With a conventional putting stroke, all your feel, touch, and distance control comes from the hand that most instructors tell you to take completely out of the stroke.
Your trailing hand — the right hand for right-handed golfers — is responsible for the feel and touch of the entire stroke. It is critical for distance control in putting.
That's actually fantastic news. Think about it: if someone handed you a ball and asked you to roll it toward a hole, you'd naturally use your dominant hand. You wouldn't grab it with your non-dominant hand and backhand it toward the target — that would be absurd.
Since most golfers are right-handed (if you're left-handed, simply apply this to your left hand), all your dexterity, sensitivity, feel, and fine motor control already reside in your right hand. You just need to learn how to use it properly in your putting stroke.
Trail Hand in Putting
The best putters in history have always understood this. When elite players arrive at a new course to practice, they'll spend 30 minutes putting with their trail hand only to learn the speed and touch of the greens.
They'll roll trail-hand-only putts all day long, developing a precise feel for the green speed and surface conditions until they've calibrated their sense of distance perfectly.
Why use just the trail hand? Because that's where the greatest sensitivity and control lives. It's the hand with the most refined motor skills for this delicate task.
Yet here's the irony: most putting instructors teach golfers to essentially eliminate the trail hand from the stroke entirely. They're asking you to remove your best tool from the equation.
What About the Yips in Putting?
As golfers get older, many claim they develop the yips in putting. But the yips are simply a flip of the trail hand — nothing more.
The yips are the result of being overly anxious about results rather than focusing on process, which triggers an involuntary flip of the trail wrist through impact.
In these lessons we're focused entirely on process: learning to hinge the trail wrist back slightly and allow it to release slightly through the ball. As you develop the correct movements, you need to permit a small amount of wrist hinge during the stroke.
That concept will terrify some of you — especially if you've battled the yips. But like any other motor skill, you can learn the correct movement pattern. When you do, the yips disappear and your distance control improves immediately.
Hinge & Release in the Putting Stroke
That subtle hinge and release takes the natural feel and control you already possess in your trail hand and channels it directly into your putting stroke — giving you genuine distance control for the first time.
It's just a small amount of hinge in the trail wrist going back and a small amount of unhinge coming through. You're not flipping — but as the wrist hinges back slightly, you develop feel in the stroke. As you come through, the wrist simply allows you to give the ball a controlled, precise strike.
If you've been taught to just rock your shoulders with completely rigid wrists and you're trying to hit a 40-foot putt, the stroke becomes incredibly awkward.
Your head moves all over the place. As your eyes shift, your perception of the putting line changes because your shoulders have to rock so dramatically — and that instability destroys your accuracy.
Instead, use that small hinge and release. Your follow-through stays completely controlled. There's no need for a long, exaggerated follow-through on a 40-foot putt — that would be counterproductive.
Allow your trail wrist to hinge back and through, delivering a crisp, controlled strike with just enough wrist action to produce natural feel. That's what elite putters do, and it's what you want in a conventional putting stroke.
Practice this movement until you're comfortable with the hinge and release pattern. Once it feels natural, it's time to develop a feel for hitting your putts in the center of the face.
Center of the Putter Face
If you've been pulling your lead arm through the stroke and simply rocking your shoulders with dead wrists, you may have struggled to hit the center of the face consistently. Once you start allowing the wrist to work back and through, you'll notice dramatically more control over strike location.
Fortunately, Eyeline Golf has developed the Sweet Spot 360, a simple little training aid that provides perfect feedback for this specific skill.
Peel off the backing and stick the device onto your putter face — they're reusable multiple times. With the Sweet Spot 360 centered on the face, any mishit — top, bottom, heel, or toe — will immediately send the ball offline.
Test it yourself: hit a putt high on the face or off the toe and the ball barely moves because the padded Sweet Spot 360 cushions the off-center strike. The ball only rolls normally when you accurately hit the precise center of the putter face.
This device provides instant feedback through both the ball's response and the sound at impact. A center strike produces a clean, solid sound. An off-center hit sounds dull and the ball goes nowhere.
This trains your trail hand to develop awareness of exactly where the ball contacts the face, reinforcing the feel and control that produces great distance control.
Once you're comfortable with trail-hand-only practice, bring your lead hand back onto the putter without losing that sense of feel and control you've developed.
Work with the Sweet Spot 360, do your trail-hand-only drills, and watch your distance control improve dramatically. For the same kind of instant feedback on your full golf swing, try a free AI swing analysis that diagnoses your mechanics in seconds. To practice with real-time coaching, check out a free AI golf lesson.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Rolling a ball with the dominant hand
Right hand only putting drill
Slight hinge & release
Head moves all over
Sweet Spot 360
Sweet Spot 360 in action
