Keep your head still during your stroke to minimize over-putts.
GOLF.com
Welcome to Play Smart, GOLF.com’s regular game improvement column that will help you become a smarter, better golfer.
In the last edition of Play Smart, we explained that being a good putter depends on two things: a solid stroke and proper reading of the green. In that column, Bryson DeChambeau gave us a great tip for becoming a better green reader. In today’s column, we’ll discuss a tip for dialing in your stroke.
Check out the video below with Top 100 GOLF Instructor Jonathan Yarwood to find out more.
Setting the ‘last image’
If you look at the best putters in the world you will notice that everything looks very quiet. There isn’t a lot of extraneous movement. They just shrug their shoulders and step back. This is something that all golfers should strive for with their strokes.
While you want peace in your whole body, keeping your head still is the most important thing.
If you watch poor putters, you will often see them turn their head and shoulders as they follow the path of their putter and ball. This deficiency can cause all kinds of problems.
“That affects the circulation of the face, it affects the way – it does all kinds of things [bad] things,” Yarwood said. “We don’t see that with one good putter.”
When a good putter makes their stroke they will simply let their eyes travel along the target line without much movement of the head. If you want to be a strong putter, you should strive for this, too.
To teach yourself how to keep your head quiet, try this method that Yarwood uses with his students. Stop the ball and focus more on the spot where your ball lands on the green. Then, hit the putt – but don’t look until the beat after the ball leaves the face.
“You should see a little black silhouette — a little black silhouette — where that ball was,” Yarwood said. “It’s called the last image on your retina.”
By waiting until you see this last picture, we will teach you to keep your head down – and not move – until the ball rolls towards the hole. This will ensure that you have a calm head throughout your swing and give you the best chance of hitting more putts.
