Solid Golf Putting - Ball and Shoulder Position, Tour Alignment Sticks Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles
Solid Golf Putting - Ball and Shoulder Position, Tour Alignment Sticks Drill (Video) - by Pete Styles

So much is written and talked about the good golf set up maybe one area that we miss out in the actual set up for putting. People tend to use just a little bit more touch and, feel and maybe personal approach to putting. But unless you’re getting the good fundamentals, the good foundation, you could be causing yourself a lot of problems with your putting. So I'm going to take a really nice useful drill that we use in the full swing and apply to putting. So here I've got my tee set up again with my alignments sticks, my tour sticks. I'm just going to bring the ball forward here and set it up slightly ahead of that first cane. So this cane points down like target line, this is parallel to my target line, it’s not exactly pointing at my flag because my ball is in front of that so I don't want the two lines to sort of meet, but both target lines is where my ball would sit and my feet's at parallel to that line.

So this effectively would point about one foot to the left of my hole and then have this line here in the dead centre of my body. So I look at the gap between my feet tight position and sort of that centre. But then quite important with putting, would like to place the ball marginally ahead of centre, I prefer to have the ball almost like a six sign ball position, so as I got here just left of centre. That will encourage a slightly more accelerating slope stroke and a slightly more ascending stroke, so I'm not going to hit down on the ball, hitting down on the ball will often cause the ball to bounce and bubble across the surface of the green and not roll smooth or true. So I'd like to play the ball slightly more ahead of centre and then set up with the ball directly underneath my left eye.

Required in putting and I'm not tilting my body towards the ball because it's ahead of centre, I don't want to turn towards it. I want to keep everything nice and straight and true and actually just strike the ball on a slight, upwards part of the arc. So consider how important your alignment is when you’re putting but also how important your ball position is. This cane go through the centre of my feet the ball sits two inches left of it, like a six sign and then slightly strike up on the putt as I play it, and I’ll roll the ball way nice and smoothly with a slightly ascending stroke. Practice that on the putting green or even just on some nice, smooth carpet at home, get used to a nice full with ball position and that will help improve your putting as well.

2013-06-27

So much is written and talked about the good golf set up maybe one area that we miss out in the actual set up for putting. People tend to use just a little bit more touch and, feel and maybe personal approach to putting. But unless you’re getting the good fundamentals, the good foundation, you could be causing yourself a lot of problems with your putting. So I'm going to take a really nice useful drill that we use in the full swing and apply to putting. So here I've got my tee set up again with my alignments sticks, my tour sticks. I'm just going to bring the ball forward here and set it up slightly ahead of that first cane. So this cane points down like target line, this is parallel to my target line, it’s not exactly pointing at my flag because my ball is in front of that so I don't want the two lines to sort of meet, but both target lines is where my ball would sit and my feet's at parallel to that line.

So this effectively would point about one foot to the left of my hole and then have this line here in the dead centre of my body. So I look at the gap between my feet tight position and sort of that centre. But then quite important with putting, would like to place the ball marginally ahead of centre, I prefer to have the ball almost like a six sign ball position, so as I got here just left of centre. That will encourage a slightly more accelerating slope stroke and a slightly more ascending stroke, so I'm not going to hit down on the ball, hitting down on the ball will often cause the ball to bounce and bubble across the surface of the green and not roll smooth or true. So I'd like to play the ball slightly more ahead of centre and then set up with the ball directly underneath my left eye.

Required in putting and I'm not tilting my body towards the ball because it's ahead of centre, I don't want to turn towards it. I want to keep everything nice and straight and true and actually just strike the ball on a slight, upwards part of the arc. So consider how important your alignment is when you’re putting but also how important your ball position is. This cane go through the centre of my feet the ball sits two inches left of it, like a six sign and then slightly strike up on the putt as I play it, and I’ll roll the ball way nice and smoothly with a slightly ascending stroke. Practice that on the putting green or even just on some nice, smooth carpet at home, get used to a nice full with ball position and that will help improve your putting as well.