When I recently went to see GOLF Top 100 Teacher Stephen Sweeney for help fixing my putting, he asked me a simple question.
“When you miss putts, do you know why you miss them?”
After thinking for a moment, I realized that I did not — and that’s the case with most recreational golfers. When a putt doesn’t drop, golfers are programmed to immediately come up with a reason for the miss. But for most, they put the blame on the wrong things.
That’s why Sweeney, who coaches Tour pros such as Ludvig Aberg and Collin Morikawa, suggests his students use a simple drill on the greens that reveals the reason for their misses. That way, they can zero in on their actual putting flaws and work on improving the weakness.
Check out the drill in the video below.
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When you are putting, there are four keys you need to focus on.
1. The read.
2. The speed.
3. The face angle (start line).
4. The strike location.
If any one of those variables are off, it can cause a missed putt. Sweeney’s drill ensures all four are dialed in — and reveals which is off on a miss.
The drill is simple to set up. First, choose a putt and push a tee deep into the ground to mark your spot. Next, read the putt and get an idea for where it will roll on its journey to the hole. Grab four ball marks (or tees) and create two gates roughly the width of the hole between your ball and the hole, roughly breaking the putt into thirds. Then, hit the putt with the goal of rolling the ball through both sets of gates and into the hole.
If you fail to roll the ball through both gates and into the hole, you’ll know that one of the four variables was not quite right. For example, if the ball rolls through both gates but not into the hole, you may have misread the putt. Or, if you roll it through the first gate but miss the second, it could be that your speed is off. Additionally, if you miss the first gate, you’ll know your start line was off.
“What we want to do is make sure we are blaming the right things,” Sweeney says.
Once you do this drill consistently from different spots, you will get a great idea of why your putts are actually missing. And from there, you can work on improving in the areas that are actually weaknesses.
