Downhill Putts

Video Transcript

"O.k., now the downhill putt. Now this green isn’t all that fast but in a lot of Country Clubs or Tournament ready courses, they really cut the greens short so they roll extremely fast. So the downhill putt can be very tricky because you can be; we're about 8 feet from the cup on this putt but if you're downhill it can especially at a reasonably good angle, at a steep slope; if you hit the ball just a little too hard it just rolls. So one of the tricks that we have is we'll hit the putt off the tip of the putter; so what that does when you hit it with the middle of the putter it's going to get the full force but if you use the tip of the putter you can still take a normal swing, but a lot of the force then is dissipated. So it's a way of giving yourself a normal stroke but reducing the risk of flying it by the hole or you can choke down on these downhill putts so your swing isn't as big. You want to take a margin of error but you want to put it into your favor. So, but a lot of times you can just hit a putt about this hard on a steep slope; it's still going to keep rolling. So these are putts that you really have to practice because they're the ones that if you have a downhill putt and it's a 5 foot putt to save Par or make a Birdie and you just hit it a little bit past the hole and it goes 20 feet past; so instead of getting a Birdie or a Par you're going to be looking at Bogey, double Bogey; triple Bogey just because of a downhill slope. So practice those putts a lot because if you can master them it will save you a lot of strokes and if you don't they can really cost you."