HOW CAN I BECOME BETTER AT HITTING THE SWEET SPOT OF MY PUTTER'S FACE? 

Peter Finch - PGA Teaching Professional at Quest Golf Academy located on England's Golf Coast shares a brilliant putting drill which guarantees that you will start making better contact in the sweet spot of your putter. Attach a small coin to the sweet spot of your putter's face with some double-sided tape. Now with this raised surface on the putter face, if you strike the ball anywhere but directly in the sweet spot, your ball will start offline in an exaggerated fashion, providing you instant feedback.

The Importance of Consistently Hitting the Sweet Spot

Top professionals are great at making contact with the center of their putter face. Dave Pelz did a lot of research and confirmed that good golfers find the center of their putter almost automatically. This allows them to place all of their concentration and focus on reading greens, selecting their line and ball speed. Most amateur golfers are preoccupied on simply making square contact with their putter face, diverting focus from those other essential putting tasks.

As an amateur golfer if you're honest with yourself, how attuned are you to where you are making contact with the ball on your putter face?  With most other clubs, when you strike the ball, either on the toe or heel, you will get instant feedback from the balls flight.  However, if you hit a putt on the heel or toe, the balls path may diverge only a degree or two at the start, leading you to believe you selected the wrong line or had a bad read of the green.

Attach a Small Coin to Your Putter's Sweet Spot

Here's a fantastic drill for you guys to use if you are struggling to consistently make contact with the sweet spot of the putter face.  And even if you are not struggling to find the center of the putter face it's still a brilliant drill to use for building confidence and consistency in your putting stroke. 

This drill is simple to setup. Use a piece of double-sided tape on the putter face directly over the center of the sweet spot. Stick a dime or other small coin (that stays inside the putter face) directly to the tape. Now if I make contact on the edge of the coin the balls going to start off line and it's going to miss the hole. So, what this really encourages me to do is find the center of the putter and hit it out the sweet spot.

Gate Your Putter

I also like to add a few other feedback tools when I practice my putting. They are not 100% necessary, but they also really give you great instant feedback.  I create a gate with two tee pegs on the ground lining up with my intended target line. This helps frame the putter. I've also added in a couple of tee pegs behind the gate.  This helps condense my stroke into something which is nice and compact.  Over this length, you can move this putt around. If you want, you can move it back further. The longer the stroke the harder it is to find the center of the sweet spot. So, it's valuable practice with different lengths of putts and backstrokes.