Difficulty Level: Pro

This drill builds on the basic Around the World drill. Once the Around the world drill gets easy for you the next step is to expand upon it.

This step gets us closer to our goal of making 90% of our 6 foot putts. Instead of using one putter length to measure the distance to the hole we will use two.

You will need 4 golf tees and 8 golf balls.

If you have a standard length putter it makes the drill very easy. Just hook the toe of the putter in the cup and lay the putter on the ground pointing directly away from the hole. Mark it with a tee. Then put the toe of your putter against the tee and mark it again. My putter is 34 inches so that makes the putt now 68 inches or 5 feet 8 inches. If you want to be exact bring a tape measure. If you do not have a standard length putter mark your putters shaft at 3 feet with a Sharpie. It is perfectly legal to do before a round and does not change the characteristics of your putter at all.

Swing the putter around and mark the green at four points exactly two putter lengths from the hole. You will now have golf tees on the top, bottom, left, and right of the hole.

In between the tees place two balls each so that you have a ring of balls all 6 feet to the hole. Now you are set up.

Working your way around the hole make every putt. Here is the kicker. If you miss you have to take all the balls out of the hole, and restart the drill. Do not stop this drill until all 8 balls are made in a row with no misses.

What I usually do is the Around the World drill from 3 feet first. This is usually very simple and I can do it on the first try. I then do the Around the World drill from 6 feet. Same rules apply. If I miss from 6 feet, I go back to 3 feet and start the entire drill again.

This helps put you in a pressure situation. There is a lot of pressure when you are putting your 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th 6 foot ball.

Finding a spot on the green with a good break to it is important also. At three feet you can usually pound the ball through most breaks so it really does not matter. But at 6 feet you have to be a little brave to hit the putt hard enough to take most of the break out of it, and keep it inside the hole.

Good Luck and Good Putting.

Coach Kip

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Difficulty Level: Amateur

This is the most basic and fundamental of all the drills. If you have already read this post that is OK because it is our intention to repeat this post many times. It is very important to keep this drill in rotation almost every time you have a putting practice session.

As we have said before it is ultra important to make 90% of your 6 foot putts. This drill not only reinforces proper technique, but it puts simulated pressure on you to make the putts.

You will need 4 golf tees and 8 golf balls.

If you have a standard length putter it makes the drill very easy. Just hook the toe of the putter in the cup and lay the putter on the ground pointing directly away from the hole. This is roughly 3 feet. If you want to be exact bring a tape measure. If you do not have a standard length putter mark your putters shaft at 3 feet with a Sharpie. It is perfectly legal to do before a round and does not change the characteristics of your putter at all.

Swing the putter around and mark the green at four points exactly at the end of the putter grip (or your 3 foot mark). You will now have golf tees on the top, bottom, left, and right of the hole.

In between the tees place two balls each so that you have a ring of balls all 3 feet to the hole. Now you are set up.

Working your way around the hole make every putt. Here is the kicker. If you miss you have to take all the balls out of the hole, and restart the drill. Do not stop this drill until all 8 balls are made in a row with no misses.

To make it even more difficult do the drill once clockwise and once counter clockwise. Now you have to make 16 balls in a row. If you do not get nervous once you get to ball 16, 17 and 18 then you are ready for the course.

No make this drill more difficult find a hole that has a good break to it. As you go around the hole you have to adjust for the break. You will end up putting a left to right break, a right to left break, a down hiller, and an up hiller.

Good Luck and Good Putting

Coach Kip

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Difficulty Level - Pro

Another great drill for you to do while you are still stuck inside.

In this drill you are going to need a while bunch of balls. Try to have more than 10.

In your living room, or on that piece of carpet that you have putt one ball to no particular spot. Make sure that it is at least 10 feet from you. If your piece of carpet is not long enough just putt it as far as you can.

With the remaining balls you are going to try to line up every one so that they are in as straight a line as possible leading right back to where you started. This will help on your touch and feel as you get used to your putter again.

If you can line up ten balls exactly then you are an excellent putter.

Line Em’ Up #2

Difficulty Level – PGA Tour

If you can do this then line up the balls next to each other so that they make a line across your putting stroke, or perpendicular to your putting direction.

Start lining them up to the right of your first ball. Then start lining them up to the left of your ball.

