Average 18 handicap golfers hit 3 GIR during a round, which means they may have up to 15 chips, pitches or bunker shots.
I define “release” as a “swing of the clubhead,” allowing the clubhead to release by different amounts depending on the shot required.
The short game is opposite of the long game.
The long game is about power. To create control you need to compress the ball to create a good strike. The long game has much more of a pressure shift (weight transfer) throughout the swing.
Players who fail to make this distinction and play their short game shots as “mini versions” of their full swing are constantly trying to take power out of the shot rather than employing a specialist short game action.
In a nutshell, the long game move should create a separation between the lower and upper body as the downswing begins, while the short game sees a lot more connection between the lower and upper body.
The set-up bounce: this is how much a bounce a player shows at set-up/address. If the player had a wedge with 9 degrees of bounce, but leans the shaft forward 6 degrees at address, then he is left with 3 degrees of set-up bounce.
Effective bounce use creates a much greater margin for error. My method helps those who get anxious around the greens by trying to attain the “perfect strike.”
In this situation I would advise you get the ball running on the green as soon as possible. Generally amateurs tend to hit the ball higher than they need to around the greens. Hitting a high shot requires a longer swing and therefore an increased risk of a mishit.
The main idea with the chip and run is to create as few moving parts as possible. I should be a short, neat swing with gentle rotation around your left side. It is easy to do the opposite with a wide stance, leading to a weight transfer rather than rotating. Wide stances can easily lead to longer than required backswings, which in turn can mean deceleration through the ball and a poor strike.
Flaring the left foot helps you place your weight correctly on the left side and opens the left hip, encouraging better rotation through the ball.
Almost all amateur golfers tilt their shoulders too much when chipping. Shoulder tilt is good for a full swing, but destructive in the short game because it creates an inconsistent strike. Shoulder tilt dictates that the sternum points too far behind the ball, setting the low point of the swing arc behind the ball, leading to heavy and thin strikes. Tilting the shoulders also makes it hard to rotate towards the target, your left shoulder will work up towards the sky rather than up and around.
Standing too far away from the ball also makes it difficult to keep the club on plane with the tendency to pull it too far on the inside. Crucially, it does not enable us to set the left wrist angle correctly at address. The angle set between the left forearms and hand is too pronounced, which leads to excessive wrist action.
Incorrect wrist set = Incorrect release.
The left wrist angle is now flatter than for a full swing and the shaft is more upright. Note that the heel of the club is slightly off the ground. It is better to have the shaft more upright than too flat, since the latter can lead to the heel of the club digging into the turf.
Grip pressure is important. You want a relaxed grip at around 4/10, lighter than you tend to hold it for long game shots.
I see many golfers standing far too open for chip and run shots when a square stance is required. It can help some players rotate better through the ball, but it complicates the swing line. An open stance makes it easier to get thrown off the correct swing plane, and can lead to poor swing paths and clubface manipulations.
Pressure will move to the right side as you swing the club away (our arms are heavy after all) but you need to feel your body weight staying left.
As to what initiate the backswing, I have had most success with my students when I asked them to push the club away with the back of the left shoulder. This gets you to use your big muscles rather than just your hands.
My favourite drill is to feel the perfect plane is to hold the club in the left hand and take it away. The weight of the club with gravity pulling it down will make you take it away on the perfect plane. If it is on plane, you will be able to hold the club in position for a few minutes. You will only manage a few seconds if it is off plane.
The most common mistake from the top of the backswing is excessive lag as you start back down. Lag is when the swing radius has narrowed. If the swing radius changes as you begin the downswing, you have to match that move with a loss of height or throw the clubhead at the ball suddenly to lengthen the radius again. Both of these manipulation will result in inconsistency. Lag is useful in the long game but terrible in the short game.
Lag is often caused by pulling on the handle as you start back down, so keep your grip soft to help create a smooth transition into the downswing. You should be able to feel the weight of the clubhead as it falls back down.
Golf is an incredibly instinctive game. Believe it or not, your mind and body are doing their best to return the club correctly to the ball on every shot, more so the golf you have played.
One of the most common short game mistakes is a backswing that is too short. When the golfer fails to achieve sufficient length in the backswing, instinct takes over and the tendency is to lag and drag the clubhead to try to add power to help the ball reach its target.
