Here’s a really important question is; how can you aim your putts better? And I think we really need to understand that when we miss putts on the golf course, it’s not always the fault of a poor stroke, and it’s not always the fault of a bubble on the green that made the ball miss. Sometimes the ball is rolled perfectly through and accurate, and sometimes the putt was absolutely smooth as pointing exactly in the line that you were aiming. But the fault might have been that you were aiming in the wrong direction. So that you’re actually bound to miss the putt if you hit it well because you weren’t aiming in the right place. So here we’ve got the cane lining up towards the camera, notice it’s not aimed towards the hole; that’s deliberate, the camera is now my target. The important thing with my aim here is that my body is perfectly lined up with this cane; so want to see the toes lined up parallel, the knees, the hips, and the shoulders and everything parallel to the target. You notice I’m saying parallel to the target not at that target, my feet should not aim at the target because my feet and not my ball; my ball is aimed at my target, my feet are on left of my target. I then go ahead and make my stroke and my stroke should be square to the aim line, that’s got my body now lined up. The next thing to line up correctly is the club face. Now hopefully with your putter you should have a square line on the back which is pointing perpendicular to the front edge of the putter, and that should therefore point directly towards your target line as well. So my putter is on top of the orange cane, my feet are square to it, everything is nicely lined up now, I then go ahead and make my stroke and the putter should roll out along the aiming point. Now the next question therefore is; well, where should the aiming point be? The aiming point should not always be the hole because the ball will have a certain degree of break on most putts. Very rarely is a putt actually dead straight. So you could aim every putt on the golf course dead straight and I’d suggest maybe only 10%, 20% would actually find the bottom of the hole, certainly from long range, most putts will have a degree of breaking. So it’s important that we’re not always aiming and lining up at the hole but we’re picking a spot to the left side or the right side of the hole aiming at that, and then making a straight stroke. We quite often see that people that line up really carefully, they know where they’re going to aim, but then something instinctively makes them stroke towards the hole; they make a pulled putt or a push putt trying to swing towards the hole. Actually once you’ve lined up and everything is square, your putt should be exactly down your aiming point line not towards the hole. And if you can improve your aim you’ve got a good stroke, you’ve read the green correctly, you’ll hole a lot more putts if you’re aiming correctly. 2014-10-09