Golf Tips: Practice Drills to Improve your Putting Game

The gate drill reached the mainstream audience from seeing Tiger Woods use it. What this drill is going to help with is your putting stroke. It helps to ensure you are making a smooth swing, staying on the correct plane, and making center contact with the ball.

Start with a distance of around five feet, and with as straight of a putt as you can manage on the practice green. You aren’t worried about making the putt in this drill. What you want is to look at your contact, and make sure the ball is going where it should be. Set your putter head on the ground, and push in tees off the edge of the heel and toe of your putter, so that it barely fits through while putting towards your target.

You should be able to hit your putt, swinging the club head through the “gate” created by the two tees. If you hit one of them, you know your putting stroke is off. If you are just constantly missing the putt that looks straight, you’re lined up incorrectly. Adjust your footing and angle until the ball starts going to its home.

If you are hitting the tees, you can fix that as well. Grab another set of tees, placing them around 6 inches back from your first set. You can do this a few inches in front as well if you want to check follow through. You should now have a little rectangle to putt through towards the hole. Setting up this way turns your gate into a tunnel, forcing your swing to be even and on one plane. If you are outside in, or inside out on your stroke, this will tell you. You are going to hit one of the tees if this is the case, and you can adjust your stroke until you start making clean contact on the ball instead of the tees.

There is a reason so many people use the gate drill. Your consistency in your putting stroke is going to go up a couple notches. Reading the putts is still up to you though.