Video Tip: Speed Control on Your Putts

In this video, Allen Terrell of the Dustin Johnson Golf School at TPC Myrtle Beach in Murrells Inlet, S.C. shows us a practice drill where you can learn how to properly manage the speed of your putts by managing the distance of your backswing versus the follow-through.

Allen Terrell:
One quality that you want to have in your stroke is the ability to control the distance of your backstroke versus the distance of your forward stroke. I would say we see mostly short backstrokes and then a big follow-through. To do that, that means your transition is going to have to be faster. And to have speed control doing that, there are a few guys out on tour that can do it, but most of the time, for the average amateur that’s a little bit too difficult.

So what we do, we take alignment stick and right here’s where the ball will be. We put a bigger dot there and then we got five inches, you can do whatever you want, it’s just a reference, five inch intervals all the way back and through. So you start by just trying to feel five inches to five inches. And then 10 to 10. That’s usually the hardest one. And then 15 to 15. And then for the bigger putt, 20 to 20.

And then you actually hit putts trying to match those different distances and get a feel for how far each length stroke propels the golf ball. I would say most people have a tendency to go back about seven inches and then go to twenty-something. Where do we want to try to match it up the most, so we can … And actually the through stroke may be quite shorter or sometimes slightly shorter because you’re contacting the ball coming through, and it’s going to slow the putter down a little bit, but your goal is to try to make the stroke as equal as you can back.