8 Things All Good Putters Do (That You Don’t)

Ever wondered what turns an average putter into a great one? In this video, putting performance coach, AimPoint specialist and Cobra/Puma ambassador Jamie Donaldson runs through the 8 things all good putters do to help you become a master on the greens!

► We’ve team up with Cobra and it’s extensive range of putters to create this content. If you’re interested in trying a Cobra putter for yourself, be sure to visit the Cobra website: https://www.cobragolf.com/en-eu/collections/golf-clubs-putters

► Chapters:
Introduction 0:00-0:32
Find the sweet spot 0:32
Control stroke length and tempo 1:58
Adjust stroke for downhill and uphill putts 4:27
Wet sand bunker shot 4:37
Square the putter face 6:13
Help themselves aim 8:08
Miss long putts closer 10:34
Read putts correctly 12:37
Allow more break on downhill putts 14:00

► Will you be trying any of these drills the next time you practice your putting? Let us know in the comments below! 💬

► Watch more on Golf Monthly…
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📹 Dan Grieve’s Best Ever Short Game Drills 👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm6KuKDuMKw
📹 7 New Shots And How To Play Them 👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ix2wTHe2Y

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whole more putts shoot lower scores it really is as simple as that so in this video we’ve teamed up with Cobra Golf and putting specialist Jamie Donaldson to bring you the eight things all good putters do we’re going to show you how to strike your putts correctly read greens properly but more importantly match up the correct line and pace so you can become a master on the greens we’re here at the amazing Tavistock Short Game Area Way Golf Club let’s get into it [Music] one thing that all good putters do is hit the ball out the center of the putter face and this is your sweet spot so this drill is going to help you get more balls coming out of the sweet spot of your putter and what I’ve got I’ve got two TEGS just the width of my putter head here and obviously the ball’s going to sit right in the middle of these two and I’m going to set up and with just enough room to get my putter through I can really work on controlling that sweet spot so I know that if I hit the teg nearer to me the putter’s too close and if I hit the teg further away from me the putter’s got away from me so managing the sweet spot with two tegs also we can look at our angle of attack having your ball position too far forward is going to cause the club to come up and left and that’s really going to impact the quality of your strikes if our ball position is too far backwards we get very steep and the putter is moving away from you so there is no perfect ball position but you’ll find some of the best players in the world go from center of the stance to just forward now Cobra’s descending loft technology is going to help you if your angle of attacks are poor they go from four to three to two to one° and this is going to really help to save you sometimes if your angle attack is out of kilt but if you keep an eye on your ball position keep a consistent ball position and one that works for you you’re going to putt a lot better another thing that all good putters do is control their stroke lengths and their tempo and for this drill you’re going to need a ruler some golf balls and markers at 10 20 and 30 ft and what we want to do is to work out what kind of stroke length you’re using for 10T and then how to lengthen it for 20 and 30 so what I’m going to do is I’m going to hit a 10ft pop okay so out the corner of my eye I could see that that stroke length was 12 in long so I’m just going to pop a marker into there now the way this works is your putter has 12 in to travel back to impact and the time you do this will affect how far the ball rolls so my forward time was very much feel-based and I want you to find out what your field-based forward time is but once we know what our stroke length is for 10 foot we can add 50% for 20 foot and then another 50% will take us to the 30 foot mark and now I’m going to play these three putts i’m going to start with the 10footer again I’m just going to get a feel for my stroke length and that all important forward time and if I hit my putt okay so that’s a perfect match all I’m going to do now is lengthen my back swing but keep that same forward time okay now I’ve got the feel i can step in and play so this is our 20footer and then we lengthen it to the 30footer and this always feels really long to me so don’t be surprised if this back swing feels much longer than what you’re using but the important thing is once I’ve got my stroke length figured out I’ve got to play my forward action in the same time as the others so let’s take us to 30 ft now okay so that’s a great way of you controlling your swing length and your forward time and this is a great warm-up drill before you play golf and remember green speeds change so you’ve got to do something different when you’re playing on different speed greens so we’re controlling the strike we’re in charge of our ball position and we’ve got a way of practicing speed control on a regular area on the golf course but you’re also going to be faced with steep up and downhill putts and what good putters do is they adjust their stroke length and their tempo to suit what they’re faced right here I’ve got a very steep downhill putt and I’d like to take you through my process for dealing with this so I’m going to change my stroke length first of all it has to be shorter we can’t use our normal length back swing but also I can change my tempo and what I’m going to do is I’m going to take even longer to get back to impact i’m going to shorten my back swing and I’m going to slow down my forward time what I’m doing is I’m just going to move it around till it feels correct for this putt once I’m happy with my two changes I can then go ahead and play let’s just do that again i’m going to work out how long I should swing it what sort of forward time is appropriate now I’ve got that feel I can set up and play my putt and there we go that’s a putt that would scare a lot of people i finished about 14 in past which is ideal what I haven’t done is left myself with a horrible second putt when you’re putting uphill you could swing it longer and quicker obviously it all depends on how steep is the green and the speed of it but that’s what I want you to go and find out what works best for you change your strobe length change your tempo get some control on these up and downhill putts one thing that all good putters do is they get their face square to their start line and they make sure they do this in several ways and we’ll look at some more in the next couple of videos but what you could do is use the technology that’s been built into the putters to help you do this and we need to get our face square to our line and the putter face is pretty much 93% in charge of where the ball finishes now you’ll notice that when you look at Cobra’s range of putters you have long solid lines dots dots and lines three lines you have some putters that have no markings on at all and different people are going to be able to square up different putters and you’ve got to find the one