Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn putting fundamentals for a pure stroke.

I review all the major moves that you need to drain more putts.

This is a great video if you're a beginning or intermediate player.

And it's a good recap if you're a more advanced player (it never hurts to review the key fundamentals).

Putter Grip

In the video, you'll see how to grip the putter with your left wrist on the "lifeline"...

And how you should lock your wrist for  a consistent stroke.

Stance

I suggest putting with a comfortable and stable stance.

I'd keep your stance within shoulder width apart.

You can have a close stance if you want, but it makes a little more sense to widen your stance a bit if it's really windy on the course.

Ball Position

Imagine there's a line right up the middle between your feet.

Position the ball to be slightly ahead of this line.

The reason why you want to have it slightly up in the stance is that you want the putter to make contact on a slightly ascending path.

This will help you get a smoother, end-over-end roll on the green.

Bonus tip...add a bit of forward shaft lean to the putter to roll the ball smoothly.

Head Position

You should be able to look straight down at the ball, or close to it.

Here's a great tip...

Stand over the ball as you normally would and drop another ball from the area just in front of your eyes.

If the ball drops even with the ball or slightly more towards your body, you're in good shape.

Pro Tip for Feel

You want to feel like your placing topspin on the ball; it'll feel like you're brushing up on the ball.

Keep the ball on the ground and have it roll end over end.

What's Next?

Use the tips you learned in this video, head out to the putting green, and drain more putts!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 8:37

Video Transcription:

All right guys, welcome back. Here’s a great putting video. I’m going to walk through all the major pieces of putting. For those of you, maybe a beginning golfer, intermediate golfer, or even an advanced golfer that wants a recap, and a look over their putting technique, make sure it looks really nice.

In this video we’re going to go over the entire thing, and we’re going to start out from the grip. I think it’s probably one of the most important things, especially for beginning golfers.

The tendency is to hold it kind of like we would hold a full swing, where it’s down in our fingers. I’ll open up this hand, you would see that’s running more down my fingers, the meaty part of my hand would be on top of the grip.

Well in putting, we want to take your lifeline, so if you look at the inside of your hand there’s this crease that goes from the base of your index finger knuckle right there and runs up between the two pads on the bottom of your hand.

Now if I look at my putting grip, the top of my grip, I want to put the corner of that grip right into that crease in my hands. So now the putter is running at more of an angle with my hand there.

When I do that, you’ll see it looks something like this where now the putter’s running up between my hands. That’s that meaty part of the hand on top of the grip, now it’s going to be more on the side of the grip or underneath.

What this allows me to do, is it allows me to kind of lock in my wrist. You’ll notice that also my thumb is kind of running down the top of the grip. It’s a little bit sideways, it’s not perfectly down the top like this, it’s a little sideways, but it’s mostly running down the top and I’ve got that lifeline in there.

That’s going to lock my wrist in this way rather than having the grip more in my fingers and creating this kind of an angle.

Now my putter shaft is running a bit more down my forearm, an extension of my forearm. My right hand, all I’m going to do is put it on the putter.

You can do a multitude of grips, but basically what I’m going to do is I’m going to position that in a way where it’s lined up with my left forearm there.

If I wanted to go left hand low which would be like this, if I just take that hand off that would still be running down the crease of my lifeline there, on the crease of my putter.

So this is left-hand low, and again you can see I still have those forearms lined up with the putting shaft. That’s the big key there, that’s a nice way to grip the putter.

We could even do a claw grip where we do something like this. That left hand is still on there, very, very similar. No matter which specific type of grip you use, we want to have that overall idea. Forearms lined up with the putter shaft, and that lifeline lined up with the corner of the grip there.

From there, let’s go ahead and take our stance. If I’m going this direction, I want to have a stance that’s comfortable.

Some players will set up with a stance that’s really wide like this, and it just seems a little bit unathletic, or almost like you’re ready to start moving around, going in different directions. I guess you could say it’s a little too athletic, even.

But we don’t want to get in the position like this, typically, you could putt like this, it’s not the end of the world. But we’re going to tend to not be as rhythmatic when we’re in a position like this.

This is a very powerful position, it makes me want to feel like I’m going to move around a lot. I want to go ahead and have my feet just kind of like I was standing and talking to somebody, about that far apart.

If you want to put them a little closer, that’s fine. If it gets real windy outside, if you get a real close stance like this, you can get kind of blown over. So anywhere in that range is going to be fine.

What about ball position? Now what I like to think of is I’m going to hit the back of this ball. If I drew a line from the back of that ball, that’s going to be about in the center of my stance, or even a little bit up toward the front of my stance just very, very slightly.

The reason for this is, if I want to hit the ball really well, if I want to get that nice end-over-end roll, get that ball rolling across the green really smoothly, my putter actually needs to be moving up in a vertical direction as it’s hitting the ball.

My putter head is actually moving up this way as I’m hitting the ball. I have a little bit less loft on the face, and that’s going to get a good topspin roll on it.

