It’s one of the most popular putting drills in the history of golf. You’ve probably done it yourself. And if you haven’t, you’ve probably seen a pro do it.

The drill is pretty simple:

• Place tees outside the heel and toe of the putter.
• Put the ball in the middle of those tees.
• Swing your putter head through.

It’s known as the ‘gate drill’, and makes it impossible to miss the sweetspot (because your putter head would crash into the tees if you did). It’s the drill Tiger Woods does every time he’s on the green.

The thing is, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this drill. Do it the wrong way, and it can make your putting stroke a lot worse without you even noticing.

The bad way

In our recent Golf Digest+ Happy Hour with renowned golf biomechanist Dr. Sasho Mackenzie (which you can check out here), Sasho broke down some key findings from his putting study.

The two important ones:

• Sasho found that hitting the ball slightly off the heel or toe doesn’t make a huge difference when it comes to making or missing putts.

• The direction your putterface is pointing is at impact—your face angle—is incredibly important, however. It only takes a tiny variation in your face angle to miss the putt.

The issue with gate drill, if done by itself, is that it helps you get better at the less important skill (hitting the sweetspot), and can inadvertently make you worse at squaring the putter face. It may be why Tiger Woods himself tends to pull putts with a closed clubface, as his son Charlie explains here.

The reason why can be explained by physics: It’s easier to fit a rectangular object through a tight gap when you angle it slightly—the same way you tilt and turn a sofa in order to get it through a door and around a hallway corner.

As Sasho explains:

“Putting through gates, it seems like a reasonable one, but in fact, trying to have your putter move through a gate probably encourages you to have your face open or really closed. You’d be able to squeeze it through there easier.”

The good way

Don’t worry, it’s an easy fix.

It’s not that the gate drill is bad, it’s just that it could be better. It’s incomplete. Here’s how most pros do the gate drill these days:

Christiaan Bezuidenhout’s putting stroke is so pure.

Says he does this drill for a few minutes every day:

Find a flat six-footer, then roll the line on the ball down the line on the ground. Tees around the putter head and start line. https://t.co/30gipzeeFr pic.twitter.com/VkERts6DQA

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) June 27, 2024

• The best way to do the gate drill is to add a second set of gates. One for their putter head, and another to roll their ball through.

• Other pros also add a line on the ground, then try to roll their ball down the line while putting through the gates.

• Perhaps the easiest way to make the gate drill better is to simply use the line on your golf ball, and try to roll it end-over-end as you swing your putter head through the gates.

Ultimately, to make sure you can’t cheat this drill, you need something that’s going to show you if you have an open or closed putterface.

Do that, and you’ll get the best of both worlds.

Once again, you can watch Sasho’s full Golf Digest+ Happy Hour right here.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com