Stockton’s Golf Putting Routine Aims to Instill Confidence (Video) - by Pete Styles
Stockton’s Golf Putting Routine Aims to Instill Confidence (Video) - by Pete Styles

If you’ve followed golf over the recent years, you’ll have followed rise of Rory McIlroy to world number one. But you’ll also maybe remember the time that he collapsed Augusta in the back nine from the lead of the tournament, he hooked one of the 10th tee and was up in the cabins where no one has ever been and then he putting collapsed on the back nine. Even since then he’s worked with Dave Stockton, a very famous putting coach. And Dave Stockton has a really good method and routine to putting. So he works a little but on the technique of putting, but he also has got some very keen ideas on the actual sort of routine of setting up and how to prepare for your putt. And if you follow McIlroy now, you’ll see he’s taken a lot of those philosophies on board.

So the first thing I’d like you to look at is how you read the putt from the low side. So Stockton believes you find the slope, you find the low side that you see how the putt is going to break, that’s your first read. Then you stand behind the putt and you do the traditional sort of crouching down, looking down the target line and see how it’s going to break. Try and get yourself as low to the putting surface as you can to see more break. Some golfers would actually stand off the side of the green on the down slope and then they can almost get eye level to the putt. Once you’re in that position and you’ve gotten a good read and you’ve imagined the ball rolling the right direction and curving all the way into the hole, you can approach the ball puttering your left hand and just get a feel for how hard you’re going to roll the putt using your right hand. So you’re looking down the target line, getting a feel for how hard you want to hit this. And then as we set up it’s going to be right foot in first and then the left foot will just come around and adjust, so that the body moves round on line. So we’re not really going to shuffle up and down too much. You should have got your right foot in a nice position with the rocking of the right hand. Then the left hand comes on and the shoulder comes around nicely. And then we have one little look at the hole, picture the ball rolling all the way and dropping in. Back to the ball take the stroke and get a hit. And we actually hit it fairly quickly. We’re not going to stand over it glancing down, glancing down, glancing down… that really doesn’t work in Stockton’s eyes.

He thinks if you’ve read the putt correctly here, you’ve already work out how hard to hit it, the roll it’s going to take. Once you’re into the putt we can get set up and get a hit quite quickly. He also advocates that you don’t take a practice swing with the intention that that actually builds tension in your game. I’ll be honest with you, my own personal putting I do take a practice swing, but I can appreciate that some people always build in too much self-doubt with the practice swing. There not happy with that swing it was too hard, it was too soft it was on the wrong line. So if you feel you would benefit from not taking a practice swing, use the right hand to gauge how hard you’re going to hit the putt, and then you actually set up line up, look back down and roll it in. If it works for McIlroy, there might be something it in.

[playerProfile url="https://golf-info-guide.com/pga-players/dave-stockton/"][/playerProfile] 2013-04-01

If you’ve followed golf over the recent years, you’ll have followed rise of Rory McIlroy to world number one. But you’ll also maybe remember the time that he collapsed Augusta in the back nine from the lead of the tournament, he hooked one of the 10th tee and was up in the cabins where no one has ever been and then he putting collapsed on the back nine. Even since then he’s worked with Dave Stockton, a very famous putting coach. And Dave Stockton has a really good method and routine to putting. So he works a little but on the technique of putting, but he also has got some very keen ideas on the actual sort of routine of setting up and how to prepare for your putt. And if you follow McIlroy now, you’ll see he’s taken a lot of those philosophies on board.

So the first thing I’d like you to look at is how you read the putt from the low side. So Stockton believes you find the slope, you find the low side that you see how the putt is going to break, that’s your first read. Then you stand behind the putt and you do the traditional sort of crouching down, looking down the target line and see how it’s going to break. Try and get yourself as low to the putting surface as you can to see more break. Some golfers would actually stand off the side of the green on the down slope and then they can almost get eye level to the putt. Once you’re in that position and you’ve gotten a good read and you’ve imagined the ball rolling the right direction and curving all the way into the hole, you can approach the ball puttering your left hand and just get a feel for how hard you’re going to roll the putt using your right hand. So you’re looking down the target line, getting a feel for how hard you want to hit this. And then as we set up it’s going to be right foot in first and then the left foot will just come around and adjust, so that the body moves round on line. So we’re not really going to shuffle up and down too much. You should have got your right foot in a nice position with the rocking of the right hand. Then the left hand comes on and the shoulder comes around nicely. And then we have one little look at the hole, picture the ball rolling all the way and dropping in. Back to the ball take the stroke and get a hit. And we actually hit it fairly quickly. We’re not going to stand over it glancing down, glancing down, glancing down… that really doesn’t work in Stockton’s eyes.

He thinks if you’ve read the putt correctly here, you’ve already work out how hard to hit it, the roll it’s going to take. Once you’re into the putt we can get set up and get a hit quite quickly. He also advocates that you don’t take a practice swing with the intention that that actually builds tension in your game. I’ll be honest with you, my own personal putting I do take a practice swing, but I can appreciate that some people always build in too much self-doubt with the practice swing. There not happy with that swing it was too hard, it was too soft it was on the wrong line. So if you feel you would benefit from not taking a practice swing, use the right hand to gauge how hard you’re going to hit the putt, and then you actually set up line up, look back down and roll it in. If it works for McIlroy, there might be something it in.

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