Putting Alignment Drill

What it fixes

Putts that start off-line even when the stroke itself feels fine — because the miss isn't coming from the stroke, it's coming from how you were aimed before you ever took the putter back. Misalignment at address is one of the most common and least noticed causes of missed start lines: it's genuinely hard to feel your own aim is off, because from inside your own setup, misaligned often feels exactly like square.

Setup

Lay one alignment stick on the ground along the target line for a straight putt of 6-8 feet. Set up to the ball normally, as you would for any putt.

Steps

1. Address the putt as you normally would, using only the target-line stick for reference.
2. Once you're set, lay the second alignment stick across your toes (or across your shoulders, checked one at a time) and see whether it sits parallel to the target-line stick — or points left or right of it.
3. If you don't have a second stick, prop a phone up behind you and take a photo from directly behind the ball, looking down the line — it's much easier to see misalignment in a photo than to feel it in the moment.
4. Adjust your stance until the check stick (or the photo) confirms you're parallel to the target line, not just until it feels right.
5. Putt 5-6 balls from this corrected setup, checking start line on each one. Recheck your alignment with the second stick periodically — setup tends to drift back toward your natural (and possibly misaligned) feel after a few putts.

Common mistakes

Trusting feel over the check. The entire point of this drill is that misalignment usually feels square from the inside — if you find yourself thinking "that can't be right, I feel straight," that reaction is common and not a sign the check is wrong. The other common mistake: checking alignment once at the start of a session and assuming it holds. It doesn't — recheck every 5-6 putts, especially early on.

Progression

Once you can consistently set up square using the two-stick check, remove the second stick and replace it with a single practical checkpoint you can use on the course: pick a spot a few inches in front of the ball, directly on your target line, and aim at that instead of the hole itself — it's a much smaller, easier target to align to accurately. Test this against the two-stick check periodically to confirm the intermediate-target method is still holding up, not just assumed to be working.