Your chest is the engine.
A smooth transition with the thought of your chest rotating towards the target supporting the release is key. It is why keeping your head down is one of the worst tips you can get as it prevents the natural rotation of your chest towards the target.
As with all shots in golf, you must not think your job is done the moment you make contact with the ball. Keep your chest rotating towards the target, the hips will then rotate as a reaction to your chest. The rotation will feel natural if your shoulders are level at address. You will find it hard to rotate if your shoulders are excessively tilted at address.
A checklist is a powerful way of improving your golf. It turns complex details into a series of simple steps. We are all guilty of forgetting or not having the discipline to follow every step of a system.
Many golfers struggle initially to grasp this shot because it involves an element of letting go. Both in terms of quite literally letting go with ultra-light grip pressure, and letting the clubhead swing using its own momentum. Letting gravity play the shot rather than trying to control the clubhead is the key to mastering this classy short-game shot.
If the chip and run was a slight pinch of the ball, this is very much a slide under the ball. Consequently, we need to change our mindset: we do not want to hit the ball first.
You need to stand a little further away from the ball, which allows your arms to hang lower. The shaft angle is lower than for the chip and run, which produces more of an angle between your forearm and left wrist.
Grip pressure needs to be softer than for the chip and run. The lighter you hold the club, particularly in your thumbs, the more the clubhead will release naturally.
A common mistake when trying to get more height is excessively opening the stance and club face. Once you learn Release-2, you do not need to open the clubface at all. In fact, opening the clubface gives you less friction and spin as the ball does not sink into the grooves; it slides diagonally across them.
While there is more of a wrist hinge with this shot, it shouldn’t be forced. Many players start picking the club up very early with their wrists, instead of blending wrist hinge with body rotation. You do not actively hinge the wrists. The setup change to the wrist angle allows the wrist hinge to happen naturally. Focus on keeping the clubhead wide in the backswing to encourage the shallow downswing needed for the clubhead to slide under the ball.
We know lag is a hindrance with Release-1. It really is a killer for Release-2 because it requires more clubhead release. If you create lag in the early part of the downswing, you will need to have a lot of late manipulation to return the clubhead to the ball correctly. Mastering transition is not easy. It takes a lot of bravery, trust, and training to allow gravity to swing the clubhead.
One aspect to look out for is not getting sufficient length of backswing. Instinct then takes over, creating lag in order to hit the ball the required distance.
It is important you do not just focus on your release and have no chest rotation to support it. This action could be described as a flick, which brings its own problems when it comes to consistency of strike.
Thinking of keeping your triceps attached to your rib cage throughout this shot will stop the arms from separating. Feel like your elbows fold in towards your rib cage to keep your release relaxed.
Just as keeping your head down for the chip and run caused an issue, it further hinders the soft-landing shot. Let your eyes follow the ball from the moment it is struck to allow your chest to open up.
Many amateurs lose the loft they set at address by flexing their left wrist downward in the backswing. I like to feel my left wrist cupping (knuckles rotate up towards the sky) as I rotate my chest back. Your backswing length needs to be longer than your instinct will tell you. The loft is now extremely weak so it requires a longer swing.
This is the most exaggerated of the 3 Releases. You need to feel like you are throwing the clubhead with the right hand from the top of the backswing, and working the butt of the grip towards your right hip as early as possible. An image which helps is feeling you are trying to throw a ball underarm as high as you can.
The back edge of the bounce slides under the ball with little or no divot because the bounce acts like the back of a spoon, making it impossible for the clubhead to dig into the ground.
The most common mistake with uphill lies is digging the leading edge into the slope and duffing the shot. This fault occurs primarily because the player hasn’t leveled their shoulders to the slope. In the sequence below, I have adapted my setup to have more weight on my right foot, which drops my right shoulder so my shoulder line matches the slope. This simple move, along with a forward ball position, encourages a shallower angle of attack, allowing the clubhead to slide up the slope instead of digging into it. The more severe the slope, the wider you need to stand to keep your balance as you adjust your shoulders to the slope.
Use less loft than your instinct tells you to compensate.
I prefer to play these shots with Release-2 as it encourages more bounce to help the club slide with the slope.
A ball sitting up looks like an easy shot, but it needs plenty of respect or you can slide the clubhead straight under the ball and it will nowhere.
