Putting. How to make it the easier game

The putting is the easier golf play but has some secrets

Usually amateur golfers don’t follow the required rules and consequently pay an expensive price in their final result, sometimes as much putting strokes as all the other golf strokes together. Why that? First, because most of the times the putting basic rules are avoided in the initial teaching lessons. Secondly, many golfers start playing and start training with a professional having already tried putting in a putting green for fun without any previous advice. So, when they start putting in a game tour they have already got vices and acquired their “own style” and have their own putter chosen by aesthetic reasons what for sure is most of the times not appropriate.



So, what to do if this is the case? Here are some basic ideas.



Type of putter

There are many putter features. However they can be classified in two major categories in terms of the most important quality: the equilibrium. How can you check it? When you suspend the putter shaft in its middle weight point in your finger the putter face stays horizontal or not. If it stays horizontal it is equilibrated. On the contrary, if it point down it is not equilibrated. Now,
what to choose? It depends on your own physical characteristics. If you are young and or have no difficulties to put along a line you should choose an equilibrated put. If not, according to you physiology (flexibility on your back and spine) and more or less difficulty to produce a putting stroke along a line, you can choose a putter not equilibrated according how you feel and fit
after testing some different not equilibrated putter. After this major characteristic you can find many kinds of putters with strangest shapes, weight, colors and adding’s what changes the feel in the impact introducing more or less acceleration to the ball. If you preferably play in courses with larger greens you should choose a putter with more weight. The other characteristics are more a question of personal felling. Try in a shop several choices without forgetting the principal: the equilibrium!

This advice does not contradict the point that a player with an inadequate putter for his ability cannot be a putter champion. Simply he has to fit his putting swing to a wrong putter adopting compensations to get the required results.



Size of the putter

This is another characteristic in which we can find in the courses a lot of wrong situations. Usually golf amateurs put with a much longer putter than they should have. Why? Because they simply buy it in the shop with a standard length without asking the seller to fit it to the required size proper to their height. This introduces disequilibrium in the putting swing and the player most of the times has to handle the putter on the bottom of the grip or even in the shaft after the gripping zone. Another usual error caused by a longer putter than it should be is to put with the sole of the putter not parallel to the ground. Often the consequence is a contact of the put heel with the grass making the put rotate and loosing the line.

So, whatever the putter you need and want to choose fit it to your height!



Putting lines (direction and distance)

There are a lot of theories about direction and distance. What is more important in putting? I would say that above 2 m or 8 feet from the hole the importance of the distance increases with the distance. Why this limit? Because up to that distance you should care preferably with the direction and match one putt. Above 2 m it is more important to avoid 3 or even more putts and you should try to place the ball inside a zone up to 3 feet around and after the hole.
Remember, short putts more than 99, 9% of the times don’t hole! After choosing the line keep your eyes on the ball, feet line parallel to the putting line and swing solid on the line.

If you are curious about choosing lines there are magnificent texts on that.
Try the website http://www.puttinglines.com/ it is one of the best I've ever found.



Stance and posture

The stance for putting is also a very important point and also we can find a lot of errors on the greens: feet too open, feet too apart, body too leaned over the green, elbows completely open, etc. The correct stance must be: legs flexible and less fasten than the shoulders, chest straight and fixed to the arms, head fixed in the ball after choosing the line, shoulders to the back, arms fall down, feet parallel to each other and perpendicular to the putting line and not distanced more than 1 - 1.5 feet (depending on your height). You must feel comfortable in a stable and bent posture with your eyes over the ball. The ball should be at 1 - 2 diameters towards the hole from the middle of the stance. The goal is to impact the ball with the putter already in the upper trajectory, providing some top spin to the ball. If you have the feet open or too wide you introduce difficulties to reproduce the perfect pendulum in a vertical plane movement of your “triangle”.



The “triangle”

The triangle composed by your shoulders and arms should be rigid, the chest in a plane, so that you make the rotation absolutely in a plane that provides your hands to move along the putting line. The objective of this triangle is to assure a rotation around your neck in the vertical plane of the centre spot of the putter.

If you are not able to make this kind of rotation and you don’t feel comfortable with it that is one reason to check the size or other type of putter and probably it is preferable to use a putter not equilibrated and reproduce a movement so near as possible to the correct one.


Grip

The grip is another point that usually everybody is not concerned about and this is absolutely wrong too. The grip must be as rigid as possible to assure a solid triangle. The wrists must be rigid as they are the vertex of the triangle that holds the putter. If the wrists rotate or bend, the triangle is destroyed and the straight line changes to an arc and consistency of putting is lost.



