The Putting Habit I Wish I Learned Years Ago

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Transcript Summary- 

Putting has always been one of the strongest parts of my game, but recently I lost a bit of confidence, especially on really fast greens. I started getting nervous over those three- to six-footers and suddenly I was three-putting far more than usual. When that happens, I always go back to a simple three-step system that brings back my confidence, distance control and feel.

Step one is getting the setup right. I want a natural, flowing putting stroke with a slight arc. From face-on, I make sure my head, sternum and hips are nicely aligned with the golf ball. When I get lazy and my body turns towards the hole, the putter can start moving outside the line, which can lead to pulls, cuts and even yips. From down the line, I also check my head position with a mirror. If my head gets too far in front of the ball, it can change the path of the putter. These simple five-second checks give me a much better chance of producing a natural stroke.

Step two is centred contact. We often assume we’re striking the ball well, but a lot of golfers are actually hitting putts from the heel, toe or bottom of the face without realising it. That makes distance control incredibly inconsistent. I like to use drills such as a gate drill or even Blu Tack on the putter face to give me feedback on where I’m striking it. The great thing is that focusing on centred contact also helps me stay much more still during the stroke.

Step three is building a routine and developing feel. This is the part I spend the most time on. Once I’ve built the mechanics, I don’t want to think about them on the golf course. I line the putter up to my target first, set myself in, visualise the ball rolling into the hole at the correct pace and then use a simple one-two-three-four routine. The key is being completely committed to the putt rather than thinking about mechanics or worrying about who’s watching.

To develop distance control, I also love playing a guessing game. I’ll hit a putt, try not to look at the result and guess where I think the ball has finished. Over time, your body starts developing that natural sense of pace and touch. It’s the same instinct you use when throwing a ball to someone—you don’t calculate how far your arm needs to move; you simply feel it.

Finally, I’ll practise breaking six-foot putts and imagine the ball trickling over different parts of the hole—the front edge, back edge and centre. By combining the setup, centred contact and routine with this feel-based practice, I can rebuild my confidence and get back to putting instinctively. That’s what ultimately makes putting one of the best parts of my game.

