Putting Guide General Technique In Golf

Aoki may have had the worst style. The manual tells you that the putter head should lie square on the ground, but the toe of Aoki’s putter hung proudly in the air, as if it was gasping for breath.

The manual tells you that the wrists should be firm throughout the stroke, Aoki so cocked his wrists it was as though he was playing a backhand at tennis.

If you had seen the young Aoki on the practice putting green, you would have told him to start again from scratch, unless you had already seen him holing putts from all over the place.

There is one player with an unorthodox putting style at every club, too, and maybe more than one, golfers who defy conventional putting laws, yet consistently hole out from every area of the green.

To a certain extent, then, putting is God given, that seems to be the lesson here. But for the less gifted among us, there are rules that ought to be followed for consistency in this infuriating area of the sport.

There are perhaps just two basic tenets to putting:
- the wrists should stay firm throughout the stroke
- the stroke itself should be smooth and rhythmical, it is often compared to the pendulum movement on a grandfather clock, and that is probably the best analogy of all.

Another thing to remember is that the rest of the body should remain perfectly still throughout the putting stroke. That is not to say that you should be thinking you are a statue and freeze on the spot, if you are at all tense, your putting will almost certainly go to pot.

When you are about to stand over a putt, try to relax your body and then concentrate your mind on the ball, moving your arms as if they were that pendulum.

Once you have mastered that, the hard part begins; learning to read the greens and the different borrows, as well as coping with the psychology at work whenever you step on to the green.