Developing a sense of touch for shots around the greens.

A while ago I was helping a student with his putting. We had worked to get him into a comfortable stance and posture and aimed correctly down the target line, but his putting stroke was sort of a stabbing action and the balls were either rolling too far past the hole or not rolling up to it.

I asked him what he was trying to do when he swung the putter. His reply was that he had worked out a formula where he tried to take the putter back one inch for every foot of putt. For example, if he faced a ten-foot putt, he would look at his putter and try to measure a back swing that was ten inches in length, and then he would hit the ball. All his attention was toward the putter and not toward his objective, the hole.

When he explained this to me I took the putter from his hand and asked him to try tossing a ball toward the hole. He looked at me as if I was crazy and said, "that isn’t a f------ golf lesson!" I laughed and asked him to humor with me while I made my point. He tossed some balls toward the hole, the first few went either too far or to short, but after 4 or 5 tries he started to toss the balls exactly the correct distance.

I then had him try to toss a ball to several different holes on the practice green. The balls all stopped with a foot or two of each hole. I asked him what he was thinking about in order to judge how far to toss the balls. He said he was just looking at the holes and tossing the balls. That was exactly my point. Our attention must be focused on the task, rolling the ball the correct distance to get it to the hole. It is difficult to do that if a person has their mind cluttered up with technical thoughts about how to swing the putter and their attention directed down at the putter or the ball.

I suggested to my student that once he had aimed the putter and taken his stance that all his attention should be on his target. We set him up with a straight putt of about 6 feet in length. He aimed his putter, assumed his stance, and then turned his head to look at the hole. He looked at the hole until he had a clear picture of it in his mind, then he turned his head back to the ball and swung the putter. He sunk six in a row!

He turned to me with a big grin on his face and said that he had never made that many putts in a row, ever.

To give ourselves the best chance of judging how big a swing is needed for putts, chips and pitch shots, once the club is aimed and the stance taken, it is best to have all our attention focused on where we want the ball to go, not on how we are going to swing the club. Focusing on the target will beat focusing on technique every time!

Have fun out there!