Posted by Dexter Francois
| Posted in
Mike Southern,
putting
| Posted on Thursday, April 28, 2011
Recently, Mike Southern has been giving me some advice on how to get more height on my tee shot with my driver. I want to get more distance with my driver so that I can be in a position to use my shorter irons into the green. My green in regulation percentage is currently a dismal 12.99. This makes it hard to score well, as I am always having to get up and down to save par.
In order to address this problem, Mike asked me to keep some notes during my next round of golf. He told me to
"...scribble notes on your scorecard when you hit a bad shot. Note what happened -- long, short, left, right, or any combination of them -- and how you felt -- you fell forward, pushed the shot, whatever. Do that for each approach shot, then we'll look for patterns.
Once we know the pattern, we'll know what the problem is and how to address it."
As I was looking at my stats on stracka.com, I realized that I had another major problem which led to this conversation.
So I was just looking at my stats. I keep them at stracka.com. My GIR percentage is 12.99. But here's something that is interesting. My overall putts per hole is 1.89. When I get to the green in regulation though, it goes up to 2.25. So it looks like I have to work on my putting as well.
I detected one of the problems. Most of the greens I hit in regulation are on the par 3's. During my last round at Dove Valley, I hit 3 out 4 of the par 3's in regulation. The 3 greens that I hit, I 3-putted each of them. This is where I am losing valuable strokes.
Mike came back with,
Let me guess... you've been listening to all that crap about "accelerating the putter through the ball."
That's a sure way to destroy both line and feel.
To which I responded,
Isn't that what all the pros say? "Accelerate through the ball and then hold the follow through."
Apparently I found one of Mike's pet peeves when it comes to the way putting is taught because he was prompted to write Why Accelerating Through The Ball Is A Bad Idea, which explained some of the misconceptions of using the words "accelerate through the ball".
Mike hit on three points which refutes the idea that accelerating through the ball is a good idea. They are...
1) The Relaxed Grip Conundrum
2) The Nature of Gravity
3) Driving a Tack
I encourage you to read this article. I cannot explain it the way Mike does and I don't want to just copy and paste the entire post. The way he lays it out makes sense. What I took away from it is that when I try to accelerate through the ball, I am fighting against what happens naturally according the Law of Inertia, Newton's First Law Of Motion.
Since I have been working with Mike, he has been trying to get me to understand that the golf swing is better understood and executed when I do the things that come naturally to me. As amateurs, we tend to fight against, or make things up with regards to making a golf swing, or in this case, a putting stroke. When we start to understand that the mechanics of a golf swing mimics everyday motions we do without thought, our golf game will improve tremendously.
Over the next few days I will be working on what Mike explained in his article. Hopefully I can make a few videos demonstrating what I am working on. That should be interesting to say the least, but I have to make the mistakes so that I know what I need to work on in order to get better. Have a great round and always hit your target.
*Bobby Jones' take on good putting technique. As Mike points out in his article, Jones never mentions the words, "accelerate through the ball."
Photo found here.
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