Alright, so let’s get into the good, the bad and the ugly…
My putting has improved, but not as much as I wanted it to… so let’s talk about it!
There are basically 3 skills we need to putt well: Read, Start Line and Speed. None of those are independent of each other! You can have bad reads and a bad start line and make a putt… this gives you bad data on your putting. If you make a putt because your two mistakes negated each other, you still made 2 mistakes.
So the first key (and this is all opinion) is to eliminate the other two variables from the equation to improve… you can’t work on 2 things at once… if you want to work on speed control, it’s best to do it absent of line work or reading putts… Honestly, I’ve taken the majority of my putting work AWAY from the hole, as it can give feedback I don’t want.
I did a lot of gate drills to work on start line before I started going down rabbit holes… plenty of options here, you can always putt down a metal ruler (make sure it’s actually straight!). Tons of value in getting your start line right and consistent. I should probably go back to doing this more.
Reading greens is a more nuanced question… Aimpoint is popular for a reason, but I have some speculation that the confidence you get from using aimpoint is more important than any additional information you pick up… being confident with your putt is a huge part of putting well, as far as I’m concerned.
Speed control drills are what I spent most of my time doing… Ladder drills specifically. Just putting from various lengths, with my target expanding as I moved farther back. I have some thoughts on how to modify these for more improvement, but this might not be the place (one basic idea would be if you have 4 marks down at a foot apart, AIM at the second mark, and balls that fall short of it are in your “range” once you are outside of 15 feet).
Ultimately, I think my technique has improved… but my mental approach still isn’t there… I’m writing something now on my personal blog about the changes I am going to try to make… but basically, I am not concentrating correctly on making putts… It’s a big focus for me over the winter. I’m honestly not sure exactly how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to start with tempo work (tour tempo has been purchased) but the problem is more when I’m on the course…
I’ve seen decent results when I use THe Stack’s putting feature and it certainly doesn’t carry over to the course, so there is an issue in my mental approach on the greens. I’ll get it sorted out, hopefully.