Todd Sones week continues on danbubanygolf.com. Todd is featured in this month’s issue of Golf Magazine. Todd has been a Golf Magazine Top 100 Instructor every year since 1995, currently serves on the Golf Academy’s National Advisory Board, and is a Golf Channel Academy Lead Instructor. Here’s the article:
Your new way to putt: Simply swing it back, and let gravity do the rest
By Todd Sones
If you’re like most weekend players
, your backstroke is about the same length on every putt, whether you’re five feet away or 50. This is a bad habit, and it’s costing you a lot of strokes. Starting every forward-stroke from the same spot forces you to hurriedly accelerate your putter on longer rolls and decelerate your putter on the short ones.
Altering speeds like this leads to wildly inconsistent distance control—and could eventually cause the yips! Acceleration should be smooth and constant on all your putts. The Tour’s best putters simply take the club back, then let gravity guide it back through contact. There’s no “hit.”
And the pros don’t set their backstrokes in stone; they take the putter back farther on long putts and shorter on short putts. This is the secret to distance control. When your putter has more time to accelerate on a long stroke, it automatically moves faster through impact, and your ball covers more ground—even though the putterhead accelerates at the same pace in both long and short strokes. Let gravity power your through-stroke.
To get the right feel, practice taking the putterhead back a given length, then let it “fall” through the ball. Practice alternating backstroke lengths, noting how far the ball rolls each time. You’ll build an inventory of putt lengths you can reference on the course.
This visual helps: Think of your putter as a pendulum, matching the lengths of your throughstroke to your backstroke. You’ll hone a smooth stroke that’s always near the hole.
To watch the accompanying video, click here.