Short Game Guide
Short Game Guide
Short Game Guide
Improving Your Short Game Is The Quickest Way To Lower Your Scores
Introduction
That's right! Depending on your skill level, if you spend the time and put forth the effort to improve your short game, you might cut as many as 15 strokes off your 18 hole score. I'm Gary Jack Palmer, and welcome to this mini-tutorial on the short game. I've played golf for over forty years, and somewhere along the line I realized that I just wasn't getting any better. It was clear that I would never become an overpowering driver of the golf ball or a precise striker of the irons. But as I reflected on my predicament, it occurred to me that most of my strokes weren't being delivered with my driver or irons. Most of my strokes were short game shots putting, chipping, and pitching. And, that was the part of my game that I practiced very, very little. I had taken dozens of lessons over the years, but never a short game lesson. Suddenly there was light at the end of the tunnel. If I could significantly improve my short game, I could drastically lower my scores. Even if my ability to hit my woods and irons never got one bit better, I could still become a pretty good player.
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Improving Your Short Game Is The Quickest Way To Lower Your Scores
(Continued)
Introduction
That's the premise for this mini-guide on the short game. In these 25 pages, I present the very best techniques for putting, chipping, and pitching. Techniques that are easy to understand and incorporate into your golf game. Also included are 8 terrific putting, chipping, and pitching drills used by some of the best players in the world. If you master these techniques and drills, you will absolutely become a better player capable of shooting much lower scores.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Contents and Page Numbers
Introduction Table of Contents Significance of the Short Game Introduction to Putting Putting Grips Putter Styles Putting Alignment Putting Drills Reading Greens Introduction to Chipping Chipping Fundamentals Chipping Drills Pitching Fundamentals Pitching Drill Summary 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 11 15 17 18 21 23 25
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
The Significance Of The Short Game
At the end of the first round of the 2007 Masters, Justin Rose was tied for the lead. He had a phenomenal round of 3 under par, including 15 pars and 3 birdies. It was the only bogey-free round of the day. You might think he hit nearly every fairway and green in regulation. Not exactly. On this day, Justin Rose hit only 5 of 18 greens in regulation, a statistic usually reserved for a 90+ shooter. But Rose got up and down so well he took only 20 putts in his round of 69. That is getting up and down at its finest, even for a touring pro. Statistics tell us that in a round of golf, over 50% of our score comes from short game shots. That's putting, chipping, and pitching from 100 yards or less. Wow, over 50%. So why are we always hitting drivers on the range and hardly ever spending time around the practice green? Depending on our skill level, we can probably save 5 to 15 strokes per round by improving our play from 100 yards in.
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Introduction To Putting
Belly putter or long putter, cross hand or claw, blade or mallet. Whatever your putting style, you must be comfortable and confident over the ball. Great putters always think they'll make the next one. To be comfortable and confident, you must have a solid putting routine that gets you focused on fundamentals that produce positive results. Your confidence is bolstered and your mind is freed from negative thoughts. So, after you read your putt, you might try something like this: Take a few relaxed practice strokes Place your eyes directly over the ball Set the putter face square to the target line Align your feet, hips, and shoulders parallel to the target line Look down the target line and visualize the ball rolling into the hole Look back at the ball and immediately putt
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Putting Grips
You should select a putting grip that feels comfortable and natural. Of the two grips pictured below, the Claw is the least familiar in golf, and the Reverse Overlap is the most common. Either grip will allow you to swing the putter in a smooth motion while keeping the wrists from breaking.
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Putter Styles
During the span of a player's lifetime, a major obstacle sometimes arises. The Putting Yips. That's when a golfer loses the ability to smoothly swing the putter back and through. Golfers suffering from this problem often change from a standard length putter to a long putter. Even if you don't have the Putting Yips, the long putter may enable you to swing the putter with a smoother pendulum motion, and you may see significant improvement in your stroke.
