I have been playing golf since 1990 at Dromoland as a young kid and one of the most frustrating aspects of my own game has always been my putting. As a kid I was very much a visual putter and my technique was horrendous looking back, yet I feel I held a lot more putts than I do nowadays as a PGA Golf Professional. In a way putting is like a different sport when you compare it to a full golf shot, there is no comparison in the way we use our body for a driver in comparison to hitting a putt. Over the years on many of occasions I have driven Par 4’s and often left my tee shot close to the hole within five feet of the hole and managed to miss the putt. It is such a frustrating game when you can hit a drive over three hundred yards on to a green pretty close to the pin yet you miss the short eagle putt. Some might say it is still a birdie however from the golfer’s perspective it is beyond frustrating.
My frustration however came to a point last year, after playing in a tournament and having shot level par with thirty-five putts almost hitting every green in regulation except for one, I decided I was going to once and for all address my putting technique because my technique just wasn’t working and it never has. On the two-hour drive back home, I had nothing else on my mind but how was I going to change the only technique I ever knew. Firstly, I hate the amount of face rotation I see in my putting stroke so I was trying to figure out how I could reduce the amount of rotation. Face rotation is usually linked to over use of your hands in your putting stroke and not using your shoulders enough. I am aware the claw grip and cack hander or cross grip as some refer to it help to reduce your hands but I never felt comfortable with these techniques.
After over an hour into the drive tormenting myself, I had a eureka moment that if I turned my lead hand or top left hand a full 90° and I had the back of my hand facing towards my body instead of the direction I was hitting the putt then surely this position would lock the putter into a more stable position and reduce the amount of face movement I had in my putting stroke. For the rest of my journey to Ennis I visualised this new position and I convinced myself this position was going to work. I drove straight to my store to test this theory out on my putting green and to my delight although it felt extremely awkward at first it definitely had reduced the face rotation in my putting stroke.
Fast forward to today I know I have definitely stumbled on a new technique that definitely works and it achieves a more consistent putting stroke, that not only keeps the face more stable but it also forces you to hit your putts more from your shoulders because of the way the putter is held in a locked position in the palm of the hand. You do need to use a thicker grip though I found with this new position because it will help to fill your palm and allow you to hold the putter in a more stable secure position.
In the first image I am holding the putter using my old putting grip, whereas in the second image I am using my new putting grip. You can see my top left hand it in a completely different position which will lead to having a more consistent putting stroke. I kept my right hand as normal because this hand is my release hand which determines the pace of my putts, so I didn’t want to change this hand. By not changing my right hand it helped me to get used to the left hand position a lot faster also. Basically, I see the left hand as my control hand to do with keeping the face stable and my right hand then tries to achieve the right pace of the putt. This has been a game changer for me yet I have never seen this technique on any golfer yet I know it works as I have definitely seen my average putts drop dramatically over the past six months since I have implemented this new putting grip. If you also struggle with consistency with your putting why not give it a try and see if you too can stop the frustration of missing putts.
