You know the expression, “you drive for show and putt for dough”? Well, it’s true. You can drive 300 yards, but if you can’t sink a putt from a few paces away, what good was that effort worth?
The point is, putting is a game of fractions of an inch, and precision matters. Fortunately, you don’t need immense strength to be an accurate putter. You just need patience, discipline, and of course, a little bit of insight.
We can help with the latter piece. Here are 7 tips to help make you a better putter, some of which you should be able to put into practice today.
Pay Attention to Ball Position
Ball position matters when it’s time to putt. You don’t want the ball too far forward or too far back, and, somewhat counterintuitively, you don’t want it exactly centered, either.
Take a page from Tiger Woods’ book; he centers the ball on his left eyeball (that is, slightly forward, for a right-handed putter).
There is actually a good material reason for this. The reason you want the ball slightly forward in your stance is because you want the club to hit slightly up on the ball so that it gets it rolling smoothly. Too low and you might lift the ball or incur backspin, which you may not necessarily want.
Keep Your Head Still
Keeping your head still is a huge golf putting tip that basically anyone can put in practice immediately with a little discipline, and which should improve your putting accuracy.
Pretty much all of us have a tendency to want to respond immediately once the ball leaves the club face and starts rolling, but this is a recipe not just for inconsistency, but for inaccuracy in general.
Keep your head still (and your body still, for that matter) until you execute the putt and the ball has started rolling. Don’t lift your head to look to see where the putt is going until the ball is already several feet away.
Be Conscious of Your Grip
Some of us have a tendency to grip the putter too tightly, and some professionals have been outspoken about this as well. The problem is that, the harder you grip, the more rigid your forearms get, and the more fatigued you get, more quickly.
You want to grip the putter as loosely as you can without sacrificing control, and since your left hand is your lead hand, it’s acceptable to work a little more pressure through your grip with your right hand.
You want to grip loosely enough that you can feel the weight and swing of the clubhead in your hands as you execute the stroke.
Feel with Your Fingers
Make sure your fingers have good contact with the putter’s grip. Putting is a game of feel in many ways that driving isn’t; you need to be able to feel exactly where and how the putter face makes contact with the ball in order to read the feedback.
You can even drop your right forefinger down the shaft of the putter if you like as this may give you better control and afford better feedback, with the one caveat that if you do this, you still shouldn’t steer with it. Just use it for control and sensitivity.
Replace Your Golf Putter Grips
For those of you that love your putter and shaft combo, but feel something else is off somewhere, here’s a tip for you: consider replacing your golf putter grips.
You can replace your grips at home, and our golf putter grips are designed with an improved texture that boosts ergonomics and control. More importantly, our golf putter grips are designed to afford you better control over the putter face by removing rotation from the stroke, resulting in more accurate putting, more of the time.
Get Comfortable with Lag Putting
A putt is considered a lag putt anytime there are 30 feet or more between the ball and the hole. In other words, this is a long putt that you don’t necessarily want to sink, but you want to get close enough for a tap-in putt.
One of the keys to lag putting is making sure your speed is where it needs to be. It’s one thing if the putt goes a little tiny bit too far, as long as it ends up within about 3 feet of the hole, but it is equally true that you miss 100% of the putts you don’t get to the hole, too.
Another thing to help you shave some strokes off your game is to remember the 10% rule of lag putting. In other words, 10% of the distance of the total lag putt should be how far away you want to get from the hole. For instance, if the lag putt is 30 feet, you want to stop the ball within a 3 foot radius from the hole; if it’s a 50 foot lag putt, you want to get the ball about 5 feet from the hole.
Read the Grain of the Green
Think of the grain of the green as how the grass is growing. It can help or hinder your putts.
When you see a shiny, light green color, that means the blades of grass are laying away from you. If the color is a darker, richer green, that means the grain of the grass is oriented towards you.
A ball will roll over the former with much greater facility than it will roll over the latter, so take that into account. Being able to read the grain of the green will give you some insight into how fast and how far your putts will roll over it. Remember, the same amount of power will cause a ball to carry much farther over green if the grain is laying down, away from you, than it would roll if the grain was laying down towards you.
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