No matter how long you’ve played the game, chances are you’ve heard some version of this advice: “Accelerate through the ball.”
While this advice is likely well-meaning in the same vein as “keep your head down,” it’s not a directive you should necessarily heed on the green, says GOLF Top 100 Teacher E.A. Tischler.
“What’s accelerating? This is a misnomer,” Tischler said at GOLF’s Top 100 Teacher Retreat at Cabot Citrus Farms. “Most people are told to accelerate through the ball, say, like in putting, because they don’t want them to decelerate because they’re a decelerator, but the answer isn’t to practice accelerating, because then they start ramming them way past the hole also.
“The key is to have a good repeatable tempo, and once you’ve changed directions, put your stroke on cruise control,” he continued. “And if you feel like from transition to follow-through you’re on cruise control, you’re gonna find that the club acceleration through the ball is going to be proper. And in reality, we have maximum acceleration when we change directions.
“So if that’s where maximum acceleration is, what’s acceleration through the ball supposed to look like?”
The answer? Overkill.
So if dialing in your putting stroke is a priority this season, follow Tischler’s advice and focus on honing a stroke with a consistent repeatable tempo instead of trying to accelerate your way through impact. Need a drill to get started? Click here. Your putting stats will surely thank you.
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Golf.com Editor
As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of female varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everyone on the masthead. She can out-hustle them in the office, too, where she’s primarily responsible for producing both print and online features, and overseeing major special projects, such as GOLF’s inaugural Style Issue, which debuted in February 2018. Her original interview series, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in both in the magazine and in video form on GOLF.com.
