Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Hey we’re going to look at how to save your shots around the green and stop pushing your putts when you’re hitting them. If you’re pushing a putt, it just means the ball is finishing on the right of the target and that’s happening, because the Putter head isn’t traveling directly along the target line. What’s happening if you’re pushing your putts? If you look at this channel that’s set up here is you’re swinging the putter back and then as you’re hitting the ball, the club face is aiming to the right of the target, and then the putter is traveling to the right of the target line as well. So that will now hit the ball to the right of the target line, and you’ll miss the Putt on the right, you have pushed it. So in order to create a straighter stroke with the Putter and to hit the ball more directly down the target line, work on the following drill.

So all I’ve done here is set up a channel so that you’re going to swing the putter along the target line. If you’re pushing your putt, you’ll find that as you swing the putter back, you may hit the inside of right [Phonetic] ball so that again that will show you that you’re having some of the putter directly along the target line and similarly, as you swing the putter through, you’ll hit the far left hand ball of the channel as well and it’ll give you the feedback that you need so you’ll see that you’re not swinging the putter in a straight line and along the target line.

So a couple of things to check before we do that drill, first of all check that your ball position is correct. The ball position needs to be in the center of the stands and if you’re pushing your putts, you may have the ball too far back in the stands and what will happen is as you swing the Putter back, your shoulders will rotate , you can see my shoulder alignment now is to the right of the target line. So as I swing back in, if the ball is too far back in my stand, I’ll just hit the ball to the right. So check that your ball position is in the middle of your feet.

The second thing to check is your eye position as well. You want to make sure that your eyes are directly over the ball or just on the inside. If you’re standing too far away from the ball so your eye line position is too inside, the ball that you are going to putt, you’ll find that you are, you’re putting stroke and because you take the Putter back on the inside as you swing back if you keep the Putter face pointing to the right, you’ll just push the putt over to the right.

So again make sure that your eyes are directly over the ball. So ensure that the ball is in the center of the feet, your eyes are directly over the ball and then just work on the simple drill where you swing the putter directly through the channel. That will get you really swinging the Putter in a nice straight line. If you work on maintaining Putter face pointing at the target, you’ll hold a lot more putts.