The swing and stroke

The putting swing and stroke in normal putts is very simple and if we divide the total travel of the putter head we should consider one third before and two thirds after the ball point. The total travel of the putter head should not exceed two feet in normal putts because in a distance more than that it is impossible for most of the golfers to maintain a perfect line along the normal
stroke. So, what is important is to average the distance you intend the ball travel by increasing the speed you need in the moment of the impact. There are simple training exercises you can do in a putting green to calculate the distance in different green conditions. After selecting the line, find a point in the green one foot after the ball and try to pass over it with the centre of the putter. Forget the ball and please take a deep breath before putting.



Shorter putts

Most of golfers use the same kind of stroke in shorter putts (up to 2 m or 8 feet). But there is a detail difference that can provide better average results. Shorter putter just require shorter backswing by obvious reason. But there is another reason for that: the shorter the back swing is the more certain you get an aligned movement. So try to make a back movement shorter than one foot and regulate the acceleration of the putter head and the final speed at the impact according the local circumstances (the grass and the relief of the green).



Other putting movements with longer putters

There are other putters different from the regular ones to be used with a fixed support in the middle of the chest or in the chin. Those putters require different grips and the technique is totally different but we will not develop that in this text.



Putting statistics

To evaluate your putting technique and performance you should adopt a systematic register of your putts in competition. Data as the putting distance and the result (short or long, left or right, and “in the hole”) will help you to adjust the putting training.



Try to follow these advices and enjoy your game!

Mental game

One of the most difficult parts of the golf game is the "mental game." Many professionals have special trainers to robust their psico in adverse circunstances. When they fail one par, they recover in the next one. It's what is called the "bounce back". Most of the professionls have a high pourcentage of bounce back.
On the contrary, all the golf amateur players suffer of a opposite illness: when they superseed their expectations in one hole usually they fail the follow one. It is well known the expression "after a birdie, a shit". That is the result of lack of mental game, one aspect that the professional trainers don't teach the amateurs to robust. A amateur must keep always his expections in a low level, if possible ignoring what they have just done in the previous shot. They must do a kind of game "shot by shot", always trying to do the best way they can and they know.

Another aspect the professionals are very strong is to play with public and many of them the more public they have the best they play. They were trained to do so. For them golf is a show game.
With the amateurs it is also the opposite. Some, even if they have just one person watching, they feel the legs shaking and fail the shot. So, golf amateurs have to adopt one attitude very simple: ignore everything around, the other players, the assistants, all.

Golf Fitness

To play better golf it is essential to be in good physical shape. By two reasons: bad shape doesn't allow good shots and is a strong risk of injury.
Together with playing a golfer must keep a paralell program of physical training dedicated to strength flexibility and muscles especially working in swing movement. But not only that. A golfer needs resistance to play 18 holes performing around 10 times the swing in each hole what means 180 swings and to walk some 6-7 kilometres.
So, golf fitness must be not only one element for better golf but also a precaution to avoid future body injuries. It is regretable to find in the golf courses many golfers playing with physical restrictions due to golf injuries.
There are many alternatives to do a good program on shaping adapted to golf needs, in the gymnasium or at home with simple devices. From the most simple one, performing the swing with a special training device or two irons, to the most complete gym working machines you can do many things. Try to work your body with a personal trainer or follow the advice of specialists. You will feel much better, play longer, more precise and hole easier.

Golf consistency

Golf amateurs mostly have problems with consistency. One category especially becomes desperate with that – the bogey players. They are in the frontier to become scratch golfers - the dream of all amateurs - and each bad stroke is real torture and most of times are difficult to overcome in the following hole. One day it is the power game that doesn’t work, another day it is the short game, other the putting and the player don’t know what the reason for his inconsistency is.

Those who care about and look for the reasons behind the results need to register their performance in all aspects of the game. A tool very helpful for that is now available on the Internet at the site http://www.golfcaddyfile.com/. You can try it for free during some months and check for the aspects you need to improve systematically in training with or without professional aid. The tool provided is a kind of tailor-made one. You can use it in full or just in the aspects you intend.

Let’s explain how it works. Usually a golf player takes note of the number of strokes and some others of the number of putts too. This is important but is not enough. If you just count these two numbers in each hole you get at that site important information as for example: the average in Greens in Regulation, the average number of putts in a round and in the Greens in Regulation, the average performance in the pars 3, 4 and 5. This information tells you what are the pars with better performance and allows a comparison with the best performances in the world so that you know where you are in a global ranking of performance.

But there are other aspects in the game that can be systematically analysed what requires statistic information too. That site in full use provides you with 17 indicators of different aspects of your game performance. You just need to collect 6 different data from each hole: the number of strokes and putts, the driving accuracy and distance, the sand saves and the up & downs. Comparing this data of your performance with the one of the best players worldwide you have a clear notion where you need to improve: the driving, the putting, the middle game, the bunker shots, the shorter game around the greens and it is not all. The site gives you information about how you react to bad holes and how you recover from – the bounce back indicator tells you if you recover from a previous bad performance. With all that information you are ready to tackle the weakest aspects of your game during training and to tell your golf professional what you really need to improve.

