Trail Hand Putting Drill
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Training your trail hand and core to work together is the first fundamental of the GOAT swing and it starts with your putting stroke. Develop your feel here first and slowly build into chipping, wedge play, iron play and finally the driver.
Developing coordination between your right hand or your trail hand and your core and the rest of your body is fundamental to a trail side pattern.
That's why you see Tiger Woods always practicing doing shots, chip shots, putting, etc.
with his trail hand only.
This is his dominant hand, and this is what he uses predominantly to control the club face and the golf swing.
And it starts with his putting stroke.
He practices all the time doing his T-drill with his trail hand only.
And that is key to learning how to control the club face and learning how to train your hands.
One of the things I hear all the time is, oh, well, I just don't have good hands.
So people start trying to take their hands out of their stroke.
And yet perhaps the greatest of all time, in my opinion, certainly at least number two, if not the best golfer of all time and certainly, in my opinion, the best golf swing of all time, best short game of all Tiger relied on his hands and he trained them so that they could be reliable.
But if you never train your hands, you're never going to have great hands.
That's my answer.
Every time somebody says, well, I don't have good hands.
Well, I said, you know how you develop good hands?
You develop the feel in your hands and that's exactly what you're going to do.
Going through the GOAT program, where you are going to start with developing your trail, hand feel and core development to learn how to control the body, control the club with your trail hand.
And it's going to start with your putting stroke.
So I'm going to show you a practice routine and help you understand the mechanics of what you've got to feel, the time that it's going to take to train it so that you can develop a tremendous sense of control.
So that as you go from your putting stroke to your wedge, to your chipping and putting, you have the same feel.
As you go to bunker play, it's the same feel.
You go to your short wedge shots, it's the same feel, full swing, driver, irons, every single club in the bag, you're learning how to control it with this trail hand.
So, Let's take a look at this putting routine and help you understand what you're going to need to do to develop control and feel in that trail hand.
So you're going to start hitting putts with one hand only, your trail hand only.
Now the key to this, so many golfers are terrified of their trail hand for the yips and numerous other reasons.
You have to learn to control the face and control your hand and your core working together.
So you'll see as I go through this routine that I will be adjusting my posture.
I will constantly be working on engaging my core.
You'll see this in some of the later clips, But what you're going to do first is practice three to five footers, trail, hand only and get to the point where you can consistently.
This is a little breaking putt.
You want a pretty straight putt.
Now we're going to the face on view, getting five and a half foot or so here.
I'm engaging my core.
So many golfers struggle with this.
This is such a fundamental of the golf swing.
Notice how stable my body is once my core is engaged.
So then I can focus on just controlling the putter face with my right hand and right arm.
So you see not a lot else is moving here.
I'm keeping the putter face very stable and this really becomes a concentration drill.
Learning how to control your hand is not hard.
You don't have to be afraid of it, but you do need to concentrate.
You need to focus on what that club face is doing, what you feel in your hand and what you're feeling as you strike the ball.
Controlling that club face is everything with that trail hand.
So learning how to release the club properly, a little hinge back with my right hand.
And then as I get more comfortable, I will practice that right hand drill for a while.
I'm going to explain the math of it in just a moment.
And you'll see how much time it really is required to develop feel in your hands.
And once I get a feel for that, I add both hands back on there, but I'm still trying to feel 100% right handed.
The left hand is helping stabilize it, making it a little bit easier to control the club because I've got a supporting hand there.
But everything I'm feeling right now is in my right hand, in my fingers, in my right arm, and my core is stabilizing.
So get to the point where you can make a bunch of five footers, three, four, five footers in a row one handed, then go to two hands.
And then you'll see I go to, this is about a 20 footer, a little double breaker.
I've got to go over a pretty good mound in front.
And so this is a really good one to develop the feel, the sensitivity, the touch in my hands.
It's going to come downhill and then break back to the left a little, or back to the right a little bit.
So now I'm really testing my skill, testing my concentration, testing the feel in that right hand, testing the feel in my fingers to get a feel for the speed, the distance control, the line, all doing it with just my trail hand only.
My core is engaged and I'm just using my hand to control that putter phase.
You can see the putter is not going all over the place.
It's not out of control.
I know a lot of people think that's going to happen as soon as they use their right hand, but if it works for Tiger, it'll work for you.
Now the timing of this, It's going to take about 500 repetitions before this starts to be something you can do more at a subconscious level, where you don't have to think about it.
So 500 repetitions.
If you look at this routine, each set of five putts that I'm hitting takes about a minute.
Obviously the longer putts are going to take much longer, like here and now I'm hitting a 45 footer.
It's got about 10 footer break hitting a trail hand only.
I do a set of five.
This one's going to take a little bit longer than a minute, but on the shorter ones, the four or five footers, those take about a minute for a set of five, give or take a little bit.
And that means to get about 500 repetitions in is going to take two to three hours.
So you can count reps or you can just count time.
I like to count time.
I don't want to sit out here and count reps every single putt I hit.
So I just put my stopwatch on, on my iPhone and just let it run and say, okay, I practiced for 20 minutes today, right handed only.
And then I, and both hands, obviously you practice with both, But that's really what you're trying to do is get the time in that it takes for your brain to build these new neural pathways and start to develop a sense of control.
When you start out at first, you're probably not going to be very good at this and that's perfectly okay, but you're going to get a lot better as you continue to practice it.
But you're never going to get better if you don't practice, you know, if you don't practice to develop the feel in your hands, to do, to develop engaging your core, to have good posture when you putt, to have good setup fundamentals.
If you don't practice it, you're not going to get better.
But, and when I started out right hand putting, as you guys know, I've never been a great putter.
I have been working on these drills for, I've got maybe three hours under my belt at this point that you're seeing here.
And I'm reasonably competent.
This is a 45 foot putt with 10 footer break, hitting it with one hand and I'm leaving them to kick in distance for the most part.
And for somebody who's always been a pretty poor putter, this is a huge change for me.
I was always afraid of my hands, but I went, why does, you know, everybody's always talking about taking your hands out of the stroke and Tiger says, all I do is use my hands and my right hand is everything.
Well, I'm, I'm on board, I'm doing the same thing.
It's helping in every single aspect of my game, but taking it from my putting to my chipping to my full swing has been an incremental process.
And this is what I love about doing these drills is that it's giving me a sense of feel throughout every club in the bag.
But starting with something that's manageable, a four foot putt, three foot putt with your right hand.
At first, you're probably going to find it to be a challenge.
I'd love to hear your feedback on it, but keep doing it 20, 30, 40 minutes, however much you can do each day.
You don't have to be on a putting green.
You can do a little putting mat in the house with a straight putt.
It's all about training your mind and training your concentration to pay attention to what you're doing with that club face, with your trail hand.
And at the end here, I do 15 footers again, you know, maybe six inches of break or so.
Once I get a feel for it with my trail hand only and making some putts, then I'll go put both hands back on the club and repeat the process.
It's all about time.
And the math is very simple.
If you can shoot for just a few hours of practice, you will completely change their feel, your sensitivity, your touch, your control, your distance, your speed, all of it.
Just with a few hours of practicing this simple drill.
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