Standard Putter
Long Putter
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Putting Alignment
The best putters align their feet, hips, and shoulders parallel to the target line and their putter face square to the intended line. This set-up gives you the best chance to successfully roll the ball to the hole. Below are 3 techniques that will help you stay aligned to the target. (1) To establish the target line, try spot alignment. Pick a spot on the perceived target line a few feet in front of the ball. This is normally an old ball mark or a discolored spot on the green. Since this spot is much closer than the overall putting distance, it is much easier to properly align to this intermediate target. (2) Select a putter that has lines on the top to help you aim the face down the target line. As an alternative to lines, Odyssey 2-Ball putters utilize two white discs that extend away from the putter face to facilitate alignment of your golf ball to the chosen target line. (3) To ensure that the putter face is aimed down the target line, try logo alignment. When you replace your ball after marking, align the logo down the selected target line. Or, you can use a Sharpie to draw a straight line on your ball, and use that instead of the logo.
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Putting Drills
In an 18 hole round of golf, about 43% of our shots are made with our putter. But do we spend 43% of our practice time on putting drills? Probably not, because we love to smash our driver on the range. Ironically, a 3 foot putt and a 300 yard drive count the same - 1 stroke. We may never be able to hit a monster drive like John Daly. We may never have the smooth tempo of Fred Couples or Retief Goosen. But we can certainly become a much better player by spending an appropriate amount of our practice time working on putting drills. Here are 3 of the very best drills that you can practice. (1) Pick out a 6 foot putt on the practice green and lay down a dime. Place your ball on top of the dime and take your putting stance. Stroke the ball and see the dime. Keep focused on the dime until you hear the ball go into the hole. This drill will train you to keep your head still throughout the stroke, which means your putter face has a greater chance of being square to the target line when you strike the ball.
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Putting Drills
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(2) Place 5 balls in a straight line at intervals of 2 feet leading away from the hole. This sets you up for putts of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 feet. Beginning with the 2 footer, make every putt through the 10 footer. a putt, replace the balls, and start all over with the 2 footer. If you miss
This drill adds a little bit of pressure and a sense of competition, similar to what you might feel when you get on the course.
(3) You've probably used impact tape on your woods and irons on the range. If not, you should. What do you think you would see if you put some impact tape on the face of your putter? You might be unpleasantly surprised. Pick 2 holes on the practice green about 20 feet apart, so you can go back and forth. Stroke several of these 20 footers checking the impact tape from time to time. If you aren't consistently contacting the ball in the center of the face, you might be looping your stroke or moving your head. Try keeping your head very still and taking the putter back and through down the target line. You should see immediate improvement.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Reading Greens
You start reading golf greens about 100 yards out, well before you get to the putting surface. From a distance you need to get a general lay of the land. This is much easier if you're walking. When you're riding in a cart, you don't have as much time to make the needed observations. Pay attention to the contour of the terrain. As a rule of thumb, greens are usually built to slant from back to front. But surrounding hills or mountains will definitely make greens slope in a certain direction. Look for lakes, ponds, and water hazards. Greens are built with drainage in mind. They will usually drain towards nearby water.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Reading Greens
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Now we have reached the putting surface, and we need to consider the slope, which is the slant or tilt of the green. Is the green bowl-shaped, humped, terraced or relatively flat? Where is the low point of the green? If we poured water on the green, which way would it run off? Walk from your ball to the hole. Sometimes you can feel the slope with your feet better than you can see it. Determine whether you are going uphill, downhill, or sidehill. You should now have a pretty good understanding of the slope of the green. Based on that understanding, you can begin to determine the break of your putt.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Reading Greens
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Now we need to consider the grain, the direction in which the grass tends to grow. Standing behind your ball and looking toward the hole, if the grass appears light and shiny, then the grain is with you. A putt with the grain will be faster and will break less. If the grass appears dark and dull, then the grain is against you. A putt against the grain will be slower and will break more. On some bent grass greens, the grain will have little effect. On some Bermuda greens, the grain will be a very significant factor. Remember, when reading golf greens, grain will have an influence on both speed and break.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Reading Greens
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Besides slope and grain, another factor that influences speed is the manner in which the greens are mowed and maintained. During tournaments, it is customary to increase the speed of the greens. This can be done in a couple of ways. The putting surfaces can be double cut, cut first in one direction and then cut again perpendicular to the first mow. The greens can also be rolled. Machine rolled greens have greater surface firmness, smoothness, and speed. The weather can also dictate how greens are prepared. When it is very hot and humid, the greens superintendent may choose to leave the grass a bit longer, which slows down the putting surfaces. When there is a lot of rain, mowing may be deferred, which again leads to slower greens.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Introduction To Chipping
