Putting Lesson

This post on putting on the Boards.ie golf forum reminded me of a lesson I got myself last season.

Sure, a lot of guys take a non-technical approach, saving lessons for the full swing only, and I was the same myself for a long time. Many people to teach technique for the simplest stroke in the game is to over-complicate an area which should purely be based on feel and repetition. But still, I couldn't help noticing how some players, of a wide variety of levels, tended to hole long putts more regularly than others (inc. myself).

I've always been an okay putter. I don't have a tendency to bin long putts, or even hole many 20 footers, but I three-putt rarely, and I'm strong from 4ft-8ft. Essentially, I'm what you'd call a decent par-putter. I wasn't putting badly at the time, but asked my pro what it was that separated the guys who crashed in a couple of putts from distance each round, from those who didn't.

He watched me putt, and immediately pointed out that the ball had a hint of side-spin. I wasn't rolling the ball forwards. This was the root cause of my defensive putting approach, which was to play alot of break, and putt dead-weight. The less than pure roll on the ball meant it would take any hint of break, struggle to hold it's line and pull up more quickly than a properly rolled putt. From shorter distances, it didn't matter so much.

As we both detest the Pelz putting theory, I was glad to find he had a better idea. We started work on a simple "open and close the door" technique. The blade comes back slightly on the inside, and a twinge of right hand puts a slight over-spin on the ball on the way through. To exaggerate in practice, we tried to draw and hook putts into the hole. It was insane how well the putts held their line, and how much straighter the technique made left-to-right putts. On top of that, we worked on keeping the putter as low as possible. I actually found the strike from higher up the putter face gave much better feel and feedback. Initially, the roll on the ball meant I was knocking a lot of putts past the hole, but after some recalibration, I had the best putting year of my life in 2009. Not a bad return for €40!