Stop Looking at the Hole If You Want to Putt like Jon Rahm

You must train your mind to look away from the hole and focus on the starting point. It sounds easy to do, but as we all know the golfing brain is difficult to control.

The next time you head to the course and practice try this putting drill. Start the exercise by finding a side hill slope on the practice green. Choose a putt where the start line is a couple feet to the side of the hole. Try to choose a putt that is about ten to twenty feet in length. Drop two or three balls and practice hitting the putt. Once you make the putt focus on the starting line needed to hole out. Keep looking at the starting line and a spot about two feet in front of you on that line. Grab a Sharpie marker out of your bag and mark that point in the grass. Make the dot easy to see. This is your starting point.

Now take two tees and go back six inches toward you and place them in the ground on each side of the starting line. The starting point you just marked in the grass should be directly in the center six inches in front of those two tees. The distance between the two tees should be about the width of a conventional putter head. This setup will look like a small triangle from where you are putting. Right away your attention will be drawn away from the hole and toward your new target, the starting point.

Start to really focus in on the dot. Forget the hole, don’t concern yourself with the tees, just look at the dot. Go through your normal routine and right before you hit the putt, take one last look at the dot. Practice hitting putts in this fashion. Your brain will begin to let the hole go because you have a new target. Watch the ball role through the tees, over the dot and then onto the hole. Your brain will quickly shift its attention to the spot. No longer will every putt leak toward the hole right off the putter face. This is the basis of why amateurs consistently end up below the hole on breaking putts. They putt toward the hole and not their line.