Tiger Woods said some interesting things about his putting game during an interview yesterday. He had just won his match over Aaron Baddeley and had helped the USA clinch the Presidents Cup.
He commented that he putted well the first few days but the ball wasn’t finding the cup. So although he felt like he did everything he could, plenty of putts slipped by.
This is reality and is often the case with putting. It’s a bit of a black art. All you can really do is hit the best putt you can and be accepting of the result. It’s just the way it is.
Then Tiger contradicted himself. He went on to say that he worked with Steve Stricker the night before to work on releasing the putter head through the ball. To me, this makes no sense.
If he was putting the ball well why would he want to change anything?
I’m not convinced this is the true story. Tiger, probably wanting to give the interviewee a good story, embellished the truth a bit.
It’s almost impossible to make a significant change to your putting stroke the night before. Even though you may feel you can make a change, you can’t. Tiger’s putting stroke is locked in and for the most part would be automated. Even if he wanted too, he couldn’t significantly make any meaningful change.
And I could almost certainly bet that when he stood on the putting green during yesterday’s round he was 100% automatic and wasn’t thinking about releasing the putter head or whatever else he mentioned during the interview. And where some putts slipped by early in the week, a few putts found the hole yesterday. There would have been no noticeable difference to his style.
Here’s the main point.
You are never going to make every putt you look at. There are so many variations with putting that even the most perfect putt can miss the hole. Yes it’s annoying and frustrating but there’s not much you can do. There’s also the chance you can hit a bad putt and it can find the hole.
So my advice is to accept that successful putting can be a mystery. All you can do is learn to let go and make the best stroke you can make. And, if you stop fiddling with your putting technique you’ll increase the chances of making more putts.
And finally, no matter what the best players say, they are not always doing what they say they are.