It's time for a new episode of “Faith N Fairways” with the founder, Brad Thorberg, who after more than 16,000 lessons taught to over 2,000 golfers has discovered the most forgotten and overlooked part of your golf game that is keeping you from playing your most consistent and confident golf ever.
Now, here is your host, Brad Thorberg.
Brad Thorberg: Alright! Alright! Welcome back, golfers. Brad here. So excited to be diving into the putting side of the code to break 90.
Today, we're going to talk about your putting speed is king to getting inside five feet. That is what we will be diving into. We've talked about 30, 30. Now we're talking about how to get inside five feet.
So, we've talked about finding your safe place 30 yards from the edge of the putting surface. We talked about how to hand ball toss for a million bucks to get inside 30 feet and even closer. You guys should be getting closer than that on average, and after working on the drill I gave you last week, if you missed last week, you definitely want to tune in. I gave you my number-one drill for chipping and pitching. But this week—speed. Speed is king.
So, we're going to dive into speed in king. We're going to dive into why that is. We're going to give you some pointers on how to help with speed, some drills. I'm going to give you my number-one drill to help with speed control and how to warm up before your round guys, but this is crucial, because what I do know—and this is a fact—is that from five feet and in the amateur or the average golfer or the amateur golfer will make 92 percent of their putts inside five feet. I do know that. That is a fact. Tour players, it’s 98 percent. Now, that's not just from five feet. That's from five feet and in, so you’ve got to think how many times you have an eight-foot putt that you leave two inches short and you tap it in.
So, I know that if we can get consistently from 30 feet and in to inside five feet, we get rid of three-putts. Yay. No more three putts. If you want to consistently break 90, we can only have maybe one or two three-putts that we offset with one or two one-putts to break 90 consistently. So, we're trying to eliminate the three-putt. We can't have that. To do that, we have to accomplish parts one and two of the code, and we have this one so crucially. We have to get this one inside five feet. It is vital. Outside five feet, that percentage starts to drop quickly. Outside 20, we ain't got a chance. Those are just the facts, Jack.
So, how can we improve our speed? Why is speed king? From my experience, you can stand on a putting green and you're not going to misread the break by five feet. You're not going to go, It's going to break left to right. Oh, I broke 10 feet, alright. You can see and feel breaking a green, right. So, you're not going to misread the green from a break standpoint. The amateur golfer can see and feel it. Your experience with hitting a ball in line, and trusting and having faith in that, that's a whole ’nother ball game, but you can visually see break and you can feel break [03:00] with your feet.
What I’ve found over the years is an amateur golfer does it, misread break by more than a foot or two at the worst. At the worst, a foot or two. So, if you have the speed, you're within one or two feet all day long, giving them and putting down here, picking up what I'm putting down I think is the saying—so, that's why speed is king.
Because even the golfer who struggles to break 100 can see, when I go out on the golf course with them, they can see the break. I can ask them, What direction do you think this is going to occur? Well, it's a little to the right or the left? They can see it, so even though they struggle to break 100, they can see the slope. You're breaking 100 trying to break 90. You know the slope. You're not going to misread it by more than probably a few inches. So, if you’ve got your speed figured out, you're going to be consistently inside five feet if not draining some of these putts.
So, speed is king. We’ve got to get better at speed.
Now, how do we do that? The simplest way is we’ve got to look at the hole. Here's what I know: hand-eye coordination.
The human body is just one of the most amazing things, but it's one of the most underutilized things for the golfer, but in every other sport, you're using it all the time, right? You don't sit there at the dartboard thinking, Alright, how far back do I need to pull my wrist to release this dart to get 25 feet to the dartboard? You don't do it. You don't sit there thinking, Alright, now at what speed do I need to flick my wrist to shoot a free throw? You're looking at where you want it to go and you're reacting. And a golfer is an athlete just like in any other sport. We are. We're athletes. The hard part in golf is we're given three minutes to psych ourselves out and be in our conscious mind when in every other sport you're in your reactionary, subconscious mind. You're using hand-eye coordination. It's naturally happening, right?
