Everyone wants to shoot better scores. The best players in the world all agree that the key to lower scores is improving your short game. We all spend time pounding range balls and trying to find that perfect groove so we can hit pure shots, but our most valuable time is spent working on shots from 100y into the greens.

Golfers learn faster and better if they learn both why and how at the same time.

The average score of the average American golfer has not gone down in the last 30 years.

In golf, how you play inside of 100y is the prime determinant of how you score.

60-65% of all golf shots occur inside 100y of the hole. More important, about 80% of the shots golfers lose to par occur inside 100y.

  • From 100y to the edge of the greens: short game.
  • On the green: putting game.
  • Judgements and decisions made on game management and shot selection: management game.
  • Mental game: fear, anxiety, confidence.
  • From outside 100y: power game.

Nearly everybody makes almost every putt from inside 2ft. Go a little farther away, to 3ft, and golfers begin to miss (even Tour pros make only 85-95% of their 3 footers). Step back to 5ft and pros hole about 65%, while amateurs, if they’re lucky, are making about 50%. From 10ft, no one consistently holes better than 25%. And from over 15ft? One in 10, best case, even for the pros.

So your best chance of making a putt is if it’s inside 10ft. And how do you get it there? Answer: the wedges, pitches, chips, and bunker shots of your short game.

Golfers who use muscle control and deceleration to turn their power swings into short shots are doomed to frustration. The short game needs to be taught separately because — and here comes the good part — it is the most important skill you can improve to lower your scores.

For most of us, the length of our first putt is a function of our short game.

At every skill level, the putting and short-game skills are easier to learn and groove than the skills of the power game. (The management game is the easiest to learn, but only once you have repeatable skills in the power, short, and putting games.) None of the concepts or motions in the short game are difficult if you take the time to understand them and then properly practice them.

What matters is performance, and there is a cold, hard, analytical way to measure any golfer’s performance, with whatever club is in his hand: Measure where the ball goes.

The funny thing is, I measured the error on the 200y 3-iron shot and it was 14y. That’s a 7% error. He hit the same “quality” shot with a 3-iron that he hit with a full wedge. But he was convinced he didn’t know how to swing a 3-iron.

This is an interesting sidelight to the Tour players. They really don’t work on their games during practice rounds. They study the golf course. They hit shots to see what kinds of reactions they’ll get from the greens, the fairways, and the bunkers, and they learn how to fit their games to the different courses they play. Watch the pros during a practice round; unless there’s some money on the line, they aren’t playing. They’re learning.

I was showing them cold, hard facts, honest data, no opinion on my part, and they didn’t believe it. I learned then that people see their lives through a filter, they see what they want to see. They don’t like to face their weaknesses, while they love to talk about their strengths. (They also don’t like to practice their weaknesses, while they overpractice their strengths.)

It said that a drive that finishes in the center of the fairway is not measurably better for your score than a drive at the left or right edge of the fairway. It also said that players who hit iron shots to within 5-6% of the pin don’t make much more money than those who hit them to within 7-8% of the pin.

Tour players tended to miss the target primarily either left or right with these irons, not long or shot. Their distances were surprisingly accurate: The average distance error was only a couple of yards, just 1-2%. The directional error, however was almost 7% on average, which for a long iron of 180-200y meant they were missing left or right of the target by 12-14y.

The left side was always a little higher on the chart than the right, because shots to the left (draws and hooks) go a little farther than shots to the right (fades and slices).

Until I saw this data, I had always assumed most players miss their shots in a random (circular) pattern around their target. No so. While some players miss predominantly left, others tend to miss right. But very few power-swing shots miss absolutely on-line.

If the best players in the world, who practice for hours almost every day of their lives for 10-20 years or more, only manage to hit the ball straight within 5-9%, then direction must be very difficult to control. And you know what? It is. The clubface travels along a fairly flat swing plane, rotating 180 degrees through the region of impact, on all full-swing power shots. To get the face of the club at the perfect angle at the moment of impact is one of the greatest challenges in all of sport.

But why were they so good at distance? Again, it’s obvious: Distance is not as much a function of a golfer’s swing as of his club selection.

What all this means is that when you’re making a full swing, golf is primarily a game of direction. Most golfers don’t realize that. They worry more about which club they choose than how straight they’re going to hit it. But having the right club doesn’t matter nearly as much as your directional accuracy with it.

In the short game, the nature of the pattern is reversed. All of a sudden pros hit their shot-game shots straight to better than 2% error, which is plus or minus 2y left or right. However, they didn’t hit these shots the right distance within 6-12y (13-26%). They were well long or short by a significant amount a high percentage of the time.

How do you hit your long shots straighter? I don’t know. But the golf world has convinced most golfers to spend most of their practice time trying to learn. I think that’s a bad decision. To make significant improvement in the power game takes good instruction, athletic ability, timing, rhythm, talent, and a lot of practice. But once you’ve improved your ball-striking, it doesn’t improve your scoring ability much, because you’re still not going to one-putt greens from where even good long-iron shots leave you.

There are 3 swings and 5 games.

Mental game: fear, confidence, anxiety, aggression, determination, focus, concentration, emotional control.

Management game: shot selection, skill evaluation, strategy, statistical analysis, risk-vs-reward balance, competitive situation.

Without question, his greatest strength was a mastery of the mental and management games. There has never been anyone to compare with his course management, composure, and use of strategy to make the most of his physical attributes. In perhaps the greatest use anyone has ever made of the management game, Jack “managed” to let more players lose to him than anyone I ever studied.

The modern power swing starts with a one-piece takeaway: The clubhead, shaft, hands, arms, elbows, shoulders, chest, and hips all start turning (rotating) away from the ball together. They move at the same angular rate, and continue to move until the body and hips become restricted and can no longer turn. When the hips stop moving, the upper body — the arms, shoulders, and chest, plus the shaft and the clubhead — continue to move, coiling against the lower body. This coil creates tension and stores energy to be released later, on the down-and-through swing.

During most of the backswing, the hands and arms remain in front of the chest, and another event occurs: the cocking of the wrists. As the backswing continues, the upper body meets so much resistance from the lower body that it can coil no further. In the final backswing motion, the arms, elbows, and hands then actually stretch or turn against the chest as the clubhead reaches the absolute top.

The swing down and through should be initiated by the re-turning of the lower body. This lower-body turn leads everything else toward and through the impact zone: The lower body pulls the upper, the upper body pulls the arms, the arms pull the hands, the hands pull the shaft, and the shaft pulls the clubhead. This chain of events means you create centrifugal force and maximum energy for release, as each component of the swing adds its own energy through impact.

The fundamental mechanics of the putting stroke are the opposite of those of the power swing. The putting stroke has no lower-body turn, no coil of the upper body against the lower, and no cocking of the wrists. The head and trunk remain still while the arms swing with a slight rotation of the shoulders. There should be no forearm rotation, a key element of every other swing: Forearm rotation is a killer of good putting, making it difficult to achieve consistent directional results. But because the forearms rotate in every other swing, most golfers let them rotate through their putting strokes without realizing it, to their great detriment.

Now to the swing of the short game, the finesse swing, which is neither fish nor fowl. It differs from the full swing, because the upper body should not be “connected” to the lower (though they should be turning at the same rate through the same angles, so they look as if they could be connected). The takeaway of the finesse swing looks identical to the takeaway in the power swing, but when the hips stop turning, the upper body — shoulders, arms, hands, and club — stop turning, too (no coil), so there is no energy stored between the upper and lower body as there is in the power swing. On the downswing, then, everything comes through impact together. The lower body doesn’t drive or lead, so it produces very little power. Everything goes back together, then comes down and through together, producing what I call a “synchronized” turn. As a result, every finesse swing, regardless of length, appears to have the same effort and rhythm.

