Top Tips To Improve Your Putting Skills

Being new to golf has its advantages; first of all you have not learned any bad habits that need to be broken. You are starting out with a clean slate and it is much easier to learn good habits from the start then to unlearn bad ones.

However, many beginning golfers make a huge mistake by not taking the time to learn to putt. This article is going to give useful putting tips and aids for beginners.

Putting may not see like a lot of fun to work on but it is crucial if you want to keep your scores low. Most beginners make the mistake of going out to the driving range and hitting ball after ball with their driver believing that the only way they are going to get good and hopefully break 80 is by hitting a 300 yard drive.

This is a big mistake, what you need to remember is that a missed three foot putt will cost you the same amount of strokes as a 300 yard drive.

So how do you get good at putting? You get good a putting by learning the fundamentals and by practicing. Here are some often overlooked putting tips for beginners.

Reading the Grain

One of the first things that you should learn how to do is learn how to read the grain on the green. This is very helpful as it will tell you how fast the putt is running and how the putt is going to break.

The simplest way to determine how the grain is running is to look at the colour of the grass. This method takes a little practice but once you understand how to do it this putting tip can save you many strokes.

When you are standing behind your putt look at the colour of the grass between your ball and the cup. If it looks shiny, you are putting with the grain. The shinny look comes from the grass lying down. When you putt with the grain your putt is going to run quicker.

If the colour of the green is a dark green your putt is running against the grain which will make the putt slower.

Reading the Break

When you are learning to putt you want to learn how to read the greens. This takes time but there are certain things that you can do to help the learning curve.

First if you belong to a home course take several balls out onto the course and just putt around the green. Look for any general tendencies, for example, if there is a lake around you may be surprised to learn that the greens, everywhere on the course, tend to break towards the water.

Then walk around on the greens and look and feel. There is a reason that the pros walk around their putts, not only are they looking for the breaks they are feeling with their feet the subtle breaks around the green.

Once you have done that stand on the side of the green and take a look at all the breaks on the green, see if there are any levels and which way it slopes. All of this information will be very helpful to helping you learn how to putt in actual playing conditions.

Using Putting Aids

Using putting tips and aids for beginners is a fast way to get your putter working for you. There are several putting aids that you might want to consider adding into your practice time.

For example there are putting machines that you putt the ball into and it returns it back to you. This is very helpful for learning how to keep the putter head square at impact and it also helps you to learn how to get the ball rolling smoothly off the putter’s face.

There are also putting aligners that you can implement into your putting practice. This type of equipment will help you to align the ball and help you learn a good putting stroke both back and through the ball.

Another type of putting aid is one that teaches you the correct arc of the putting stroke, many beginning golfers have the misconception that the putter goes straight back and straight through this aid will teach you to actually release your putter head.

Using these putting tips and aids for beginners will help you to quickly improve your score as you will begin to understand all the things that you need to know to be a good consistent putter.

Article by Dave Talbot