Putting is almost certainly the most important skill to master in golf if you want to shoot lower golf scores. Having said that, for a golf skill that is one of the simplest skills it is amazing how many golfers lack confidence in it, which is puzzling when you think about it.
If you can swing your putter backwards and forwards rhythmically then you can learn how to become an excellent putter. Five year olds can hit a ball to a hole and so can you.
Putting successfully requires mastery of three disciplines.
1. Aiming the putter to where you would like to hit the ball to
2. Hitting the ball exactly on the line the putter is aimed on
3. Hitting the ball with the correct amount of force for the distance
These are the basics you must master in putting first. Reading the greens matters little if you can’t hit your ball where you putter is pointing, and at the correct speed.
Also it doesn’t matter about the style of the stroke you choose to use if you can’t hit your putt where you’re aiming and at the correct speed. But if you master these 3 disciplines you will hole more putts and have a lot more fun playing golf.
It is so easy to get caught up in the theories of how to stroke your putt but consider that the ball doesn’t care what you look like and only responds to the putter face and head.
Start with short putts of about 3 feet and master the 3 disciplines and when you can hit your putt where the putter is pointing 8 times out of 10 then you can increase the length of the stroke and force and increase your distance.
Ideally you will hit 5 putts a total of ten times per session or 50 putts in total.
Putt 5 balls to 5 coins at 5 different distances say 10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet, 25 feet and 30 feet.
Hit the 5 balls so that they finish within 3 feet of the coin with a pass rate of 80 percent.
This will require a minimum of 2 putting sessions per week for a period of 12 weeks.
It is well worth investing your time in this and developing your confidence because the payoff is grand when you can face any putt and know that you will hit it in the hole more often than not from short distances and hit is close more often than not from longer distances.
Until next time,
Lawrie Montague
If you asked one hundred regular amateur golfers to honestly rate the quality of their mental game on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being highly competent at managing their mental/emotional state on the golf course and one being totally incompetent on the golf course what do you think the majority of golfers would say?
I bet they would say that they rank too low on the scale, probably about a 2 or a 3.
If you then ask them what they need to do to raise their score most would have very little idea about what they need to do.
Some will say that they have read popular authors like Bob Rotella and other popular golf psychologists who write about the mental game and golf.
The truth is that very few golfers ever spend any time developing their mental skills and there’s no doubt that it is holding you back from hitting better and more consistent golf shots and shooting lower golf scores.
How much easier would it be if you knew what your unique personality style was for learning and performing on the golf course?
If you knew that your particular style meant that you needed to take instruction a certain way as well as the way you play on the golf course?
If you were oblivious to your performance style could it mean that every time you play you are no better off than the last time you played?
That in fact you would never get better at golf because you don’t know what you need to do.
Golf is a game of gross generalisations.
Golf books, golf magazines and other forms of media try to persuade you to go with a popular style that may not be even close to being the best way for you.
This has been a challenge for me for many years up until recently when I came across a golf personality profile that actually got it right.
Someone finally developed a golf personality profile for every golfer that helps you to understand why YOU play golf the way YOU do and how YOU can get better at it by following some simple guidelines.
The profile was developed by Bobby Foster, a management consultant headquartered in Columbia, SC. Bobby is a former teaching professional and golf coach at the University of South Carolina where he coached several All-Americans including four players who played on The PGA Tour.
He is a Certified Behavioral Analyst specializing in the D.I.S.C Behavioral Style Model. He explains the purpose behind the development of the mental golf profile -
“Our company has had great success using DISC profiles in work language to help people improve performance in all types of working environments.
Over the years, I’ve often thought about how much better I would have been as a player, instructor and coach if I’d known about the DISC System during that stage of my life.
We built this profile in golf language so that players, instructors and coaches could enjoy the same benefits I’ve seen countless experience with DISC profiles in the workplace.”
The system generates personalized information for working on your mental game just as video and launch monitors produce personalized information for working on your swing and customizing your equipment. The profile works great for self-coaching as well as for collaborating with your instructor or coach.
It’s Quick…It’s Accurate…It’s Comprehensive… “The beauty of this system is that our players get an accurate and comprehensive report without having to spend hours completing a laborious questionnaire. You sure get a lot for the time and money you invest in this process.”