I want you to imagine turning yourself into a stick person to play this shot. Hover the clubhead at address and firm up your grip pressure, lock your arms, go down the grip and play a Release-1 chip and run shot with no wrist action. This will give you a shallow angle of attack and allow you to chip the ball off the top of the grass.
Wedges are designed so the sole cambers towards the toe to create some bounce relief. This feature is a key part of modern wedge design to give players more versatility. There is very little bounce on the toe of a lofted wedge, which is beneficial when playing this shot as, in this situation, the bounce isn’t your friend due to the tight lie.
Essentially, yipping is an involuntary movement. It tends to make its presence felt either through a twitch or flinch through the strike, or through an unpleasant sensation of feeling “stuck.”
I have not met many amateurs who can say pitching is their strong point. Many simple do not understand this area of the game. They do not approach the shot with a clear concept.
Your concept for pitching should be clear: quite simply, anything that is not a full shot you should definitely as short game.
The clockface approach sounds fantastic, but I have rarely met a player who can do it.
Being able to stop the club at particular positions in the backswing is difficult. After all, we know fell and real in a golf swing are rarely the same thing.
A sign of a good finish is the chest and hips looking at the target with a quiet right ankle, meaning you have not driven up onto your right toe like you would in a full shot. Your finish position with your right arm should match the length of the left arm swing you had going back.
Pitching from the rough.
We talked previously about the need to steepen the angle of attack when chipping out the rough. The same applies to pitching. Playing the ball in the center of your stance with some forward shaft lean. Hinging the wrists earlier going back and bringing the club sharply down will give you the contact you need. From the rough the ball will have less spin so land the ball shorter and allow it to run out further.
A tour pro will get up and down 80% of the time from a good bunker lie.
Historically, golfers have stood a long way open (to the left) with an excessively open clubface and swung across the ball in attempt to slice the ball out of the bunker. This is an outdated technique that evolved around bunkers with much less sand in and wedges with less loft and bounce. Unfortunately, many players still use this technique and struggle as a result.
When you swing excessively across the ball, you have so much momentum going in the wrong direction that you must hit the ball extremely hard to get the ball to the pin. This is difficult because most players are tentative in bunkers anyway. A clubface which is a long way open to the swing path also create problems with the ball having excessive slice spin, which spin to the right, moving away from the hole.
I prefer a much squarer alignment. The heel line should be parallel to the target, which means the toe line will be slightly open as I like to see the front foot flared out 45 degrees. Sending the sand towards the target means you do not need to hit the sand as hard, and distance control becomes easier.
The most common mistake I see is excessive hip action that plays havoc with low point control, leading to inconsistent amounts of sand being taken. A wide stance is crucial in giving you a solid base. I like to see a driver-width stance to provide a good base, and 80% of the weight set on the left side with the lower body.
Many golfers believe where the grooves point is where the loft points. This is true from a standard shaft angle. However, when your shaft lowers, the grooves will point at the target but the actual loft starts pointing left — the technical term is face-plane tilt. You will need to open the face around 30 degrees to get the loft pointing to the target. (It may look open to the target, but it isn’t.)
Your aim in compacted sand is to use a steeper angle of attack with more of a digging action as opposed to a splash.
Moving the ball position back of center and the hands forward removes the bounce, because bounce is not your friend out of this lie. You still need to have the clubface opened to acquired loft, and it is useful to stand more open to encourage a steeper, out-to-in path. The relationship between the lower and upper body needs to be slightly different too. You want your lower and upper body both stacked to the left to help create the steeper angle of attack.
Deep sand is the hardest bunker shot for many amateur. Deep sand invariably leads to shots that move the ball just a few feet.
Many describe the long bunker shot as the “toughest shot in golf” and it is hard to disagree.
Setting expectations is important when faced with challenging shots. It is so easy to hit this shot clean and way over the green. I do not recommend using a SW and trying to take less and with more speed as it is fraught with danger.
Use 9i or PW. Open the clubface as you would for the standard splash shot, take plenty of sand and watch the ball come out lower and run down the green.
