Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in
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Putting
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Once you have a consistent acceleration, then you can learn to control your dis- tance by the distance you take the club back. Below are some great ways for learning how to control the distance of stroke.
Use a landmark to map your swings the way you do with your wedges
There are really only two ways to establish a common distance of stroke - use either distances on the ground or using the body landmarks. The common body land- marks are either referrenced to your feet (big toe, little toe, outside of foot) or to use your hands (inner thigh, outer thigh, outside pocket) or use the clubhead and practice taking the putter back Clubhead widths (4 inches, 8 inches, 12 inches, 16 inches). You need at least 3 different “stock putts” that you can vary from on the course. To calculate a stock putt, find a flat spot on the practice green and hit balls wihtout aiming at a hole. Hit at least three different puts using the same reference point and the same “gravity” or speed of stroke. DON’T LOOK AT WHERE THEY FINISHED between putts. Then if the balls finish all within a foot of each other, pace the distance from where you started. Repeat the process for your other landmarks.
For instance, I use my hands as a reference point. Here are my average distances for my home course:
Inner Thigh = 6 paces
Outer Thigh = 9 paces
Pocket = 12 paces
When you are on the course, you will need to pace each putt as you walk back from your behind the whole read. You do not need to walk right along the line of putt, you can do it off to the the side so that you do not walk on someones line. You will also need to estimate how much to add for uphill and into the grain, and subtract for downhill or with the grain. With a little practice, this will become second nature.

When you get to a course, spend five minutes on the practice green guaging your standard putt distances and compare your “standard” for your home course to the new course. This will give you an idea of your putt distances for this particular day on this particular course.
Tags: Putt, Backswing, Transition, Drill, Beginner
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Okay, now that we know that we're hitting the ball in the center of the club and we have
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a consistent gravity, what else can we use to determine the distance is the length of the
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backswing.
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So if you remember from the how to re-green section, I talked about pacing your puts, which
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a lot of players have had success with.
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This is a way to map the pacing of the puts and make it even more relevant.
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So right here I've got a golf ball.
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If I was going to set up and take a few strokes, concentrating on my acceleration rate,
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I'm going to vary the length of backsstroke.
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And I'm basically going to hit a few puts at each different backswerp distance and then
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I'm going to pace them off to measure them.
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It's one easy way to map my body and my putting stroke that I've found very, very successful
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both with myself and with a lot of clients.
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So I use my body as the landmarks, but I'll teach you a couple of ways you can do this.
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So I will hit three puts where I use the front of my thigh as the distance I'm taking
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it back.
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So I'm basically bringing the putter back until I feel like my hands are right in front
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of my inner thigh.
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And then I'm going to hit it as hard as I can or I'm going to smoothly accelerate to finish.
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I'm going to do that for my inner thigh, for my outer thigh and outside of pocket.
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So I feel a lot of my feel with my hands.
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So that's why I use, that's my stock one, that's my stock two, and that's my stock three.
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So inner thigh is one, outer thigh is two, outside pocket is three.
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Now if I hit three puts and I pace those and they're all within a foot of each other,
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and I'm doing this well, and I can use that on the green.
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So typically my inside thigh putt at my home course goes about eight paces.
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So that means when I'm on the green, if I'm eight paces away, I know all I need to do
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is take that my hands back to the inner thigh and the putter is going to, or the ball is
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going to go the right distance.
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Obviously I will adjust based on the course that I'm playing, and I will basically measure
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my normals on their practice green.
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So when I get there, I'll get there 20 minutes early, hit a few of my number one putt,
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and it say it only goes six paces.
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Well, now I know that this is my six-pace putt today.
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Okay, so you can either use your body landmarks like your thigh and your pocket, or you
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can use the putter head if you're more visual.
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So in that case, I'm going to take the putter back until it's even with my foot, or the
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inside of my foot, my big toe.
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I'm going to take it until it's even with the outside of my foot, and I'm going to take
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it until it's about four inches, six inches past.
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So that's one other way to map your distances.
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Another way that you can practice this is using putter head widths, because some people are
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very good visually, and you can see the putter, it's always with you when you putt.
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So you have a very constant reference point, and you can say, okay, if I take it back
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one putter width, it's going to go this far.
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So what you would do is you would basically put one tee on the ground to identify where you're
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starting from, and then you would put another tee on the ground to identify first distance
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back, and then you would put another tee on the ground for second distance back, and then
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you would put a third tee on the ground.
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So now I can go ahead and hit some putts, where the putter is going back, roughly the
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distance each one, and then I would measure those, and that would provide an additional reference
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point or framework.
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So this would help me with my distance control.
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So you can either use your body, you can use the club, or you can use objects on the ground,
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but you need some form of reference to control distance so that your constant gravity makes
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sense.
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Okay?
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With this last key, you should have no trouble lag putting anywhere inside 40 feet on the
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green.
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Give this a try.
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I've had it make a significant impact in people's ability to cut out three plets, but it's
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going to take a little bit of practice on the green, so go out and give it a try.
