Tips On How To Improve Your Distance Control On The Putting Green

In this video, PGA Professional Katie Dawkins explains how to improve your distance control on the greens.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Katie Dawkins. I am an advanced PGA professional and I'm here today at West Hill

00:09Golf Club on the beautiful greens that they have here to help you work out how to better judge

00:14distance on the green. So how do I get this ball close to that hole? If you could guarantee that

00:21you never took any more than two putts on every single green, my goodness, how many shots would

00:26you save every round? I would say a lot of golfers are creeping into that double figures mark. So if

00:32putting is going to save you lots of shots and especially getting that first putt close, then why

00:37is it that people turn up for lessons and want to go on the range? Everyone needs to put a little bit

00:41more time into working on their putting game. Here are a couple of tips just to help you with that

00:46judging of distance on the greens. So how do I get a ball from about here on the edge of the green

00:51to there? One of the easiest ways to get feel for how much stroke to give it would be to roll it

00:57there. So if I am going to roll a ball to that flag, say it was for a million pounds prize money,

01:03I'm not going to stand here and give it a thumb like this with my arm. I'm not going to give it

01:07quite a jerky sort of shot. Yet this is how some people putt. Some people will stand here and smack

01:14the ball to get it close to the hole. It's very hard to know how much hit to give it. You're better off

01:20taking the hit out and working on different length strokes for different length putts. A really great

01:26way, especially if you have a demon hole on the course that really bugs you, perhaps you three

01:30or four putted, heaven forbid, the last time you played it. But a really good way is to stand on

01:35that green out on the course when no one else is around, roll a few balls to that hole from different

01:40spots on the green. What you'll find from that is you start to get a bit of an idea of how much swing

01:55with the arm to give it, then drop a ball down there and have a putt from that same spot. What

02:01that's going to do is it's going to start to give you a nice amount of feel for how much stroke you need

02:07for that particular length putt. It'll also give you a feel for how the up slopes and the down slopes

02:12and how the conditions are going to affect you that day. If you were going to play a different

02:17course and you were on the putting green, for example, a really good drill will be to stand

02:22there and have in your head almost like a metronome, a rhythm, a one, two, a tick-tock. So if you're

02:29standing over the shot it's tick-tock, tick-tock. If it's a little putt it's little tick-tock and if

02:37it's a big putt it's a bigger tick-tock. But the rhythm stays the same. That way you're working on

02:43length of stroke to determine the distance your ball goes. As with when I roll a ball with my arm

02:49there's always a little bit more follow through than there is back swing. So bear that in mind,

02:54it's a smooth acceleration and give it a go. So this is a part of the game that players just don't

02:59practice enough. So all you need to do is go out and work out how you control distance. There's no

03:05textbook way of doing this. It's just down to practice and putting some time in. You put some

03:10work in on the greens and your game will thank you for it.