How to use your bank card to improve your putting at home — for free!

Your best alignment aid was sitting in your pocket this whole time.

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I’m not sure where in the world you are right now, but I’m in the northeast, where it’s been rainy and cold for a full week now. It’s why I’m starting to prepare for the worst, otherwise known as the offseason. Like a bear stocking-up on food before hibernating for the winter, I am compiling a mass of at-home tips that will last me through the colder months, so my game doesn’t emerge sluggish in 2021.

One of them is so simple I wonder why I don’t do it more. All it requires is a golf ball, a putter, and a card of some sort.

PERFECT PUTTING MAT STANDARD

$169.99

The way it works is exceedingly simple. It’s a three-step drill:

  1. Set up to the golf ball
  2. Holding your putter in place, replace the golf ball with the credit card, so one side is flush with the putter face.
  3. Remove the putter and check to see where the card is aligned.

You can see it demonstrated by teacher Mike Bury below (who is an A+ follow on Instagram if you haven’t already)

The primary benefit of this drill is to check the alignment of your putterface. It’s not uncommon for golfers to align their putterface closed or open at setup unknowingly. By employing the use of an outside object as a visual aid, it allows you to check your alignment, and course-correct quickly if need be. If your credit card is not pointed in the direction you want, there’s something amiss with your alignment.

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Luke Kerr-Dineen

Golf.com Contributor

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.