How To Improve Your Putting Practice Drills

Here's How:

1. Use the practice green to guage speed and work on distance control. Distance control (sometimes called speed control) should be the focus when practicing putting.
2. Hit your putts at a ball marker, not at a hole, to start with. Don't immediately try to make putts - simply roll the ball toward a ball marker you've put down about six feet away. Think about the stroke and centering the ball on the putter face.
3. Set down distance markers and alternate putting to different distances. Set ball markers, clubs or some other markers at 10-foot intervals, out to 30 feet. Alternate hitting balls to the different distances. This helps hone distance control and feel.
4. To practice long putts, hit from one site of the putting green to the other, tryig to stop your ball just at the fringe. Making a 70-footer is something we're very unlikely to do, so it doesn't make sense to practice those very long putts by aiming at the cup. You'll only be disappointed when the ball doesn't go in.
5. Practice making putts, not missing them. What does that mean? When you are ready to putt at a hole in the practice green, start by putting from shorter distances. If you're practicing 20-footers by aiming at the cup, you're probably only hurting your confidence.
6. Also, when aiming at the hole, putt from a flat part of the practice green. Short, flat putts are the ones you have to make to get better, and making those builds confidence.
7. Always end your practice session by making short putts. Don't walk off the green on a miss. Force yourselve to make multiple putts in a row to end the session - even if you have to putt from 6 inches to do it. In his article on a proper warm-up session, instructor Michael Lamanna recommends ending your putting warmup before a round by making 25 straight 6-inch putts.

Tips:

1. Visualize to stay positive. Confidence plays a huge role in putting. As you stand over putts on the practice green, visualize a trough leading from your putter to the cup and imagine hearing the sound of the ball dropping into the cup.
2. Put down a chalk line to practice keeping your putter on-line. You can find a chalk line in a hardware store - it's that string carpenters snap to a surface to leave a chalk imprint.
3. Practice keeping your putter on line and hitting the sweet spot in your living room. Use an alignment tool (a ruler, for instance) and putting aids you can buy to affix to your putter's head that will help with centering the stroke.

What You Need

• Putter
• Putting green
• Putting aids