Why Do Some Players Practice Their Golf Putting With Their Eyes Closed (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Why Do Some Players Practice Their Golf Putting With Their Eyes Closed (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

Why do some players practice their putting with their eyes shut? Now this inherently is something you won’t see them doing them very often and purely because you won’t be able to tell whether they got their eyes open or closed but I would – there’s a lot of good players at your club, certainly good players on the PGA Tour that when they are practicing their putting on the putting green probably more importantly in the house of the hotel room before they play, they would practice their putting with the eyes closed. And it isn’t for fun; it isn’t just to make the game even more difficult that already it is, it actually has a purpose and a benefit.

It works on this principle; when we stop watching the putter so much we start to feel the putter a bit more. Now we take away one sense we heighten the other senses. So people spend so long watching their putter head and affecting what the putter head is doing, if they see the putter head wobble they compensate for it. If they think it’s not gone back to far they try and hit the putt really hard and none of that can be really very productive. What we would like to be able to do is when we look at a putt like this we get to feel for how hard we want to hit it. You know we can look at a hole and we can gauge that so quite importantly I am not watching the putter here I am looking at the hole and feeling that. Then as I look over at the top of the ball I should be able to shut my eyes, make my stroke, and produce exactly the same sort of stroke and that’s a really good practice drill for you to do. You don’t have to use a hole, for this what you could do is set three or four balls upon the floor and hit one at a time with your eyes closed and see if you can get the ball to go the same speed the same distance. So as I setup to putt number one this isn’t aiming for the hole it’s aiming more towards the camera. I close my eyes and make my stroke. I don’t look up at that putt I look down at this one, close my eyes, make my stroke. And again I don’t look up I just look down at the putter close my eyes make my stroke. And if I made three fairly consistent strokes the ball should have all finished fairly close together so clearly, I am a little bit way out with those certainly the last one was a little bit under hit. Now if I did that with a few more putts I might be able to actually feel yeah that was definitely too short or that was a bad strike, or that was a bit too hard. But by practicing a drill of putting with our eyes closed, we get a lot more feel from the putter and we stop having to watch it so much. So if you feel that when you go on the golf course you don’t have very good distance control pretty much like I’ve just displayed, if your distance control isn’t very good, practicing putting with your eyes shut. It’s not just a good fun exercise; it actually has a real benefit to your game. 2014-10-13

Why do some players practice their putting with their eyes shut? Now this inherently is something you won’t see them doing them very often and purely because you won’t be able to tell whether they got their eyes open or closed but I would – there’s a lot of good players at your club, certainly good players on the PGA Tour that when they are practicing their putting on the putting green probably more importantly in the house of the hotel room before they play, they would practice their putting with the eyes closed. And it isn’t for fun; it isn’t just to make the game even more difficult that already it is, it actually has a purpose and a benefit.

It works on this principle; when we stop watching the putter so much we start to feel the putter a bit more. Now we take away one sense we heighten the other senses. So people spend so long watching their putter head and affecting what the putter head is doing, if they see the putter head wobble they compensate for it. If they think it’s not gone back to far they try and hit the putt really hard and none of that can be really very productive. What we would like to be able to do is when we look at a putt like this we get to feel for how hard we want to hit it. You know we can look at a hole and we can gauge that so quite importantly I am not watching the putter here I am looking at the hole and feeling that.

Then as I look over at the top of the ball I should be able to shut my eyes, make my stroke, and produce exactly the same sort of stroke and that’s a really good practice drill for you to do. You don’t have to use a hole, for this what you could do is set three or four balls upon the floor and hit one at a time with your eyes closed and see if you can get the ball to go the same speed the same distance. So as I setup to putt number one this isn’t aiming for the hole it’s aiming more towards the camera. I close my eyes and make my stroke. I don’t look up at that putt I look down at this one, close my eyes, make my stroke. And again I don’t look up I just look down at the putter close my eyes make my stroke.

And if I made three fairly consistent strokes the ball should have all finished fairly close together so clearly, I am a little bit way out with those certainly the last one was a little bit under hit. Now if I did that with a few more putts I might be able to actually feel yeah that was definitely too short or that was a bad strike, or that was a bit too hard. But by practicing a drill of putting with our eyes closed, we get a lot more feel from the putter and we stop having to watch it so much.

So if you feel that when you go on the golf course you don’t have very good distance control pretty much like I’ve just displayed, if your distance control isn’t very good, practicing putting with your eyes shut. It’s not just a good fun exercise; it actually has a real benefit to your game.