Should I Watch The Golf Ball All The Way Into The Hole (Video) - by Pete Styles
Should I Watch The Golf Ball All The Way Into The Hole (Video) - by Pete Styles

Should you watch the ball directly into the hole? Well, wouldn’t that be lovely? It would be nice every time we had a putt, wouldn’t it, just to be able to turn our head and watch the ball track straight into the hole. But the reality is that the more you move your head to watch the ball the less times you’ll watch it -- because the actual act of moving the head can be quite disruptive to a putting stroke; we find that the body starts to turn too much, the hands and arms start to swing offline too much, and the head lifting up is never a positive influence on your putting stroke.

So what we’d often suggest you do is listen to the ball go in, rather than watch it miss. And particularly from close range when we have three, four, five footers, we’re quite eager to see whether the ball goes in, so we often see people take a putt and they turn their head to see whether it goes in and often they will watch it miss and what they should do is take their stroke and listen and they’ll hear it drop in rather than watching it miss. So here’s the golden rule for you; when you’re taking your putts, I want you to keep your head fixed down to where the ball was until the ball has moved past your peripheral vision. So as I’m setting up here, I turn my head so I can see the hole, I can’t see the hole when I’m looking down, I can see to around about this area here, so this is maybe four, five feet ahead of me. So I should keep my head down and still looking down here until the ball is four or five feet away then I can turn my head and then I can watch it move. So have a few practice goes probably just in the house if you’ve got some carpet at home or in the putting green at the golf club of taking these putting strokes and get the feeling like the putter moves beyond your peripheral vision before you look up. So again we’re lining ourselves up carefully here, we’ve got everything pointing in the right direction, the head stays down, it’s quite difficult to not get eager go look up but then I turn my head beautiful. I didn’t watch the ball go in but I heard it go in; and that’s the best way for you to strike your putts with confidence; don’t be peaking too early. 2014-10-09

Should you watch the ball directly into the hole? Well, wouldn’t that be lovely? It would be nice every time we had a putt, wouldn’t it, just to be able to turn our head and watch the ball track straight into the hole. But the reality is that the more you move your head to watch the ball the less times you’ll watch it — because the actual act of moving the head can be quite disruptive to a putting stroke; we find that the body starts to turn too much, the hands and arms start to swing offline too much, and the head lifting up is never a positive influence on your putting stroke.

So what we’d often suggest you do is listen to the ball go in, rather than watch it miss. And particularly from close range when we have three, four, five footers, we’re quite eager to see whether the ball goes in, so we often see people take a putt and they turn their head to see whether it goes in and often they will watch it miss and what they should do is take their stroke and listen and they’ll hear it drop in rather than watching it miss. So here’s the golden rule for you; when you’re taking your putts, I want you to keep your head fixed down to where the ball was until the ball has moved past your peripheral vision.

So as I’m setting up here, I turn my head so I can see the hole, I can’t see the hole when I’m looking down, I can see to around about this area here, so this is maybe four, five feet ahead of me. So I should keep my head down and still looking down here until the ball is four or five feet away then I can turn my head and then I can watch it move. So have a few practice goes probably just in the house if you’ve got some carpet at home or in the putting green at the golf club of taking these putting strokes and get the feeling like the putter moves beyond your peripheral vision before you look up.

So again we’re lining ourselves up carefully here, we’ve got everything pointing in the right direction, the head stays down, it’s quite difficult to not get eager go look up but then I turn my head beautiful. I didn’t watch the ball go in but I heard it go in; and that’s the best way for you to strike your putts with confidence; don’t be peaking too early.