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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
I'm not necessarily the greatest putter but I've gotten a lot better and frankly my biggest issue is reads. I recently played a round with my coach and while I have lots to work on, in his words I don't need to change a thing about my putting process. I switched to armlock a while back and it took longer than I expected to get really comfortable with it but it has paid off long term as I very rarely miss my line.
Most important thing is practice before your round. Show up early and spend at least 20 minutes just hitting putts. Preferably a half hour. First 5-10 minutes, just hit putts to get a feel for the greens and how fast they're rolling. The remainder, go through your whole routine on each putt. Make sure you hit a bunch from various distances, and everything outside of 10 feet focus entirely on speed. If you make a putt on the practice green that would have gone 8 feet by if it had missed the hole, that's a bad putt.
Next thing that works for me, I use the alignment tool on the ball (triple track is best in my opinion) to line up with the line I want to hit it. Check that you've got it lined up on the line you want, check it again. Even slightly off and it's a miss. Take the extra 5 seconds to get it right, preferably while others are lining up their own putts or even while they're chipping on if you're first to the green. Then all you have to worry about is speed, which is the thing to focus on anyway... Every putt is a speed putt.
The third thing is kind of part and parcel with the second, but being consistent in using the same ball does actually matter. But even I don't practice that very well as I always end up with somewhere between 3 and 6 balls every round that I've found that are perfectly good balls but are just randoms. If I just played with my tried and true ball every round, that's probably worth a stroke on the greens or maybe more.
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Thanks, as I admittedly do like… none of these things. I’ll hit the range beforehand and hit 30 but I’ll go on the practice green and hit <5 and think I’ve got a “feel” for it, so I meant it when I said I need tips lol.
I also switch balls around all the time and will play just about anything. Someone gave me a bunch of Kirklands which were fine to me at first but now I just feel like they hit weird. I don’t know why. What’s your “tried and true”?
Arm-lock looks interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone do it (in the groups I play in). I should probably buy a new putter, too, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lubicon
As my approach game got better (ie I hit more greens) I found my putting average got worse which had me stumped until I realized it was because my initial putts were from longer distance now. When my iron game sucked I was missing the green but my chipping got me closer to the hole than my longer irons were as I began missing fewer greens. That made my putting seem better. Perhaps there is some of that in your game and your putting is not as bad as it seems, you are just starting with longer putts.
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Ah you know what, that thought hadn’t even crossed my mind but you might have hit the nail on the head. When I started out I was definitely in a lot of situations where I was chipping it on from not too far away which let me get closer to the hole before my first putt and I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot longer puts now instead.
The closer putts still feel harder, but maybe it’s some sort of psychological thing based on how I’m thinking about my putting in general.