Why You Need This: In today's video I'm going to show you a great drill to help you hole more long, breaking putts.

There's always more than one line you can play to make a putt.

It's all about the speed of the putt to determine which line is optimal.

In this video, you'll learn:

• a simple drill to help ingrain the feel of how hard you need to hit putts,
• a way to make the hole bigger for you, so you can sink more putts,
• and the ideal distance you need to be hitting putts.

Let's get started.....

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 4:46

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, I’m going to show you one of my absolute favorite putting drills. It works with your speed control which is really going to help you to make a lot more putts and eliminate those three putts.

It also works with the amount of break that you’re playing, and learning that there’s not one particular line for a putt, there’s multiple lines, it all depends on the speed that you’re going to play them.

So here’s how this works. We set up with a 12-foot putt, or roughly a 12-foot. You can go a little farther, a little bit shorter.

I want to make sure that this putt has some break in it. This putt here has about 10 inches of break. I can play one that has a little bit more break, and actually makes it easier to miss this tee I’m going to talk about here in a second.

But what you don’t want to do is pick an almost straight putt. Really, really difficult to miss this tee if we’re going for a straight putt.

The way I do this is I go ahead and hit a few putt without any tee or anything in the way, and I find a ball that I’ve hit with really good speed that goes right in the center of the cup.

Then I’m going to mark that line so the ball rolled over this line, I’m going to mark that with a tee. I’m going to get to it in a minute why I’m doing this and how that’s going to help you to control your speed and your line.

But what I’m saying by a really good speed putt, if I’m hitting this putt correctly, and if it has the right speed to roll about a foot past the hole, if it’s rolling that slow and catching any part of this cup it’s going to fall in.

If it catches the right edge of the cup, the right lip, with that kind of speed it falls in. If it catches the left lip of the cub, it’s going to fall in.

Now if I was to hit this putt where it’s going to roll three or four feet past, maybe five feet past. As it hits that lip, it’s going to lip out or bounce out. Same on this side, so I’m really making the hole very small when I’m going this.

Also if I play the putt really slow, I may leave it short, I’m not going to make any of those, so obviously we don’t want to do that.

Also, if it’s going super, super slow, the ball wobbles around as it’s about to stop, so it really has less chance of holding its line.

Basically, what I’ve done here to set up this drill, I find a 12 to 14-footer with a good amount of break in it. I hit one perfect putt and then I put a tee right in the middle of that line, so if I hit that putt again it’s going to smack into that tee.

Now I’m going to work increasing and decreasing my speed to make sure that I get the line correct. So here, I’m actually going to hit this putt too hard.

If I miss this putt it’s going to roll four or five foot by. I’m going to try to keep it below that tee, take some break out and basically ram it in there.

So here really, really firm, below the tee. See if I can get one to go in. Oh, almost, barely lipped out. One side note on this, you’re not going to make a ton of these.

This isn’t a drill where you sit up here and make 15-20 in a row, that’s not the goal of this. The goal of this is to learn to control your speed and then line that goes with that speed.

There, so I hit it a little firmer again, I lipped out on the other side. Now you can see how if I have a little bit too fast a speed, both of those hit the lip.

If those were going slow, those would have fell in, but since they were going too fast, they lipped out and it makes the cup a little bit smaller.

Let me get one more try here on the fast one, then I’ll move to the slower side. That looks pretty good. All right, there we go, it rammed into the back, too much speed, kept it below the hole, but I saw when I sped this putt up it took some break out.

Then what you’re going to do is you’re going to slow the speed down. I’m going to play it above the tee and let it die down into the hole.

Here I want to get myself plenty of room to hit above the tee, let it curl on in there, oh, barely broke over. So again, barely less than a foot by speed, and you’ll see I just needed to play that a tiny bit higher.

Let’s go ahead and try one more and see if I can get one to actually go in here. That one looks pretty good. So you see well above that tee and that one actually went in.

When I hit my put with firm speed, I was all the way down here and the ball went in. When I hit my putt with slow speed, I was all the way up here, and the ball went in.

So you can see I have about an eight-inch-wide gap that I can actually hit into and make that putt. It’s actually bigger than the cup itself, but all depends on how much speed I’m playing.

Try this drill out. I guarantee you’ll learn a lot about your putting, you’ll find out if you’re hitting it a little too firm, or a little too slow, and you can adjust that. You’ll also be able to adjust your line.

Do this on two or three different putts, try to make at least two putts on each one. Two low, and two high, before you move to the next one, and I promise you guys you’ll be putting better, you’ll start to make those big putts and feel confident that you can control not only the line, but the speed.

All right guys, so for those of you that are members of the website, what I want you to do before you go any farther, is go into the Top Speed Golf Putting System.

If you go into the Instruction tab at the top of the website, click on Top Speed Golf System, and then the Putting System as you scroll down. Work through those to learn those key fundamentals.

There’s only a handful of things we really need to do well in putting, and we’re going to get the basics done there so that you can rely on your fundamentals your entire lifetime. It’s going to be muscle memory, you’re going to be able to ingrain that.

Then all you’ll need to work on is drills like this. Working on your speed control, your green reading, and the amount of break that you’re going to play to play your best golf and to make a ton of putts. We’ve got to get those fundamentals first.

So best of luck to you guys, I’ll see you in the Top Speed Golf Putting System. Let’s go ahead and get started.