that suits you best now it’s important to mention that one degree out at impact will get you hitting the edge of the hole at five feet so at 5 foot if you’re one degree out there’s a good chance of you missing and if I set up square to this putt here and I’m just going to open my face just a tiny amount now I’m going to play the putt okay and that’s hit the right edge definitely at least a degree open that one and now we’ll play at this putt i’m going to set up aiming well and I’m just going to change that putter face just a fraction there we go hit the left side so it’s very important for us to get that putter face absolutely square at impact so I’m aiming square i’m going to keep it square there we go middle of the cup keep watching because that was me aiming naturally but we’re going to look into using a line on the ball or even picking a spot on the green to help you square up that face another thing good putters do and you’ll have seen this on television is they help themselves aim and that might be by using a line on the ball or picking a spot which is just in front of the ball they’re going to play so I’m going to show you two ways of helping you aim now it’s important to remember that when we use a line on a ball when you address it it probably won’t look good so if you do use a line on the ball you’ve got to trust it and what I’m going to do is I’m going to come down here i’m going to line up the ball that I’ve already put my line on i’m going to take a step back and I’m going to use the shaft just to check if my alignment’s good if I’m not happy I can just tweak that ball but I’m happy with it where it is i’m going to come in here i’ve got a nice long line on the back of my putter here which matches the golf ball so I’m going to match these two up and play my putt and it’s important when you’re set up to these balls that you don’t worry about does it look correct the reason you’re using a line is because you can’t aim without one so we’ve matched the two up and there we go but some people don’t want to use a line on a ball they’re going to be the guys that pick a spot between the ball and the hole so if I take a step back again and use the shaft here I can put a marker on the floor which is about 10 in in front of the ball it’s important not to have this later on in the putt because that putt’s going to be breaking in fact the ball starts breaking pretty quickly so make sure that your spot is no more than 10 in in front of you and if I come back here again and just check yep I like that that’s exactly where I want to hit the putt i’m just relying on the club face and the markings sometimes the shape of the putter here to aim and I’m going to make sure that I hit my putt over the spot the picking a spot technique works fantastic unfortunately you can only use a marker when you’re practicing and when you’re on the golf course or in a competition you’re going to have to find a a blade of grass or a blemish that you can use to help you with your aim find the one that suits you best and add it into your pre-t routine [Music] another thing good putters do is they miss their long putts closer and it’s always going to be better to have an overread so good players might add something to their long putt reads because they know that a putt that’s coming down from a higher position is going to finish closer so what I’ve done here is I’ve set up three balls one of them is a one foot under read the next ball up the slope is the correct read and then I’ve added a foot which gives us a one foot overread so let’s have a look and see where these putts finish and if I play the underread we can see here that that ball’s breaking a lot more and that’s left me with quite a tough second putt that’s about a five or a sixt putt and you’re always going to feel the need to hit those under readads harder your instincts are going to kick in a bit more so if you hit a lot of putts way past the hole on long putts that could be something you’re doing now we’re going to play to the the correct read okay that was a good read had a lot of chance of going in and now we’re going to play the one foot over and it’s it’s quite difficult to get people confident with aiming away from the hole but it’s going to help you miss closer so let’s have a look and see where this overread finishes okay so we can see from where those golf balls finished that the under read has left me with a nasty putt the good read nearly went in but the overread is also finished very very close so you need to get a bit more comfortable with aiming higher even higher than you think you need to especially on long putts if you want to get rid of those three putts finish closer to the hole another thing that good golfers do is they read putts correctly and one thing you could do to help you read putts better is to use aim point and we’re feeling the slopes and as I stand here and here there’s a lot of weight on my right foot so I know this is going to be a quite aggressive break from left to right so I’m just going to adjust my aim accordingly okay so that putt was breaking left to right now if I come into this one I can’t feel anything so this is going to be a pretty straight putt there’s not going to be a lot of break on this one okay nearly and the important thing here is I’ve now got the weight moving onto my left side so this is a right to left breaking putt so I’m going to allow for a bit of break there we go so just feeling the slope and understanding which way is downhill is going to help you aim your putts better if you feel a lot of slope there’s a lot of break if you don’t feel much it’s a pretty straight putt [Music] the last thing that good putters do is they understand that downhill putts break more than uphill putts so we’ve got two putts here that are on the same amount of slope from the same distance one of them is downhill one of them is uphill now the reason for this is putts that are rolling downhill actually roll slower and when they roll for longer gravity can be more effective and they break more so we’ve got the correct read here for this putt and what I’m going to do is I’m going to add a little bit to it so a downhill putt rolls slower breaks more i’m just going to aim outside of that marker there okay so there’s the downhill part and you could see that I started that outside of the standard read for that amount of slope but what we’re going to do now is we’re going to go and look at the uphill version so now we have the same length putt but this time it’s uphill and we’re going across exactly the same percentage of slope so we’ve kept the aim that would be correct but because it’s so far uphill I’m now going to aim inside that marker so we’re aiming about halfway between the hole on the cup okay so we can see that broke a lot less so if you’re putting uphill you’re going to have to reduce the amount of break you allow for because you’re hitting the putts firmer they get there quicker so there you have it hopefully by incorporating some of the advice from Jamie in this video you’ll start to see your ball disappear far more often on the greens in here if you’re interested in trying some of the Cobra putters out for yourself especially the 3D printed models like this limited edition Enzo here be sure to check out the Cobra