All credit to Dave Pelz and his book: Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible
Publisher: Doubleday
Copyright 2000, New York.
I didn't call this book "THE" short game bible. It's "MY" short game bible, Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible. I make that distinction because it is the work-in-progress record of my research, what I understand about the game, and how I teach the short game of golf. This book is not intended to say "everything" about the game and all of its shots or to convert golfers to any particular theory or method of play. My short game bible contains my research on how the game is being played and my thoughts on how it can be played better, i.e., how golfers can shoot lower scores.
My short game bible will show you why and how shooting lower scores is completely reasonable, as well as why "where you putt from is more important than how well you putt," and why "if you can wedge it, putt it, and driver it, you can play this game."
Who cares about Score?
1.1 Defining the Scoring Game
In golf, how you play inside of 100 yards is the prime determinant of how you score. Just take a look at the PGA Tour's approaches from inside 100 yards statistics. There is a strong correlation between solid play and their rank in this category (obviously we still need to factor in putting and ball striking). I don't say this play completely determines your golf score, just that it is the most significant factor when it comes to writing numbers on your scorecard. I base this statement on more than 23 years of studying golfers and compiling data, which show that 60% to 65% of all golf shots occur inside 100 yards of the hole. More important, about 80% of the shots golfers lose to par occur inside 100 yards. These results led me to focus on what happens inside 100 yards. This book focuses completely on play from 100 yards in to the edge of the green.
Golf's most important distance is the "Golden Eight," the eight feet that separate a two-foot putt from a 10 foot putt. More simply put, the Golden Eight is the distance difference between making and missing most of your putts. I've studied thousands of golfers, at all skill levels, and found that nearly everybody makes almost every putt from inside two feet. Go a little farther away, to three feet, and golfers begin to miss (even Tour pros make only 95% of their three-footers). Step back to five feet and pros hole about 75%, while amateurs, if they're lucky, are making about 50%. And at six feet, the best in the world, sink about 65%, plus or minus 5%. So your best chance of making a putt is if its inside 10 feet. And how do you get it there? Answer: wedges, pitches, chips, and bunker shots of your short game.
My research shows that the short game is the single greatest influence on the success or failure of players on the PGA Tour. It also shows that the higher your scores, the more you need a good short game. Beginners and high handicappers hit fewer greens than better players which means they face more short-game shots per round. The more you need your short game, the better it has to be if you're going to become a good player. So while the short game is the bread-and-butter skill to the Tour players, it's of even greater consequence to "normal" golfers. The truth is, very few golfers, even at the Tour-player level, understand the details and realities of their short games. Don't be intimidated or discouraged by the number of different shots and areas of practice that are comprised by the 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.
2.3 Shot Performance Evaluation
The best measure of a swing is the golfer's accuracy in moving a ball from point A to point B. For example, if a golfer is 100 yards from the hole and finishes 7 yards from the hole then the percentage error in this shot would be 7%=7 yards/100 yards. In my analysis, if the golfer made a perfect swing, with 0% error, the ball would have gone in the hole. 100 shots with a particular club is called the average of the percentage error. The first thing I learned after recording enough data was that the average PGA Tour player has an average PEI for all his full swings (drives, 4irons, 9irons, etc.) of 7, meaning an average of 7% error. I also learned that if he had a PEI of 7 for his shots from 100 yards to the green, sticking the ball about 20 feet from the pin, he would think that wasn't too bad. From a full wedge swing, a 20 foot putt for birdie was ok. Most pros seemed satisfied with that. What he wasn't happy with was having a 200 yard shot, hitting his 3 iron, and plugging the ball into the bunker. From the plugged lie he couldn't blast out close to the pin, meaning he had to get real aggressive to save his par. So he rolled his first par-saving putt four feet past, missing the putt coming back and taking a double bogey. After his round he said, My 3iron killed me! I'm a terrible long iron player. I hit my 3 iron 40 feet left of the hole and it cost me a double bogey. It ruined my round. My long iron play was the downfall again." He trudged off the practice tee and beat on that 3 iron for the rest of the day. The funny thing is, I measured the error on the 200 yard 3iron shot and it was 14 yards--42 feet. That's a 7% error.
