Golf Tips To Help With Your Long Putts

Guest columnist and Director of Golf Instruction at the beautifully elegant Club at Mediterra, Adam Bazalgette, shares with readers of the Golf for Beginners blog why lag putting is the secret to a low handicap.

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Long putting, or lag putting as it is often called, is a key to good scoring in golf.

 On the PGA Tour, the players make an average of just fifty percent of their putts from eight feet, which means that the everyday golfer will do well to make fifty percent of their six-foot putts! The current strokes-gained putting leader? Bryce Molder! These may seem like low averages, but there is a lot that can go wrong on a short putt; spike marks and other imperfections on the green, a slight misread, a lip out, etc.

When putting from, say, more than twenty-five feet, you will find it is very easy to misjudge the distance by six feet or more, whereas it is unlikely that you will miss left or right by more than a couple of feet. This is why distance control is so important.

 The two biggest components in good distance control are good visualization, or green reading, and proper rhythm in the stroke. Both require practice to become reliable.

Simply watching a lot of putts roll (practice) will help you read greens and become a good visualizer of putts. A test of your visualization skills is that once a long putt is a third of the way to the hole you should be able to estimate pretty accurately whether it is going long, short, or about the right distance.

Only when a golfer can fairly accurately see the ball rolling in their mind at the correct speed across the green BEFORE they step over the putt can they expect to be able to feel the desired stroke.

Regarding rhythm, there are a few objectives to understand:

• In a pendulum, the length of the backstroke and through stroke are the same; this is due to gravity.
• It is also true that in a pendulum maximum speed is reached at the very bottom of the arc. However, most people don't realize that at the bottom of the arc there is NO acceleration, it has reached maximum speed.

The middle of the arc is, therefore, right where we want to make contact with the golf ball in our stroke, the point with the most speed and the least "Hit" or acceleration. I strongly recommend that you practice this at times without aiming at a hole, just focusing on your motion.

A great drill is to place two tees in the green, say three feet apart (vary this drill), and hit some putts placing the ball right in between the tees, and slightly to the side of them in order to allow you to hit a putt. Don't over-control the putter with your hands, but feel the pendulum rhythm of your stroke until the putter head goes evenly from tee to tee and you can roll several balls the same distance. Once this becomes natural you are on your way to better putting!

One final point, the time each stroke takes (think of a metronome) should always be the same. This means that the putter will have to be swung faster throughout the motion (not just in the forward swing) on longer putts than shorter putts. The rhythm, such as tick-tock, will then always be a constant.

Best of luck with this...now go practice!

 About the Author: 

Adam Bazalgette grew up in London, England, where he took up golf. He has been teaching golf full-time since 1992.  
Adam worked for David Leadbetter in Orlando and in 1994 was promoted to the Academy Director at the Leadbetter’s Naples facility.  

Adam currently is the director of golf instruction at The Club at Mediterra in Naples Florida and has held this position for the last six years.  Make sure to visit his site at http://adambgolf.com for private lessons if your going to be in the Naples Florida area!

Say hi to Adam Bazalgette on Twitter and like on Facebook!   



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photo credit: activerain.com, Adam Bazalgette

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Office on the Green - Why Businessmen Love Golf

Guest golf blogger Colin Knight is an avid golfer and traveller.  Having played all over the world, he now enjoys a quieter life working with Belmont Lodge in Herefordshire, England. 

Here is Colin's take on why businessmen love golf and unwritten rules which can broker business deals.

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Golf has a strange audience compared with other sports like cricket, for example. Unless you're an avid golfer, then you would likely find it hard to understand what the attraction is and why so many business deals are signed and sealed on the golf course. 

Two businessmen playing racket-sports, knocking a tennis ball back and forth to each other, may seal a deal afterwards but, with golf, deals are completed and finalized during the game.

A round of golf can take approximately four hours, which we all know is much longer than would be normal if there weren’t other goings on.  The majority of a golf game is walking, planning and yes, talking. Golfers like to show their prowess on the course and for some reason, it can broker business deals.

It is almost an unwritten rule, that a good player (with a solid golf swing) will have an astute and charismatic business mind. Perhaps the rules of golf, which are so law-abiding and strict, has something to do with this idea. Golf is a game of precision and integrity. It has finesse and flair from the clothing to the game itself, and it also has an element of mutual honesty: being a great golf opponent means having to trust and be honest with your most bitter of rivals. 

The golf "fraternity" appear on many boards of global corporations. Golf requires a certain coolness and stridency under extreme pressure. To an unskilled eye, golf looks terribly boring. Hitting a ball, walking to it, hitting it again and then more walking, it must, let's face it, look a bit daft and a waste of time. 

However, to the golfer and their colleagues, it is a huge affair with many Friday afternoons spent finalizing the week on a course. Some companies offer golf membership as part of a remuneration package and it’s almost compulsory to play the game at higher levels. Interviews have been completed on golf courses, although beating the CEO of a company you are trying to impress may not be one of your finest moments. That said, you would be admired. 

Perspective clients are tempted out onto the golf course to put together a plan of action. Sales and marketing managers, who have to be connected to the world in their fast-paced jobs, may balk at the idea of being disconnected from the world for hours, but a game of golf and the bonding that seems to follow is surely a more direct way of interaction than an impersonal tweet or email.

While a group of builders may not understand golfers completing deals on the course and make fun of 'girly golfers in colored trousers’ and ‘pen-pushers should get a real job' they will never have what two opponents and friends in business have on a golf course. It truly is all hearts and flowers bonding and there are few finer ways of securing a deal than on a golf course.

Thanks again to Colin Knight from Belmont Lodge in Herefordshire, England! Learn more about Belmont Lodge on Twitter and Facebook.

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