The goal of your power swing is to hit the ball as far as you can, within the constraints of reasonable accuracy. From 9-irons to drives, which you want to hit as far as you can, you can allow yourself to be somewhat inaccurate in direction so you can get the distance you need. You want maximum power with reasonable accuracy.

The goal of your putting stroke is to give up all sources of power, achieve the simplest motion you can master, and provide maximum precision to strike the ball down a given line at an appropriate speed. This is almost the complete opposite of your full-swing intent. Accuracy is at a premium; maximum power is useless.

The goal of your finesse swing in the short game is a compromise between the above two. You want to hit the ball as accurately as possible, but you still need adequate power in your swing. You must give up some accuracy control because you need some power, but you try to do so with a rhythmic swing, not a hit, for the best compromise.

3 games, with 3 swings and 3 sets of fundamentals to learn. Each is simple, easy, and learnable. But nobody has conquered all 3 yet, because they have not realized that they should be separated to be learned best.

That’s a fine 5-iron, better than the average Tour player by several feet. But most Tour players will 2-putt from 40ft, 30ft, 20ft, even 10ft; so the fact that Trevino generally hits it closer to the pin doesn’t give him a very meaningful advantage for 1-putting more often. It does give him this small advantage every time he hits a power-swing shot onto a green in regulation, which occurs about 10 times around.

60-65% of all shots in golf occur within 100y of the green, it is clear that “he who rules the short game collects the gold.”

Through my research, I’ve learned that 80% of a player’s handicap is determined by his play within 100y of the green. But when I ask students how they spend their practice time, almost all say their spend 80% of their time practicing the full swing. Most students report spending less than 10-15% of their time on their putting, and almost no time practicing their short game.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard a golfer, pro or amateur, say, “I’m hitting it great on the practice tee, but I can’t take it to the course.” He blames himself for not being a good pressure player, or thinks he hasn’t practiced enough, or simple feel incompetent. The irony is that a player who can do it all on the range probably is practicing a swing that cannot possibly be taken to the course by anyone with any kind of talent. He is grooving a move that wouldn’t stand up for the greatest Tour professional with the greatest nerves in the world. But he doesn’t realize that, so he keeps practicing, hoping a little more sweat will make the difference.

It won’t, owing to the way adrenaline affects his body and his muscles. Adrenaline is released into the body when a person gets excited or scared; there’s nothing we can do about it. Adrenaline makes our muscles get stronger, sometimes very much so. This extra power can be helpful if we need to escape from heavy rough or bad lies. It can be managed in the power swing if you know it’s coming: Simply change your club selection. However, if you rely on muscle control for your short game, adrenaline effects can be deadly.

Adrenaline will flow whenever the golfer feels pressure. If you face a hard or important shot and you rely on muscle control to “hit” your short-game shots, chances are good that any “touch” you may have had — even just a few minutes before on the practice range — will be gone. There’s no flow of adrenaline when you’re practicing, so any touch learned on the range vanishes when pressure appears, even when you make what feels like a really good swing.

The muscles that kill touch in your short game are the incredibly strong yet small muscles of your fingers, hands, wrists, and forearms. You must make a conscious decision to keep those muscles out of your shots and use what we call in our schools “dead hands.” If you’re swinging with dead hands, those small muscles have only 2 jobs: (1) to cock the wrists during the backswing; and (2) to hold on to the club so it doesn’t fly out of your hands during the rest of the swing. If you can do that, you can beat the adrenaline effect.

If you want to produce the same shots on the course that you practiced on the range, especially under pressure, you must stop using your muscles during practice and begin using the length and rhythm of the finesse swing to power those shots.

And one more thing: No matter what you call it, the setup and alignment of your body is one of the most important fundamentals of your short game.

Using an aim club on the course is a violation of the rules (the USGA thinks it makes the game too easy, which should prove to you it’s a good idea).

You don’t have to be a genius to find the low point: Take a swing and see where the divot begins and ends. Between those 2 points, at the bottom of the divot, is the low point.

Why do I think the positions of your divots are important? Because I see so many of my students hit fat wedge shots. They position the ball forward of where they natural swing divots start, and they hit that dreaded fat shot.

It’s important to understand where the center of your stance really is. It’s not halfway between your toes, it’s the centerline between your ankles.

Golfers often move the ball forward and back a few inches in their stance, up and down along the target line, without thinking. Nothing much looks different and the assume they can hit the ball solidly and cleanly — controlling the bottom of the swing arc — no matter where the ball is in their stance. In fact, this is virtually impossible to do without using the muscles of the hands and wrists. My point is that if the ball is anywhere in your stance except in the exact position to be hit with your dead-hands swing, you’ll have to use your hand muscles, exposing yourself to the effects of adrenaline.

Yet many golfers have been taught to hit higher, softer shots by moving the ball forward in their stance. For lower shots, they’re taught to move it back.

If you want to hit the ball higher, use a more lofted wedge and make solid contact from the center of your stance.

Yes, ball position is that important. And there is no margin for error in the forward direction.

Be sure you understand the physics of ball position:

  • A good finesse swing will produce good shots only if the ball is positioned correctly in your stance.
  • Play the ball too far forward and you’ll either hit it fat or be forced to learn “hand-powered” swing compensations that will make you generally less consistent and specifically worse under pressure.

For chip shots, position the ball back in your stance, off the back ankle. You want to hit the ball with a descending blow, trapping a minimal amount of grass between the clubhead and the ball, and creating a low, running trajectory.

For all distance wedge and pitch shot swings from normal lies, when you expected a normal trajectory, position the ball in the exact center of your stance. Your front foot should be turned toward the target by about 30-45 degrees.

In a bunker, you want to contact the sand behind the ball. First aim to the left, then position the ball inside the heel line of your left foot.

When the ball is too far forward in the stance, the golfer will slide his hips forward, toward the target, at the start of the downswing, in an effort to reach the ball and not hit behind it. The more the hips slide, the harder it is for them to rotate.

Balls positioned too far back create a different problem. The golfer instinctively feels the need to reverse weight shift to get the ball higher in the air. This type of swing leans back, frequently produced sculled low-liners.

Look at this phenomenon, which we call “long-to-short” swinging (long backswing, short follow-through); it is very common in the short game and very wrong. Use this image only to learn what not to do.

If a force pushes from behind a mass and is not directed exactly through the center of mass, then the mass must rotate.

When a mass is pulled from in front, the mass must align with and follow the force. The mass cannot rotate, but must follow the direction of the force. When pulled, the cart is stable, will follow you wherever you go, and needs no directional guidance.

It’s better to make a stable (pulling) wedge swing than an unstable (pushing) swing through impact. In short, you want the clubhead to be accelerating when it meets the ball. But even with physics squarely on my side, I don’t teach acceleration through impact. I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work. Rather than making a good pulling swing, men equate acceleration with hand and muscle power, so when consciously trying to accelerate, they use their hand muscles, which puts us back where this chapter began, suffering from the effects of adrenaline and likely to fail under pressure.

There’s a better way to be sure to make an accelerating swing: Make a short backswing and a longer follow-through. This assures acceleration without muscles, and stability in the dead-hands finesses swing.

My research has shown that golfers get the idea of “short backswing, long follow-through,” yet they still find it incredibly difficult to do on the course.

