down to halve the hole, and suddenly, they hit an amazing wedge shot to four feet.

Should you give the putt?

You may feel they deserve it after a great shot, and you’re not wrong. But this is match play, and I say: Make them earn it. Maybe they do, in which case, we can all respect a good shot well played. Or maybe they don’t, in which case they’ll walk away more annoyed than they would’ve been after failing to take advantage of such a great shot. That, in match play, is a momentum shifter.

5. If you’ve already given lots of putts

Personally, I’m a big fan of using the ability to give putts to disrupt my opponent’s rhythm during a match. Granted, in most matches, I’ll follow rule number one from this list. But for a higher stakes money match, I’ll kick it up a notch by giving them lots of putts earlier in the round, and then almost nothing later on.

Sometimes, that may mean giving a longer putt than you ordinarily would. Your opponent may have a three-to-four footer early in the match to halve the hole, for instance. In that case I’d probably say: Scoop it up, it’s good. Do that enough times and you’ll lull your opponent into a false sense of security. They’re expecting to be given putts. And that’s when you hit them.

Sorry, fella, but I’ve got to see the rest of that two-and-a-half footer to win the 15th hole.

All of a sudden they’re caught off guard, which makes them nervous, and they realize they haven’t hit a short putt all round. Maybe they still make it. Or maybe you’ve just shifted the momentum of the match back in your favor.

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But what happens when there seems to be more bad days than good? What should you do then?

That’s what we asked Ramon Bescansa, inventor of the Perfect Putter and putting coach to a number of PGA Tour players, notably Abe Ancer.

The first step is simple: Don’t panic! Or worse yet, don’t start aimlessly tinkering. You’re better off breaking it down into simple parts and going from there.

First, pinpoint what’s going wrong

Bescansa says the best first step is to take a look at what he calls the “four key elements,” and decide which one is going wrong the most. One may be affecting another, he says, but a good coach will be able to evaluate what the central problem is — and the root cause of it.

“Understanding if it’s green reading, alignment, speed control or stroke,” he says, outlining the four elements. “A lot of times people will work on their stroke when they start missing putts, when in reality, it’s their green reading that’s off. You need to know what the issue is you need to work on.”

If long putting is your issue…

A common problem, especially among the ranks of recreational golfers, is poor speed control on longer putts. It only takes one putt hit too firm, or soft, to put you in three-putt territory. If that’s your issue, Bescansa says first look at the golf ball itself.

Putting

“You have to make sure you take a good look at how the golf ball is rolling,” he says. “A lot of times, golfers will deliver the putterhead with too much loft, or not enough. The ball will be bouncing and you won’t have that consistency off the face.”

A simple thought to help amateurs improve that consistency of contact, Bescansa says, is to simply focus on keeping your head down, and only lifting it when you think the ball has come to rest.

If short putting is your issue…

Missing short putts could be for a variety of reasons, Bescansa says, and it’s very dependent on the individual player. So start by thinking about previous problems you may have encountered in the past. Often, it’s the simplest things that need checking up on. Notably, your alignment.

“For better players, it’s often alignment,” he says. “It’s less that they push and pull putts all the time, but that they’re not aiming in the right place. It’s so important, because if you’re aiming a little too far left or right, it doesn’t matter how good your stroke is. You’re going to miss the putt.”

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With that in mind, it’d probably make sense to take a closer look at how pros spend their time on the putting green. We know they’re working hard, but what are they actually doing?

As far as I can tell, it clusters around three different things, with everyone doing a bit of each. Adopt them into your own practice, and you’ll come out a better putter on the side.

1. Nail the start line

Pros spend a lot of time practicing making sure their ball starts on their intended line. I’d actually say this is the most common thing pros work on when they practice putting — especially before tournament rounds.

They’ll practice this in a variety of ways, usually by using a string and putting underneath it, drawing a line on the green, putting through putting gates, or simply having a coach keep a close eye on them. Whatever they prefer, the goal is the same: Get the ball started where they’re intending.

2. Technical checks

This can be done in conjunction with start line practice, but not exclusively. This kind of practice is more technical in nature, and usually involves a training aid, like a mirror. When pros practice like this, they’re making sure their alignment is in good shape and their eyes are over the ball. Sometimes they’ll even add a drill to work on their stroke.

Generally speaking during tournament weeks, pros will check up on this stuff, rather than look to make major overhauls. Really, they’re just making sure everything is where they want it.

3. Pressure drills

Some pros do this more than others, but they all do it at some point — and coaches will often say it’s the best kind of practice. This kind of practice aims to simulate tournament pressure by giving them a task, or a game, to play.

Usually, pros will do this by surrounding a hole with tees, with the goal of making a set number of putts in a row. Sometimes pros will do it as a ladder: They start with a short putt, and if they make it, they move back to a slightly longer one. If they miss that one, they start again.

The point is to get the competitive juices flowing. Not just to practice putting, but to practice putting with a purpose.

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The post These are the 2 ways golfers line up putts. Which one are you? appeared first on Golf.

With that in mind…

1. You see a curved line

When they’re sizing up the hole, many golfers see a curved line starting at their ball and breaking into the hole, like you hear Zach Johnson talking about in this video (and demonstrating above). Though there’s no hard-and-fast rule, players who see a curved line breaking into the hole generally prefer to read putts by focusing on where the ball will enter the hole, rather than the line it will start on.

2. You see a straight line

Others envision a straight line extending  down the start line of the putt they’re about to hit, as you see teacher Dave Pelz demonstrating above. Golfers who do this will generally experience success using the line on their golf ball. The big thing golfers who visualize putts like this need to remember is that they can tend to under-read putts, as Pelz explains. This is because while you may be visualizing a straight line, the ball won’t travel along that straight line. As soon as you hit the ball, the ball will start curving off of it, so make sure to factor that in as you’re reading putts.

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The post The interesting reason Jim Furyk uses a crooked grip on his putter appeared first on Golf.

The post The interesting reason Jim Furyk uses a crooked grip on his putter appeared first on Golf.

It’s a good thing, too. If he did, Furyk likely wouldn’t have become one of golf’s household names — fourth on the all-time earnings list, with a major championship and two sub-60 PGA Tour rounds to his name.

While most of us have become accustomed to the various peculiarities in Furyk’s long game, there’s no shortage of interesting tidbits in his short game, either.

One of them I encountered first hand earlier this week as Furyk was rolling putts. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but something just seemed… different. And then I spotted it.

Furyk’s putter grip was on crooked, rotated 45 degrees toward the target.

“It looks weird,” he said, grinning. “But it feels good.”

Furyk has been using his crooked grip since last year en route to his second-place finish at the Charles Schwab Cup. It started when he made the switch away from a left-hand low putting grip, which he had been using for most of his career, to a more conventional overlapping style.

He liked how his new grip made his stroke feel, but the putter didn’t feel like it was sitting right in his hands, so he started tinkering in his at-home golf club workshop.

Looking for the right feel took him to some strange places, including, at one point, putting into play an upside-down putter grip.

But then, in 2021, he settled on his off-center putter grip and has been using it ever since.

Fewer putts missed left

Furyk doesn’t grip the putter with his thumbs completely on the flat part of the putter grip, but the putter grip being rotated toward the target does help weaken both of his hands. This doesn’t just feel more comfortable, Furyk says, but prevents him from pulling putts to the left — which is his most common fault on the greens. He may push putts occasionally, but he’ll rarely miss left.

“Especially on shorter putts,” Furyk adds.

You won’t find many putters gripped like this, and I’d definitely proceed with caution before trying it yourself, but the moral of this story is simple: Whatever works!

NEWSLETTER

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