When's the last time you practiced your chipping? Last week, last month, maybe never? That's crazy, because it's something you can do at the practice green or in the backyard. It doesn't take a lot of time and the rewards are gigantic. Think what kind of scores you could shoot if you eliminated the skulls, the fats, the thins, the chunks, the blades, and the shanks. And think how much better your putting would be if you were looking at six footers instead of 20 footers following your chip to the green. Back in the day, the Pitching Wedge was considered the right chipping club for playing short shots around the green. The Sand Wedge was the only club choice for blasting out of green-side bunkers. In the modern golf game, chipping club selection is wide open. The best players will use everything from hybrid woods to a lob wedge to get the ball close to the hole. They will commonly chip with irons from 5 through 9, plus wedges with lofts from 48 to 64 degrees. As green complexes get more and more challenging, getting the ball close to the hole becomes more and more important. We waste way too many strokes by selecting the wrong chipping club for the shot at hand. Don't rely on just one club.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Introduction To Chipping
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A better choice is to use the same basic chipping technique each time, but to choose a different chipping club depending on the distance you need to make the ball travel to the hole. You master a single method (stance, alignment, ball position, take-away, and follow-through), then select a different chipping club depending on the height and distance you want the ball to travel. It's all about keeping it simple and consistent. Choosing the right golf club for the given situation is absolutely critical to short game success. Assume you have 60 feet to the hole. Besides the distance, the chipping club you select will depend on whether you are: on the fringe of the green in the rough near the green in a deep green-side bunker on a bare lie going uphill or downhill
Really good players consistently pick the best club to handle their lie. You're not going to make many chip shots. Hopefully some, but not many. So your emphasis should be on selecting a chipping club that will help you get the ball in the proper position to make a putt. Normally, you try to chip the ball as close to the hole as possible. But there are exceptions to the rule. A 6 foot, straight, uphill putt may be far more desirable than a 3 foot, breaking, downhiller. Pick the right chipping club to put yourself in the best position possible. 16
The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Chipping Fundamentals
Address the ball with most of your weight on your front foot. The ball should be positioned slightly towards your back foot. Place your hands ahead of the ball. This set-up will produce a descending blow with limited hand and wrist movements. Take a smooth, short backswing and then accelerate the club through impact. major cause of poor chipping is taking too long of a backswing and then decelerating the club at impact to prevent hitting the ball too far. A
The hands must lead the clubhead throughout the chip shot. That is, the hands should always remain in front of the clubhead. A tendency of poor chippers is to allow the clubhead to overtake the hands, causing a flipping of the hands in an effort to scoop the ball into the air. Keep the hands in front of the clubface throughout the swing, letting the loft of the club elevate the ball.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Chipping Drills
If you're like most golfers, you love to smash your driver on the range, hit a few irons, then head for the first tee. Very few of us get to the course early enough to spend any time on the practice green. So off we go, hitting an occasional good chip, but way too many that are thin, fat, skulled, too long, too short, or maybe even shanked. How many strokes could we have saved if we had spent 30 minutes on chipping drills on the practice green? Get good at the four drills below and you will see your scores come tumbling down. (1) Start this chipping drill with a 7 iron. Between the ball and the hole, stick a tee in the green where you think the chipped ball needs to land to roll close to the hole. Using the 7 iron, try a few shots, adjusting the tee as necessary. Try to land the ball as close as possible to the tee. Repeat until you can consistently chip close to the tee and roll close to the hole. Now move the tee closer to the hole and switch to a 9 iron. Go through the same process. Then, move the tee closer to the hole again and switch to your favorite wedge. On the course, select your chipping club and pick out a landing target for your chip. That target could be a discolored spot on the green that simulates the tee. This spot chipping drill should really help your touch and feel around the greens.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Chipping Drills
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(2) Grab your shag bag and an old rug or piece of carpet and head outside. Simply lay the rug down away from the chipping area and try to land balls on it. Use different clubs and different distances. This will give you a real sense of how far different clubs and swing lengths carry the ball. (3) The Descending Blow Chipping Drill is all about hitting down on the ball. This drill requires you to do 2 things in the set-up that will help you get the chip airborne consistently. First, lift the heel of your back foot so only your toe is touching the ground. Consequently, nearly all of your weight will be on your front foot. Second, put the ball back in your stance, aligned off the toe of your back foot. From this position, you will be chipping with a descending blow and your hands will stay in front of the club face throughout the chipping motion. This chipping drill teaches you to hit down on the ball with your hands leading the club face, which results in chips that fly consistently to their target.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Chipping Drills
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(4) You don't need a ball for this one. Just your DRIVER. Get into a chipping set-up with your driver. Take your grip about half way down the shaft. The clubhead won't reach the ground and the butt end of the driver will be resting against your side. Place most of your weight on your front foot, keeping your hands well forward in front of the clubhead. Make chipping swings, back and through. With the driver shaft against your side, you are forced to keep your hands in front of the clubhead. For effective chipping, your hands must always stay in front of the clubface, and you've got to log some serious practice time.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Pitching Fundamentals
Chip shots and pitch shots are totally different. Unlike a chip shot which spends most of its time on the ground, the pitch shot spends most of its time in the air. On a chip shot, the clubhead always stays below the hands going back and through. On a pitch shot, the clubhead rises above the hands. A pitch is a shot difficulty with the be a full swing. to get very good that we play from 100 yards in. Most of us have some pitch shot because it is not a full swing, or at least it shouldn't A golfer who uses his driver swing for a pitch shot is not going results. Pitch shots are all about distance control, not power.