There is something about most golfers’ mental outlooks that causes them to be insecure at the top of a short backswing. My experience leads me to think that the golfer gets to the end of a short backswing and thinks, “I can’t get it there from this position; I’m going to leave it short.” He wants to hit those shot with his muscles; it’s instinct, and it is very difficult to overcome.

Do you understand how dead hands eliminate adrenaline problems? How setting up parallel left prevents hand-compensation? Where ball position should be relative to the bottom of your swing arc and divot? And how to make a short-to-long stable swing? If so, you are ready to learn the synchronized turn and true finesse swing.

Simply turn your upper body at the same speed that you turn your lower body from start to finish. Synchronize your upper and lower bodies to turn and rotate together on the swing back and forward. This doesn’t meant they are connected. Rather, they are turning together in a synchronized motion.

Do not allow one part of your body to coil against another part, as you do in a power swing. Your shoulders never coil against your hips, your arms don’t coil against your chest. By eliminating all coiling, you stop power from being produced by your lower body. You don’t want the legs driving, leading, or accelerating the rest of your body into impact.

If there’s no coil, no lower-body drive, and you don’t add any hand, wrist, or arm muscles (keep dead hands), you should be able to produce a low-power swing. And low power is what the finesse swing and the short game are all about.

Big muscles for power, small muscles for touch and refinement.

But haven’t I been saying don’t use your hands? Yes, and I meant it. You cannot consciously use your hands to add power to finesse shots and have them supply fine-tuning as well. If the muscles of your hands and wrists kick in to help power a shot, they are no longer available for subconscious fine-tuning. To get power from a muscle it has to be firm and strong, contracting and tight. Muscles in that condition can’t supply small increments of touch refinement at the same time.

I divide all finesse swings into 2 types, those for shots that carry over 30y and those for shots that carry less than 30y. The distribution is based on how each swing should finish.

For the longer finesse shots — those between 30y and just short of your power-swing distance with the same club — make a full, complete finish, transferring all your weight onto your forward foot.

Do not allow your body to slide toward or your left knee to flex laterally toward the target during the down- and through-swing. As you make a synchronized turn through impact your left knee should be almost straight-but not rigid.

For shots under 30y, you can’t use a full finish because you’ll carry the shot too far. So between 10-30y, shorten both your back- and through-swing lengths, using shorter swings for shorter shots. For stability’s sake, make sure you follow-through is at least 50% longer than your backswing.

One these shorter swings, make sure you keep your hands out of the action of the shot. I see too many students whipping their hands and club behind them in what I call a “styler finish.” I’ll tell you again: If you use your hands to “style,” or supply power, or determine where your divot occurs, or for anything, you won’t be good under pressure.

Many golfers ask: Doesn’t cocking my wrists make my swing wristy? My pro told me to simplify my swing by keeping my writsts stiff. Do you agree?

An absolute no to both question.

Wristy swings are the result of hinging, or collapsing, wrists (no difference; golfers use both these terms for the same thing), bad moves if you do them in either direction. A proper wrist cock aids the finesse swing by providing a reliable source of consistent power that doesn’t involve the muscles. The centrifugal force generated by the body’s rotation will always uncock the wrists for you through impact. And nothing could be more repeatable than that.

Although there are a few instances in the short game when you don’t want a wrist cock, the “no wrist cock” swing is a special condition used in chipping and to produce the ultimate soft shot with the slowest possible head speed.

Most teaching professionals feel the grip is the most important fundamental in golf. I disagree, at least in regard to the short game. There the grip falls somewhere down the line behind alignment, ball position, and stability.

The grip I recommend for all finesse shots — chips, pitches, distance wedges, and sand — starts with the hand in the square position and keeps them there through impact. The quieter they are, the better, so the clubface reaches impact in the same position every time. Most people call this a fairly weak grip: The Vs should point to the center or left side of your chin, with the palms parallel to each other and perpendicular to the target line.

Remember, you care about the hand position in the grip and where the forefinger line points, not where the thumb or V points.

The angle between your spine and the ground determines what level, or swing-plane angle, you must swing on. Thus, your swing plane and body angles can change with the length of each club and with the slope of the ground beneath your feet on each successive shot.

The more you bend over, increasing the angle between your spine and hips, the more difficult it is to rotate your hips.

The closer you get your spine angle to perpendicular to the line from shoulders to ball, the easier it is to use centrifugal force to make a swing repeatable.

While the concept of swing plane is complex in the power game, in the short game it is very simple. After you have determined your posture and committed to a dead-hands, synchronized finesse swing, the finesse-swing plane is the very steep angle that includes the ball and both of your shoulders. And you definitely want to keep your clubhead in the plane throughout your finesse swing.

Nothing, and certainly no human muscles, will ever be more repeatable than centrifugal force through impact.

Good alignment and posture, and in-plane swing, and a good turn through impact are all you need.

That is what learning is all about: assembling and assimilating information in your brain so it learns what your swing needs to look and feel like and how the ball will react when you do it that way. And the best part is that you don’t have to think about it: It happens automatically if your pay attention. As you see more and more shots and store them with your kinesthetic awareness, your brain refines and builds better memories to draw on in the future.

However, none of this happens if you don’t watch and receive the required information in your brain. You must do it in real time, as it happens.

If you can make a habit of holding your finish and retaining the feelings of each shot while watching its flight, then what you see and feel within the first 8 seconds will be correlated in your mind and you will have optimized your process of learning touch for distance.

Golfers who hit shots and turn away in disgust, or drop their shoulders, hunch over, or move in any way, lose the feelings of their swings. Then they can’t correlate what they did with the results.

Your perfect finesse swing begins from a perfectly postured setup, aligned parallel left of your target, the ball centered between your ankles. Your weak finesse grip has the back of your left hand facing the target, the forefinger lines pointing at your nose. Beginning with a one-piece takeaway, everything moves away together and stops together at a short backswing position. There is no upper-body coil, no excess storing of energy, and your fully cocked wrists have the clubhead in the perfect swing plane, which extends high above and slightly behind your shoulders.

On the downswing, everything moves together, perfectly “synchronized” and accelerating with dead hands through and past impact. The clubhead is stable, achieving its maximum velocity 2 or 3 feet after contact with the ball. The through-swing continues to a full, high finish, your right hand almost touching your left ear. At the finish, nearly all your weight is on your left (front) foot, with the right toe touching the ground for balance. You made a smooth body turn, with no hint of a forward slide and no lateral motion of your left knee toward the target. Your left leg was almost straight as you held your finish, standing on your left side, feeling the swing and watching the shot’s result.

How exact do you need to be? You need to stick the ball in the “Golden Eight” range, consistently leaving yourself putts inside 10ft. Once outside 10ft, it doesn’t matter much matter where you are: The odds of making putts decrease so rapidly, your score doesn’t change much whether you’re putting from 20, 30, or 40ft. You’ll probably 2-putt all of them.

I find it ironic that many modern courses indicate yardages to the center of green from 300-100y. But they don’t mark any sprinklers inside 100y, where knowing yardage is most important.

We found that no matter how a player became during a practice session, he would have regressed the time we started a new session the next day. However, with almost every session, he would get better more quickly than in previous sessions.

The smoother the swing, the easier it can be felt, recognized, and repeated. Herk-jerky swings are hard to “feel” and remember; smooth swings are easy.

I had my caddie on the range, I was hitting shots to him, he was calling back my distances, and I found that I knew what my shot distance was going to be before he called it back. I’ve learned the right and wrong feels of the distances I want to hit.

