The worst part of my putting is my speed control, and it’s really not even a competition. If you watched the first part of my session with Stephen Sweeney, we worked on my putting setup and I ended up with a new putter in the bag. In the second installment of The Lab with Stephen Sweeney, we focused on how I’m actually moving my putter and dialing in my speed control issues as well.
Although my favorite part of this installment was Sweeney explaining his capture speed philosophy. Rather than saying every player has to play the same speed, he explained what different levels of capture speed would actually do and when they would apply to different scenarios.
What is capture speed?
Capture Speed 1: The ball just barely trickles over the edge of the cup and into the hole.
Capture Speed 2: The ball falls over the edge and lands right in the center of the cup, no contact with the back of the cup.
Capture Speed 3: The ball clears the end completely and hits the back of the bottom of the cup.
Capture Speed 4: The ball almost clears the cup and hits the back edge.
Walking into this lesson, I would have said I was always looking for a capture speed of 1. What was cool with Sweeney is that he wasn’t concerned about which capture speed a player wanted to use, but instead that they used that speed consistently. (Although he will say he prefers speed 2.)
“The 4 speed is maybe a match play one you’d use, but you have to understand that’s making the hole so small,” he says. “I like to live around 2 speed. On a normal stimped green that’s going to put putts no more than about 18 inches passed the hole.”
He also mentioned it depends on conditions. A tricky downhill putt at a U.S. Open might be a 1 speed, where an uphill putt in match play might be a 4 speed. Again, the idea is just consistency.
To practice this, we went through a one-handed putting drill while gradually moving back from 2 feet to 12 feet while trying to maintain a capture speed of about 2 and landing the ball in the center of the cup. (This is also a classic warm-up that Tiger has used for years.)
You can check out the entire video below, and if you haven’t watched Episode 1 of The Lab with Stephen Sweeney make sure you go back and catch up on that one. We’re all on the journey to eliminate three-putts, and this has helped me more than anything before. Hopefully it helps you too.
