In this video, PGA Professional Katie Dawkins explains how to improve your distance control on the greens.
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00:00Hi, I'm Katie Dawkins. I am an advanced PGA professional and I'm here today at West Hill
00:09Golf Club on the beautiful greens that they have here to help you work out how to better judge
00:14distance on the green. So how do I get this ball close to that hole? If you could guarantee that
00:21you never took any more than two putts on every single green, my goodness, how many shots would
00:26you save every round? I would say a lot of golfers are creeping into that double figures mark. So if
00:32putting is going to save you lots of shots and especially getting that first putt close, then why
00:37is it that people turn up for lessons and want to go on the range? Everyone needs to put a little bit
00:41more time into working on their putting game. Here are a couple of tips just to help you with that
00:46judging of distance on the greens. So how do I get a ball from about here on the edge of the green
00:51to there? One of the easiest ways to get feel for how much stroke to give it would be to roll it
00:57there. So if I am going to roll a ball to that flag, say it was for a million pounds prize money,
01:03I'm not going to stand here and give it a thumb like this with my arm. I'm not going to give it
01:07quite a jerky sort of shot. Yet this is how some people putt. Some people will stand here and smack
01:14the ball to get it close to the hole. It's very hard to know how much hit to give it. You're better off
01:20taking the hit out and working on different length strokes for different length putts. A really great
01:26way, especially if you have a demon hole on the course that really bugs you, perhaps you three
01:30or four putted, heaven forbid, the last time you played it. But a really good way is to stand on
01:35that green out on the course when no one else is around, roll a few balls to that hole from different
01:40spots on the green. What you'll find from that is you start to get a bit of an idea of how much swing
01:55with the arm to give it, then drop a ball down there and have a putt from that same spot. What
02:01that's going to do is it's going to start to give you a nice amount of feel for how much stroke you need
02:07for that particular length putt. It'll also give you a feel for how the up slopes and the down slopes
02:12and how the conditions are going to affect you that day. If you were going to play a different
02:17course and you were on the putting green, for example, a really good drill will be to stand
02:22there and have in your head almost like a metronome, a rhythm, a one, two, a tick-tock. So if you're
02:29standing over the shot it's tick-tock, tick-tock. If it's a little putt it's little tick-tock and if
02:37it's a big putt it's a bigger tick-tock. But the rhythm stays the same. That way you're working on
02:43length of stroke to determine the distance your ball goes. As with when I roll a ball with my arm
02:49there's always a little bit more follow through than there is back swing. So bear that in mind,
02:54it's a smooth acceleration and give it a go. So this is a part of the game that players just don't
02:59practice enough. So all you need to do is go out and work out how you control distance. There's no
03:05textbook way of doing this. It's just down to practice and putting some time in. You put some
03:10work in on the greens and your game will thank you for it.