Last Saturday, I had my second short game lesson from Brendon Elliott.

If you missed the first weeks lesson you can find it here – Orlando Golf Lessons.

For a quick recap, the first week was a putting evaluation, complete with video, pictures, dixx putter stats and a review of my last 10 golf scores.

Brendon compiled all that data and came to a simple conclusion, I’m a crummy putter.  🙂

So this weeks focus was to unlearn my crappy habits and learn some better ones.  There was quite a few things that I needed changed, the first of which was my putter length.

I picked up the putter from play it again sports about four years back.  I think I paid twenty bucks for it and it was made for a giant. 🙂  The putter was about 2 1/2 inches too long for me and because of that, I was having to hunker down over the ball and bend my elbows so that the putter rested flush with the green.

This caused my swing to be totally inconsistent and made it very difficult to control the swing speed.

The proper putting form is displayed in the image on the left.  You want your shoulders and arms to form a perfect triangle with your hands holding the grip forming a point.

This triangle should never be broken through out the putt.

You need to swing in a low arching pendulum motion and the stroke should be even with the back swing distance matching the follow through distance.  For example, if your back swing is three inches, your follow through should also be three inches.

Additionally, your swing speed must remain constant.  Another problem with my putting was that my back swing was slow and I’d muscle the putter forward to strike the ball.  This opens you up to many inconsistencies in the swing path, swing speed and point of impact.

To help me get my swing speed rhythm down, we used a four count metronome.  Two counts for the back swing and two counts for the follow through.

Another problem that I had was that after the point of impact, I was turning my body towards the target, opening up my stance and causing the putter face to open and put some unwanted spin on the ball.  This was also causing me to extend my follow through out longer and higher than it should have been.

We used the Eyeline Putting Plane Alignment System to help break that habit.

This has guide  rails that helps to keep your swing path constant.

It also helps with the back swing and follow through distances.

Brendon has measured out the perfect distance from one of the holes on the green that if you take your back swing to the left of the putting plane and end it at the right of the putting plane, the putt will end up in the cup.

The last thing we covered was bending forward at the waist until your eyes are directly above the ball.  See that black line running down the center of the training device?  You square your shoulders to the red line closest to your feet and bend forward until your eyes are over that black line.

This lesson has helped me tremendously.  After I had my putter resized, I threw on a new grip in an attempt at a fresh start.  The very next day I played a round out a Dubsdread and manages to shave five strokes off my putting game.  I feel after a bit more practice and my body gets used to the new posture, I’ll be able to shave off another five strokes easy.

Stay tuned for more vicarious short game lessons via Brendon Elliott. 🙂

-Dave

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