He hit the same "quality" shot with a 3 iron that he hit with a full wedge. He was tickled pink with the wedge, he was red with rage over the 3 iron. But he was convinced he didn't know how to swing a 3 iron. I say his swing with the 3 iron had the same quality of motion as his swing with the wedge. The numbers prove it. On average, the Tour players had--and still have--about 7% error in their full swings: 5% was the very best, 10% shots were poor. A 1% or 2% error shot was truly rare, while 15% to 20% was awful, and also very rare. Every player-every one, bar none -had a very different PEI for his full swing than for his wedges which was usually at least twice and, for some players, three times as high. Tom Simons was 8% with his full swing, but about 17% with his wedges which is more than twice as bad. Andy North was 7.3% with his full swing and 16% with his wedges, while Kite was 7.5% and 13% respectively. These were three among the better wedge results.
Players who hit iron shots to within 5% to 6% of the pin don't make much more money than those who hit them to within 7% to 8% of the pin. The putting PEI data showed that the better a player putts the more money he wins--all other things being equal. There is a strong correlation to the short game however. Any player who was good with his wedges was also good at cashing checks. When you are holding a wedge, it's distance that should concern you, because if you don't hit the ball the right distance, you can forget about having a high probability of holing those birdie putts. In summation, if you want to score, the most important "game" to improve is your short game. Second most important is your putting game. And the least important game is your power swing/ ball-striking game.
If golf were only one swing and you were really good at it, it would seem logical that you would (or at least could) be good at all aspects of the game. However, this has never happened! Even Jack Nicklaus had relative weaknesses in his game (his sand game, and he wasn't the all time best striker). If you accept the possibility that each game is unique--and therefore that different swings must be learned--I can detail those differences. There isn't one swing, there are three.
Chapter 4: Mechanics of the short game
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 way to tame adrenaline then is obvious: don't use your muscles to power your short game. Instead, let the power gone from the energy provided by your finesse-swing motion. 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 short shots and use what we call in our schools "dead hands." If you're swinging with dead hands, those small muscles have only two jobs:
Finding the Center of Your Stance
Since without thinking, golfers move the ball forward and back a few inches in their stance, up and down along the target line nothing much looks different and they 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. You can get away with moving the ball back in the stance a bit--the shot would just be a little lower than normal. But moving the ball forward in your stance for short shots is asking for fat shots. The center of your stance is not halfway between your toes, because your feet are almost always angled in or out to some extent, and golfers tend to balance their weight on the ground through their ankles.
There's a great 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 finesse swing.
Grip is not the most important fundamental in the short game, as it falls somewhere behind alignment, ball position, and stability. Having said that, I think there is a preferred short game grip, and using it will make this game easier. The preferred grip is fairly weak where the Vs formed by thumbs and forefingers should point to the center or left side of your chin, with the palms parallel to each other and perpendicular to the target line. I would suggest sticking with your normal full swing grip.
Finesse Swing Plane
The finesse-swing plane is the very steep angle that passes through your shoulders and the ball when you are at address.
Hold, Watch, and Feel: Learning from Feedback
It's very important to hold your body finish position until the ball lands and you can see the results. The correlation between how you swung and how the ball flew will be fresher in your mind. That is just the feedback you need to prepare you subconscious to play your best in the future. As you hold your finish, feel the swing you just made and watch how the ball flies and where it stops. To become a great player, you've got to notice flight trajectories, carry distances, and how your shots react on the greens, and file those impressions away with your kinesthetic sensations of the swing--length, rhythm, and so on--so your brain can correlate the information for future benefit. You don't have to think about all of this, but you do have to see these results: feel your swings, watch your shots, and let your subconscious do the rest.
This is what learning is all about: assembling and assimilating information in your brain so it learn 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 you 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. Biofeedback studies have shown that a human's short term feel memory is very short: Every eight seconds you lose about 30% of the sensations or feelings you have generated--if no new ones have come along. If you do add new sensations, they immediately cover up the old.