Back to the analogy of imagine watching a sixth-grade basketball game. Kid cherry-picking, doesn't get all the way back to the other side of the court. They steer the ball. They toss it to him. Nobody's around him. He’s dribbling on the hoop. What’s he thinking? Don't miss it. Don't miss it. Don't miss it. Clunk right off the bottom of the rim. But two minutes later, that same kid, dribbling between two kids and throw up a layup and drain it. Why? Because he was reacting. He wasn't thinking. That is so, so crucial.
So, for a lot of you, you're looking down at the ball thinking, Oh, gosh, don't leave it short. Don't leave it short. Don't hit it away [unclear 0:05:20.3]. Don't hit it. You're thinking of whatever you did wrong he last time you hit a long putt. You're telling yourself, Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't do this, or you're doing some crazy, Go back this far and take it back, and through this far to hit it x distance.
One, does that work? Yes. Yes, it does. But it only works for those who practice it hours and hours and hours. So, it works great for tour players, which is where you probably picked it up, from a tour player, or you picked up that advice from a golf coach or an instructor who works with tour players. But it's not for you, the amateur golfer who, one, probably hardly ever practices putting until you started listening to “Faith N Fairways,” and [06:00] I told you early on in episode two of this series that you need to start practicing your putting.
Now, if you don't practice you're putting a ton, that doesn't apply to you at all. But what I do know is hand-eye coordination is so huge into putting game, so, so huge. Right? Think of how many times you've three-putted and the ball is three feet past the hole. You just step up and slap it with one hand, and it goes in—hand-eye coordination. Didn't think about it—but the same three-footer for par, you're standing over sweating bullets, thinking, Don't do this. Don't push it. Just go in the hole. Please go in the hole. You're thinking all the wrong thing.
So, the mindset and putting, so, so crucial, especially on your short putts, which we'll dive into next week on “How Consistent Golfers Make the Short Ones.”
But for now, how do we get better at speed? We need to look at the hole. We need to rely on hand-eye coordination, our God-given ability to have hand-eye coordination. It's there. It's powerful. You're just not using it.
So, how do we unlock this? Well, we need to look at the hole and we need to start practicing that. You're not, if you miss the ball on the toe or the heel, with the amazing technology in putters, you're still going to end up within a foot or two of where you wanted it, and our goal is just to be five feet shorter or five-feet-by-five-feet right or five feet left. You have a 10-by-10-foot window. That should be easy. So, a slight mishit, toe or heel isn't going to affect your speed enough to miss your window.
So, I need you to start looking at the hole and using your depth perception and hand-eye coordination, because what this is going to do is it’s going to start to give you confidence. It's going to give you a ton of confidence by practicing this and rolling putts, and you're going to find is so easy to start rolling putts up close to the hole from that 30-foot window.
Even though Brad has cracked the code to consistently breaking 90, there are still three major mistakes he's found from working with over 2,000 clients that will sabotage your round before you get to the first tee. Head to www.MyGolfCode.com now to receive your free guide where he outlines all three faults and provides you with some easy action steps to start playing more consistent golf today.
So, we want to start looking at the hole.
Now, before your round, to start doing this, what you want to start doing is you want to start rolling putts to the fringe. You want to find a place in the middle half of the green where it's 20–30 feet to the fringe, and you want to start lagging putts where they're just dying and trickling and stopping an inch short of the fringe or just trickling an inch or two on. And you want to sit there and hit these putts to the fringe uphill, downhill sidehill from 20–30 feet until you start getting a feel of rolling three or four that are stopping within a few inches of that fringe or just rolling a few inches onto the fringe—because, guys, think of that.
