Putting Drills To Lower Your Scores

Golf Monthly

29/05/2025

Tips to help lower your scores

Transcript

00:00So one of the drills that I love to do on the putting green, just to make sure that my club

00:11face is returning to the ball square, is I like to use, just on my Chrome Soft here, I've got,

00:16I've actually got these three lines, the triple track lines, and I'm going to use these as kind

00:21of a drill. And very simply, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to aim at a target,

00:24and I'm going to point those lines literally directly at this target. Now, when I take my

00:30putt, and actually I'm going to do this one, I'm going to hit quite a few putts doing this.

00:34If I start closing the club face down, what we're going to see is those lines are going to start

00:39wobbling and the ball's going to go off to the left. If I do the opposite and the club face is

00:43returning open, again, those lines are just going to start wobbling off to the right. So what I want

00:49to do is just, I've got a cup of balls, I'm just going to hit a few towards the target, and I just

00:53want to see, can I get these lines to just go end over end towards the hole? So let me just have a

00:59little go, strike one just to the target. So I missed it on the right, and I could really see

01:06the lines wobbling off to the right when I did that. So I know the club face didn't close down

01:13well enough, it was open through. So I'm going to do that again, line it straight up to a target,

01:19set up behind, and I'm just going to try now and close the club face down slightly,

01:23just so I can really see those lines going end over end. It's a really good way of using the

01:30triple track technology to help you putting. So for those of you that are really struggling

01:34with distance control, I've got a great little drill that I want you to try. As we know, distance

01:39control really is king. If you were to misread a putt by, say, three foot, if your distance

01:45control is correct and is right, the next putt is only a three footer. So it makes a lot of sense to

01:50work on this part of the game. Now, how do we do it? So what I've got here is what we call a ladder

01:55drill. I've just got a couple of stations here set up. You can use cones or I've just got alignment

02:00sticks. And the idea is to putt a ball and try and get it to stop within the station. If I can do

02:06that, I then move on to the next. If I get that one, I move on to the next one. Now, what I'm trying

02:10to do if I fail, if I've hit it short or long, I have to start the whole thing again. So let's have

02:16a go. First one in. There's the first one and it's slightly longer. And then the next station,

02:34let's go for the last. So there I have it. That's the ladder drill. That's the station drill. Give it

02:45a go. Try or get all three. And if you fail, you've got to start again. I really hope that helps. So

02:50here's a lovely little drill just to give you a bit of confidence before you go out onto the golf

02:55course. Unfortunately, what I see with so many players on the putting green before they go onto

03:00the first tee is they've done a great little putting routine and they always finish exactly

03:05the same way. Just hitting a couple of balls to the hole. The issue that I have with this is it's

03:10kind of lose-lose practice because if you hole it from say two, three foot, well, you kind of feel

03:16you should be holding that anyway. So you haven't actually gained much, but what happens if you miss?

03:21Now you can actually do this to some extremes where you get a hundred balls. You could, you could hold 99 of

03:27them, but if you miss one, if you're faced with that on the golf course, unfortunately you will

03:31be thinking of the one that you missed. So what I like to do is take the hole out of play,

03:36use something really small. Like I've got a tee peg here, but you can use something small like a needle,

03:42anything that just gives you, take the hole out of it and just give you a really small perception.

03:46What I want you to do is just get a line of balls, put them in a circle and actually just very

03:50simply just putt towards the tee. Now, if you miss it, it's not the end of the world as long as it didn't go

03:56too far either side because it probably would have gone in, but if you hit it, your confidence just

04:02grows and you feel really good getting onto the first if you're faced with this. So let's have a

04:07go and see if I can hit the tee. So you can see I've hit the tee there. I'll move to the next one

04:15and I will keep doing this and I will see how many times I can hit that tee. So one of the things that

04:20always gets me on a passing green before people go out and play golf is they're always practicing with

04:25three golf balls. And where this is really funny from a coach's perspective is it's got nothing to

04:31do with the real life game of actually adding a bit of pressure. If you think of golf, you only get

04:36one go at it. You get one opportunity. Unfortunately, when you're practicing with three balls, you get

04:42feedback. You can miss the first one short, say you missed the second one long, and then you get it

04:46right the third time. Unfortunately, your brain is just adjusted to the two previous shots. What I like to

04:52try and do is this little setup station here is the nine ball drill, and it just adds some vital

04:58pressure to your putting. And the way we do that is twofold. What I want you to do is actually first

05:04of all, keep a score of how you do this, but keep the shots as random as possible. So I want you to

05:11say do the first one short, move to a long, move to a medium, keep mixing up the balls until you finish

05:17the nine balls. I want you to hole out every single one, and I really want you to get a score at the

05:24end of it. So give the nine ball drill a go and watch your confidence grow.

Putting Drills To Lower Your Scores

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