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 that first eight 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. You can practice that way forever and never improve. But if you get to the follow-through, hold it, and watch your shot land (usually 4-6 seconds after you strike it), you'll probably hold on to 80% of the feeling generated during the swing.
You can't remember the feeling of a swing made a few minutes ago if you've made several new ones since. But if within eight seconds you see the ball land five yards past your target, which was at 43 yards, your mind will file away an input of that vision correlated with a strong set of feelings and sensations in a memory of what produced that 48 yard shot.
Watch great players. Both when they practice and when they play they hold their finish on shots until they see the results of their swing motion. In putting you should hold and feel your arm swing at the finish. In short game it's your finesse turn, you body's motion, that determines where your shot is going, and therefore that is what you must hold in your finish position. You can lower your arms after wedge shots, because they didn't control the shot, but you must hold and feel your final body position, letting your brain correlate the sensations with the result.
The World-Class Finish
I divide all finesse swings into two types, those for shots that carry over 30 yards and those fore shots that carry less than 30 yards. The distinction is based on how each swing should finish. For longer finesse shots, those between 30 yards and just short of your power-swing distance with same club--make a full, complete finish, transferring all your weight onto your forward foot. I've found that asking a student to concentrate on making a full finish removes his instinct to "hit" shots.
For shots under 30 yards, you can't use a full finish because you'll carry the ball too far. So between 10 and 30 yards, shorten both your back and through swing lengths, using shorter swings for shorter shots. For stability's sake, make sure your follow-through is always at least 50% longer than your backswing.
Distance Control is the Issue
Scoring is not about hitting every shot perfectly. Scoring is about getting away with your misses, avoiding penalties, taking advantage (by saving a stroke) of the good shots you hit, and getting up and down when you miss the green. Scoring is about optimizing your talents by playing to your strengths and away from your weaknesses, and lowering the number you write on the scorecard. You need to stick the ball in the "Golden Eight" range, consistently leaving yourself putts inside 10 feet.
We teach what our research shows us works for real golfers who practice and improve. I mention this so you know how my "3x4 System" for controlling wedge distances was discovered, and how it will help you learn to score better. This system works every time for those who learn it.
The ability to hit your short game shots specific distances--say 21 yards when the pin is 24 yards away, or 12 yards when you need to land the ball at that spot so it can roll to the pin--is what my scoring game system is all about. Once you begin mastering a solid grip, perfect ball position, clubhead stability through impact, short-to-long swings, and the synchronization of your finesse swings, this development and honing of yours skills allows you to bring more precision into your short game shot distances. You need to be exact enough to stick the ball in the "Golden Eight" range, consistently leaving yourself putts inside 10 feet. It's from 30 yards--or 60 or 47--where we can control the shot's accuracy within one or two yards, that we need to know the exact distance, because we can almost always leave our shots in the "Golden Eight" from there.
The only way I could think to teach Tour pros precision distance control was to take them out to a practice area, give them visible targets at known distances, and reward them with immediate, accurate, reliable feedback on each swing until they learned to do it right. After staying at a yardage for a few shots--giving the player a chance to become accustomed to carrying the ball say 50 yards (which he would do surprisingly well once he had the feel for the proper swing)--I'd ask Eddie to go to a new yardage--say 70--and we'd repeat the process. After another 20 to 30 shots, we'd move to say 30 yards, then 90, then 60, 25, 40 and all around They all hit thousands of wedge shots and received immediate, accurate feedback at the conclusion of each shot and, very important, while still holding their follow-throughs. It worked, although not immediately. We found that no matter how good a player became during a practice session he/she would have regressed by 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. So we kept on practicing with feedback, and the improvement began to be measurable on the course and in tournament play. More finesse shots began to finish close to the holes, more up and downs were being converted, and their bank account balances began to grow.
