Thursday, February 17, 2011

Short Putting Challenge

When I was out playing tournaments as an amateur and a professional I always had the theory that if my short putting was good, my longer putting would be good as well. My theory was that I could be more aggressive with my mid and long putts when I was confident I could hole the short putt coming back. This meant that I spent a lot of time working on my short putting and I thought up a few different games/challenges to make my putting practice time more enjoyable. One of the games I used was called Putting Tee Ball and this is one I want to set as a challenge for you today.

To start you need six golf balls and six extra long tees. It is important that you use extra long tees as we want to make this game as challenging as possible. You need to set five of the golf balls on five of the tees as is shown in the picture above and to the left. It is important that you tee the balls up nice and high for the challenge to work. Then I want you to measure two feet from the tees and place the sixth tee as your marker to begin the challenge. Place the sixth ball next to the marker tee and take aim at one of the tees with a ball on top. The goal of this putt is to hit the tee so that the ball falls from it. This is why it is important to tee the balls high so that the ball you putt only strikes the tee and not the ball on top of the tee. Once you have knocked one ball from a tee you need to attempt to do this for the second tee and ball. If you succeed with your first attempt you can move onto the next tee and ball. The aim of the challenge is to knock all five balls from their tees with five consecutive putts. Once you have completed this from two feet, you can move the marker tee back to three feet and start again.

This is a tough drill and it may take you some time to move away from the two feet station. Make sure you keep trying and working on your short putting. I want everyone to record their scores either in the comments section of my blog or via my twitter account which you can find here. If you get to the three feet station and you knock four balls from their tees before missing one you would record your score as 3ft 4balls.

Enjoy the challenge that this drill is and I am looking forward to reading your best scores and seeing your improvement over time.

Until next time,

Brent