Why You Need This: Everyone wants "Putting Made Simple."

It can be one of the easiest things to do in golf.

But, NOT if you try to stay smooth, keep our hands soft, or keep the head still.

What? That can't be right.

Find out why those 3 "good" things can hurt your putting.

Let's get started .....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 6:26

Video Transcription:

Let me ask you if this has ever happened to you before. You find yourself over a pretty important putt.

Maybe it’s only six or seven feet, you’ve probably made hundreds if not thousands of these over your career, but now you find yourself over one of these to win a match, to shoot one of your lowest rounds, to save a par on a very important hole.

You try to tell yourself to do all the things you’ve heard before. You try to tell yourself to be nice and soft with your hands, to keep your head still, to really focus on positive thoughts, on really good things.

But you just can’t for the life of you, no matter what you visualize, you cannot picture this ball going into the hole. It doesn’t seem like it’s physically possible for that to happen.

You find yourself getting kind of tight or jerky with your hands. The smoother you try to make your hands, the jerkier they get.

Then you pull back the trigger, you make this long backswing, you decelerate, and all of a sudden, you miss that putt, and it’s so frustrating because you know it’s so simple, it’s so close you should be able to make these all the time.

Well in this video, I’m going to talk about some of those common myths, how that good instruction, those good tips can actually be hurting your putting.

How to get confident over those putts, and drain those short to mid-range putts every time and win those points.

Let’s go ahead and get started.

Let’s talk about this first misconception with putting. One of these things that is good advice but can really hurt your short putts. We all know that we want to be very soft.

We want to keep our hands soft on the putter, we want to make a nice, smooth stroke. We don’t want to be jerky at all, but what ends up happening if we stay too soft, and we try to make it too smooth, a lot of times we’ll take that putter too far back.

When we take that too far back, now all of a sudden if we accelerate through, we’re going to hit it way too far.

So if I take it way back here and then accelerate like I should, it’s going to be way too fast, going to roll over the hole. Now naturally, being a good athlete like you are, you’re not going to do that.

So what you tend to do when you stay soft, you take it a little too far back, and then you decelerate, the putter face gets unstable, you leave a lot of putts short, just barely short of the hole, and you miss a lot more putts that you shouldn’t miss, and you should be making there.

What we want to do, is we want to kick that habit once and for all, and get the right stroke length. What we want to do here, is we want to make sure that we’re making a nice aggressive stroke, we’re taking that putter back fairly short and accelerating on through.

What I’m going to do is I’m going to set up to this putt, I’m going to make a fairly short backstroke, and I’m going to notice with my eyes about how far that putter goes back as I’m making the backstroke.

So here, I’m going to set up one tee where my ball is. That’s where the ball was there. I’m going to notice when I made a good stroke, my putter came back to about right there, the putter face did, to hit this putt.

If you’re in a longer putt, it may need to go a little farther back, if you’re on a shorter putt, maybe a little bit shorter.

Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to multiply that by two. If that putter, let’s say that’s about two putter head widths, a little more than tow putter head widths, I’m going to go about four putter head widths in front. Two, three, four.

So this is just a rough idea here, doesn’t have to be exact. But I’m making for every one foot I go back, I want to make sure I accelerate through and go two feet forward.

There’s some great research done by Sam Putt Lab, where they took actual PGA Tour players, and that’s what they found.

For ever one foot they go back, they’re accelerating through and going two foot forward. That ensures that I accelerate through this putt.

Now what I’m going to do as I set up here now, I’m going to make sure when I make my backstroke, I’m going to stop about at this tee, and when I come through, I’m going to hold my finish about at this tee in the front.

If I do that, that’s going to ensure that every time I don’t decelerate, I accelerate through that putt, and I’m going to make a whole lot more of them.

Don’t worry about staying smooth, worry about making the correct length stroke, and you’re going to find you’re naturally more smooth all on your own.

Now the next piece is trying to keep our hands really soft and still in the grip. We’ve all heard how we want to be really soft with our hands.

Now a lot of times I find myself the softer I try to be with my hands, then the more jerky I get, the more jabby I get coming through contact.

So I’m telling myself, I’m trying with all my might to stay really, really nice and soft, but all of a sudden at impact, I kind of get a little jab at it, we don’t hit a very good solid putt.

Now I exaggerated there, but this is happening to a small amount, just a little fraction off could throw your putter face alignment off, you’re going to miss the putt.

What I found is if we can take the focus away from our hands, and bring it in to our elbow, that’s going to make things a lot more consistent.

What I like to focus on, is keeping my elbow as I go in my backstroke moving down, and then as I come through, I’m just going to move that elbow up and then my hands just track right along with it.

When I take the focus away from my hands, and put it into my elbow, it automatically smooths my hands out, makes it much easier to stay consistent, and I make a lot more putts.

Now piece number three is to keep your head still. This one by itself isn’t a bad tip at all. If we start to move our head around at all, that’s really going to give us a lot of problems.

Essentially what we’re doing there, is when our head moves, our eyes or our hand-eye coordination gets all thrown out of whack.

It’s the same thing as somebody taking this golf ball and moving it around in your peripheral vision. It’s going to make it very tough to be consistent.

So keeping your head still isn’t bad, but what I have found is that a lot of times when players keep their head still, they still find a way to kind of move their body, their legs and hips are moving around, and that can lead to a lot of inconsistency.

With all great putters I’ve ever seen, they’re keeping their entire body very still, they only thing that’s moving is their shoulders are rocking, their hands and arms are moving, but their eyes, their hips, their feet are staying very stable. I have a great hack, a great trick to help that happen.

As I set up this golf ball, what I want to do is I want to feel the weight in my feet. I want to feel the pressure throughout my entire feet. I want to feel very balanced, and very 50/50 weight distribution.

As I make this putting stroke, I want to keep that weight distribution exactly the same throughout the entire stroke. I don’t want to be jerky, I don’t want to flip the ball, I want to make sure that I stay nice and stable, that way we can make a lot more of those putts.

If we do those three things, you’re going to make a lot more of those putts, you’re going to feel confident.

You’re going to feel like your putting stroke is smooth, and you’re going to be the guy that is Mr. Consistent, Mr. Reliable, you’re going to be the one that everybody wants to take the putt when it really matters.

Now I don’t want us to stop here. We talked about a lot of really good tips in this video, but we have to build the basic stroke first. We have to groove our stroke. We have to build the fundamentals so that we can take these last steps, or these cheats to make more putts with what we already have.

What I want you guys to do is go to the Putting section of the Top Speed Golf System, start working through video number 1, number 2, number 3.

Work your way through those drills and those videos. That way your putting stroke becomes automatic, you build that foundation, you build the fundamentals, and then when you get to the green, you’re going to feel that much better, that much more confident.

So go to the Putting System, I’ll see you guys there. Let’s go ahead and groove that stroke, that way we don’t have to think about it and it becomes completely natural.

Let’s get started.