Heat and rain are critical ingredients to the health of golf courses and most importantly the putting greens.
Although the rain and inclement weather are not necessarily great conditions to play golf in, they certainly assist in the growth of golf course grasses.
Last week’s article discussed the effect that weather has not only on golfers, but also on the playing conditions of golf courses.
Inclement weather conditions can and does dramatically affect the growing conditions of golf course grasses.
This is particularly true and most noticed with the growth or lack of growth of the greens.
Although each golf course and their superintendant has their own methods to speed up the growth process and or avoid the lack of growth that inclement weather conditions spawn, us as golfers have to find ways to deal with inconsistent playing surfaces.
Most noticeably, from golf course to golf course, is the inconsistency of the speed of greens.
Some courses prefer to keep their greens soft and slow, where others prefer to keep them firm and fast.
The firmness and speed is mostly relative to the clientele the course is catering to, but primarily left up to the superintendant.
Regardless of the playing characteristics of a putting surface, they tend to be different from golf course to golf course.
What this means is that you as golfers must be equipped to make the necessary adjustments when playing different courses.
Doing so will assist in lowering your scores by making less putts and increasing your overall enjoyment each and every time you play.
Consistent putting or inconsistent putting — as we like to refer to it — is relative to many factors.
Some of these factors are not in your control.
Most noticeably is the putting surface itself.
You have to be able to make the necessary adjustments in your stroke to become more consistent when putting on greens that you are not familiar with.
In other words you have to ensure that your putting technique has a sound and consistent foundation to pull from.
In this article I shall talk about the fundamentals of the putting stroke.
This will include the formation of the stroke, the grip, the stance and tempo.
This information will lead us into next week’s article which will discuss how you read greens and the fact that most golfers can read greens better than they believe they can.
Finally, once you read the greens you need to properly align yourself to ensure the ball starts towards your intended target.
First of all, the putting stroke is a shoulder-driven motion, keeping the head and lower body (hip and legs) as still as possible.
To assist you in creating this feel, take your putter and lay it across your chest under your arms.
Now, get in your putting stance with your hands together as if you are holding your putter.
Now, make the putting motion keeping your head and hips still.
With the putter under your arm pits and you making the putting motion, you begin to feel the swing more in your back than you did before.
This is important as most players’ putting motion is more of a sway, using the hands and wrists too much.
The path that we are trying to create (the back and through motion of the club head) is a straight-back, straight-through motion.
When making a stroke, we are attempting to take the club straight back along our intended target line with the clubface remaining square to that line and then straight through the ball towards the target.
When discussing the proper putting grip, there are many that you could use.
In fact, there are so many that I could not begin to discuss them in this article.
Therefore, what is important is that you place your hands on the club in such a way that is not only comfortable for you, but one that allows you to have a relaxed grip pressure.
The more relaxed your hands are on the handle of the clubs the better your feel is when it comes to distance control.
Most importantly — when it comes to the grip — is that whatever grip you choose, be sure that it is one that allows you not to break your wrist throughout the swing.
This is one of the most common mistakes golfers make and one swing error that you need to eliminate to become a much better putter.
If you use your wrists in the putting stroke (in other words, flip) then you are not using your shoulders properly to drive the motion.
Using too much wrist tells me that you will be not only inconsistent in your distance control, but also your line.
A good grip is the first step to ensuring less wrist in your stroke.
As with the grip, there are many ways to get in your stance or set-up position.
I look for a couple of different things.
First of all, you need to have good balance.
Whether you have a narrow or wide stance is irrelevant; you need to ensure that you are balanced over your feet.
Secondly, the ball needs to be positioned forward in your stance.
This is important as we want to make contact with the ball just past the bottom of the arc (the arc the club head makes back and through). This starts the ball rolling with over roll, which assists in keeping the ball on its intended line for a longer period of time.
Finally, with the stance we need to bend at the waist attempting to get our eyes over the ball and or over the line that we intend the ball to start on.
This not only assists in seeing the line that we want the ball to take, but also assists in allowing the club head to go straight back on its intended line longer and straight through.
The last point that you need to incorporate into your golf swing for this article is tempo.
Tempo is the speed that the golf club travels back and through the ball towards the target.
Tempo is the one missing link in most players stroke that creates inconsistency in distance control.
The time you take the club back to the time you make contact with the ball should be the same for every length of putt.
I count one, one thousand two. This assists me in ensuring that my tempo is consistent from stroke to stroke. This ties into the fact that the clubs goes back further and through further for different lengths of putts.
Most players will tend to take the club back too far and then either speed up or slow down their tempo to send the ball towards the hole.
In other words, their swing speed will change to determine the length of putt they have in front of them. A consistent swing tempo will force you to either lengthen or shorten the size of your putting stroke for the distance of your putt.
Putting is the great equalizer in the game of golf.
It does not matter your gender, your athleticism, or your age, if you practise and improve you’re putting technique and believe you are a great putter, then you will notice your scores lowering and therefore your overall enjoyment of the game becoming greater. Play well and have a great week.
Scott Bergdahl is the teaching pro at Lakewood Golf Resort