7 STUPID putting MISTAKES most golfers make

In this video I'm going to show you seven mistakes golfers make with the putter. I'm going to show you how to fix them so you do not make those mistakes anymore and therefore hole more putts. Now all these seven points I'm going to talk about are equally as important, especially number seven. But let's start off with the first one and it's actually before you go and play golf. How many times do you see a golfer make the mistake of getting to the practice putting green, throwing a few balls down and just simply hitting to a hole with, if I'm honest with you, not a lot of structure. Just basically, for no reason whatsoever, just putting them towards a hole. That's not too bad. However, if I'm dead honest, that's not the best time to, the best use of time before you go out and play. The best thing you should do is work out the speed of the green today, the day that you're playing golf. Set up to the side of the green and you're going to start off short and without really thinking about where the ball is going to finish in line, direction, your objective is to get the ball to finish as close to the first cut off the green as possible. This is a great drill to help you figure out the speed of the green that day. So you can get a really good gaze. That one's a great one to start off with and you can go further back just trying to work on pace of putt. So that's a little bit hard. So I'm learning from that. I'm getting knowledge of the speed of the greens before I go and play today. The trick is, don't make the mistake of just getting to a practice putting green, that's pretty good, and aimlessly hitting towards holes with no real structure. Take time, learn the speed of the greens that day and that simple drill will help you do just that. So out on the golf course, the mistake I see golfers make is don't take enough break into consideration. So I've got a little right to left putt here. I see a lot of golfers make the mistake of not giving enough respect to that break. So for example, if I put this just on the right edge and put it towards the hole, the likeliness, I've not read enough and it starts moving away from the hole. It's never stayed on the top side. You might hear it on commentary on TV. The promise is to try and get it finishing past the hole on the top side as it starts to swing. So next time you're on the golf course, read more into it. It's a right to left putt, yeah. So I'm going to aim slightly higher up on that hill. There's advantages to that. The ball's going to be falling towards the hole and generally golfers will under read it as opposed to over read it. Feel like you're giving it more break, start swinging more towards the hole. Not always going to get it in, but you're going to give yourself a much better chance. Oh, how many times playing golf would you have your playing partners go? Oh, good effort. At least you got it to the hole. Never up, never in. Now as much as there's some truth to that statement, that last one, never up, never in. I've also left myself an unbelievably difficult putt coming back. Now for most amateurs, have this idea of minimizing your mistakes. Yes, you want to give it a chance of going in. There's nothing wrong with that. But you'd rather have a tapping for your next putt than that horrible six, seven foot of coming back. Even though you had your playing partners go, great effort, at least you gave it a shot. What you need to be aiming to do is get it as close to the hole as possible. Give it a chance, yes. But if this ball finishes a tapping distance away, I would rather have that putt every single day. Now your playing partners might not be impressed with that and go, you didn't give it enough of an effort. But believe me, I'd rather tap that in for par than try and hit that return putt, which is much, much harder. This length of putt, a lot of golfers hate. And they make some fundamental mistakes. Because on a putt like this, you're thinking to yourself, well, there's no reason to miss this. It's fairly short. There's not going to be a lot of break in it. There's no real reason why it should be missed. And because of that, we then fill our mind with negative thoughts. We'll be stood over this golf ball thinking, oh, please don't miss. Imagine what this is going to do to my scorecard. Imagine what my playing partners are going to think of when stood over a putt like this. And guess what? That doesn't particularly fill you with great confidence. That's a big mistake. What you want to be doing is replacing all of those negative thoughts with some positive reinforcement. Here's a really great tip. Whether you do your practice putts to the side of the ball or whether you do it behind the golf ball, what I'd like you to do is imagine that every single practice stroke is the actual shot you're about to hit. So as I take my practice stroke here, I'm imagining that's the ball I've hit and it's rolling and it's going in the hole. I'll do another practice putt. It's rolling, going in the hole. Another practice putt. It's rolling, going in the hole. And every single time, I'm almost hearing the ball going in the hole all the time. Massively raises your level of confidence. Then when you stand over the ball, all you're going to do is repeat what you've already seen. You know it's going to go in. You've got that confidence and you can knock it right in the middle of the hole. Don't make the mistake of thinking negatively. Replace it with positive reinforcements. These next three are super important. So many golfers, when they putt towards the hole and it misses, do this. As soon as they hit and it misses, head up in the sky, hand on the face, looking at the playing partners going, Can you believe that missed? Problem with that, and this is a mistake, is now I don't know what happens to that golf ball once it missed. And we can learn a lot from what happens once it missed. How did it break? Was it going downhill, uphill? We need to learn from that. You watch the best players in the world, when they miss a putt, they are watching it go past intently. Because as soon as that ball misses, they want to know what it's done. They want to know how it's broke. How did it swing past the hole? How did it break? Because then you can use that information to hold the putt coming back. Don't make the mistake of just looking away. Blase, study from even the shots when it misses, because it'll help you hold more putts on the return. Everyone knows when you hit a driver or an iron out the middle, you get the best performance. We might not do it as often as we'd like, but when we hit it, we just know it's perfect. It's no different with a putter. Let's picture you've got a 30 foot putt. If you're hitting the middle of the putter phase, you're getting the best, most consistent ball speed, and the most consistent roll. As soon as you start to deviate from that centre, to hit more towards the toe or the heel, performance will drop off. Your ball will finish nowhere near the hole, just by simply not hitting the middle of the putter. Dead simple tip to help this. A couple of pieces of blue tack, one on the toe, one on the heel, and practice hitting the middle of the face. You can do it at home on your carpet, you can do it out before you go and play. It's a great drill to help you find the middle, and therefore get more consistent rolls, and hold more putts. I'm going to show you how this old monkey tee peg, that I've just found at the bottom of my bag, could help you putt better. One of the mistakes I'll see a lot of golfers make, when they putt into the hole, they just putt to the hole as a hole. The idea, you want to aim small, miss small. This is a great drill, try this. Next time you go and play, instead of actually aiming for a hole, stick a tee peg in the ground and putt to that. This idea that you're trying to minimize what you're aiming for. Because if I only just missed that tee peg, I know that's pretty much going to go in the hole. If I knock that tee peg over, I can absolutely guarantee that would have gone in the center of the cup. Don't just aim at the hole as a hole, aim small, miss small. And then when you go out there and play golf, it'll feel like you're putting a pea into a giant bucket. Another thing you can also do, even if you're at home, it's a great drill, and just flip the tee peg over. Stand it up on its other end like that, and you can still putt to a horrible manky tee and improve your putting, even when you're at home.