8 Simple Indoor Golf Putting Drills to Practice Daily

The following at home golf drills are beginner level to build basic fundamental putting stroke skills. You need just a few phone books and a coin or tee to set up these indoor putting practice drills.

Also, you can practice these putting drills on carpet if you don’t have a synthetic indoor putting green.

Drill #1: Phone Book Path

Drop two phone books onto the ground at home and leave enough distance between them that your putter can barely squeeze through. Make practice strokes focusing on keeping the putter path straight and putter face square. If you don’t, you may bump into the books which give you feedback that your putting stroke wasn’t straight for that stroke.

Drill #2: Phone Book with Golf Ball

Set up two phone books again so that you’ve left your putter enough room to make a stroke between them. Now place a 10 foot piece of painter’s tape in the middle of the path and parallel to the books so that it creates a target line. Several feet of tape should be outside the books so that you can see how your ball stays on line for several feet.

Set a golf ball down in the middle of the books path on the target line you’ve created and stroke putts. You can use the books to monitor your back swing length compared to your forward swing length. The forward swing should be equal or slightly bigger than the back swing. Using the books as a guide for a straight putting stroke, try to see how many putts you can keep on the tape/target line.

Drill #3: Right Handed Putts

Pick a target to putt to from 3 feet away and using just your right hand, stroke one handed putts trying to hit the target. Make sure to keep the putter path straight still as well as the face square to your target. This will build your putting stroke by ingraining skill with one hand.

Drill #4: Left Handed Putts

Repeating the same golf drill from above, use just your left hand to stroke 3 foot putts to a target you’ve selected. These two one handed putting drills make a our list of the best golf drills at home because of their simplicity but also their effectiveness.

You’ll be surprised how much more confident you feel once you can master one handed putting strokes. Spend 15 minutes each day and it will add up over the month, you’ll see.

Drill #5: Putting to a Tee

One of the best ways to practice putting at home is simply working on your control of the putter face. Set up a golf tee so that it’s upside down.

Starting 3 feet away, putt a ball to the tee trying to knock it over. Then move back to 4 feet, 5 feet, and so on. Try to work your way back to 20 feet away and still be able to knock the tee over.

You’ll gain amazing feel of your putter’s face and know when you’ve closed the face or opened the face during the putting stroke since you’re hitting to a super small target.

Drill #6: Putting to a King of Hearts

Grab a King of Hearts playing card from a deck of cards and lay it on the carpet or floor several feet away from you. Attempt to putt the golf ball with enough speed that it stops on top of the king of hearts.

This is a challenging putting drill that will improve your putting distance control before you know it. And using a playing card helps simulate a golf hole since it’s small, so you’ll also work on your putting accuracy by making sure you’re aligned to the target properly.

Drill #7: Three Ball Distance Control

For this putting practice drill, you want create a 1 foot long box or zone using tape or some sort of distance marker. The goal is to putt all 3 balls into this zone with each ball going slightly further than the previous ball. But the 3rd ball can’t go beyond the 12 inch zone. It teaches you putting distance control by forcing you to feel each putt and try to replicate that distance but slightly further without over hitting the ball so that it rolls beyond the 1 foot long zone.

Drill #8: Golf Putting Stance Practice

Lastly, we want you to improve your putting set up and your stance. This is a fundamental step to helping you make a straight putting stroke.

Have your putter sitting next to the couch and during TV shows or during commercial breaks, stand up and work on the proper putting stance set up.

Doing this for just 15 minutes per day can build muscle memory and turn into a good habit so that your putting stroke improves without a whole lot of effort.

SOURCE: golfpracticeguides.com

MAKE THE ONES YOU HATE TO MISS

A six-footer is by no means a gimme, but it’s still short enough that it stings when it doesn’t go in. To make more of these, start by locking in your speed. It’s the most important part of every putt. And when you assess speed, don’t just factor how fast the ball needs to roll to get to the front of the cup. Think about it: You’re not trying to be so precise with your putting that the ball falls in on its last rotation. So forget the front of the cup. You should be looking at a spot 1½ feet beyond the hole. You’ll still be in tap-in range if you miss, but now you know the ball is going to get there every time.

Once you’ve determined that spot, then you can read the break. Start by walking to the hole, and try to picture the line in your head, keeping in mind that it continues 18 inches past the cup. Typically a putt of this length isn’t going to break that much—unless your course is Augusta National.

To get my speed down, I often practice with a small silicone cover over the top of the hole. The ball rolls right over it. If you don’t have one, you can just putt over the location of an old cup like I’m doing here (see bottom photo). The point is to get the ball to stop at a consistent distance beyond the hole. After I hit a putt that rolls over the cup and stops where I want it to stop, I’ll put a dime down to mark that end point. Then I’ll stroke putts over the hole trying to get every one to stop on a dime, so to speak.

DEVELOP A SHOT CLOCK
Having a pre-shot routine is important, but that doesn’t mean only doing the same things before every putt. Just as important is the amount of time you take to do those things. It will make a big difference if there’s a consistent duration from setup to stroke—it gives you good rhythm and confidence. Another thing you should do before you hit a putt is to take one last look at your line of putt all the way to the hole and then back to your ball—but do it quickly. The longer you stand over the ball, the more likely you’ll start to psych yourself out that you might miss. Good putting is a lot more mental than physical. Not a lot can go wrong with your stroke on a six-footer—it’s a fairly short and quiet motion. If you can relax and trust in what you’ve done prior to the putt, your chance of rolling one in will go way up.

