Ladder Putting Drill
Ages 8 and up · A putter, several balls, and four targets (tees, coins, or tape lines) at stepped distances, roughly 10, 15, 20, and 25 feet (scale to space)
Three-putts are the junior scorecard's quiet thief, and they die by distance control: the ability to roll a putt the right SIZE, not just the right line. The ladder drill trains exactly that: putts rolled to stepped targets at increasing distances, the stroke growing longer (never faster) with each rung, the touch calibrating with every rep.
It runs anywhere: tees or coins as rungs on a green, cups or tape lines on carpet, and its scoring games make lag putting (golf's least glamorous, most score-saving skill) genuinely fun to practice. A junior with touch beats a junior with a pretty stroke, weekly.
How to run it
- Set the ladder: four targets at even steps away. The goal at each rung: the ball STOPS within a putter-length of the target (past or short, close is close).
- Rung by rung: two putts to the first target, two to the second, and so on up the ladder, grading stop-distance aloud.
- The stroke rule throughout: longer putts get a LONGER stroke at the same rhythm, never a harder hit. Count the rhythm ("one-two") identically at every distance.
- Ladder game: one ball per rung in order; a ball inside a putter-length scores. Four points possible per trip; log trips.
- Finish downhill (space allowing) or with the random round: the parent calls rungs out of order, touch adjusting on demand.
What to say
Common faults and fixes
One stroke size hit harder or softer (touch by violence).
The rhythm count out loud at every rung: the stroke visibly lengthening while the tempo stays fixed. Practice strokes looking at the target re-link eyes and size.
Everything short (the decelerating stroke).
Grade the follow-through: as long as the backstroke, every putt. Deceleration is the touch-killer; the through-stroke rule cures it without adding force.
Rung-blindness (same result at every distance, no calibration happening).
Say the miss aloud per putt ("three feet past") so the next stroke has data. The ladder trains a feedback loop; the announcing IS the loop.
Make it easier, make it harder
Two rungs, shorter distances, stop-zones drawn generously.
Five rungs and longer steps; the random-call round; uphill-downhill ladders on real greens; the leapfrog game (each putt must finish past the last but inside the zone); score the weekly ladder trips and race the log.
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