Full Transcript- So putting's always been like the bedrock of my game, like the best part of my game. But something happened recently where I struggle to get this as control particular, do you know those real fast greens? And then whenever I got to within three to six feet of the hole, I started getting really nervous. I started to miss those short putts. So out of nowhere, I'm like three putting sometimes two or three times around. And that just really wasn't me. So as well as kind of, you know, you know, losing my stroke somehow, I started to lose confidence on the greens. Now, whenever I do that, I always return to an old system a mentor gave me many years ago. And it always brings me back. It brings back my confidence. It brings back my distance control. It helps me hole short putts every time and bring me back to the best part of my game. It's incredibly simple and I want to share it with you because I know how destroying putting can be. You know, data from my shot scope watch tells me, look, that this is about 25 foot putt and if you're over 15 handicap, you might be missing these, you know, three putting these sometimes two or three times around. Well, I want you to stop that and give yourself some confidence that you can actually start to hold these 25 footers. So, let's get started. So, let me show you my three-step process. The first two steps lay down the foundation. You need them in place. The third one is what really helps me hold more and more putts, and that's one that I practice the most. But the first two steps need to be in place. So, step one, what we're trying to achieve or what I want you to achieve is this. I always find myself I want to create a most natural flowing stroke. Okay? Just a beautiful pendulum action that swings on a slight arc back, a slight arc through, and it's always rhythmical. That's what gives me the most amount of feel. And I want that to happen naturally. What I look for from face on to achieve that, I want to make sure my head, the middle of my sternum, and my hips are all in a beautiful alignment. Just look to the back edge of that golf ball here. That's what I'm looking for. Now recently without me knowing they weren't like that. I'd got my head my body just slightly out of kinder without realizing. Often because when you look at trying to read a green you sometimes turn this way as a byproduct. What I'd done is this. My putter started to come up and outside the line. Then it would come down on the golf ball too much often then hitting it too hard sometimes. But I end up starting to pull the putts left. I'd then start to react by doing some weird stuff with my hands. And then people would say, "Oh, it looked like a yip." Right? And that's why I started to miss short puts. All I needed to do, I got a bit lazy, was to put myself on camera from face on, and I would have realized that the club was coming outside the line because I wasn't in alignment here. As soon as I got myself aligned here, the putter naturally started to track much, much more on this alignment compared to this alignment. Does that make sense? So, that's the first thing I'm looking for. face on. Just make sure everything's in alignment. Just sitting behind the golf ball. Nothing more than that. So down the line, again, I want to keep it really simple. I I I want putting to be so natural for you. So I am looking for a gentle little arc in this stroke. And you've probably already started to fix a lot by just changing your setup from this face on view. As we said earlier, I would have seen my putter just coming slightly outside the line. Why? because my body was turned this way, which is important. Often when we're starting to read a put or look at a putt, sometimes we turn our bodies to the hole and then we forget to turn them back. Makes sense? We want to turn them back here. So, just before every shot to start off with, I'll hold the putter up, bring the club down here, making sure that everything's in alignment. That way, I can naturally let the putter swing freely knowing it's going to swing on a mini arc. That's the first thing. The other thing I'm looking at, and this is absolutely huge, is where my head position is and how it's angled. Most of the time I'm finding with a lot of students that come and see me, they're almost set up in golf posture where they're looking almost down like this, down the sockets of their eyes, almost like it's like a secondary gaze. This is unbelievably important. If you were going to read a book, you can't read it like that. But if you face it like this, now we can read. This is really, really important. Now look, not only can I in a sense look straight down at the golf ball and get beautiful perception of where that ball is, I can also now look really read the entire green. Really, really important. But there's one other thing I'm looking at here from down the line. Where is my head position? And I use a mirror all the time. It takes me literally five 10 seconds to recognize this. my head tends to get too far in front of the golf ball. When that happens, my putter starts to swing outside the line. Again, what does that create? Again, pulls or cuts. I don't feel I'm doing this. So, I use a mirror just to check. Again, it's just a simple 5-second checkpoint. Move my head now roughly. It don't have to be out right on the ball, but roughly in the vicinity of the golf ball. Again, that helps me maintain this putter swinging on an arc. If I start to get more here, I start to get too close to it. my arm starts to work more outwards. So moving the head just so it's roughly eyes are directly roughly in alignment with that golf ball. Suddenly now I'm in a position to stroke that putt almost into the hole. So face on and down the line. They're the first two things I'm looking for. So that's step one out of the way. We're getting close to getting you ready for the golf course. Now you've got a great setup. You're giving yourself the best opportunity now to start putting well. Now, what we want to do is move to step two. How are you striking your putts? Every time I ask a student how they striking it, they go, "Yeah, pretty good, Danny." Do you know what? They never really are, including me sometimes. If you're hitting it without realizing off the heels, that'll be me sometimes. Sometimes at the bottom of the club, sometimes out the toe, your distance is always going to change on every putt. So, you need to get good at hitting the center of the face. And it sounds really, really simple, doesn't it? But we don't do that. So, personally, all I do is I simply make some putts and I simply pay attention to where I'm hitting it in the putter face. People like Tiger Woods uses a gate drill that he Why does he use that? So that he learns to hit the ball at the center of the face. I've even seen people putting blu-te on their putter faces. Again, just to train the center contact. Again, all it's doing, if you can get center contact every single time, it helps your distance control. But here's the other thing. What I personally find when I do this, when I'm paying attention to where that ball is hitting in the face, it naturally helps me stay that little bit stiller because I'm concentrating on it. One of my personal problems is sometimes, as we said earlier, I'll tend to without realizing start to move forward a little bit here. Sometimes during the struck as I do that, the heel starts to move towards the blade, right? But that suddenly stops when I start paying attention to where that ball is striking in that putter face. So I get myself set here and I go where am I striking it? I think that was still a little bit towards the heel. Just a just a tad tad. Right. So I keep going. I felt as though maybe I moved a little bit on that one. So I pay attention to that and I start to hit more and more putts. Just keep paying attention to where that ball is hitting in the face. Again, you can use a tea drill or use blu-tack, but practice that as step number two. Now, let me take you around the green. Now, for step three, this is the bit that I spend the most of my time on because this is the one that gives me all the feel, all the distance control, and helps me haul the putts, and that's building a routine for the golf course. I want to be instinctive. I want you to be instinctive. I want you to walk up to putts like the best players in the world do, take a look, and hit them. Well, you've already laid some of the foundations, but now you need to build that trust and that feeling. So, what I do now is this. I always put the putter, line the putter up to my target first, and then I set myself in. Most people I see, they walk, they set up their bodies first, then put the putter in. That will always get you mis misaligned. Set the putter up first. This is a ball that's going to break from right to left. You've been seeing this. Then, what I'm doing here is this is really, really important. I've always got this kind of natural flowing and continuous motion. I'm getting myself set up here. From here, now all the mechanics that we did earlier, I'm forgetting about now. I've already built them in. I'm now visualizing this ball from my putter, drawing imaginary white line here. I'm visualizing it as I'm making my practice strokes. I'm visualizing the pace and how that ball is going to go into the hole. I then get myself set up here and then I have my one, two, three, four routine. One look at the hole. Two back to the golf ball. Three, four. So it looks something like this. One, two, three, four.

