This has become one of Phil's favorite putting drills.
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A lot has been made of Phil Mickleson’s driving recently, which makes sense. He’s hitting it longer than ever as Lefty has fallen in love with gaining swing speed to hit “bombs.”
And over the weekend, he was spotted using the driver to help his putting.
It’s an eye-catching drill to those who may not have seen it before, but it’s actually a pretty common and useful drill that may help your own putting stroke.
First, take a club or an alignment rod and place it under your armpits, then take your address position. I’ve drawn a line down Phil’s driver shaft here; you’ll see why in a minute.
Setup(PGA TOUR)
The goal of this drill is to simply rock the shaft back and forth. First, the lead side of the shaft dips down as you make your backstroke.
Backstroke(PGA TOUR)
And then, the lead side of the shaft moves upward as you stroke through.
Follow through(PGA TOUR)
The shaft is there to maintain the relationship between your arms, wrists and shoulders, to make sure they all work together. Your sole focus should be to rock your shoulders back and forth, creating that pendulum rhythm we all desire. You can see it in the action below.
Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees the brand’s game improvement content spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.
An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University. His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
