Putting Distance Control

Video Transcript

One of the hard things for people, particularly if they have not practiced a lot on the putting green, is to say, well how hard to I hit the ball to get it to this hole that is a distance away, how do I know how hard. One way that may be helpful is to kind of bowl the ball in your mind. I do this in competition. I take my hand with the ball on the ground right here and I am going to do this with my arm. In my mind I take my hand back to the distance which I need to take it back if I were going to roll the ball to that distance up there. Now I am going to take this ball as a practice thing to show you how it works. Watch how far back I have to swing my arm to get the ball there. I have to judge a little bit because I am into the grain; you have to read that, and into the grain will make me take it a little farther back. So I am taking it back and then rolling the ball to the hole. Let’s see how we did for distance. Pretty darn good. Now watch this. I am going to try to feel the same thing as I putt the ball here. I am going to feel the backswing I just made with my throw, take a practice one, there I felt it. Now I am going to take the putter in my hands and do the same thing I did with rolling it. Watch how close those two balls end up. You see the feel of taking it back and going through on a little bit of a rolling pattern can be very useful when you go out to play. So without taking a lot of extra time, when your turn to putt is coming up, just give it that little rolling feel, get up to the ball and do the same thing for your backswing, get to the ball and do exactly the same thing when you putt. You will see that you can control your distance much better and much more consistently.

Gary Wiren
Trump International Golf Club
3505 Summit Blvd.
West Palm Beach, FL. 33406
Tel: 800-FOR-GARY
Tel: 800-367-4267

Dr. Gary Wiren was the PGA Teacher of the Year in 1987 and is also author of the PGA Teaching Manual. He is listed as one of Golf Magazine's Top 100 Teachers and Golf Digest's #12 instructor in the world.

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