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Meter Stick Distance Control - Putting

As discussed in a similar video, the length of the back-swing & forward-swing can say a lot about a player's tempo and acceleration on the putting green; poor control of these characteristics will often result in sporadic distance control and unnecessary three-putts. Thus, players who struggle with these areas can benefit from learning how to "balance" their stroke. In this case, all you will need is a simple meter stick and some tape to begin training.

Tags: Putt, Drill, Intermediate

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The Strel is meter stick distance control.

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So in one of the other videos I talk about kind of measuring the length of the backswing,

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this is an easy way for me to work, especially with juniors on a basic stroke of matching

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the length of backswing and follow-through, so helping with tempo and acceleration rates.

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Some golfers love this and can visualize it.

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Other golfers hate it because they can't really feel it.

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Basically I've got this blue line here will be the center of the swings.

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So that's basically where I'm going to have my putter head, so the ball position would be just

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on the edge of that blue line right about there.

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And then I've got red line to red line.

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I've got green line to green line.

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I've got white line to white line and end to end or I'll say yellow to yellow.

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And so what we're going to do is we're going to practice making some strokes where

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it's the same length back and through or approximately the same length back and through.

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Now you can combo this with any technical drill if you're working on the elbows or the

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wrists or the pivot or a posture.

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You can combo this skill with any of those techniques.

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So this is a meter stick and basically I put the blue tape at the 18 inches, which is half

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of the meter stick and then the pieces of tape are roughly at 6 inch intervals.

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So these looks like this was a earlier model where I did 4 inches but you can break it

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up as long as they're even on both sides.

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I've done 3, 4, 6 doesn't really matter just depends how many different iterations

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you want to have.

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So the goal is then if I do my red plate, that was a little bit past red and I do that

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let's say three times in a row.

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So red to red that was a little bit faster.

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These should all go about the same distance so for red to red.

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So these should go about the same distance if I'm taking it back to the same distance

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and having a constant acceleration.

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What you'll start to see is if you change your alignment each time, the distance actually

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grows it's not like even gaps or linear gaps, it's more exponential.

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So red in this case might go three or four feet.

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Now I'll aim a little bit to the right of that and I'll do green to green or I'll hit

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it square.

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So if I do green to green you'll see that that would have gone probably more than twice

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as far even though it was twice the distance.

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Now if I aim this bit to the left and I go white to light, that was a little bit bigger

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than white, that would go more than twice the distance.

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So it grows exponentially and we get to a point where I'm doing, we'll see if we can

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split the distance.

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So if I do the end of it, if I do yellow to yellow, not quite, you'll see that this

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is going to cover probably a good 40 foot pace put or sorry, 40 pace put or potentially

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more.

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So this also gets me into practicing a little bit more of these bigger strokes which many

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golfers who are struggling with their distance control tend to only take the putter back

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to a certain distance and don't really have an upper limit.

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This can help you feel much more comfortable and help you dial in your distance control.

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So you can practice with this or something similar, T's balls but something to help you

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basically measure and visually quantify the amount and the size of backswing will help you

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figure out how backswing and tempo are the two main factors for controlling your distance.

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