It’s vital for you to realize that this system of controlling the length of your shots with the length of your backswing works only if you always swing at the same rhythm (your rhythm) and always follow through to a full, complete finish. If you do, the velocity of the clubhead at impact is simply a function of the length of the backswing. The farther back you take it, the faster the clubhead is traveling when it reaches the ball.

These 3 are the basic finesse swings, which every good players should “own” because they are easy to execute and they produce 3 known, repeatable, and controllable distances. It is the same as having 3 different clubs in the bag that produce those same distances. By “timing” the wedge swing, we also created an infinite array of swings and shot distances in between the 3 reference swings.

The 10:30 finesse swing usually flies about 10y shorter than a full coil-and-hit power swing for the same club.

Almost every one has come to the same conclusion: The 9:00 o’clock is the most reliable, most easily reproduced, and most consistent distance producer in the game.

Your swing rhythms should always be constant and look like you, just the way your walking stride looks like you. If you maintain your rhythm and use dead hands, your finesse swings will perform under pressure like you’ve never seen before.

One more time: The rhythm of all the swings must be the same, and the backswing lengths for each of the 3 reference swings must be repeatable.

Practice your 9:00 o’clock backswing at home in front of a full-length mirror (you won’t believe what 10 or 20 swings every night for a few months will do for your ability to repeat these moves).

Maybe it’s a male ego thing. When men first take up the game, they control their clubs and “hit” with their hands, trying to avoid whiffing. This seems to become a habit that is difficult to break.

You didn’t use a club, didn’t use your natural rhythm, and didn’t see a ball fly, but the finesse turn is the heart of your finesse swing. If you can’t turn your body properly, you have no chance of invoking a club and ball, and making a good finesse shot. However, if you stand in front of a full-length mirror, making these moves occasionally stopping to see what they look and feel like, you’ll get it in no time.

No matter how many wedges you carry or what their lofts, they are not as important at this point in your development as working on your ability to make quality finesse swings.

Now matter how many wedges your have to choose from, if you can’t make the proper finesse motions to the correct backswing times, then nothing else matters.

The math is simple: 3 swings times 4 wedges equals 12 distances. But the philosophy calls for something more: You want to own these 12 shots.

To control your shot distance accurately enough to make your next shot (putt) imminently holeable.

It would be like having 11 extra clubs in your bag when you’re competing with someone of similar skill who has only one club and no idea how to control the distance for any shot inside 100y.

  1. How you prepare, and what you do before swinging a club, affects the way you swing it.
  2. The more consistent, repeatable, and boring your preshot ritual becomes during practice, the more efficiently your subconscious can take control of your swing mechanics on the golf course.

When you arrive at the ball, first look at the lie. Is it ok? If not, what compensation will you have to make to hit the ball solidly? Grip down on the club a little? Move the ball back in your stance a bit? Swing across the line to cut the ball from left to right? Or for clean contact, how sharply descending must the swing be?

What about the distance to the pin? How far do you want the shot to fly? How much wind and which way is it blowing? What trajectory will work best? What club do you need? What swing key do you want to be thinking about?

Every shot requires a different line of thinking. But it’s as you mull over these questions that you must make all your shot and swing decisions and — this is most important — commit to them. You can’t have any doubts when you’re standing over the ball ready to make your swing.

The goal of the preparation process is to see and feel the exact swing you are going to make before you truy to make it happen for real. One or two practice swings may or may not be enough. Your last practice swing must feel exactly right for the shot you want to hit. If it feels right, you’re ready to go; if not, make another or 2, or 3, or 4 more, if necessary, until you are completely comfortable.

My finesse-swing preshot ritual goes like this: It starts with 2 slight knee flexes, during which I say to myself, “Okay,” which means I just saw and felt a perfect preview swing and I’m starting my ritual to go. I waggle once as I look at the target for the last time, waggle once again as I look down at the ball, then forward press and start my backswing. The sequence and timing of my finesse preshot ritual motions are always the same, and the same rhythm applies to the finesse swing that follows.

Preshot routine:

  1. Check lie, distance, wind, landing area.
  2. Consider risks of mishit, gambling percentages.
  3. Choose club, visualize the shot, commit to the shot.
  4. Imagine the swing, swing key, and commit to the swing.
  5. Internalize look and feel with practice swings.
  6. See and feel the perfect preview swing; when it feels perfect, go to your ritual.

Preshot ritual:

  1. Always move at the same rhythm, your rhythm, just like in practice.
  2. Don’t think about the future, shot results, or consequences; focus on doing your ritual.
  3. Let your ritual lead you into repeating your preview swing.
  4. Watch and feel how good the swing and shot that follow are.

But always, before every full swing, wedge shot, or putt, religiously execute your preshot ritual. That’s the only way to train your subconscious to accept it and make it a habit.

By always practicing properly, always using your ritual, and never doing it any other way, your subconscious will gain maximum trust in it. And this will give you the best chance of performing under pressure. Never lie to yourself, never do it quickly to get it over with, never drag out the time to make sure you do it properly. After a few thousand times, you won’t even realize you used a ritual or made a swing. And that’s when you know you’re succeeding.

The pros I worked with have told me many times that they can’t remember making a swing, especially an important one, under pressure. They remember their thoughts during the preshot preparation, how good their preview swing felt, and how they knew they would perform successfully. This feeling is something referred to as being “in the zone.” I think it is simply you and your subconscious being in perfect communication. You have trained your subconscious properly, and it is trusting you completely to perform the ritual and get out of the way: You do the preparation and the ritual, your subconscious will execute the shot.

Magnifying the importance of shot behavior on the ground is the fact that there is very little chance for forgiveness in the short game. If you hit a poor drive or a bad long-iron shot, your short game usually can save you. Play badly around the greens and your score almost always rises.

  1. Distance wedges: 30-100y off the green.
  2. Pitches around the green: from inside 30y.
  3. Chipping: from within a few steps of the green. And the bump-and-run: from inside 100y.
  4. Sand shots: from inside 100y.

Don’t crouch too much or spread your feet too far apart, as these moves restrict lower-body motion and put control of the swing into your hands and arms. Because you’re standing tall and holding a short club, you should be fairly close to the ball. Your arms should hang loosely, almost straight down from your shoulders, leaving 4-6 inches between your hands and legs.

You should be able to feel the clubhead as you waggle and swing. If you can’t feel the weight of the head going back and through, close your eyes and concentrate on this feeling. If you still can’t feel the club, you’re probably gripping too tightly and have too much muscle tension and control in your hands.

Distance-Wedge recap:

  1. Start the swing by moving everything — legs, hips, upper body — together and in rhythm away from the target.
  2. The arms move with the rest of the body: They do not initiate the motion or add any power. The fingers and hands are dead, doing nothing besides holding the club and cocking your wrists.
  3. Don’t set your wrist cock prematurely; this should be accomplished gradually during the backswing, and be completed before you reach the top or end of your backswing.
  4. During the through-swing, keep everything synchronized as you swing down and through the ball. Body rotation and the club should still be speeding up until a few feet past impact. This natural, muscle-free stability is produced by a follow-through longer than the backswing.
  5. Swing through to a high, full finish regardless of the length of the backswing, and hold your finish position while you watch the result, with 99% of your weight on your front foot (use your back toe for balance only).

The pitching wedge (PW) provides a somewhat low, penetrating trajectory, with medium backspin, resulting in a shot that bounces forward from a shallow pitch mark in the green surface, the rolls a fair amount. This shot is perfect for playing short of elevation changes on a green, so the ball bounces and then rolls up to the next level by the pin. This shot also is great in windy conditions, especially agains the wind. The PW is a good choice off tight lies, but expect a lower trajectory and more spin.