– Dr. Greg Rose, Co-Founder, Titleist Performance Institute
Following is the 5 step outline of the Mental Golf Workshop™ profile process -
- Log in to www.mentalgolfworkshop.com with my access code procollege (all one word).
- Pay US $65.00 (worth every penny too!)
- Spend about ten minutes answering the multiple-choice questionnaire.
- Your answers go through the proprietary scoring system to produce a 20 plus page report.
- Review the detailed descriptions of your mental golf tendencies and customized strategies for these areas of your game – Golf Temperament
- Pre-Round Preparation
- Mental Tendencies When Playing Shots
- Course Management
- Working With Your Instructors
- Mental Tendencies Toward Golf Fitness
Your report is produced in a “workshop” format, with space provided to make notes as you work through your report. This format makes it easy to self-coach yourself or to review with your instructor or coach.
I know that this great tool will be the tool you need to make the New Year your best year ever to play golf the way you have always wanted to.
Lawrie Montague – Golf Confidence Pro
Top Professional golfers who play golf on tour are unique individuals who passionately pursue their dream of achieving success on the PGA and LPGA tour’s with drive, energy and determination. They allow us to see what lies within; the potential to be a lot better than we currently are.
To improve your golf you need a strong passion to constantly fuel your motivation. Passion comes from your desire to be excellent at what you do, and golf is one game where you have to work very hard over a long period of time to gain a high measure of control over your golf shots and ultimately your golf scores.
By removing the “quick fix” mentality from your thinking and working hard on your weakest, most important skills you can make progress with your golf. Your passion to improve will keep you focused on the task, and in the weeks and months from now you will reap the rewards of your dedication with better golf shots and lower golf scores.
This week Golf Confidence Academy (GCA) launches our new Online Video Golf Lesson Program. Every week thousands of keen golfers visit GCA and Lawrie Montague owner of Golf Confidence Academy gets many requests for advice from golfers around the world to help them solve their golf swing technique problems.
From this month visitors to Golf Confidence Academy will be able to send videos of their golf techniques and have Lawrie analyse them.
Lawrie is a very successful golf coach who has more than twenty five thousand hours of experience coaching golfers from beginners to tournament winners and through the power of the internet he’s able to help golfers to improve their golf so they can play confidently and competently.
Lawrie co-owns Pro Tour Golf College at Joondalup Resort in Perth Western Australia where he trains and prepares aspiring tour professionals and tour professionals. He also owns Gold Coast Golf School on Queenslands Gold Coast where his instructors help amateur golfers to sharpen their golf skillsd to gain more enjoment from their game.
Here’s one of Lawrie’s Online Video Golf Lesson students (who was part of his test program) commenting about the program…
“I stumbled upon Lawrie through his Youtube golf videos. As an avid player, I have seen hours of Youtube footage on golf instruction. I rarely however, watch more than one video within an instructor’s channel. When I found these videos, I was blown away by Lawrie’s ability to analyze the swing.
He explains technical aspects of the swing in a way that is easy to digest, and you can just sense his enthusiasm for the game. I soon after sought Lawrie’s opinion of my golf swing.
I was more than impressed when I received my swing analysis back. Lawrie clearly diagnosed and explained the critical areas where my swing could be more efficient. He also illustrated the positions I should be in, by drawing overlays onto the video.
He then explained certain drills I could work on to achieve these positions. Overall the video lessons I receive from Lawrie are thorough, clearly explained, and without any fluff. I have never heard the physics of the golf swing explained better by anybody anywhere.
Its hard to believe that somebody on the other side of the world could improve my game without ever seeing me in person. My swing continues to evolve and change under Lawrie’s keen eye. I am playing golf with more confidence and awareness then ever before. He can definitely do the same for you!”
Sincerely,
Paul – Lantana Florida
So if you would like to have Lawrie help you to improve your golf technique you can visit this page www.golfconfidence.org/online-golf-lessons and go through the simple process to have Lawrie help you to play better and more confident golf.
There’s something really interesting that happens to dedicated, serious golfers as they go about developing and improving their game. At some point of time many reach a stage of progress sometimes described as “arrested development” where they essentially reach an impasse with their golf performances and stop improving.
