Ian Poulter: Become a PUTTING ASSASSIN with This Simple Drill

Ian Poulter, known as one of the best putters on tour, explains how important it is to find comfort standing over putts and shows the drill he uses to become an assassin at making everything inside of 6 feet.

Let’s get right to it. Walk us through your fundamentals as it pertains to putting. Absolutely. Um I’ll give you guys a little insight into my mindset on putting uh some of the fundamentals and how I approach different putts. For instance, 5 foot putt. Um it’s a very simple putt. We know by just standing over it, it’s going to break a little bit left to right. Um we make it difficult at times. We try and overanalyze. We try and make it too complicated. But there’s hundreds and hundreds of different ways to putt. We’ve seen them. For me, um I changed my putting uh grip. Uh the start of this year, I went to one finger down the side. It’s something which I’ve done when I onehand putt. I brought that into my putting stroke uh at the start of this year and I found it actually helps me release the putter head. That was one of the things that I was struggling with uh over the last couple of years getting the actual putter to release. One of my faults was leaving the face slightly open. So by moving the finger down the side I was able to feel the putter head start to release a little bit more. take you back a step to the fundamentals. I can’t tell you the exact distance of how my feet are in terms of widthwise. I probably can’t tell you um exactly where my ball position is. I think for myself, the best way of explaining it is I’m comfortable when I stand over the putt and I line up like so. I’m just in a position where I feel comfortable. My ey line generally is just inside. Now, everybody through time has has has been there and has stood over the ball and everyone says you have to have your eyes directly over the ball. We’ve all dropped ball on ball through through time. There is no right or wrong way. You just need to feel balanced. You need to feel comfortable and you need need to be more more importantly, you need to be confident in what it is you’re going to do. So, you like to be as natural as you can. get comfortable and just let your athletic ability take over. I think it’s instinct. I think people putt best under instinct, under pressure, under just feeling the putt itself. Visually seeing the line, visually seeing the speed and speed is everything when it comes to putting. Speaking of speed, Ian, on a putt this length, explain to the viewers at home what you try to do on this length of putt as far as speed goes, the pace the ball goes into the hole. So, with this putt being very slightly uphill, I’m very confident and I try and feel like I hit the mudset above the top of the whole the actual cup itself. So that type of pace generally means that if it’s going to miss, it’s probably going to roll 2 and 1/2 3 ft past. Um, which I’m comfortable with. So I’ve already set my pace in my head to okay, I’m happy going 2 and 1/2 3T path. So again, I’ve already instinctively picked up on my speed and my pace. And now from this position, I’m actually just trying to work out how much it’s going to move left to right. What are the imperfections in the green? Where’s the grain going? Now, in my opinion, by the time you’ve marked your ball, by the time you’ve actually put it back down in place and you’ve stood up, you should have had a generalized feeling of where that line’s going to be. Welcome back to Golf Channel Academy. All right, PZ, we got this setup here of TE’s and a clock face. Yep. Something you are very fond of. You try to use to helps you with pressure putts and different brakes and so forth. Walk us through how this helps you and how this can help the viewer at home. I like this for a number of different reasons. Uh I use between 6 and 8 ft in a clock formation, eight stations, northeast, southwest, and then the ones in between. And what I find with this is I go around three times, so 24 putts. I try and make sure I hole at least 20. I don’t generally use the small 3T, 4T, 5T. I want to stretch that out a little bit to that 6 to 8t range. And I go around each position. And you’re always going to find yourself in this kind of setup when you’ve actually got the slope the way it is. There’s a couple of putts in the eight which are going to be tricky putts, right? The left to righters, uh, the slippery ones, the quick ones, the, you know, even even the ones that are straight downhill are not easy. So, it really focuses me on making sure that I’m concentrated for a period of time. I don’t want to miss any of the first eight. I don’t even want to miss any of the second or the third day. I want to hold as many as I possibly can. So that lumps the pressure on to be able to get to my goal target of 20, a minimum of 20 out of 24. So, you know, I stand over that putt. I know I’ve hit that a little bit too wide. So, I’ve already burnt one of my four options. The pressure it builds the the pressure builds as you go round. And that’s one of the things that I really like with this drill. I know this putt’s actually breaking slightly right to left. And because it’s downhill, nice. It might not go in at the pace of that other one because obviously having an uphill putt, you can be slightly more aggressive. This putt being downhill, moving a little right to left, it’s probably not going to hit that the top of the cup. It might drop in just at a a slightly slower pace. This part here is one of the ones that I feel is going to be quite tricky. It’s one of those ones which looks like it’s going to go a little bit left. Um, you know, I haven’t hit the part the grains right to left. So, this is one that could very easily be missed. It did move left. All right. So, pressure’s building. That’s again, you know, I’ve I’ve burnt two of my four and I’m only on my first wave. So, you know, I won’t go home until I’ve done the 20 of 24. Wow. Okay. Looks like I’m going to need more than uh more than my uh my Well, to be fair, some of these putts are really difficult outside the whole downhill, left to right, which are always difficult for right-handed golfers. Good stroke there. Any any of the left to right putts are difficult for for a right-handed putter. So, as I said before, you will you already know when you’re doing this exercise, you’ve only got to do one lap to know which ones are going to switch your brain on more than the others. Obviously, straight uphill putt is not going to be as difficult as the, you know, the little slippery sixt left to right putt. So, the last one of the Okay, but it’s a very practical drill for the amateurs at home because it doesn’t take up a lot of space. You know, you it’s it’s pretty simple to follow. You have eight stations, go times, three times around, at least try to get 20. And maybe the amters at home try to get 16 out of 24 or 12 out of 24. Write it down, right? And I’m not one that does loads of, you know, loads of drills, but this is one of those drills that I feel is really important to practice. It will take the pressure off of your short game. You hold these parts, you convert these, you lower your handicap, you will become more successful and enjoy your golf more. I promise you, you will become more confident from this range where you won’t miss these putts. How many times have you done this where it just taken you one shot? The most I’ve done is 27 without missing. 27? You must have been feeling good going to the first team. I’m feeling great.