As time passed, I noticed that after a few wedge sessions, the swings of the players began to look more rhythmic. Each player seemed to be swinging with less effort, and somehow the wedge swings were smoother than they had been in the beginning. What I later realized was happening was that their subconscious minds were learning to correlate the feel of their swings with distance thier shots would fly. The smoother the swing, the easier it can be felt, recognized, and repeated. Herky-jerky swings are hard to "feel" and remember; smooth swings are easy. They were subconsciously developing synchronized finesse swings long before I knew what a synchronized finesse swing was. As I studied these swing changes, I realized they were no long coiling in their backsings, and the rhythm of their moves were becoming consistent with their personalities. I could see they were removing their hand and forearm muscles from supplying the power for the shots. They found subconsciously that their shots were more accurate more reliable, and more easily reproduced when they took their hands and the "hit" out of their swings. It's vital for you realize that this system of controlling the length of your shots with length of your backswing works only if you always swing at the same rhythm and always follow through to a full complete finish. The farther back you take it, the faster the clubhead is traveling when it reaches the ball. And the faster the clubhead is moving, the longer the shot. Short backswings for short shots, long backswings for long shots. It's a simple concept and it works so well.
As I developed my ability to predict shot yardages from swing visions, I began to name the different swings I saw. There was the full swing. Then there was the 3/4 swing, when the ball flew three-quarters (75%) of the full swing distance. And there was the 1/2 swing, when it flew half (50%) of the distance of the full swing. As I continued working with various Tour players, we needed to refer to swings between the 1/2 and 3/4 positions, and we named them in accordance to where the left arm points on a clock. There is the 10:30 position (full swing), the 9:00 position (3/4 swing), the 7:30 position (1/2 swing). If they wanted to hit the ball slightly farther than their 9:00 distance, they took their backswing to 9:15 or 9:30. A slightly shorter shot became an 8:30 swing. To set this concept in your mind, look carefully and imagine these three swings all in the same rhythm. It's that simple. With constant rhythm finesse swings, distance is controlled by backswing length or time.
Because of the shorter shaft, more upright swing plane, and the requirements of dead hands and synchronization, you should never take any club back past 10:30 in a short game shot. Begin each swing with a "slowish" one piece takeaway to the top of the backswing (slow by your standards, not in compaison to anyone else). Come down through the impact zone aggressively (not hard, but positive: Imagine "saawish-swish" is your backswing to through swing rhythm) and make a full, high, well balanced finish. You should be able to hold your pose with your weight fully on your left side and only the right toe touching the ground. Cock your wrists continuously, gradually as you make your backswing, and have them fully cocked before you get to the right backswing "time." If you wait to cock your wrists until you've reached the right time, the swing will carry on as you cock and get too long for the distance you want. Also, keep your left arm extended throughout the swing, until it folds at the finish. Not only will this keep your swing radius constant, but it's the easy way to judge backswing time and length.
It's 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 100 yards. Who do you think will win?
Like the pros, you'll probably find the 9:00 o'clock swings are the easiest to make and the 7:30 much more difficult. I've seen this over and over again with thousands of students. You especially want to think rhythm back and through with both your hips and upper body synchronized on the 7:30 swing.
Go to a practice range and hit between 10 and 20 solid shots with each finesse swing and each of your wedges. Walk off or laser the carry distances of the sold shots, write down the yardages, then average the numbers to determine your numbers for that particular finesse swing. Write these averages on a little piece of paper and stick it to the shaft of your wedges, or in a yardage book. Both of these are perfectly legal by USGA rules. It's very satisfyng to know you have the right club and the right swing for the shot at hand. It makes the swing easier to execute.
Preshot Preparation
Before you decide what shot to hit and how, you must weigh several-many variables.
Minimum vs. Maximum Spin
To consistently pitch and wedge your shots and stop them withing the "Golden Eight" feet surrounding the flagstick, you should be aware of how much/ how little backspin can be imparted on shots from different lie conditions.
Begin by understanding that a golf ball bounces off a firm surface (when there is no significant pitch mark) like a beam of light bouncing off a reflective surface (where incoming angle = outgoing angle).