If you're warming up before you round and you're now rolling 5, 6, 7 putts in a row, and they're all stopping there within probably a foot of each other, you’ve got this. Because what's our goal? Five feet short or past [09:00], five feet left or right, 10-foot window. We’ve got this, because now you're lagging these putts from 30 feet to the edge of the green, controlling the pace wonderfully, and that's our goal—30, 30 and five: find a safe place at 30 yards. Pitch/chip it inside 30 feet. Lag it inside five. Tap it in. Bogey—and what you're going to find as you get better in those first two areas is you're going to start making some pars. You're taking double out of play. No more three-putts and we are consistently breaking 90.
So, what that warmup needs to look like is you should probably be spending at least five or 10 minutes lagging putts from the middle of the green to the fringe, never at the ole, never, ever. Never, ever, ever should you be hitting putts before the round of golf outside five feet at a cup. That is a great way to just mentally blow up your mind of self-doubt and negativity before you go to the first hole, because outside five: five to 10 feet we make 7o-some-percent as an amateur; 10–15, you're talking 30; 15–20, you're talking 5–10 percent; outside 20, it's just luck. That's a fact, Jack.
I mean, 20. They've done it and they've hit. They've had robots hit cuts from 25 feet and the robot will miss the putt, just because over that course of distance, the slightest little wiggle off a blade of grass or grain of sand is enough to completely miss the cup over 25 feet. So, robots are going to miss putts outside 20 feet. And that's why it's so important for us to get inside 30, because as you get inside 30, you're going to start to have 3, 4, 5, 6, and start to get inside 20 where you actually have a statistic advantage of making the putt. And if we can start lagging inside five, we start to have very, very, very, very few three-putts, which means we have a lot of pars and bogeys, and you’re now consistently breaking 90 and enjoying the round—because what does breaking 90 do? It just makes golf fun, makes it enjoyable. It allows you to go out and play with anybody. Anybody.
You could go and play with the scratch golf or shooting par and you will never feel like you're holding them up, because they don't notice it. Because where's the extra shot coming from? It's coming from right around the green where they're at, too, and that's the beauty of breaking 90. You just feel comfortable and confident on any golf course with anybody you'd ever play with. And golf just became the equivalent of the ski slope where every time you're walking off the course, you're happy; you're smiling and it was an enjoyable investment of your hard-earned time and money.
So, we’ve got to get the speed dialed in. You need to start looking at the hole. You need to start warming up, looking at the fringe and rolling putts for a good 5–10 minutes until you can start lagging five, six putts to different targets uphill, downhill, where they're just barely trickling under the fringe or stopping just a few inches short, because then you’ve got it. Then you now walk into the first tee box. Hey, I have the speed. I know how far the ball flies and rolls in my chipping and short [12:00] game, and I'm going to come up with my safe place on each hole. Boom. We have swagger on every hole from now on and we are breaking 90. You can do this. It’s that simple.
Now, even when you get the speed figured out, guys, there's still going to be three major things that you're probably not doing right that’s sabotaging you before you even get to the first tee. So, you want to want to stay tuned here and get my “Three Biggest Mistakes” download. It's free. It's going to give you some pointers to help you before you even get to that first tee box. So, you want to make sure you stay tuned and get that website and download that.
But what I want to do now is give you my number-one drill for speed control and putting. This is my go-to with all my clients. Over 2,000 clients. Every single one of them needs this drill. You can't get so good, it doesn't work. It's only going to make you better—we'll put it that way—but we want to work on a ladder drill for speed control.
So, what you want to do is—guys, think of this: our goal is five feet, right? So, what I do is I have my clients set up a ladder, so they grab about four clubs and they lay them out on the putting green. And you can do this in your living room if you have some tighter-nap carpet. But you want to lay out these clubs. You want to space them four feet apart. So, now you have this ladder that has these rungs that are four-foot in width.
