3 Skills To Improve Your Putting
/I am very fortunate to be able to work with some high talented players on numerous parts of their games. But what I find interesting is that many of these players don't fully understand the essential skills required to further develop their putting performance. Without understanding these keys elements, it makes improvement more difficult. Arm yourself with these 3 simple keys to improve your practice and ultimately, reduce the amount of putts taken.
GREEN READING
The better the player, the better they are able to read greens well. Well, they will more often then not get the direction of break correct but not always the amount. We have also heard that it requires years of practice to hone in on this skill. That in my opinion, is completely false. I am very fortunate to work with some very special kids. We have been able to accelerate their green reading skills by teaching them AimPoint Express. AimPoint Express is a super simple green reading process that provides golfers a better understanding of how much break to play on any putt. Better yet, it will reduce the amount of time it takes to read a green. Nice little feature to help speed up play.
STARTING DIRECTION
Starting the golf ball on your intended line at your aim-point is a high priority skill set. Typically we will see poor putters struggle to consistently start their golf ball on their intended line. On the other hand, better putters are more consistent with this skill set, so they increase the likely hood of making the putt. We teach players to understand how to improve this key factor and provide a clear blueprint to train.
SPEED CONTROL
Successfully controlling speed on putts is the corner stone of great putting. Especially when it comes to reducing 3-putts and increasing the capture width of the hole on those must-make putts.
SIMPLE PUTTING ASSESSMENT
So now that we clearly understand the 3 keys to improve your putting, how do we go about improving these putting skills? First, we need a clear understanding of what our main issues is. Follow this really simple plan to understand your tendencies.
- Find a breaking 20 foot putt.
- Perform your read.
- Place two tees 12 inches in front of your golf ball on your intended line and then another about half way down your line (similar to video shown).
- Place a string 12 inches beyond the hole.
- Hit 5-8 putts but change locations after every putt.
Goal of this is to see if we can read and visualize the ball rolling across the green, start ball on intended line and match up speed, with starting point and read.
CHECKS AND BALANCES
The drill will show someone which of the 3 essential putting skills is the weakest. Now devise a plan to work on that specific skill. See how I said specific skill? We can't head to putting green and practice like always. By that, I mean throwing down a few golf balls and start hitting them to holes. This isn't purposeful practice nor will it help you improve your weakest putting skill. We need to isolate each putting skill set separately and need specific games attached that individual skill set.
PUTTING SKILLS GAME
Image below is a putting line assessment game Dennis received from Dr. Rick Jensen. Dr. Jensen is a golf performance consultant, sports psychologist and creator of Certified Golf Coaches Association. This is one of the many assessments Dr. Jensen takes players through. We take our players through the same assessments he does with his players. How do you compare?
At Dennis Sales Golf, we provide the best putting instruction in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas. Each instructional session starts with our unique comprehensive putting assessment to accurately determine performance issues. We then provide expert putting instruction to enhance skills and provide practice blueprint to continue improvement. During each 2 hour putting lesson, we will use SAM PuttLab to measure stroke tendencies, use Blast Motion to help with speed control and teach AimPoint Express concepts.