When the slope of a landing area is changed by 10 degrees, the ball's bounce angle is 20 degrees.
Publisher: Doubleday
Copyright 2000, New York.
- Who Cares About Score?
- Defining the scoring game
- Shot Performance Evaluation
- Mechanics of the Short Game
- Alignment is critical
- Finding the center of the stance
- A concept of stability
- A synchronized turn
- Rhythm and timing
- Cocking and grip
- Finesse swing plane
- Hold, Watch, and Feel: Learning from Feedback
- The World-Class Finish
- Distance Control is the Issue
- Preshot Preparation
- Preshot Ritual
- Distance Wedges
- Distance wedge execution
- Shot behavior
I didn't call this book "THE" short game bible. It's "MY" short game bible, Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible. I make that distinction because it is the work-in-progress record of my research, what I understand about the game, and how I teach the short game of golf. This book is not intended to say "everything" about the game and all of its shots or to convert golfers to any particular theory or method of play. My short game bible contains my research on how the game is being played and my thoughts on how it can be played better, i.e., how golfers can shoot lower scores.
My short game bible will show you why and how shooting lower scores is completely reasonable, as well as why "where you putt from is more important than how well you putt," and why "if you can wedge it, putt it, and driver it, you can play this game."
Who cares about Score?
1.1 Defining the Scoring Game
In golf, how you play inside of 100 yards is the prime determinant of how you score. Just take a look at the PGA Tour's approaches from inside 100 yards statistics. There is a strong correlation between solid play and their rank in this category (obviously we still need to factor in putting and ball striking). I don't say this play completely determines your golf score, just that it is the most significant factor when it comes to writing numbers on your scorecard. I base this statement on more than 23 years of studying golfers and compiling data, which show that 60% to 65% of all golf shots occur inside 100 yards of the hole. More important, about 80% of the shots golfers lose to par occur inside 100 yards. These results led me to focus on what happens inside 100 yards. This book focuses completely on play from 100 yards in to the edge of the green.
Golf's most important distance is the "Golden Eight," the eight feet that separate a two-foot putt from a 10 foot putt. More simply put, the Golden Eight is the distance difference between making and missing most of your putts. I've studied thousands of golfers, at all skill levels, and found that nearly everybody makes almost every putt from inside two feet. Go a little farther away, to three feet, and golfers begin to miss (even Tour pros make only 95% of their three-footers). Step back to five feet and pros hole about 75%, while amateurs, if they're lucky, are making about 50%. And at six feet, the best in the world, sink about 65%, plus or minus 5%. So your best chance of making a putt is if its inside 10 feet. And how do you get it there? Answer: wedges, pitches, chips, and bunker shots of your short game.
My research shows that the short game is the single greatest influence on the success or failure of players on the PGA Tour. It also shows that the higher your scores, the more you need a good short game. Beginners and high handicappers hit fewer greens than better players which means they face more short-game shots per round. The more you need your short game, the better it has to be if you're going to become a good player. So while the short game is the bread-and-butter skill to the Tour players, it's of even greater consequence to "normal" golfers. The truth is, very few golfers, even at the Tour-player level, understand the details and realities of their short games. Don't be intimidated or discouraged by the number of different shots and areas of practice that are comprised by the 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.
2.3 Shot Performance Evaluation
The best measure of a swing is the golfer's accuracy in moving a ball from point A to point B. For example, if a golfer is 100 yards from the hole and finishes 7 yards from the hole then the percentage error in this shot would be 7%=7 yards/100 yards. In my analysis, if the golfer made a perfect swing, with 0% error, the ball would have gone in the hole. 100 shots with a particular club is called the average of the percentage error. The first thing I learned after recording enough data was that the average PGA Tour player has an average PEI for all his full swings (drives, 4irons, 9irons, etc.) of 7, meaning an average of 7% error. I also learned that if he had a PEI of 7 for his shots from 100 yards to the green, sticking the ball about 20 feet from the pin, he would think that wasn't too bad. From a full wedge swing, a 20 foot putt for birdie was ok. Most pros seemed satisfied with that. What he wasn't happy with was having a 200 yard shot, hitting his 3 iron, and plugging the ball into the bunker. From the plugged lie he couldn't blast out close to the pin, meaning he had to get real aggressive to save his par. So he rolled his first par-saving putt four feet past, missing the putt coming back and taking a double bogey. After his round he said, My 3iron killed me! I'm a terrible long iron player. I hit my 3 iron 40 feet left of the hole and it cost me a double bogey. It ruined my round. My long iron play was the downfall again." He trudged off the practice tee and beat on that 3 iron for the rest of the day. The funny thing is, I measured the error on the 200 yard 3iron shot and it was 14 yards--42 feet. That's a 7% error.
