Gate Drill: Fix Your Putting Start Line

What it fixes

Putts that start off-line the moment they leave the putter face — even when the read was right, a stroke that pushes or pulls the ball at impact wastes a good read before the ball even reaches the break. This drill isolates start line specifically: it doesn't test your green-reading or your distance control, just whether the ball leaves the putter face on the line you aimed it.

Setup

Place two tees (or short alignment sticks) in the ground a few inches in front of the ball, spaced just slightly wider than your putter head — that's the gate. Set up for a straight, flat putt of 3–4 feet, with the gate positioned directly on your intended line, a few inches ahead of the ball.

Steps

1. Address a 3–4 foot straight putt with the gate set up a few inches ahead of the ball.
2. Putt the ball through the gate without touching either tee.
3. Hit 5–6 balls in a row before stopping to check your results — this keeps you focused on the stroke, not scorekeeping after every single putt.
4. Once you're consistently clean through the gate, narrow it slightly — move the tees a little closer together, leaving just enough room for the ball to pass.

Common mistakes

Setting the gate too wide to actually be a test — if you can't remember the last time you missed it, it's not narrow enough to tell you anything useful. The other common one: judging the drill by whether the putt went in rather than whether it passed cleanly through the gate. For this specific drill, the gate is the only feedback that matters — the putt itself missing or dropping is irrelevant to what you're working on here.

Progression

Start with a gate roughly twice the width of your putter head. Once you're consistently clean — no misses across two full sets in a row (10–12 balls total) — at that width, narrow it by about half an inch. Once the gap is only a little wider than the ball itself, that's about as narrow as useful gets; beyond that you're mostly testing luck on a flat green, not stroke path.