Learn What Straight Is With Rory McIlroy

I spent some time with putting coach Paul Hurrion recently and that has been very useful. We broke my stroke down to the basics and then just tightened everything up, working on my core stability.

I like to set my palms square to the target line before gripping the club, so that my forearms are parallel. You don’t want one forearm to be ahead of the other or you’ll be encouraged to push or pull putts.

I’ve added an inch to my putter so that it now measures 33 3/4 inches. Two reasons for this are that I now stand marginally taller over the ball, but more importantly, my eyes are now just inside the line to the hole. Before I had my eyes too much over the ball and I felt like I needed to pull it on to the right line.

The drill I’m showing you here is all about setting up on the correct line and then delivering the club consistently so that the ball follows that line every time. It sounds simple, but you do need to practise like this to ingrain a repetitive stroke.

Find a straight putt. A lot of pros draw a very thin chalk line on the green, but if you aren’t able to do that, you can use tee pegs instead. Place one just behind the ball, flush with the ground, and then another half way to the hole. Finally, a third directly past the hole. Just practise taking your stance and then rolling the ball down the line that you can now visualise more easily.