How Important Is Your Golf Putting Tempo?
When someone mentions the importance of tempo in golf, most of us will automatically assume that they are referring to the full golf swing, and of course tempo is a crucial element in achieving an effective golf swing. However, it is also vitally important to work on your golf putting tempo if you want to become a successful and consistent putter.
Having a consistent golf putting tempo will dramatically increase your ability to control the speed and distances of your putts and works best with a pendulum type putting stroke. This is where you use your shoulders and arms to rotate the putter back and forth. The hands should remain quite and just feel like an extension of the golf putter.
The definition of a good putting tempo is to be able to maintain a consistent speed and distance throughout the entire putting stroke, i.e. the backstroke is the same length and takes the same time to complete as the follow through stroke does, just like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
If you can maintain a consistent golf putting tempo throughout your entire putting stroke, then all you need to do to control the distance of your putts is too increase or decrease the length of the backstroke and follow through!
Everyone’s natural putting tempo will be different, just like the full swing, so you will need to spend some time practicing on the putting green or at home on the carpet to find out what tempo suits you best.
Once you have found it, continue to practice it so that the feeling will eventually become second nature and hopefully you will find that your golf putting performance and confidence will start to steadily improve.