Maximize Your Winter Practice: Mastering Golf Putting Skills

During the long dark winter months getting out to work on your game is naturally never as appealing during the summer. However I've always advocated to all my students that a huge amount of benefit can be gained from the correct type of indoor home practice, especially for your putting. Over the last 10 years I've worked hard to understand how the brain learns high precision movements (like a putting stroke), in the most efficient and pressure proof way. This first in a series of posts will be mainly about SPEED CONTROL and helping you judge the correct distance on putts. Imagine having rock solid confidence at having great touch for speed control on the greens. Great putting is the FASTEST way to lower your scores, no question, and speed control is at the heart of great putting.

SPEED CONTROL (STROKE MECHANICS):

Lets of a look at the stroke mechanics for good line control (holing out) and good speed control. Often when there is dew on the ground the path of the ball will leave a TRAIL. Lets use this word for the acronym "TRAIL" to understand our mechanics for good speed control.

a) Tempo: (How long your back swing and through swing take)

b) Rhythm: (The smoothness and "togetherness" of the motion)

c) Acceleration: (How the speed of the putter head changes, the amount of FORCE applied)

d) Impact: (How close the ball is struck from the sweet spot)

e) Length of stroke: (How long the backswing and through swing is)

Lets look at how you can improve each of the 5 technical points above. Then when you get back out onto the greens in March time there will be another post about how you transfer these skills to the actual course.

a) TEMPO:

Many studies and measurements have been taken of the strokes of great putters and there tends to be a very consistent parameter which is tempo. This it the amount of time taken for the backswing and downswing which should be consistent what ever the length of putt. It's vital that in order for the brain to be able to deliver a known amount of putter head speed to the ball that the tempo is established in your head before you putt. You should know how long the backswing and downswing of the stroke will take essentially. Most putting strokes on tour have a ratio of 3:1 for backswing to downswing

b) RHYTHM:

The actual mechanical definition of rhythm is all things moving together at the same angular speed. Think of the spokes on a wheel. Every part of that spoke moves round at the same rate, but the outer part is obviously moving faster than the inner part near the centre. The feeling you want is of arms shoulders and putter all moving together at the same rate.

c) ACCELERATION:

This is how suddenly the putter changes speed. Think of a nice smooth acceleration in a car where there is no "sudden jolt". A great drill for this is to balance something on the back of your putter like a ball or a coin usually and make sure it doesn't fall out due to a sudden change in speed.

d) IMPACT:

A simple one, but very important still. If you miss the sweet spot by enough it will have a serious effect on the distance the ball travels as less energy will be transferred to the ball. The other more subtle impact factors are LOFT (how much loft there is on the putter face), and also the ANGLE OF ATTACK (the vertical path up or down) of the putter head at impact. All these things have an effect on the power transferred to the ball.

e) LENGTH OF STROKE

Your length of stroke should change for different length putts and on different slopes. What you do NOT want to be thinking is "how hard should I hit this putt", but thinking "how long should my stroke be and how fast should the putter head be travelling when I strike the ball". Then you can hopefully keep the TEMPO, RHYTHM, ACCEL, and IMPACT as consistent as possible and only change the length of stroke depending on how much speed you need on the ball.

The factors affecting how much ball speed you need are the

a) GREEN SPEED (the amount of friction between ball and grass),

b) THE ELEVATION (change in height between the ball and hole),

c) LENGTH OF PUTT (how many feet between you and the ball).

d) WIND (the direction and strength of the wind will certainly have a small effect even on the greens).

For more info on putting speed control do get in touch, and watch out for future articles about putting speed control.

1.