BE AN ATHLETE, NOT A ROBOT
If you struggle with these makable putts, it’s probably because you’re too focused on using perfect mechanics. I’ve got news for you, guys like me on the PGA Tour rarely set up and make a textbook stroke, yet the tour average for putts made from six feet last season was 70 percent. What I’m saying is, there are a lot of ways to get the ball to go in the hole.

Putting is extremely personal, but everyone should feel comfortable over the ball. I like when my arms hang freely, and I have a slight roundness to my back. As for the stroke, I don’t think about the length the putter moves back and through. Instead, I try to be as athletic as possible, meaning my process is to look at what I have to do—then react. If you’re shooting a basketball, you don’t think about how hard your arm has to move for the ball to reach the basket, you just look at the rim and let it fly. Try putting with that same mind-set.

SOURCE:  golfdigest

 

Who Knew??

Golf has actually been played on the moon! It is only 1 of 2 sports to literally have been played out-of-this-world, along with the javelin throw. Back in 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut, Alan Shepard, swung a one-handed shot with a six-iron, which was all his pressure suit would allow.

Tell us the most unusual place you have played golf!

It’s time for you to shoot for the moon!

 

How To Spin The Golf Ball

You have no doubt seen TOUR pros on television, or any good golfer for that matter, hit shots into the green that end up spinning back like a rocket, particularly in wet conditions.  You might note how that never really happens when you’re out on the course, and you wonder how exactly they do it!  So, how do they put backspin on the ball?

Being able to spin the golf ball is actually something that most amateurs, and even some seasoned golfers, cannot control.

It is something that comes with experience and a certain degree of proficiency.  It requires you to know how to make solid, “ball-first” contact with the golf ball, and do it with sufficient speed for the grooves to do the work.

There are, of course, many instances where it would be quite useful to be able to put spin the ball.

Often, it’s from a tight lie off of the green, with rough, a bunker or another obstacle between you and the flag.  In such a case, you would typically want to fly the ball close to the spin and have it stop dead or even spin back a little bit.

The focus of this article is to discuss what exactly backspin on the golf ball involves, when you can spin the ball and how it is actually accomplished.  Hopefully this can help some of you who want to take your game to the next level!

How is backspin generated?

Backspin (spinning away from the direction of the target) occurs when the clubface makes contact with the ball and the grooves on the face of the club “grab” the ball, imparting a spin before it takes off.  There are several key factors which affect how much the ball spins, and they include:

• The effective loft of the clubface at impact.  The higher this loft is, the closer the clubface becomes to pointing directly up towards zenith, and the easier it is for the grooves to grab the ball and “roll it up” the face.  For example, it’s much easier to impart backspin on the ball with a 9-iron as compared with a 3-iron, and you get relatively little spin with a driver.
• How clean the strike is.  If there is grass, mud, sand or any other matter between the clubface and the ball at impact, some or all of the grooves won’t be able to make contact with the ball to create spin.  This is why you generally cannot spin the ball out of the rough — grass gets between the clubface and the ball.  You generally want to hit the ball before the ground in order to get solid spin.
• Clubhead speed.  It is important to accelerate through the ball if you want a good backspin.  The faster the face impacts the ball, the more time the grooves have to grab the ball and create spin before the ball “rebounds” or “rockets” off the face.

It is widely believed that the steepness of the clubface path coming into the ball, or the angle of attack, affects the spin of the ball given a fixed loft.  However, there exists evidence, particularly from TrackMan, that is contrary to this claim.  In general, hitting “down” on the ball does appear not affect spin rates.  The three factors bulletted above are the primary determinants of golf ball spin.

What can I do to spin the ball?

Based on what I mentioned above, you should do the following if you want to maximize the amount of backspin you generate:

1. Use a quality golf ball with a high spin rating, like the Titleist Pro V1/V1x.
2. Use a higher-lofted club, or open your clubface.  The shorter clubs — 7, 8, 9 irons, and wedges — will naturally produce more spin than longer clubs.  If you do open your clubface, just be sure to make the necessary adjustments in your alignment.
3. Hit from a tight clean lie, like from the fairway, fringe or even a bunker.  As I touched on above, you cannot expect to spin the ball out of the rough, especially if it’s sitting down or the grass is long.
4. Make sure your clubface is clean, hit the ball solidly, and take the divot after the ball.  This will allow the grooves of the face to make full contact with the ball.  Unfortunately, many amateurs often neglect to clean their clubs even when they’re caked with dirt; what they likely don’t realize is that they’re either partially or completely preventing the club from creating backspin.
5. Accelerate through the ball at an appropriate speed.  If you feel that you’re swinging too slow and it may be hindering your ability to put spin on the ball, take a look at my speed article for some clarity and tips.

Note that the firmness of the golf course typically determines how far balls spin back.  On wet grass (fairways, greens), there is less rollout and most of the spin will go into bringing the ball back.  In other words, the result of spin is much more obvious in soft conditions.

Hopefully, after reading and understanding the concise information presented above, you’ll be well on your way to developing a firm control of the spin on your golf ball.

SOURCE:  golfstead.com