Lesson #1
March 28th 2019
Hello Young! Here we have a face on and down the line view of your putting stroke before our lesson. A lot of good things happening here so only a few minor touch ups needed. Below you will find notes and some examples to help reinforce proper form and technique. Also note that throughout this summary every picture can be enlarged just by clicking on it because I know some of these may appear small depending on the device you use to view them.
Something that we didn’t really cover but I would like touch on a little is your left arm position at setup. You can see your arm lines do not match on both sides. Your left arm and wrist position here will encourage your wrist to flip the clubhead at the ball and cause inconsistent contact and accuracy. In my example you can see both my arm lines are equal on both sides and my left arm stays straight with a flat wrist. This allows the clubhead to stay low through the hitting zone and makes contact much more solid and consistent.
From down the line you can see your knees change flex and position as you putt as well as your head moves down and up. I always check eyeline from this position because it can have a huge influence on how you see the line of the putt. Ideal positions are either directly over the ball or a ball or two inside of it. You never want to line your eyes outside the ball because it will distort the real intended line. Your eyeline is great so no changes needed there!
With the help of a foam ball and a device that locks your arms against your torso we started to train your body to feel the correct movements for more stability. We can see your knees and legs not changing position as much during your putting stroke and your head staying steady. The putting connector aid helped make your stroke feel more torso rotation rather than a arms only swing because with less moving parts the stroke may retain its consistency much easier. With the help of some tee markers we grooved an equal distance back and through stroke so you could work on proper tempo and getting to the right finish position after the putt is struck. You did a great job matching your stroke length to the tee markers!
Here’s a short clip after using the training aids. I introduced the gate drill here to help fix the path of your stroke a little bit. You tend to swing the putter a little out to the right of the target line with a slightly closed face. The gate drill fixes this without much thought!
We moved on to lag putting from 20, 25, and 30 feet. Again using tee’s as markers for the proper length of stroke back and through. The key to this is maintaining consistent tempo so that you only have to change the length of the stroke for more distance. Your putter was still finishing a little high off the ground here but still better than when we started. You did a great job in this part too!
We finished off at 30 feet with a gate and an alignment stick preventing your finish position to be too high. I also added a chalk line to help you see your intended start line of the putt. By keeping the finish firm and low here you saw effortless power and felt what a solid struck putt should feel like. Great job during this lesson, see you in a few weeks!
Here’s a little bonus clip of Tiger Wood’s putting stroke. You’ll notice all the things I’ve been going over with you. Left arm and left wrist make a straight line with the putter shaft so he can finish square and low through the ball. No flipping of the wrists.