2 Hours on the practice green

[mddubya]

Good lord I Can't putt. I went out today to the practice green, the wind was just to high to consider a round of golf. So I take my putter and 4 balls with me. I promised myself before I went out there that I wouldn't stop till I'd practiced for a while and made 4 putts in a row. A little over 2 hours later I finally was able sink 4 maybe 8 footers in a row. I started out lining the balls up in 1 foot increments, each one farther away from the hole beginning 3 feet away. It took me over an hour to finally sink all 4 of those in a row. Then I fanned the balls out around the hole in a semi circle about 8 feet out and spent another hour before I was able to sink all 4 in a row. I tried the placing a penny on the ground behind the ball and another on the backside of the putter to see if my stroke was straight. Supposedly when you follow through with your putter stroke, the 2nd penny should drop off in a straight line from the one on the ground to the hole. I saw I was pulling my stroke to the inside just a bit and I was missing the majority of the putts to the left. After this revelation I started compensating for that and began missing them to the right. Another tweak and surprise, I'm missing to the left again. That and of course coming up short when it looks like I had the line right.

To give you an idea of how bad my putting is, the last time I played a round, I played 9 holes, and was striking the ball pretty good with everything but my putter. 9 holes, 21 putts out of a score of 45. I have a Boomerang and practice on it almost everyday and have gotten pretty good at it. But when I get on a real green I can't seem to translate it over to a real putting surface. Any practice tips other than what I'm already doing?

 

[SiberianDVM]

Do you use a line on your golf ball? That was the one biggest help for me, especially for putts over 10 ft.

Other than that?......I got nothin'.

 

[cwo2lt]

Any practice tips other than what I'm already doing?

Pretty much what you're doing but a drill that helped me was to start at 3 ft and make 25 in a row, move back to 4 ft and make 25 more and so on back as far as you wish. You can cut down the numbers too, I reduce the number to 15 at the 8 ft mark.

For long lag putts just go for an area around the cup, say a 3ft circle and try to put 10 into the "ring". I try to do that before a round as well and it's made a huge difference for me.

 

[SilverUberXeno]

Find a level surface and make sure you can hit a putt straight. Once you can do that, you can work on your distance/green reading. But Tiger's eyes would be useless if he couldn't get the ball rolling on its intended line.

 

[5iron]

Try to feel confident about yourself and trust you can make some putts. I know that confidence doesnt compare to skill or technique but if you doubt you are gonna make a putt, it makes the putt that much harder. Nice job practicing on what you feel needs help, so you can improve your game !

 

[mddubya]

Do you use a line on your golf ball? That was the one biggest help for me, especially for putts over 10 ft.

Other than that?......I got nothin'.

I've tried everything else other than hypnosis, lol, I'll give the line a shot.

 

[Eracer]

Forget about putting to a hole for a while.

Find a level spot, make a box 18"-24" on each side, using four tees stuck in the ground. Now do a similar ladder drill using nine balls. Put the first ball two feet away from the box, then place the next ball six inches behind the first, continue placing the other seven balls in a line going back to about ten feet. The idea here is to limit your backswing with each putt. You will need to give yourself a little more room as the putts get longer, but try not to make the distance between balls more than a foot. Now imagine a hole on the front edge of the box, and try to make all nine balls stop inside the box.

This is a great drill for working on distance control, while reducing the tension caused by focusing on a small target.

Once you can get all ten balls to stop in the box, do the drill with your 5-iron.