Make More Putts — Video Transcription
I’m going to try to explain what you can do to gain confidence back and have confidence most of the time when you’re putting, what you need to focus on. Okay. First, I got to explain a couple of things. All of the putting actions with those, you know, with the exception of butterfly putts and actual push putts and stuff like that.
It’s a pulling motion. It’s not a pushing motion motion, even though a lot of people call pitch putts, push, but they’re not push putts. They are pulling putts. You pull the disc to the target. The thing that really gives the putt acceleration and the drives and everything else is torquing motion. Two very important things about the torquing motion is that it provides power, or velocity, and direction in order to propel the disc.
You have to have traction. Your grip and how you develop traction. It’s up to you. I talked to Ricky Wysocki and how he gets traction. He gets it from his three finger pads and his thumb, and that’s pretty much it. He’s got enough power and enough grip with those three fingers and the thumb to really torque his putt through the target.
Personally, I can’t do that. I have more traction points than that. I have the bottom of the rim and I have the, uh, underside knuckle of my middle finger. It’s kind of like a fan grip. So I have more traction points. Now with more traction points, more things can possibly go wrong. But when you stop, when your torque lever stops in the same spot, every time with the same rhythm every time, it should go the same direction.
Every time, regardless of how much power you put on that torque motion, you really want to make your putt as simple as possible. The more moving parts you have to your putt, the more things can go wrong. One thing I noticed about Ricky, Wysocki’s putt is it is really simple. There’s very little moving parts.
Now he’s got like everybody else has… he’s got the body momentum, you know, which is a small thing. And he’s got the upward and forward thrusting arm motion, which is a lot. And then he’s got the last little bit. The torque, which he does with his fingers and thumb. So he’s got basically arm motion, torque motion.
That’s it. So keep your putt as simple as possible. As long as you have enough power.
Where do you think you should focus? You should focus right there at the end, that last torque. And what is the disc doing at that last torque? Use muscles or tension or whatever you want to call it at the hit as the disc is being injected. Boom. And then you’re off of it again, just like a throw, just like a throw is everything’s really loose and you hit it and you’re off of it.
So your muscular action with your lower arm and your wrist and fingers and stuff only lasts a split second. I think I’ve told you where you need the focus and where you don’t need to focus is on everything else. You have to feel everything is going right you’re swinging, right. And your rhythms, right.
And stuff like that. But you don’t focus on that. And you focus on that disc shooting into the target. The disc will tell you what you’re doing right or wrong. But you have to be in contact with that. You have to feel it go. If you don’t feel it go, you can’t feel how fast it’s going. You can’t feel where it’s going. You can’t feel the angles that it has, and you should be able to feel that instantaneously upon ejection.
If you get that far with your concentration, where you can feel the disc pulling itself to the target target, you’re there. You’re in the bullseye, feel very confident that you got a really good chance of making all of those putts from 20 feet and in regardless of the wind conditions or topography or anything else like that, then you are, you know, you’re 90% on the way there
Putts that you hit outside the circle are usually they’re just bonus putts. They don’t even happen necessarily every round for the best players in the world. Okay. But what the best players do in the world, do. Is they do not miss those 16 footers, the 20 footers and stuff like that. They may occasionally miss one at the edge of the circle, but you know, they’re human.
If you are focusing on the disc being pulled to the target, it is difficult to fall off at all. You may miss a little bit here and there, but I mean, missing short ones just should not be an option. You’re not going to miss a short one if you’re pulling your disc to the target. And if you feel you’re just shooting to the target, I mean, I don’t see how you miss.
You always want to feel 100% confident that you can pull the trigger, knowing that it is possible that you miss, but you feel like you’re going to make this putt and you should feel like you’re going to make the putt every single time. And if you don’t, you’re not focusing properly or practicing sufficiently.
-Dave Dunipace
