Awesome putting exercises
Once you are comfortable with your putting technique I would recommend any of these simple and very effective practice routines to help you generate feel, distance control and imagination in the short game. These drills are designed to give you smaller targets than just the hole and get you visualizing much more when trying to hole putts.
Tee peg drill 1; Place a tee peg in front of the hole and from short range practice hitting the tee using 3 balls. Once you are good at this try to hit the left side of the tee with the first ball, then the middle of the tee with the second and then the right side with the 3rd. Then gradually move further away from the hole and see how far away you can get before you miss. This is brilliant for refining your aim and hand eye coordination. You will get annoyed after a while that you are not hitting the correct part of the tee. Remember all of these putts will still be going in!
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Goal mouth 1; Place 2 tees in front of the hole just over a balls width apart and try to putt through them from short range (2-3 ft) then move back. Once you are good at this spice it up a little. Try to get the ball through the tees hitting the left one as it goes through, then the right one as it goes through. If you are good then you will be able to hit the left then right and still make it go through in the one shot!
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Goal mouth 2: On a sloping putt lace 2 tees just wider than the ball on the side of the hole where the ball will go in. Then try to hole the putt going through the goal you have made. This should help you visualize the putt rolling in on its intended line.
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Lips; I don’t know if you have ever thought about how many different lines there are when holing a putt. Well they are infinite. This drill help to get your imagination started and is a good one to play with friends. With 3 balls try to get the first putt in by lipping it in off the left. The second one should go dead centre and the next should lip in on the right. Once you can do this from 2 ft move back in 12 inch increments and see how far you can get back away from the hole.
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For longer putts try these drills:
Putting from distance is pure hand eye coordination coupled with striking the ball reasonable well every time, which, if your technique is good shouldn’t be a problem. These drills will get you close more often and you should start seeing some monsters drop in.
Small Target; Firstly the idea to try to imagine a dustbin lid and get the ball into that is to say the least RUBBISH! On every long putt you should always be looking to hole the putt. If you are aiming at a dustbin lid and miss by 20% then you are 4-5ft away. If you are aiming at the hole and miss by 300% you are 2ft away at the most. Always aim for the hole, or if your eye sight is good pick a part of the hole on the side the ball will swing in from.
Look at the hole; Practice hitting a few putts looking at the hole while you hit the ball. With a little practice your eyes will tell your hands how far to hit the ball and your distance control will be awesome. When you can do this try to burn the image of the hole into your mind and think about this while you hit the putt while looking at the ball. This will do the same thing but allow you to strike the ball better because you can now see it.
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Roll the ball; There are millions of these drills that you can do which make practice interesting. Once you have tried mine then why not try to make up some for yourself! Use you imagination. I have many more practice drills that are good for any problem you may have weather it be under or over hitting putts, missing one side more than another, anything.
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Contact me and I will give you some drills to do that will improve your putting!
Finally you may have noticed but I would bet that at 99% of golf clubs the best putters are the juniors. The reason for this is because they compete against each other going round the putting green over a specified number of holes using just one ball. This is great fun and more importantly great match practice, as you only have one ball out on the course. Once you have done your drills, do this; Play against a friend and play for something to make it interesting and competitive. Or if on your own go round once and try to beat your score the next time. NO MULLIGANS EITHER!