Plugged lie is not as frightening as it looks. The key here is to be aggressive, there is no finesses with this shot. Place the ball back of center and lean left. Pick the club up early with lots of wrist hinge and aim to bury the clubhead in the sand around 2 inches behind the ball. There will be little to no follow-through, this is simply due to the amount of force you are applying downward into the sand. The ball will pop out high and will lack spin so you must expect it to run out more than the splash shot.
For the more advanced player you can experiment with a wide-open clubface swinging across the ball, concentrating on the heel beating the toe to the sand. This can help you get the ball to come out softer if you have less green to work with.
On a downslope, use your most lofted club and place the ball back of center with a forward shaft lean. The more severe the slope, the wider your stance needs to be to help you lever your shoulders to match the slope. This is an easy shot to hit way behind the ball.
Upslope are the easiest bunker shots you face as you have a built-in launchpad. It is easy to get the ball to go up, but it can be harder to get it to go forward enough. Use GW or PW.
Once you have mastered the ability to read the lie and use the correct technique, you may want to start working on altering how much you spin the ball. The simplest way to start is to make a line every inch coming back from the ball.
- 1 inch: a lot of spin
- 2 inches: softer and still spin sufficiently
- 3 inches: the ball launch lower with less spin and run out more. This is also known as the “Chunk and Run,” very useful when there is water behind the pin and you do not want to risk carrying the ball to the pin.
The vast majority of golfers, and I would include a lot of elite players here, practice poorly.
You need to pay attention to what the ball is doing, how close it is getting to the hole, but pay far more attention to your setup and swing changes. Commit to the changes and commit to the drills. Remember, in order to make changes we need to exaggerate the new move and be prepared for it to feel uncomfortable and different initially. A good coach will encourage you to feel uncomfortable and not allow you to creep back to what feels comfortable. After all, it is human nature to go easy on ourselves.
Equally, if you hit a good shot, don’t just pull another ball over, reflect on why it was good, what felt different. This is practicing with intent and not just hitting balls.
Make these pressure games challenging. If you practiced less but made it harder you would get far more benefit than lots of easy practice. Easy practice may be good for the ego but won’t see much improvement.
Most of us are pretty good at throwing a ball somewhere near our target. It is an instinctive action, and we seem to be able to judge distance and trajectory automatically.
Most of you would bowl when you have a lot of green to work with and throw it higher if you had to go over a bunker. Therefore, simply go with this mantra: how you would throw is how you would play it.
The question I like to ask players is: “What are you thinking?” Many don’t have an answer. They have no plan or way of coming to a viable conclusion on how they will play the shot and why.
Many golfers arrive at their ball riddled with tension and are simply hoping for a good result. So, the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath and mentally switch on.
Most amateurs make the critical mistake of selecting a club before assessing the lie and shot at hand. If a high shot is required, they attempt to play it regardless of whether the lie allows them to play a lofted shot.
Many amateurs are not able to visualize, not because they cannot, they have just never tried to, or been sufficiently aware of the components that go into a short game pre-shot routine.
As a rough guide for a chip and run, the ball will land a quarter of the way and run three quarters with a 7i. A 9i is approximately one-third carry and two-thirds run out. A gap wedge is 50-50.
Once you have played your shot, it is important to spend some time reflecting on it. If it went well, what was good about it? Did you hit your landing spot? Was the flight as you visualized? Reinforce what you did well. A lot of golfers focus on what they need to do better, when focusing on what you did well is equally powerful in cementing improvements.
The pros would spend more time looking at the area between the ball and the pin. They would then have a few practice swings. Their eyes would start from the ball and move to the landing area and then the hole. They would track the break if there was a slope. Then they looked over the ball, looked where they wanted to land the ball, then the hole, then every pro’s final look was where they wanted to land the ball. They stared at this spot for a couple of seconds before they played the shot, really painting a picture of the shot they intended to play.
Look at something long enough and the image becomes imprinted in your mind, even when you look away from it. This is really powerful in terms of improving your natural feel.
The amateur results were very different. Their red dot was in most cases fixated on the hole. They paid little attention to where they wanted to land the ball. Consequently, they painted an incomplete picture. Several amateurs also kept their eyes fixed on the ground as they made their practice swings.
At school you study and write things down to learn them. The problem with sport is we just tend to go and do it.
I like players to record a very simple statistic from within 30y of the green and write down how many shots it took to get the ball into the hole.