Hole Those Short Putts In Golf, Tour Alignment Sticks Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles
Hole Those Short Putts In Golf, Tour Alignment Sticks Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles

There’s nothing more frustrating in golf than doing a lot of hard work and getting the ball really close to the hole and then missing the short one. Particularly if you kind of knew that you were going to miss it. We see so many golfers get within three feet of the hole and their confidence just plummets. They expect to get the putt but deep down they know that there is a good chance that they are going to miss it whereas from 30 feet away they don’t expect to get it. So they actually approach it with less expectation and maybe a bit more confidence that well I’ll just roll this one down there and they put a better stroke on the longer putt than they do on the shorter ones.

So this exercise here is really designed to help you grove a nice consistent stroke and to help you hold particularly the short putts. So what I’ve done here is taken my two toll sticks and placed them just a few inches apart and basically it’s about half an inch wider than the width of your putter. So depending on the width of your putter you measure that, you measure the width of the toll sticks there. Then as you set up just make sure that your whole body feels very square to the sticks. So I’ve got my feet, my knees, my hips and my shoulders all square but my eyes are sitting directly between the gap, between the two sticks.

That way when I tilt my head I’m looking straight down the target line, straight to the hole and I want to go ahead and make a dozen or so practice swings just rocking the club backwards and forwards gently, trying to keep it between the sticks as much as possible. I don’t want to see the club wandering off too much. I want to feel that my stroke is straight back and straight through as much as possible. If I was to see the club go outside the line here and pull back across, that could mean a lot of putts are going to go down the left side likewise pulling it back on too much of an inside arch and shoving it outside to try and compensate putts there a few putts missing down on the right side.

So ideally we want to imagine that these two sticks are made up like little walls and we are just going to try and keep the putter running down that central grove between the two walls as accurately as possible and as quite close to the ground. We don’t need to lift the club up to get over the sticks; we try and run the clubs straight back and straight through as close as possible. And if you can do that consistently, just standing at home, maybe even just listening to the radio or watching the TV just try to keep the club grooved on that stroke your body will adapt to that position better so that when you go out on the golf course even on those little shaky three footers you don’t see the club wander off into the back stroke but you have a nice consistently grooved straight back and straight through putting stroke, you will hold more short putts and your score will improve.

 2013-06-27

There’s nothing more frustrating in golf than doing a lot of hard work and getting the ball really close to the hole and then missing the short one. Particularly if you kind of knew that you were going to miss it. We see so many golfers get within three feet of the hole and their confidence just plummets. They expect to get the putt but deep down they know that there is a good chance that they are going to miss it whereas from 30 feet away they don’t expect to get it. So they actually approach it with less expectation and maybe a bit more confidence that well I’ll just roll this one down there and they put a better stroke on the longer putt than they do on the shorter ones.

So this exercise here is really designed to help you grove a nice consistent stroke and to help you hold particularly the short putts. So what I’ve done here is taken my two toll sticks and placed them just a few inches apart and basically it’s about half an inch wider than the width of your putter. So depending on the width of your putter you measure that, you measure the width of the toll sticks there. Then as you set up just make sure that your whole body feels very square to the sticks. So I’ve got my feet, my knees, my hips and my shoulders all square but my eyes are sitting directly between the gap, between the two sticks.

That way when I tilt my head I’m looking straight down the target line, straight to the hole and I want to go ahead and make a dozen or so practice swings just rocking the club backwards and forwards gently, trying to keep it between the sticks as much as possible. I don’t want to see the club wandering off too much. I want to feel that my stroke is straight back and straight through as much as possible. If I was to see the club go outside the line here and pull back across, that could mean a lot of putts are going to go down the left side likewise pulling it back on too much of an inside arch and shoving it outside to try and compensate putts there a few putts missing down on the right side.

So ideally we want to imagine that these two sticks are made up like little walls and we are just going to try and keep the putter running down that central grove between the two walls as accurately as possible and as quite close to the ground. We don’t need to lift the club up to get over the sticks; we try and run the clubs straight back and straight through as close as possible. And if you can do that consistently, just standing at home, maybe even just listening to the radio or watching the TV just try to keep the club grooved on that stroke your body will adapt to that position better so that when you go out on the golf course even on those little shaky three footers you don’t see the club wander off into the back stroke but you have a nice consistently grooved straight back and straight through putting stroke, you will hold more short putts and your score will improve.