Putting/Putter Guide

scotty cameron putting cup down the hall way works for me.

I don't practice at home. Hard to simulate greens on hardwood floors. Will get in some practice in the morning before I tee off. Living in the south and being retired has advantages. Very hard to simulate that roll of real turf. We tee off at 8am and by the time we get to the back nine, the greens will be rolling different.

3-5 footers for 30 min on my putting mat with my alignment mirror.

Very nice! Looks a lot more classy than my 2x4s. I like to do that drill and then one of my favorite drills is to take a metal yard stick the kind with the hole at the end and putt down it all the way as slow as possible. That way I know I'm not cheating by just powering through it. If it stays on the yard stick all the way down at a slow pace I believe you're hitting it within 1-2 degrees straight. If you add your books in the beginning it will keep you honest but the yard stick doesn't lie. Unless your house is really tilted. Pick one up from your local box store it's something around $3 and it will take care of your swing path, speed control, impact. And also give you immediate feedback on what's going wrong. Let me know if you try it. It's my go to late at night work on golf thing!

Oh and start with the ball in the hole at the end of the yard stick. I think I forgot to mention that.

Interesting question. According to Scotty Cameron one of the most important putts is a 20 foot putt since it gives a variety of feedback. In fact, when he does high speed video recording in his studio it is on a 20 foot putt...

Another golf expert, Dave Pelz, believes the 3 foot putt is critical.

Both make sense, however using Scotty Cameron Putting Rails which you can find in a variety of spots on the web including Scotty Cameron Studio Store will assist you in squaring your face at impact much like your picture with the two books above.

Good Luck!

This might sound weird, but I place a coin to putt at to help me with accuracy. Try to roll the ball over the coin. Even with a miss to the right or left edge of the coin, on a green, I'd have a shot at the edge of the cup. Definitely helped me out last season.

I putt to a poker chip from about 5 feet away with the goal of rolling the ball over the chip. I find that putting on carpet is hard to work on speed but this is better than nothing.

At some point I want to buy or build an indoor putting station to help replicate real green speed.

I do my work on the carpet, its better then nothing. Just working on aim and speed, since it rains so much up here in the NW, getting used to speed is a must.

Do any of you ever suffer from grooving a "distance" into your stroke with home practice? I've had a couple of occasions where I've ingrained a 15 foot stroke, which is great if that's how far you are from the hole, but if you're 10 or 20 feet out, not so good! I've found I'm much better suited to just practice 3-5 foot putts, aiming at a 1 inch wide target.

Great question, George. I haven't run into that one before but similar to you, I try to focus on shorter putts (3 to 9 footers) when putting at home. I also have this training aid that makes the cup smaller and I use that for most of the off-season, basement putting sessions.

- Mike

I usually will putt to the leg of a chair...working on speed from 5 to 10' on carpet..anything a ball left or right of the chair leg will find the bottom of the cup...

The chair leg is the diameter of a quarter...

I recently made my own stimpmeter so I can practice on different surfaces at home and have an idea of what the rating is. This way when I get to the course and I'm told what the stimp reading is for the greens that day I have a correlation of what it should be like. Needless to say, the employees at my local box store think I'm slightly strange since I had them bring out all of the potential carpets that I wanted to try and then proceeded to rate them all. It's a nice selection. And a good way to practice the same length putt in various ways. Knowing how my 10ft putt will feel on a 8.5 stimp Vs. a 10.5 is great. The meter is easy to make and the practice makes the drills new and fun.