For a difficulty level of PGA Legend you can line your golf balls up in a line but in an alternating fashion. First to the left then to the right then back to the left and so on until you run out of balls.

In any of these drills I like to start with a colored ball, orange works great, if you want to be super manly you can start with a pink ball. The colored ball is your starting point.

Good luck and Good Putting. I hope to see you on the links soon.

Coach Kip

Here is my first attempt while setting this drill up at a range of about 10 feet(I am a little rusty with this one)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Difficulty level - Amateur

Putting is a great thing to do indoors in the winter, and during those rainy days in the spring. All you need is some good short carpet. If you do not have short carpet you can buy a pre-made putting mat at any golf store. I find that Golfsmith has the best selection of equipment right now. They have very reasonable prices too.

If you don’t want to buy a putting mat you can usually go to any carpet store and ask for some scraps of carpet or some old remnants depending on how big you want to go. We will give you some design ideas on how to make it break in another article.

Here is the drill:

Take a coin and toss it on the carpet. It can be anywhere. I like to just throw it out there and where it lands is where I putt. If it rolls then so be it, I still have to putt the putt. This gives you a little randomness to the putt and makes it feel a little more like the real thing.

Putt at least 3 balls but no more that 8 balls to that coin. 3 gives you a chance to correct mistakes and gives you a feel for the putt. More than 8 and they begin to just get in the way.

The goal is to putt the ball so that it stops exactly on top of the coin. If you can do this you are genius. I have never been able to stop one on top of the coin, ever.

Never leave a ball short on this drill. A putt that is left short will never go in the hole.

Then do repetition. Over and over again. Get really good at rolling your ball over a dime. Just think how good of a putter you will be when you can throw a dim out in the middle of your living room and hit it every time.

Alternative: Place the dime about two feet from a wall. Putt so that your ball rolls directly over the coin, but does not hit the wall. This will help with control and getting a feel for your putter. Do not worry about your carpet being slower or faster than your greens. This is more to get a feel for the putter. Once you know how the putter feels and how it will make the ball roll it does not take much to adjust do different playing conditions.

Good Luck and Good Putting

Coach Kip

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

In this blog we will refer to different putt lengths to help better judge your game and your attributes. NO MATTER WHAT DISTANCE IS BEING PUTTED THE SAME PUTTING STROKE IS USED. Sorry to yell but I am a coach and it happens sometimes. There are some different tactics that we will use depending on the length of the putt. Of course they are very arbitrary and you may need to adjust your personal preferences.

• Short Putts – 1-6 feet in length. Average golfers will make about 75% of these. Good putters will make about 90%. Tour players make about 95%. Our goal on this site is to teach you how to make every single one of these putts. We want to get you up in the 95% range. Why is this so important? If you can make over 90% of your 6 foot putts then it is not so difficult, and not so never racking when you have a putt of this distance. This is usually the putt for birdie or par, but if it is the putt for boogie it counts just the same. Making more of these putts will help the rest of your putting game, and your chipping game.

• Medium Putts – 6-15 feet in length. Average golfers will make about 30% of these. Good putters will make about 45%. Tour players make about 60%. You can see by the statistics that the tour players are starting to pull away from the rest. There is no reason for you not to get to the point that you are making 60% or more of these putts. I like to think of this as the attack range. You can still be very aggressive most of the time in trying to make these putts. These are the putts that can make a good round bad, or a good round great.

• Long Putts – 15 feet and longer. Average putters will make about 5% of these. Good putters will make about 15% of these. Tour players will make about 30%. After a certain point they are all just long putts that you have to try to get as close as possible, and give it a chance on going in. Believe it or not many times I will just kind of putt the ball down there trying to get it close. I call it throwing it at the hole and see what happens. Since I coach football I will make an analogy about it. Lets say a team has 3^rd and very long. Many times they will put their best receiver on a long pattern and just throw it to him and see what happens. Best case is that they catch it. If not there is a good chance that the player will get interfered with and draw a penalty. Most of the time it is incomplete and they will have to just punt. Worst case is that the ball gets intercepted. But a good quarterback will be able to guard against this using some technique. That is what we will focus on is guarding against the big mistake. We will concentrate a lot on getting the ball within 6 feet so that we can make the follow up putt at least 90% of the time.

We will keep this article active so that you may come back to it often.

Good Luck and Good Putting

Coach Kip

Bookmark It

Hide Sites