That brings me to my next piece which is once I have the back of the ball in the center or a little tiny bit up, now how much forward shaft lean? If I get a lot of forward shaft lean, I could pop that ball into the ground, and it’s going to start bouncing.

If I have too much forward shaft lean, so I have so much to where it’s a negative angle, now I can get that ball to launch up in the air and star bouncing on the green. I want that ball to roll end over end.

I want to go ahead and just get just enough forward shaft lean to where my left wrist is feeling pretty locked in, that’s a good key to have. Then I’m feeling like I’m a little bit behind the ball, like my eyes are looking down the target line.

Now if I’m looking from this way down the target line, I would like to have my eyes pretty close to being over top of the ball. I don’t want my eyes way back in here, so if I dropped a ball from the center of my eyes, I don’t want it way back in here, five or six inches inside of this.

I definitely don’t want it to where I’m so far over that if I dropped a ball it would be outside of the target line. I’d like for that, again, I’m going to be set up slightly behind it, kind of imagine Jack Nicklaus, a little bit behind it.

Not to that extreme, but I’m looking down the target line, and if I’m dropping a ball between my eyes, it’s going to be somewhere there over the line.

EyeLine Golf, hence the name, has a great putting mirror. I go over some great drills in the Top Speed Golf Putting System on the website, where we have a little putting mirror down here and I show you some drills to work on that, to get your eyes lined up perfectly.

Now our stance is good, we have a good grip, we have a good ball position, all that’s looking really nice. How do you want to feel like what’s going on with the stroke?

I’m going to give you a little bit of a pro tip here. I could tell you just to rock the putter back and forth, just in a nice gentle arc, almost imagine like a grandfather clock to where it goes up and then down and through. So it’s almost like just doing this.

That’s really not how the best putters in the world putt. That’s not bad, you could putt pretty good doing this, you’re going to eliminate a lot of three-putts, you’ll probably make a lot of the putts you’re supposed to make. But if I want to make a ton, again I need to get that kind of topspin roll on there.

If you watch the best putters in the world, what they’re going to do is they’re going to have that putter slightly lower to the ground on the backstroke, and as they come through, because I said that putter’s moving up, then as I come through that putter’s going to get a little bit higher on the ground.

Now I’m not trying to make it go really high like this. I’m not trying to artificially push it low, but all I’m doing is I’m taking my left elbow, my left shoulder, and I’m letting it round under because I have some forward shaft lean.

Again, because I have some forward shaft lean here, this is locked in. As it rounds under, that’s going to keep it fairly low to the ground.

As I come on through that’s going to rock up, and that’s going to take it higher off the ground. For example, if I had no forward shaft lean and I was here, and I had my hands side by side like this and I rocked under, then I would get off the ground.

With forward shaft lean, and because my left shoulder’s higher at address as I rock back, it’s going to stay lower to the ground. So this is going to rock under, and then I’m going to feel like I’m putting topspin on the ball, almost like the back left of my hand, like I said, it’s nice and locked in there.

I’m going to let that roll toward the target like the back of the hand’s just moving toward the target in the follow through. So not very handsy when I’m doing that, I’m just keeping everything kind of locked in and letting it roll.

Now finally, I want this putter shaft to release a little bit. As I come back, I’m going to feel a little bit of this, this is my backstroke. Imagine there’s a slightly little angle, I’m going to feel that putter with momentum kicking forward that way.

This is the sensation that I’m going to get from my hands. Let’s imagine my hand was dead still, I would feel that putter head kicking forward, kicking toward the cup in the distance.

As I release this putter, it’s going to release toward my target. I’m going to have a little bit of rotation on the face. If that’s straight up and down, I’m going to have a little bit of rotation going back and through, not very much though.

It’s going to be a nice, gentle, small arc. Again, I’m not trying to manipulate the rotation of the putter, it’s going to arc back and through.

Now let’s put it to the test. It’s all good to say, OK, we need to do all these things, but can I really putt? That’s what we’re really wondering now. This guy talks a lot, but can he putt at all.

Let’s go ahead and knock down about five or six balls. I’ll see if I can make five or six 12-footers in a row for you guys, and show you the technique.

All right guys, so one of the things we want to concentrate on is making sure that we’re hitting it nice and slow. I don’t want to have a lot of speed on it. That way if it does happen to catch one of the lips, it’s actually going to fall in instead of lipping out.

A lot of times I’ll see players that are lipping out a lot, and they think they’re getting the wrong line, when in reality they’re just hitting too hard.

Obviously I have to hit it hard enough to get there, but I recommend around 6 inches to 12 inches past the cup is a pretty good place to aim. That’s a really good thing to keep in mind as you’re putting.

Also, don’t want to putt it very hard because my camera, which is about a $1,200 camera sitting behind it, I don’t want to break the lens on that for sure.

So this is a good way, put something valuable back there and that’ll keep you from really ramming it as you practice. Put a little pressure on you. So here’s my 6 putt, let’s see if I can drain this last one.

All right guys, best of luck. Go out there and make some putts.