One of the key things about putting is that every different green you’re going to play on is going to be a different speed, different slope, different distance. And that’s really part of the challenge, is it’s not just the same as teeing off, let’s say teeing off we just tee the ball up, the fairway is down there somewhere, the teeing ground is nice and flat, we just produce the same stroke and it’s full speed, full power all the time. But putting every single shot you hit is different. Now if we were to approach a downhill fast putt, so it’s a 20 footer back down towards the camera across a lightning fast [Inaudible] [0:00:43] downhill, we might employ a different technique here to make sure we don’t get too aggressive.

The classic mistake with this sort of shot would be to hit it too hard. You know if we made our normal putting stroke we’d be quite quick back and through, we’d be hitting the ball it would go beyond the camera or beyond the hole. So a nice little different technique that you could use for these fast downhill sloppy putts would just be to slow your swing down slightly, shorten it slightly, and really nice would be to grip the club more lightly. By gripping the club more lightly the swing will feel slower, and shorter, and a lot more controlled rather than a tight grip pressure which tends to be a bit too urgent and a bit too fast. So a nice soft relaxed grip pressure, nice and gentle back, nice and gentle through and I’m just going to roll this one down gently towards the camera. And my grip pressure there is really super relaxed, super light even in the follow through there’s no grip pressure in that. It’s still a nice positive push towards the hole, I’m certainly not decelerating but because my grip pressure was light the putt didn’t go racing off and didn’t go too fast. So next time you’ve got one of those slippery little down the hill putts just think about gripping the club lightly, shorten and slow down your swing, and see whether that can help you control your distance better.