And, then, what you want to do is you want to have the very back end of that ladder be about 30–34 feet away, and you pace off till you're about 34 feet away, and that's where you're going to hit your putts. So, now you're hitting it from the hardest possible spot, but what you want to do is you want to pick a certain rung in that ladder that you're trying to stop the ball in that four foot window, because if you get really good at hitting eight to nine out of these putts, and they're stopping in that rung of that ladder, that four-foot window because you have three windows there to choose from. And you want to mix them up and go through your routine. You want to be looking. You want to be looking.
So, what I do is I set up that ladder. Boom, boom, boom. I lay down the four clubs. We have our three spaces, our three- or four-foot spaces, and I stick a tee in the middle of each of those spaces as my visual point that I'm looking at, and now you're just rolling putts to that tee. You're looking at that tee and you're just thinking, I'm just going to roll the ball up to that tee, and you change the rung.
Your goal is just to practice that and set a target. It's not about—guys, this is a huge nugget in itself. I wasn't planning on putting in here—but you’ve got to have a practice plan. Right? In any sport you’ve ever played, coach always had a plan for practice. Otherwise, it just gets away from you. So, you need to have a plan of, Alright, how much time am I going to spend or how many balls am I going to hit here? So, you've got to have that plan.
So, your plan might be, Alright, I’ve got three rungs. My goal is to hit 10 balls to each rung, alternating rungs, going through my routine of looking at the tee, doing a couple of practice shots, stepping up looking at the tee and just thinking roll the ball to a tee. And what you want to do is get really good and, as you start tracking this, you're going to find it's pretty simple and you're going to start to get [15:00] eight or nine out of 10 of these rolling into the rung you're looking at, getting them to just die and stop close to that tee. And, guys, bye-bye three-putts, right there. Three-putts are gone, because you’ve got the speed figure it out, but that's my number-one drill for practicing it.
But you’ve got to practice. Guys, this doesn't happen overnight. This is a very difficult game that, even with the good mechanics, that six inches between your ears will still cause you to blow up. So, even with good mechanics, you still have to implement the mechanics and improve the mindset, the focus in the field and you’ve got to get out there and work on this drill.
So, you’ve got to work on this. You’ve got to work on hitting your landing towel. And, if you do that, I promise you, you're going to reduce the three-putts and you're going to start making more up and down.
So, that is why speed is king. That's how you're going to practice it and that's how you're going to get ready before your round. And, then, next week, what we're going to do is we're going to dive into what consistent golfers do to making short putts. How do they make so many short putts? Your friends are consistently shooting in the 70s, low–80s. How does it seem like they never miss a short putt?
Well, I'm going to teach you how they do that next week, so you don't want to miss out on that, because that's the last piece of this, because if you can now just start draining putts inside feet left and right, we have no more three putts. Right? We have no more blow-up holes where we took an extra shot to get there and then we compounded it with poor chip and three or four putts, and the next thing you know, we're leaving with the triple bogey that sabotages the next three holes because we're still thinking about it. Never again. Why? Because we're going to improve our speed. Next week, we're going to learn how to make the short one and make it count.
So, hopefully, that helps you guys. We’re on track. We're almost there. The light at the end of the tunnel, breaking 90 consistently, it's right there. Soon, the rest of summer, this fall, you're going to be breaking 90 by implementing this.
So, we're through the code, “30, 30 and five.” What we’re going to learn next week: how do we make the short one consistently? What are the better golfers doing that we're not? We're going to learn that. So, you start draining all those putts inside five feet and, boom, we're there. We're breaking 90. Guys, you're right there. You're on the cusp, so close. Can't wait. Can't wait to teach you that.
Take what you learned this week and in the last few weeks. Start applying it. And a lot of you are seeing success already. I love it. I love the emails I'm getting of the great success you're having. I love it. So, we implemented speed. Speed is king. Start practicing it, rehearsing it before your round, doing the drill. Next week, you're going to learn how to make the short ones.
Have a great week. Get out there. Enjoy. Have fun. We'll talk to you next week.
This is ThePodcastFactory.com.
