What Is The Gate Putting Drill And How Will Help My Putts (Video) - by Pete Styles
What Is The Gate Putting Drill And How Will Help My Putts (Video) - by Pete Styles

So what is the gate drill and how can it help improve your putting? Well simply the gate drill is probably the most commonly used putting drill on any practice putting green before any PGA Tour event you’ll ever see. And the gate drill is as simple as this; we take two tee pegs at the back two tee pegs at the front, and we place them just wide enough that your putter can fit through the gate. So as I bring the club back it fits through the gate this side and likewise through the gate this and that should be directly in line with your intended target my intended target here is the camera not this hole over this way.

Now depending on how proficient you are with this, you can widen and lessen the gap. So here I have probably got three or four millimeters either side of my putter head and the point of this now if I take the ball out of the way, is that I can watch whether that club comes back through the back gate and through, through the front gate nice and smoothly. It grains in a nice straight, straight back through – a straight back and straight through putting stroke. If I had a big curl in and curl out putting stroke sort of inside square inside, or even outside square outside putting stroke, this would really show that I have got a bit of a problem. So the gate putting drill you could practice this at home using maybe some books or some of the golf balls or even just on the surface of your carpet to make sure you straight back, straight through. But here we’ve got some tee pegs pushed into the ground a couple of millimeters; either side of the toe either side of the hill, setting up in there and if you practice stroke straight back straight through, straight back and straight throw. If I make a mistake and I am puling the side bang I knock one of the tee pegs over pushing it through push out there and I hit the other tee peg so I can immediately identify whether I have made a mistake or not. If I then put the putter in there, no ideally I don’t want to watch this putter going back and watch it going through, I just want to make my normal straight back straight through stroke and I should miss the gate on either side. I can practice doing that on shorter and mid-length putts. On longer putts it can get a bit more tricky because the longer putts you might have a bit more inside in the backswing and inside in the follow-through shape to your stroke. But certainly to make more shorter putts, the gate drill is an excellent practice drill one widely used by PGA Tour pros. 2014-10-10

So what is the gate drill and how can it help improve your putting? Well simply the gate drill is probably the most commonly used putting drill on any practice putting green before any PGA Tour event you’ll ever see. And the gate drill is as simple as this; we take two tee pegs at the back two tee pegs at the front, and we place them just wide enough that your putter can fit through the gate. So as I bring the club back it fits through the gate this side and likewise through the gate this and that should be directly in line with your intended target my intended target here is the camera not this hole over this way.

Now depending on how proficient you are with this, you can widen and lessen the gap. So here I have probably got three or four millimeters either side of my putter head and the point of this now if I take the ball out of the way, is that I can watch whether that club comes back through the back gate and through, through the front gate nice and smoothly. It grains in a nice straight, straight back through – a straight back and straight through putting stroke. If I had a big curl in and curl out putting stroke sort of inside square inside, or even outside square outside putting stroke, this would really show that I have got a bit of a problem. So the gate putting drill you could practice this at home using maybe some books or some of the golf balls or even just on the surface of your carpet to make sure you straight back, straight through.

But here we’ve got some tee pegs pushed into the ground a couple of millimeters; either side of the toe either side of the hill, setting up in there and if you practice stroke straight back straight through, straight back and straight throw. If I make a mistake and I am puling the side bang I knock one of the tee pegs over pushing it through push out there and I hit the other tee peg so I can immediately identify whether I have made a mistake or not. If I then put the putter in there, no ideally I don’t want to watch this putter going back and watch it going through, I just want to make my normal straight back straight through stroke and I should miss the gate on either side.

I can practice doing that on shorter and mid-length putts. On longer putts it can get a bit more tricky because the longer putts you might have a bit more inside in the backswing and inside in the follow-through shape to your stroke. But certainly to make more shorter putts, the gate drill is an excellent practice drill one widely used by PGA Tour pros.