Best College Putting Drills to Practice
Below you’ll find some challenging putting drills for college level golfers to practice as well as junior golfers who strive to build a strong short game that can withstand pressure and crush your competition.
Practicing with purpose and utilizing these skill building drills makes putting feel easier out on the course plus it makes practice time more fun.
If you find yourself feeling like it’s a chore to spend an hour putting every day, then you need to change up your routine and find a way to make golf practice more fun. Otherwise you’ll burn out.
Check out this practice plan program for college golfers
The Compass Putting Drill
When you think of a compass, it has north, south, east, and west markers. This is how we want to set up 4 tees around the hole to mark 4 foot distances to work on different breaking putts from uphill, downhill, left to right break, and right to left break.
Ideally, your practice green should have 9 holes on it allowing you to set up this drill for a total of 36 putts. Try to make all 4 putts from around the hole to score 4 points, and then move to the next hole and set up this drill again.
After completing it 9 times, see if you score at least 33 out of 36 with the goal being to score perfect 36/36.
You can move back to 5 feet once you successfully score 36/36 three times (three different practice days) to prove you have built consistency from this distance and it wasn’t a lucky one day.
Around the World Putting Drill
This college putting drill requires 20 tees, 5 set up N, S, E, and W at one foot intervals starting from 3 feet. This allows you to practice putts from all 4 angles around the hole and from 5 different distances (3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 feet).
Start at any tee you’d like and as you sink each putt, remove the tee. If you miss, you can’t remove the tee. Go “around the world” sinking putts from all 20 locations to complete this putting drill for college golfers.
If you’d like to put pressure or improve over time, count how many attempts total it takes to sink all 20 putts.
15 Foot Birdie Putting
At the college and professional level, you’re going to find yourself hitting most wedge shots from 30 to 100 yards to within 15 feet of the hole. If not, you need to spend more practice time on your pitching to get a better proximity to the hole.
This will leave you a lot of birdie tries from 10-20 feet range so this is important to practice your 15 foot putts and give yourself a chance to make a few birdies per round at this range of putting.
There’s not too much to this drill other than hitting a high volume of putts from all 4 sides of the hole to work on uphill, downhill, left, and right breaking putts.
Aim to putt 50 reps from each side, totaling 200 putts. But only putt 10 at a time and move to a new location that way you break up the 50 reps and keep yourself focused.
You can also add in some scoring criteria to add some additional pressure. For example, if you leave the putt short, you lose a point. If you hole the putt you score 2 points. If you hit a putt more than 3 feet past the hole, you lose a point.
This scoring system will help keep you focused on never leaving a birdie try short but also not blasting it past the hole, resulting in a long putt coming back and potentially 3 putting.
College Golf Practice Plan
Please check out our college golfer level training programs that will give your practice schedule some structure and help you build an all around golf game from tee to green, including a tour level short game. Simply show up and complete the daily practice routines, tracking your stats and monitoring results over several weeks.
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