Brian Fitzgerald – Page 13

Struggling With Your Putting

Struggling with your putting. Just stop making this mistake. The biggest mistake I see most people make and they have very poor distance control as a result. So here is typically the mistake that I see people make.

So it’s ended up ok. It’s about three feet from the hole. It’s not a bad putt but it was a bad mistake. That type of putting stroke is not going to work on a consistent basis and it’s got to you having poor distance control. Did you see the mistake? Basically, what I see most people doing is having a back swing that’s too short and a follow it is too big.

Anyone doing that will hit good putts from time to time, but they will not be consistent We want as golfers is to be pretty consistent. We want to be able to two putt that. We want to 2 putt that as often as we possibly can. We don’t want three putts. Three putts ruin our score.

So the way I like to think of it, if I was going to throw this ball, say to the camera in front of me here, I would throw something like that if I went back further, I would be having a bigger back swing and a bigger follow through.

Imagine how bad I would be at throwing if I had a short back swing, and then a big follow through to compensate. It’s just not how we throw most people throwing it. Most people are going to go back in through roughly the same distance. That’s what I want you to do when you putt. I want you to develop a stroke that is back and through the same distance.

The big thing that changes is the golf ball gets in the way of that moving club. So without a ball there, your club, the back swing and follow through are the same distance. The moment I put a ball there, the ball gets struck by the club, which then slows down the club and it reduces the length of the follow through.

Very simple. It’s what we would do in pretty much every other sport. But for whatever reason, in putting everyone thinks short back swing, we have to accelerate through the ball. If you’re accelerating through the ball, the fastest point of your putting stroke is after you hit it. That’s a bad system. We want the the fastest point of my putting stroke to be at the contact point of the ball.

So this is what I get a lot of people to do is to do it one handed. So if we can putt just right hand only you will automatically without thinking about it, have a much bigger back swing and a shorter follow through. Tiger Woods, arguably one of the best parties ever practiced every day. Right hand only. And he had very, very good distance control.

And that’s one of the reasons his back swing basically controlled the length.

I’ve got a couple of clients that struggle with this concept, and what I’ve gotten them to do is utilize a back swing that’s just way too big for the task. But the only thing is, is I don’t want them feeling like they’re going to accelerate. So even here, if I use a ridiculously long back swing and this is about a forty five foot putt. But if I have a crazy length back swing as long as I don’t accelerate through the ball, it’s not going to be too bad a putt.

It’s something you’ve just got to get to and the more you practice it, the better you’ll get.

I like to think of the brain is a great learning machine. We’ve grown up throwing balls. We don’t think too much about how we throw. We just look at the target and throw the ball. We should do that when we are putting.

And if we have a back swing, that’s to big as long as we don’t and accelerate through the ball. The brain learning system will adjust the length of follow through to produce the putt that we want. But we’ve really got to make sure we have that target as our intention.

So I have a good look at that hole in the distance and then hit the putt. Even though I didn’t accelerate through the ball, that turned out to be quite a good putt with a very long back swing.

I hit it It’s probably two and a half feet from. So you can do that. We are just going to get away from this concept of never up, never in, accelerate through the ball.

Terrible, terrible concept.

So we always want for that when we putt that, whatever the length of the back swing we hit the ball and we we don’t accelerate.

But the impact slows down the putter face. and it generally works out that your follow through is going to be about one third of the length of your back swing. So if I take my aim, think only about my back swing length follow through, and that’s probably going 18 inches past the hole.

I’m very happy with that part. So the way to fix your padding and improve your distance control is to lengthen your back swing and shorten your follow through.

Just think Cam Smith is one of the best parties in the world. That’s what he does. He doesn’t even take a practice swing.

So if you want to get better at golf. Start working on your putting. I’m going to put a link to another putting video I know is going to help improve your putting.