Putting greens: the single-most important part of any golf game or professional golf course. Every golfer aims for it, but not every golfer can practice enough on a putting green to have no worries when entering onto it. To practice for the putting green, a golfer can come up with a variety of options to help improve their putt.

In the house one can make a variety of exercises to help improve their game: practicing one’s perception of distance, linear alignment of objects or locations, finding perpendicular or parallel lines and planes, muscle relaxation, ensuring eye movement is controlled, etc. There are different methods for every player and different areas for every player to work on. Knowing one’s game and how one plays it well and how one could play it better is half the battle. Perfecting these little things will help one’s game on the putting green.

One could practice their movement with balancing exercises, building a strong, solid and square setup as a base for movement.  Knowing when you are ready to fire or if you are unsteady or unsure is easily practiced inside, rather than on the putting green before an important hole. Maintaining stillness with the pivot as you make the stroke, practicing to keep a constant and light-grip pressure on the club, feeling the relaxed nature of a pendulum stroke without the hit.

There is always the tried, tested, true and relatively cheap, artificial putting green. Set it up in your backyard or make some space in the living room, there are options for both. Whether it is something that can withhold against the elements or something you want in the comfort of your living room while you watch CNN, artificial putting greens can help a golfer’s game at the most important point of the game: on the putting green. There are plenty of pre-fabricated options that can fit any basement.

Outdoor artificial putting greens can be set up in any size of backyard. They are easy to maintain and are very convincing for the purposes of practicing one’s game. The practice of creating your own backyard putting green from scratch is usually an arduous one, and is warned against by experts simply because of the amount of labor involved. Artificial turf eliminates this problem and is also purchasable in some places by the square foot. There will always be differences between artificial grass and real grass, just as there are differences in grass from course to course. Practice does not have to take place in a perfect setting.

The options for increasing one’s skills on the putting green are multiple and open to all income brackets. There are many drills one can practice while on the green, but how often might one have to move on for the oncoming golfers? Any drill found in a golf manual should be easy to emulate if one thinks creatively. Do not become discouraged if you are rained out or do not have the time; there are plenty of ways to practice your game.