The sand wedge (SW) creates a high, crisp trajectory with lots of backspin, and a shot that lands and makes a medium-deep pitch mark in the green. From this pitch mark, the ball usually bounces only modestly forward, then spins back almost to where it first hit the green. Don’t use this shot with too much wind, because of its high spin; into the win, it will up-shoot and go nowhere. The SW has too much bounce on its sole (bottom) to be effective from tight lies. However, the bounce make the SW an excellent choice from deep grass (rough) and soft sand.

The lofted wedge (LW) provides a high, soft trajectory with modest backspin (unless hit hard from a longer distance), and a shot that lands softly and makes a medium-deep pitch mark in the green. Because the LW comes down almost vertically, the first bounce is more up and down than forward, and the ball tends to stop fairly quickly. If the shot is hit crisply from a tight lie, the increased backspin can pull it back short of where it first landed, sometimes even off the green. The LW is an excellent choice from greenside bunkers and for many soft lob shots around the green from the fairway or short rough. It is not a good choice from deep rough or very tall grass.

The extra-loft wedge (XW) provides the ultimate high, soft shot, one that controls its behavior on the greens with an almost vertical landing trajectory. While it does have some backspin, it’s usually not too much, because this shot is rarely hit hard. (Hit the XW hard and it will fly too high, becoming almost useless.) The XW works best when hitting high, soft shots to difficult pin position on hard, fast greens, without having to play cut shots (which are somewhat more difficult to control). These shots usually make shallow pitch marks on the green as they come in softly and from short distance. The XW is the best club from the sand for short shots (under 10y carry), and for getting the ball up quickly over high bunker lips.

The depth of your shot’s pitch mark in the green can have a greater effect on the shot’s subsequent behavior than backspin.

It’s easy to understand that the depth of a ball’s crater is affected by the incoming angle of impact. Less obvious is that the angle of impact can be affected by the elevation of the green relative to the golfer and the slope of the ground from which the golfer hits the shot.

While the primary distance controls in the 3x4 System are length of backswing and club selection, there is one other way to adjust shot distance without violating or interfering with the rest of the system: change the length of your club.

To take 4-5y off a shot, grip down about 4-5 inches, move a little closer to the ball, and make the same swing.

To lower your shots even more, position the ball about 4 inches back in your stance and again use a low-hands follow-through. This will minimize any wind effect on your shot.

As you practice different-length finishes, you’ll see that even though the ball stays on the clubface only a very short time, your follow-through has a real effect on ball flight. The higher your hands finish, the higher the trajectory; the lower the follow-through, the lower the shot flies.

Most golfers who try to play a short follow-through get very “handsy” and “muscley” in the impact zone, resulting in poor control, especially under pressure. So go with the low finish only when a low shot is absolutely necessary and a lower lofted club won’t get the job done.

While it’s okay to occasionally play the ball back in your stance to produce lower shots, it is not okay to play the ball forward in your stance as a means of getting a higher trajectory. Playing the ball forward leads to 1 of 3 results, and 2 of them are bad: From a forward position, golfers either hit shots solidly (but with distance results that aren’t great), hit a thin skull (terrible result), or hit it fat (terrible result).

To hit a higher shot, the first choice should always be to take a more lofted club and make your standard dead-hands finesse swing. The second choice is to open the clubface, aim your swing line to the left of the target, and keep your ball exactly in the center of your stance, relative to your new swing line. Keeping the ball in the middle of your stance ensures crisp contact, and you can hit the ball as high as you want simply by opening the clubface enough and aiming far enough left. Remember, higher shots usually fly shorter distances, so be sure to make a longer backswing (and, as always, a full finish) to get these shots all the way to your target.

When faced with a bad lie, you should change your setup. Here’s a simple rule: The worse the lie, the more sacrifices you should be willing to make (in carry distance, height, stopping distance, and general shot control or accuracy) to better accomplish the single most important factor in achieving acceptable results — clean, crisp contact of your clubface on the ball. And always remember, it is all too easy to jump out of the frying pan (the bad lie) into the fire (a worse lie, penalty strokes, double bogeys, and worse). The number-one result you want to achieve from a bad lie is a safe recovery to a safe position.

Two comments when playing from grass:

  1. The taller the grass, the shorter the shaft and the longer the swing you should use.
  2. Never try to curve a shot when you can’t get clean contact between the clubface and ball.

From a bare, hardpan lie on hard dirt, move the ball 3 inches back from normal position, open the clubface slightly, and aim a little left. Make your normal dead-hand finesse swing.

You can and will use all of your wedges for pitch shots, and, as you’ll soon learn, the conditions of the shot dictate which wedge is best.

There are other factors contributing to golfer’s fear of pitch shots:

  1. Pitch shots are not well understood mechanically.
  2. They are rarely taught by club pros.
  3. They look simple.
  4. Golfers fear looking foolish, especially on such a simple shot.

Many golf pros teach that the lower body should remain totally still during the pitch shot. They reason that you don’t need power from the lower body, so they try to simplify the swing by eliminating moving parts. I don’t agree.

It’s true that you don’t want to be driving your legs on pitch shots, but you do need enough lower-body motion to keep your body parts synchronized during the swing. The upper and lower body must move at the same rate, so you don’t create power but you do create rhythm. And it’s difficult to have good rhythm if you don’t move your lower body. Golfers who freeze from the hips down become arms-and-hands player. Rather than swinging, the swipe or hit at the ball, producing inconsistent results, especially under pressure.

Do you understand what produces spin? To impart backspin (spin that would bring the ball back toward the golfer), the face and force of the club must contact the ball below the ball’s center of mass.

Overspin (or topspin) is produced by making contact with the club above the ball’s center of mass. However, it’s hard to do this without skulling the shot: That’s why thin and skulled shots fly so low and so far — no backspin.

You’ll never have an accomplished pitching game if you can’t land your shots consistently on the spot you want. You must be able to do this with every wedge in your bag.

A key to pitching success is practicing with each of your wedges. Each club will produce a different trajectory, different height, different backspin characteristics, and different bounce and roll behavior on the greens. While this may seem overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. I’m not suggesting you practice, master, and memorize every possible pitch-shot situation. But you do need to practice enough to learn which combinations work best for you and are easiest for you to visualize and produce. You must practice enough to develop a favorite shot, while knowing which shots to avoid. The favorites will become the shots you go to when the pressure is on because you can execute them with confidence and reliability.

As you read them, some facts will stick out and stay with you; others may not mean a thing. The only way you’ll ingrain any of them in your game is to see for yourself what works and what doesn’t. In the end, you’ll have to practice for yourself.

So when hitting a pitch to a Bermuda green, check whether your shot will be coming in with or against the grain of the grass before you decide how far to fly it. On bent, however, it doesn’t matter much.

While the PW roll roughly equal the carry in the air, SW shots rolled less, about two-thirds as far.

In general, you can increase the spin on any shot by cocking your wrists and making a more descending blow than normal. Playing the ball slightly back in your stance and pinching it against a firm surface will maximize spin. To minimize spin, keep your wrists straight (zero wrist cock), and sweep through impact with as little loft as possible (relative to what the shot will allow). If you don’t need either maximum or minimum spin, you probably can get more consistent results by playing your normal pitch swing and producing what I call the “normal” (mid) amount of spin.

The higher your shots come into greens, the less important spin is.