This level has been described many ways by sports coaches such as; plateauing out, levelling out, or becoming stale etc.
Every time you come off the golf course after completing a round, your golf scores reflect your aptitude and attitude for creating your golf score. For many golfers it becomes more of a physical and psychological battle than a round of golf with their golf game taking control of them leaving them defeated, frustrated and unhappy.
I think it’s one of the most fascinating aspects of golf performance psychology because it doesn’t seem to matter what improvement strategy the golfer takes, they discover yet another way to produce less than desirable scores. In-fact over the years I have met golfers who have been in this frustrating and unsettling place for literally years.
Golfer’s that reach this arrested development level will quite often change their equipment, change their golf instructor or even change their sport in an effort to change this condition. Quite often a change in equipment or instructor might do the trick but I have found that the problem has a lot more to do with how you go about improving your game rather than simply changing a brand of golf club.
The way many advanced golfers practice tends to be based mostly on improving the golf swing performance to improve their golf scores which ends up being the limiting factor in improving their performances on the golf course.
It’s like saying that the tyres on a racing car is the only factor that determines whether the driver will win the race or not, without considering all the other performance factors in the race car, like fuel for instance. Tyres are very important on a racing car but they won’t do you much good if you run out of fuel before the end of the race.
So determining exactly what you need to work on to improve your golf scores should be you starting point. If you were going to practice your golf skills on the practice range for five hours what skills would get the most attention? In other words, how much time would you allocate to each skill set and why?
- Full Swing – Technique Training
- Full Swing – Target Training
- Putting Skills – Long and Short
- Chipping, Pitching and Lob Skills
- Sand Skills – Short and Long
- Full Swing – Trouble Shots
- Short-Game – Trouble Shots
Study the skill sets above and rate each skill set in order of its importance to you right now in improving your golf scores on the golf course. Consider the makeup of your round and determine which skills have the greatest effect on your golf scores.
When you go about improving your golf skills you need to know whether the skills that you’re focusing on will actually make a difference to your bottom line golf score. It’s not uncommon for advanced golfers to be working on the wrong golf skills, particularly when they’re in the arrested development phase.
You need to find a simple way to measure your golf skill routine to determine which of the golf skills need more of your focus. It’s not unusual to hear a golfer describe themselves as a bad putter, but is the golfer a bad putter because they are missing putts that are outside of the makeable range? What is the makeable range? Well, you will discover when you test your putting skills that you will make a high percentage of the putts you attempt from 3 feet (85-95%) of the hole and almost half as many from six feet (45-55%) of the hole and almost half as many again from ten feet (15-25%) of the hole and so on.
So the question you might need to ask yourself is this; “am I a bad putter because I’m trying to hole my putts for par from outside ten feet of the hole because I don’t realise that from this distance I would actually only make 15 to 25 percent (1 to 2 out of 10) of them?”
Should the question really be re-framed to something like this; “what percentage of my chip and pitch shots around the green finish within six feet of the hole?”
I bet you that if you get a high percentage of your chip and pitch shots within six feet of the hole that you will make more putts and your putting average will improve. This illustration is the same for other skills as well.
If you consider yourself a bad driver of the ball and you hit say 40 percent or less of the fairways that you attempt to hit when you use a driver, is it possible that by testing your driver skill on the driving range to a set of targets that are placed twenty yards apart at 200 yards that you achieve a forty percent success rate (4 out of 10 shots) with a driver and a sixty five percent success rate when you use a three wood, however when you set the targets on the range at twenty five yards apart you now can achieve sixty percent success rate with your driver.
So whenever you play a hole that has a fairway twenty yards wide at your driving distance you will take a three wood from the tee instead of your driver. If the fairway is twenty five yards wide you can confidently take your driver and swing away confidently.
By measuring your different skill sets in this manner you can accurately determine which skills need more of your attention and which need less. Every golfer uses a formula for producing their golf scores and by measuring the elements that make up your golf score you can change the formula so that you break free from your arrested development and go on to produce better and more consistent rounds of golf.
Until next time,
Lawrie Montague – Golf Confidence Coach
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