Now, it's interesting there because I'm thinking of you and I'm talking to you here. I'm missing one of the main ingredients that exists in all my putters. half in the shot there and I'm half thinking of you on camera. That's also a recipe for an absolute nightmare putting. So, if you're in a sense overthinking this, you can't put I didn't feel that's the first one there that's come up short. Out of all the ones I've hit so far, I wasn't really in the put there. I'm more thinking of you and getting it right almost controlling it. So, what I'm going to do now is this. I then if I can feel this sometimes in my practice, I would then go in there and I'm I've got to now visualize that ball going into the hole. And that's all I picture. I forget about you watching. I'm visualizing that ball going into the hole at the correct pace. One, two, three, four.

That's what I mean. That time I was really into the put. Does that make sense? I wasn't somewhere else. I was right there. I felt it. That's what you've got to create. Now I've got the pace of these greens pretty quickly. But sometimes I don't. I arrive on uh some putting greens and you might find the same where I don't have that pace. Well, how do you develop green uh the pace? Well, you've already started to do it by making good solid contact. One piece I give every student and it's one that most people ignore. They think it just is a bit hocus pocus, but it's absolutely incredible. You have to build your, you know, your unconscious mind. You've got to build that feeling. And and one of uh where I do it all the time without fail is this. I get myself set up here and I play the guessing game where what I do is I go from my trim. I visualize, as we've just done there, the ball going into the hole. Visualize it. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to guess where that ball has finished. Short. Has it finished short? Good or long? Yeah. And what I'm trying to do here is is

I think that's probably pretty good. Maybe a little bit long. A little bit long. Yeah. So, it means I know that I've got that kind of feel. I don't need to look at the hole. What we want to be able to get to when you walk on the golf course is is not thinking, "Oh, I should hit this soft or hit this hard." I want you to be able to get to a putt where you just go bang. Just like you would do if you were throwing a ball to me right now. You wouldn't think, well, how far should my putter go back and through? You would just throw it. You do that by playing the guessing game. Hit putts just with one ball around the green and each time guess where you think it's gone. Most of the time you'll be out. If it's on a new golf course, you'll be out most of the time. But if you keep playing the game without looking until your guesses are right, you're building your intuition. Don't ask me how we do it. Our bodies are incredible at finding this feel. Now, I said it sounds hocus pocus, doesn't it? But this is it. It's something that we can't describe. We can't put a finger on it, but we build intuition by playing that game. You'll often hear good players talking about, "Oh, my hands feel really light on the grip." They do, but where's that lightness come from? It's come from this feel and touch. Yeah. That they're imagining. Now, just to finish off, what I'd always do is I'd then find maybe a six-foot breaking put, big breaking putt, and I'd hit some putts where I'm just imagining the ball just trickling over the front edge of the hole on one, then hitting the back edge of the hole, then hitting just the center. But what I'm doing now is this is I'm going through the routine on each one of them and developing that sense of touch and feel that I is required for me to play out on the golf course. That's a three-step process that gets me back on track every single time. And it's unbelievably simple. And I really truly honestly believe it's one of the reasons why it's probably one of the best parts of my game. So, I really hope you it helps your putting just as it does for me. I really do because when you start putting awesome, it makes you feel so so good and it really makes your round of golf. So, if you enjoy this video, make sure you give it a thumbs up. Maybe share it with one of your friends who you know might be struggling with their putting. Now, if you're struggling with putting, you might also be struggling with your short game. So, if you're struggling with chipping, check this video out right here. And if you're not sure what you're doing and you want to have a kind of an analysis of what's going on in your golf swing and and a simple correction, check out my new uh Swing Coach app here by scanning the QR code or clicking the link in the top comment below this video. It will give you an instant analysis of what's going on in your game and how to fix it. But until next week, have a wonderful golfing week.