Relate this information to the advice everyone hears for short shots: “Get the ball on the ground and running as soon as you can.” This axiom is true for those amateurs who cannot control how far they fly their wedge shots. But the pros often get their best results by bringing shots in high, landing them close tot he pin — rather than the edge of the green — and not worrying about how far they will roll.

You’ll quickly learn the truth about many delicate shots around the green: It’s easier to control the ball with a short club and a long swing than with a long club and a short swing. This truth stands strong for all the wedges.

Golfers hit their short-game shots much straighter on the practice tee than on the golf course.

The reason is the ground beneath the golfer’s feet. Many players don’t understand that even on short shots around the greens. ground level influences aim.

The nesty lie should be called the “nasty lie,” because it is one of the trickiest in golf. The ball looks as if it is sitting in a bird’s nest. Because the top of the ball is visible, golfers think they can hit it out. However, it is almost impossible to make crisp, clean contact with a normal pitching motion.

If you swing hard and the ball comes out hot, it will fly way too far. If you swing too easy and you don’t make clean contact, you’ll fluff the shot and may have to try it again from just a few feet ahead.

Use the chop shot, very similar to the chop used from deep grass. It should allow you to make “almost-clean” contact between the club and the back of the ball.

Position the ball well back in your stance; the nestier the lie, the farther back you play it. I’ve often played this ball behind my back ankle. Grip down on the shaft to shorten the club, lean forward so your natural swing motion becomes more vertical, make a full-wrist cock on the backswing.

The shot from water is just like a shot from sand.

Also play the ball forward in your stance, to ensure that the club will not cut into the water; rather, it will splash, bounce off the surface, and scoot under the ball.

I have come to this conclusion: The chipping swing is too easy. What I mean is, because it is easy to do, you can learn to chip with bad technique and, at least in the early stages of your game development, your chips look good compared to your other shots. Later on, however, this poor technique will severely limit your effectiveness.

New golfers have no idea how costly poor chipping can be to their game. They don’t know that they’ll chip at least 2-5 times in every round for the rest of their golf careers. And they don’t realize how unforgiving each chip really is. If you stub or chili-dip a chip (hitting the ground behind the ball), it adds a stroke to your score and you have to try again. When you run the ball way past the hole and have to chip coming back, it’s the same thing — a wasted shot. Even when you think you chipped pretty well, if the ball doesn’t stop inside the “Golden Eight” feet, you’ll probably miss the first putt — another wasted stroke.

One of the cardinal rules of the short game: “Hit the little ball (the golf ball), before you hit the big ball (the earth).”

I can explain a good chipping swing very easily: Imagine that your arms form 2 sides of a triangle, with the line across your shoulders the 3rd side. When chipping, keep the shape of the triangle constant and swing it in synch with your body. That’s all: no hand power, no lower-body power, no adrenaline problems. Don’t let your wrists hinge or break down (and, of course, there’s no wrist cock since you don’t want the power). Avoid the temptation to “hit” a chip with the muscles of your hands.

Don’t strangle the club trying to keep your hands quiet. In fact, the tighter you grip the club, the more likely you are to have active hands, which will “fire” through impact.

Another way to quiet the wrists and hands is swinging the club with a pure pendulum motion while setting and maintaining substantial angles among the elbows, forearms, and wrists.

Always make a few preview swings through the same grass conditions that surround your ball. Once you see the perfect swing, step up to the ball, execute your preshot ritual, and go. Don’t think or delay: Trust that when you repeat that swing, your result will be fine.

You should be standing close to the ball, your stance narrow, and the ball about 3 inches behind your stance center, on-line with your back ankle. 65% of your weight should be on your front foot, your hands well ahead of the ball. Your follow-through should be 20% longer than your backswing.

Just be sure to get the ball safely over the fringe, because reading how a ball will react through the fringe is less reliable than reading how it will react on the smooth, evenly watered, well-manicured green. And you’d always rather be putting than chipping your next shot. Always.

Which club should you use? Some golfers chip with only one, usually the 7i or 8i. But do yourself a favor and practice so you’re comfortable with a number of different clubs, from 4i to PW. Experiment to find out how far shots roll with each club after landing and how far they carry.

The results consistently showed that the lower the ball flight, the straighter the bounce when the ball landed on the surface. This means that a lower-lofted club will make the ball bounce and initially roll straighter on your expected line than a higher-lofted club.

Initially, these results surprised me because I had assumed backspin was the main factor controlling a ball on the green and was good. However, watching Perfy, I learned a lesson: The greater the backspin Perfy put on his chip shots, the greater the dispersion pattern of balls on the green.

The more backspin on your shot, the more its reaction depends on the condition of the landing area. Put less spin on the ball and it will have a more consistent reaction and be less dependent on what’s happening in the landing area.

Good chipping calls for less backspin.

From good lies, chip the ball low with minimum backspin: Take a lower-lofted club (as long as you can make solid contact) and carry the ball onto the green without rolling it too far past the hole. However, as the lie gets worse, move the ball farther back in your stance and use a more lofted club to assure clean, solid contact. Because without good contact, your shots won’t land near your projected landing area and you won’t produce good shot patterns.

If you’re not going to putt, and the landing area is predictable, use the lowest-lofted club that will land the ball 3ft onto the putting surface.

If the landing area is unpredictable (and likely unforgiving), fly the ball as close to the hole as you can.

Remember, you want to choose the simplest shot that will handle the situation. Since the putt is the simplest shot in golf, it should always be your first choice.

The key is to hit enough chips to learn which of your shots work best and which are the easiest for you to execute well.

Most golfers never take lessons on the unusual shots, and they certainly don’t practice them, so they don’t know where to begin when faced with one.

The traditional shot from this lie is the bellied wedge: using a putting stroke action to swing a wedge so its leading edge contacts the equator of your ball. A wedge is used because it has more weight, and is more solid along its bottom leading edge, than most other clubs. By lifting the wedge off the ground and aligning its leading edge with the ball’s equator, the club doesn’t have to travel through much grass. Look for a wedge with a straight leading edge: The straighter the leading edge, the easier it is to keep this shot on-line. If the leading edge is rounded, you’ll have to worry about the ball squirting left or right.

Take your normal putting posture and place the ball 2 inches forward of the center of your stance.

When your ball is in heavy rough, it’s time for another nontraditional shot — the wood chip. A small wood head separates and slides through the grass, unlike an iron, which has to cut through it.

All the evidence points to one very simple rule: Leave the flagstick in whenever the Rules allow.

Like the other yips, these are caused by fear, an understandable reaction after witnessing a long spell of bad results.

Poor ball position: If the Ball is too far forward in your stance, even just in the middle of your stance, then the club can easily hit the ground first. Fat shots and skulls result.

In your living room, create a chipping routine in which you make a practice swing. Don’t aim at anything, results don’t matter. Just repeat your practice swing, take your address position, and chip the Wiffle ball for 10 minutes a day for 2 weeks.

Unlike chip shots, which land on the green (or at least very close to it), the bump-and-run lands at least 2 or 3 bounces. Bump-and-runs are much longer than chips, sometimes covering 50-100y.

The mechanics of the bump-and-run swing are similar to the finesse chipping swing, except: the synchronized turn is longer both back and through; a partial wrist cock is employed (to produce more power as required); and the ball is positioned at the stance center.

The swing requires a low, sweeping motion through impact, not a descending blow. The shaft should be gripped at full length, to encourage the flattest angle of attack and minimum backspin. The 5i and 6i are the most common used, although any loft from 3i up can be used.

You should practice and use the bump-and-run so it’s there in your game when you really need it — and you will need it.