The basic set-up for a standard pitch shot is as follows: Feet about as wide as your hips Front foot slightly open towards the pin Ball positioned in the middle of your stance Hands slightly ahead of the ball Slightly more weight on the front foot A pitch shot is a mini-swing, a scaled down version of your full swing. For a right handed player, the backswing stops when your left arm is about parallel to the ground, as in the image below. The through swing is a similar length to the backswing.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Pitching Fundamentals
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In the picture below we observe the proper position of the club at the top of the backswing. The left arm is parallel to the ground and the butt end of the club is pointing at the golf ball. From this position, the golfer turns through the ball so that his belt buckle faces the target, and his arms are again parallel to the ground.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Pitching Drill
Create a Distance Chart for Your Wedges Many golfers still play the game with two wedges, the pitching wedge and the sand wedge. Normally, a pitching wedge has 48 degrees of loft and a sand wedge has 56 degrees. That 8 degree difference equates to about 30 yards in distance between the clubs, which is not a good thing. Being in between clubs is a bad situation. And with a 30 yard gap, you're going to be in between clubs way too many times. That's why many golfers have incorporated additional wedges into their bag, while removing some of the longer irons. For example, you might elect to carry the standard pitching and sand wedges, and add wedges with 52 degrees and 60 degrees of loft. For the sake of this drill, we'll assume we carry the four wedges mentioned above. Beginning with the 60 degree, hit several balls using our mini-swing pitch shot technique described earlier. Determine the average distance that you hit the 60 degree. Repeat this process for the 56, 52, and 48 degree clubs. The distance chart you create may look something like this: 60 Degree 56 Degree 52 Degree 48 Degree 55 Yards 70 Yards 85 Yards 100 Yards
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Pitching Drill
(Continued)
Now your gap between wedges is a much more manageable 15 yards, and you know exactly which club to select from 55 to 100 yards. And don't forget, you use the exact same swing for each shot. To hit shots from 55 yards in you can choke down on your club a couple of inches and shorten your mini-swing pitch shot a bit. These short pitch shots are like chip shots in that they are feel shots that require a significant amount of practice. The guy below has choked down on his club a little, and has shortened his swing so that his left arm doesn't quite reach parallel on the backswing.
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The Best Techniques For Putting, Chipping, and Pitching 8 Drills To Lower Your Scores By 5, 10, Maybe 15 Strokes
Summary
Statistics tell us that in a round of golf, over 50% of our score comes from short game shots. That's putting, chipping, and pitching from 100 yards or less. It's also the part of our game we tend to practice the least. Consequently, we tend to overlook the very area of our game that gives us the best chance for improvement. Depending on our skill level, we can probably save 5 to 15 strokes per round by improving our play from 100 yards in. Not all of us are capable of becoming a long drive champion. We may never be able to hit our 7 iron 200 yards. But I'm absolutely certain that golfers of all skill levels can develop good short games when they utilize the proper techniques and dedicate the necessary time to practice. If you would like to explore the Short Game further, I recommend that you visit xxxxxxx.com
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