How Can I Judge The Length Of My Golf Putting Stroke (Video) - by Pete Styles
How Can I Judge The Length Of My Golf Putting Stroke (Video) - by Pete Styles

How can you judge the length of your putting stroke? It’s a very difficult question to answer this one, because the length of your putting stroke will change and therefore create different length of putts. But then a definite length of putt is going to be different on a different sloping green, on a different speed of green. So it’s almost impossible to say that a putt that comes back 6 inches and goes through 6 inches will produce a 10 or 12 foot putt. It’s impossible to say because the greens change speed. So really how we judge the distance of our putts has to be very much on the feel. So as we lining up through a putt, we look at how far it’s got to go, we have a good read of the break, then we would step to the side and we would judge how far back and how far through we feel and the way you generate that feel is by lots and lots of practice, just repeating the same thing over and over again. And if anybody doesn’t understand the concept of feel I would say to them well how would you roll the ball into that hole. I know it kind of get down and they’d roll it and they would get pretty close, and if I gave them another ball, they’d probably roll it a little bit closer.

And that’s your body just using its natural ability to feel something. You know I’ve not rolled the ball on this green before and I’ve not rolled the ball this distance for a while, but I’ll be able to roll this ball fairly close to the hole. Just with my natural feel. If I went further away I would swing my arm back further through further and again I would change the feel, change the distance of the putt. So it’s not only really clear answer I’m sorry but the way you would change the length of your putt to create the distance is changing it by feel. There’s a couple of other things that you could do to try and be consistent with this. When you look down at your feet, you could imagine the way your toes are, so you got a big toe here a little toe here on this side. For a long putt you going to want to swing the club outside of your little toes and for a short putt you’re probably going to want to make the stroke more inside your big toes. It’s a very rough guide to make sure you’re not going to approach a putt of this length and start having this great big massive swing out here when you don’t need it. So shorter putts think about, keeping the club sort of back to the big toe as the putt gets longer, we’re going to need to take the club back more towards the little toe. And that’s a very rough guide of how you can control the length of your putt. But ultimately it comes down to lots and lots of practice and lots of really, really good feel on how far back you should swing your putter. 2014-10-13

How can you judge the length of your putting stroke? It’s a very difficult question to answer this one, because the length of your putting stroke will change and therefore create different length of putts. But then a definite length of putt is going to be different on a different sloping green, on a different speed of green. So it’s almost impossible to say that a putt that comes back 6 inches and goes through 6 inches will produce a 10 or 12 foot putt. It’s impossible to say because the greens change speed. So really how we judge the distance of our putts has to be very much on the feel. So as we lining up through a putt, we look at how far it’s got to go, we have a good read of the break, then we would step to the side and we would judge how far back and how far through we feel and the way you generate that feel is by lots and lots of practice, just repeating the same thing over and over again. And if anybody doesn’t understand the concept of feel I would say to them well how would you roll the ball into that hole. I know it kind of get down and they’d roll it and they would get pretty close, and if I gave them another ball, they’d probably roll it a little bit closer.

And that’s your body just using its natural ability to feel something. You know I’ve not rolled the ball on this green before and I’ve not rolled the ball this distance for a while, but I’ll be able to roll this ball fairly close to the hole. Just with my natural feel. If I went further away I would swing my arm back further through further and again I would change the feel, change the distance of the putt. So it’s not only really clear answer I’m sorry but the way you would change the length of your putt to create the distance is changing it by feel. There’s a couple of other things that you could do to try and be consistent with this. When you look down at your feet, you could imagine the way your toes are, so you got a big toe here a little toe here on this side. For a long putt you going to want to swing the club outside of your little toes and for a short putt you’re probably going to want to make the stroke more inside your big toes. It’s a very rough guide to make sure you’re not going to approach a putt of this length and start having this great big massive swing out here when you don’t need it. So shorter putts think about, keeping the club sort of back to the big toe as the putt gets longer, we’re going to need to take the club back more towards the little toe. And that’s a very rough guide of how you can control the length of your putt. But ultimately it comes down to lots and lots of practice and lots of really, really good feel on how far back you should swing your putter.