Is that what you try to do? Because if that’s the way you think the sand shot should be done, your mind will do whatever it can to make it happen. And that’s a big reason there are so many poor sand players: misconceptions about the shot that become self-fulfilling prophecies of disaster.

When the clubhead digs deep into the sand, it loses so much of its velocity (like a wedge being pushed rather than pulled) that it loses stability. That leads to loss of control, improper direction, and often even a shot left in the bunker.

  1. You must set up and aim your body and swing line a little to the left of the flagstick. Not a lot — about 17 degrees (2 or 3 steps) left of your target — but with every part of your body, stance, shoulders, and swing line. Everything.
  2. Set the clubface extremely open, more open than most golfers realize is possible. The face should aim 45 degrees to the right of your swing-line direction, so it scoots through the sand without digging into it. Your club should penetrate only about half an inch below the surface.
  3. Position the ball forward in your stance on a line at the inside of the heel of your left foot.

The scoot-and-spin has a margin for error of about 2 inches, for producing shots that finish where I want them to.

On the dig-and-push, if I was not within a quarter inch of perfect entry into the sand, I was in trouble.

If you stab at the ball with a punch shot swing, there’s nothing lifting the ball except the loft of the club. That’s why a swing without a follow-through hits low shots. Also remember that to produce spin, the club must pass the ball coming out of the sand, and that can happen only when the face is very open.

So how do you control the distance of your shots? Here’s how not to do it:

  1. Don’t change the rhythm of your swing.
  2. Don’t change how close you hit behind the ball.
  3. Don’t change how hard you swing through the sand.

The easiest way to vary the distance of your sand shots is to use clubs of different lengths and lofts, all the time continuing to use the same swing.

I recommend that most players carry 4 wedges, 2 of which have more loft than the traditional sand wedge.

In the golf industry today, bounce is completely independent of a wedge’s loft, length, weight, or shaft flex. This means that there is no assigned bounce to a particular type or loft of a wedge; the amount of bounce is the preference of the designer.

The golfer who carries only 1 low-lofted wedge, and therefore must open it to hit high shots, can’t afford to have it be a deep-bounced club, because its bounce changes so drastically when the face is opened, and becomes so large, that the club could never be used from tight lies.

The better your lie (the higher the ball sits on top of the sand), the farther forward the ball should be positioned in your stance.

The worse your lie (the deeper your ball is buried), the further back in your stance the ball should be positioned.

The farther forward the ball is positioned in your stance, the more you should open the clubface.

The farther back the ball is positioned in your stance, the more you should close the clubface.

The more you open the clubface:

  • The more left you must aim.
  • The shallower the club moves through the sand.
  • The higher the trajectory of the shot.
  • The more backspin the shot will have.
  • The softer the shot will land.

Now, if you want to tackle some difficult sand shots, try hitting from sidehill lies. When the ball is above your feet, forget the scoot-and-spin blast shot, it won’t work even if the ball is sitting up on top of the sand. You’ve got to be careful and make a good swing, because you have no margin for error. Try the dig-and-push blast, aiming slightly to the right of the target, the clubface almost square. Be firm through impact with a little grip pressure than normal, to be sure the toe of the club doesn’t dig in and get stuck in the sand.

Play the ball from the normal positions for all 3 lies. The difference is that you want to cock your wrists as much as you can early in the backswing, which shortens the radius of your swing. This gives you the ability to make a very descending blow into the sand, popping the ball up and out without too much forward power, because your abbreviated follow-through.

The same technique works on the completely buried lie, but you have to supply even more pop, so a lot more sand comes out.

A chapter on sand play is a good place to remind you that you can never prepare too much or too well for what is going to happen in golf.

That’s 12 clubs for a range of 200y. From 100y to 15y, most sets provide you with one club, usually a SW. For the last 15y, when you’re on the green — where nearly half the game is played — you get 1 club, the putter.

How else do you explain that since I started playing golf, the average loft on a PW in the marketplace has decreased from 51 to 46 degrees, while the standard shaft length has increased 1 inch? Both of these changes mean golfers are hitting their PW farther. The public is told that if they’re hitting the ball further, then the clubs must be better.

It is absolutely critical that you maximize distance accuracy inside 100y, where you can consistently hit the ball straight enough to have a chance to make the 1st putt. By adding wedges, you optimize your chance of saving a stroke after every shot from inside 100y. The cost to you is the slight sacrifice in distance control from longer yardages that doesn’t matter to your scoring.

It’s not important which, how, or how many long irons you drop. What’s most important is adding the wedges.

When it comes to optimizing the equipment in your set, a properly fit putter is a top priority.

If you can wedge it, putt it, and drive it, you can play this game.

The man who can pitch doesn’t need to putt.

Golfers like to practice most what they do the best. It is something to avoid. The weaknesses in your short game are far more important to your scoring than the strengths in your power game.

Your score is less dependent on great shots in the power game than on great shots in the short game (while the exact opposite probably is true for your ego).

Something else about Kite. His “bad” drives usually find the edge of the fairway, or at least stop in the first cut of rough. Over all these years, I’ve never seen him hit a ball OB. He could almost always still play his bad shots.

The smart way to play isn’t always aiming straight at the flag or flying your ball all the way to the hole. You’ve got to play the course, the conditions, and, more important, your personal percentages. That applies whether you’re lining up a shot of 200y or 20y.

You must realize that from the strategic point of view, golf is played in quantum steps. That is, you make either a 3, 4, 5, or 6; there are no one-half or partial-digit scores. You either get it close enough to make the next putt, or you don’t. You either make the putt, or you don’t. You save the stroke, or you don’t.

Remember, you get no credit or recognition for “almost” or “close” to making a score of one stroke less.

In reality, there is no one right way to play a 35y approach, any more than there is a right way to play a 550y par 5 with water 15y short of the green. In both cases there is a “best-strategy” way to play, and it may be different for each golfer, every time he plays the hole.

Short-game strategy is different and generally much more complex to assess because it almost never depends on what a player can do. All golfers “can” hit a short shot around the green. Short shots don’t require strength or tremendous physical ability. All golfers know they can physically “can” hit the shot, so in many — far too many — cases, they try it.

Very simply, short-game strategy should depend on the probability of a golfer executing a shot successfully, not the possibility of doing so.

A few words of caution: Good short games take years to develop, so don’t expect too much of yourself too soon. It’s easy to overthink the grain of the grass, the closeness of the lie, the effect of backspin, and other variables, none of which matter if you can’t execute shots from good lies that land where they are supposed to and have the trajectory, spin, and speed appropriate to finish close to the hole.

The way your ball lies in the grass, or nongrass, is more important in the short game than in any other game of golf. This is partly because, in the short game, you don’t swing hard enough to minimize the effects of grass on your trajectory and spin rate, as you often do in the power game.

On low-running shots, almost all of the swing energy transferred to the ball makes it run forward; on high lob shots, most of the swing energy lofts the ball high, and very little makes it move forward.

The result of this is that the bump-and-run shot roll is most sensitive to the length of your swing, while the cut-lob is the least sensitive. So whenever the lie allows it, consider the low-running shot. But if the lie is so bad that you can’t figure out what it will do, open the blade and hit a big, high cut-lob shot. If contact is better than you expect, the ball will go a lot higher but not much farther.

You should commit to playing a little more break than you “read” on these shots. Only 1 in 10 approach shots finish above the hole, while 9 end up below. Easier putts follow from playing more break.

Not holding the finish. When you don’t hold your follow-through and finish position on a chip, pitch, sand, or distance-wedge shot, you lose the feedback of what your effort produced, so you don’t learn anything from the results. I evaluate practice sessions based on what I think the student learned.