Most of the times the golf professional only looks at your swing in the driving range trying to fit it in his concepts of the perfect swing. But average golf amateurs will never get the perfect swing ever. They have their own swing and want to play and get better results. So, as the golf professional doesn’t know what your real performance in the course is, in fact he doesn’t know which aspects of your game you really need to improve. That information only you can provide him. But, as one day is one aspect and the other day another, you need to collect statistical information and compare it with the best performers.

That is what provides the tool of the http://www.golfcaddyfile.com/ . Try it and enjoy your game!

Pitch or chip?

Most of the golf players have difficulties to choose which one – pitch or chip - is the best shot in many situations on the course. It is also frequent to find golfers that don’t distinguish a chip from a pitch. Some even think that a pitch shot is only executed with a pitch iron and a chip with a chipper. The purpose of this text is to elucidate golfers that have such difficulties.

The first aspect to clear is that the names of the shots are not related to the specific irons or wedges used to play although there are clubs with those names. You might remember that there is even a chip club that was very popular some years ago with two equal faces to be used from left or right side, very useful when the usual side swing cannot be performed by the player due to a fixed obstacle, tree, wall or other impediment. You can chip or pitch or even make other kind of shots with most of the wedges and irons. What makes the real difference between a chip and a pitch shot is the type of swing you perform.

So, what is a pitch shot? We could say that it is a regular shot in the normal stance with full or shorter swing causing the normal parabolic trajectory of the ball. The ball travels up according the loft of the club and the speed of the swing and falls down with a shorter movement forward or even back in consequence of the spin acquired by the ball in contact with the club face. This kind of shot is recommended when there obstacles in the trajectory of the ball and in the limit when a tall tree is between the player and the hole a balloon pitch shot can be the right choice. You can pitch with whatever club you want - usually the shorter irons and wedges - but if you open the face of longer irons you will be surprised with the beautiful and higher & longer shots you can obtain. However, the usual situation for a pitch is during the short game when a pitch shot most of the times is recommendable around the green with obstacles between. The ball flies after the impact and falls down with a shorter movement on the green. It is recommended especially when we want to place the ball nearest the hole.

Is that clear? And what’s a chip shot?

A chip shot is a totally different shot: in the swing and in the usual stance. First of all the stance must be opened and the ball placed at the back foot. The swing is more similar to the putting following a line in the desired direction (tacking in account a putting line after the ball touches the green) without wrist cocking and gripping near the lower limit of the grip. The club, as it is played with the ball at the back foot, is closed in relation to the usual position. The shaft of the club should be closer to the left arm (for right players) and move without rotation, that is paralell to itself. The ball will fly over the rough and the border of the green and then fall in the green make one or two little jumps and adopt a trajectory to the hole. Usually you should adopt a falling point outside the rolling trajectory, because the more loft the wedge has the tendancy to right spin increases.

After these preliminary considerations which club should be chosen? Depending on the distance to the border of the green and the distance from this border till the hole the club should be choose between a pitch club and any wedge. Usually, in normal horizontal greens and played as it was said before, the ball fly one third of the distance and rolls on the green two thirds of the total distance. A 9 or an 8 or even a 7 club can also be used in special circumstances, when a longer rolling distance is required after the flight of the ball. If you are a skilled golfer you can also use a wood or a hybrid According with the local conditions of the green the position of the ball can be changed: if the ball should roll less distance we approach the ball to the centre of the stance and use a higher loft club. Compared with the pitch shot the chip is a much easier shot. Around the green and inside a circumference of 50 m from the hole the chip shot is safer, unless the ball is near the border and immediately after deep rough. So, read the green carefully and the conditions of its border before choose the best shot.
And if you have tendency to shank choose always a chip instead of a pitch if possible.

Practice both shots in the driving range and fit your own best club for each situation!
Enjoy your game!

Key words in golf.
Address Albatroz Approach Average Backspin Backswing Ball Birdie Bogey Bounce Bounce-back Buggie Bunker Caddie Caddy Card Chip Club Clubhead Course Divot Dog leg Downswing Draw Drive Driver Drop Eagle Fade Fairway Fitness Fitting Flag Follow through Fresh air Green Grip Golf assessment Golf consistency Golf mprovement Green in Regulation Gross Handicap Hazard Hole Hole-in-one Hook Hybrid club Iron Lie Links Lob Loft Longest-drive Master Match play Matching of clubs Mulligan Nearest-the-pin Net Out-of-bounds Par Par 3 Par 4 Par 5 Pitch Pitch mark Play-off Power-game Practice of golf Professional Putt Putting Rough Sand wedge Score Scoring Scramble Scratch Shaft Shank Short-game Shot Slice Spin Stableford Stance Statistics Stiffness Stroke Stroke-play Sway Sweet spot Swing Tee Tracker Up-and- own Wedge Wood Wrist cock