When I recently went to see GOLF Top 100 Master Stephen Sweeney for Help me fix my problemhe asked me a simple question.
“When you miss putts, do you know why you miss them?”
After thinking about it for a moment, I realized I don’t – and that’s the case with most recreational golfers. When a putt doesn’t fall, golfers are programmed to immediately come up with a reason for the miss. But for the most part, they put the blame on the wrong things.
That’s why Sweeney, who coaches Tour professionals such as Ludvig Aberg and Collin Morikawa, suggests to his students that they use a simple drill on the greens that reveals the reason for their misses. In this way, they can zero in on their current pointing out faults and working to improve the weakness.
Check out the drill in the video below.
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Because you miss putts
When it comes down to it, there are four keys you need to focus on.
1. The reading.
2. The speed.
3. The angle of the face (starting line).
4. The place of strike.
If one of these variables is off, it can cause a putt miss. Sweeney’s drill ensures that all four are marked – and reveals who is off in a miss.
The drill is simple to set up. First, choose a putt and push a tee into the ground to mark your spot. Next, read the putt and get an idea of where it will roll on its journey to the hole. Take four ball marks (or tees) and create two gates roughly the width of the hole between your ball and the hole, 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 don’t get the ball through both doors and into the hole, you know that one of the four variables wasn’t right. For example, if the ball goes through both holes, but not into the hole, you may have missed the putt. Or, if you go through the first gate but miss the second, it could be that your speed is off. Also, if you miss the first gate, you know your starting line was off.
“What we want to do is make sure we’re hitting the right things,” Sweeney says.
Once you do this drill consistently from different places, you’ll get a great idea for what your putti are really missing. And from there, you can work on improving the areas that are really weak.