Believe it or not, if you start shanking as you begin working on your new finesse swing, you’re on the right track. It often happens because the lower body is working with the upper for the 1st time; this creates more centrifugal force with less effort coming down through impact, which swings the club a little farther out and away from the body.

The “styler” finish. While a low-hands-coiled-around-the-body “styler” finish occasionally gains popularity with younger players, and may look cool and different, it’s a surefire way to ruin your short game. A low follow-through requires muscle and hand control, which means it will prove inconsistent, especially under pressure. It also creates a lower trajectory than does a high finish, again meaning less consistency in how shots react upon landing. My advice is to stay with the dead-hands swing, and let the club finish high and long.

Most amateurs think the man who makes the most birdies will be the winner. In reality, it’s usually more likely that the man who makes the fewest bogeys wins.

You need to know what it is about the swing that makes the ball fly higher or lower, with more or less spin, longer or shorter. If you know the swing requirements for the shot you are trying to produce, you can practice, improve, and turn your short game into a subconsciously controlled, automatically performed “feel” game. But you can’t get to that point without basing it on something sound and reliable, without understanding intellectually what it is you have to do to make a shot happen. Then you need to know when to gamble.

Never hit a shot if you have any anxiety about its outcome. If you haven’t practiced the swing sufficiently, if you don’t have the confidence to pull it off at least 90% of the time, then it’s the wrong shot and you shouldn’t try it.

That’s right — 90% of the time. I’m going to put 10 balls down and you’re going to bet me your paycheck that 9 of 10 will land near the target. If you can’t make that bet, don’t try that shot.

Here’s what happens when someone attempts a shot with less than 90% confidence. I call it golf’s version of the anxiety attack:

The player is worried as he thinks about the shot; worried a little more as he addresses the ball; takes extra time to think and make sure he’s not going to do whatever it is he’s worried about doing. But then the subconscious anxiety attack occurs at the top of the backswing. The player thinks, “OMG, don’t let this happen,” which is the worst possible thought any golfer can have as he moves down toward impact.

Here’s a saying I use with my players: “Trust is a must, because to bail is to fail.” If your subconscious doesn’t trust you, it will “bail out” in the middle of your downswing, guaranteeing a poor shot. You can’t change your motion in the middle of the downswing; there isn’t enough time and you don’t have enough hand strength to override the centrifugal forces that have built up. If your subconscious bails out on you in the middle of a swing, you will fail!

Another smart bit of self-management is to never gamble when there’s a penalty such as water or OB nearby. Penalties can’t be erased from the scorecard, so avoid them at all costs.

Forgetting eagles and maximizing birdies is smarter, safer, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised if a few eagles come your way.

Whenever you have a wedge in your hands, fire at the pin. Don’t play conservatively unless there’s a potential penalty guarding the pin so tightly that your wedge skill can’t match up to the 90% rule.

  1. Never “rake and beat” balls.
  2. Never hit a practice shot with bad alignment.
  3. Know your precise yardage.
  4. Watch the trajectory of each shot.
  5. Hold your finish while you learn.

You must never rake over a second ball and hit that shot until the first one has landed — and you’ve watched it land. You must take the time to back away after each shot, then approach the new one and get into your setup the same way every time, just as you intend to do on real shots that count on the course. Getting into your address position is as important as, and can be more important than, the swing itself. Because if you’re set up incorrectly or differently on each shot, there is no way to make or learn to groove a good, repeatable swing. So practice carefully, taking enough time to make proper setup a habit.

Always practice with an aim club.

Once I have his attention, I ask, “Without looking back, what did that shot just do? Where did that ball go?” Most of the time they can’t tell me. They have learned absolutely nothing, so they have wasted the time it took to get ball and body into position and make the swing. This isn’t practice, because they aren’t learning anything. It’s just exercise.

The only way to achieve this ability is with experience, seeing and feeling how different swings cause different golf-ball behaviors. You can’t learn this by watching someone else hit, from videotapes, or from books. Those can teach you why and what to do and how it is done. But you must make the swings yourself so you can add feel to the swings you’ve observed, giving your mind’s eye the complete correlation between actions and results.

The grinders benefit most from long, intensive, repetitive sessions in which they drill over and over and over what they need to do and how it feels to do it. They have to see the results many times, and they seem to internalize these results very carefully. It seems to take them a long time to learn or improve. However, the upside to this is that once grinders learn something, once they have it, they don’t lose it.

In each practice session, practice your short game first. Then your putting. Then work on your power swing.

Within the total of your short-game practice time, the first priority should be the 15y pitch shot around the greens, followed closely by distance wedges (30-75y), then chipping from close to the greens, then bunker play, and lastly indoor mirror practice.

You want careful, meaningful practice with feedback on results. Anything else is a waste of time, so don’t even bother to practice if you’re not going to do it right.

Hand muscles are about as good for the finesse game as they are for putting: no good at all. They do nothing but screw up both games.

It’s easy to practice and groove a muscle-controlled swing on the range, where you get 10-15 tries at every shot, and you can do it over and over again until it feels just right. You can have the timing down and have complete control over the hit impulse, and everything can be just fine — on the practice tee.

The problem is reproducing that exact muscle function and performance energy when the heat is on, when pressure is applied, when your heart rate goes up and the adrenaline begins to flow. You can’t do it, because you can never practice under these kinds of pressure-filled conditions.

It’s always easier to learn the feel and sight of these backswings without a ball on the ground, when you are not making a shot, and not worrying about results. For every backswing you make, go ahead and swing through to a full, synchronized finish. You may as well commit your perfect finesse move to subconscious control that much sooner.

Play like you’ve practiced and practice like you’ll play.

Please never forget that appearances can be deceiving when it comes to ball position. When golfers look down, their shoes dominate their visual landscape. This generally results in ball placement that looks centered, but is actually well forward of their true stance center.

The backswing should be shorter than the follow-through to create stability. Notice I didn’t say the backswing must be short, just shorter than the through-swing.

You can’t build a successful finesse game without an overly strong grip. A strong grip, with your hands more under or behind the club, produces too much power, harming finesse, touch, consistency, and control.

Stability is to the wedge game as aim is to putting. Without stability, your short game will never be very good. If the head of your wedge is unstable at impact, your mistakes will be magnified.

The rhythm of your finesse swing must be constant — shot to shot, hole to hole, day do day, year to year.

Play like you practice. This is the best secret of the game. And the only way to do that is to be smart enough to practice like you are going to play. It’s slower, it takes more effort, and you have to be more careful, but it works.

When you get frustrated and discouraged (and you will), ask yourself this question: “Do I have the patience to practice smart enough to improve?”

(1) As they improve, they need to work on different things; and (2) they get more careless in their practice habits. Both changes lessen their improvement rage, and can dampen enthusiasm.

I can’t overemphasize the value of proper repetition: Just because you can hit a shot doesn’t mean it’s committed to memory and will be there when the pressure is up. Practice, practice, and practice some more until it will be there whenever you need it.

They have no understanding that it takes tens of thousands of good repetitions to ingrain a habit in long-term muscle memory. Even the most gifted athletes need thousands of practice shots to get good. Yet weekend golfers, intelligent and successful in their workday worlds, expect to own a good swing right away.

During practice, remember it is your bad shots that determine your score. Practice your weaknesses, while spending only routine maintenance time on the strengths of your game. Try to hit 10, then 15, then 20 shots in a row, without a really bad one. Only after you eliminate your bad shots are you ready to focus on making your good shots better.