He hit the same "quality" shot with a 3 iron that he hit with a full wedge. He was tickled pink with the wedge, he was red with rage over the 3 iron. But he was convinced he didn't know how to swing a 3 iron. I say his swing with the 3 iron had the same quality of motion as his swing with the wedge. The numbers prove it. On average, the Tour players had--and still have--about 7% error in their full swings: 5% was the very best, 10% shots were poor. A 1% or 2% error shot was truly rare, while 15% to 20% was awful, and also very rare. Every player-every one, bar none -had a very different PEI for his full swing than for his wedges which was usually at least twice and, for some players, three times as high. Tom Simons was 8% with his full swing, but about 17% with his wedges which is more than twice as bad. Andy North was 7.3% with his full swing and 16% with his wedges, while Kite was 7.5% and 13% respectively. These were three among the better wedge results.
Players who hit iron shots to within 5% to 6% of the pin don't make much more money than those who hit them to within 7% to 8% of the pin. The putting PEI data showed that the better a player putts the more money he wins--all other things being equal. There is a strong correlation to the short game however. Any player who was good with his wedges was also good at cashing checks. When you are holding a wedge, it's distance that should concern you, because if you don't hit the ball the right distance, you can forget about having a high probability of holing those birdie putts. In summation, if you want to score, the most important "game" to improve is your short game. Second most important is your putting game. And the least important game is your power swing/ ball-striking game.
If golf were only one swing and you were really good at it, it would seem logical that you would (or at least could) be good at all aspects of the game. However, this has never happened! Even Jack Nicklaus had relative weaknesses in his game (his sand game, and he wasn't the all time best striker). If you accept the possibility that each game is unique--and therefore that different swings must be learned--I can detail those differences. There isn't one swing, there are three.
Chapter 4: Mechanics of the short game
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 way to tame adrenaline then is obvious: don't use your muscles to power your short game. Instead, let the power gone from the energy provided by your finesse-swing motion. 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 short shots and use what we call in our schools "dead hands." If you're swinging with dead hands, those small muscles have only two jobs:
- to cock the wrists during the backswing
- to hold on to the club
Begin using the length and rhythm of the finesse swing to power the short game shots. You feel the centrifugal force (outward pulling) and natural motion of the swing powering the shots, rather than "hitting" shots with your hand and arm muscles. And you hold your finish, retaining the feel of your swing until each shot lands and you can see how far it flew. While practice swinging, you should focus on finding a smooth repeatable rhythm that you can imagine producing the results you want. Once you can see, feel, and judge the proper motion with a practice swing, you'll be able to repeat it in a real swing; from there it's a small step to doing the same thing during a match when your heart is pounding and your muscles are pumped full of adrenaline. Take several practice swings until you make one that looks and feels really good, that will produce the shot that you want, the way it did on the practice tee earlier that day, last week, last month. This is called "making a preview swing." Once you see and feel that rhythm and make a perfect dead-hands preview swing, it's easy to step up to the ball, repeat it, and produce the result you expect on the course.
Alignment is Critical
The setup and alignment of your body is one of the most important fundamentals of your short game. Because your instincts are to control and execute compensations with your hands, and are totally target oriented, correct alignment is critical if your body is going to learn to make fundamentally correct swings with dead hands. In the short game, aim poorly and a good swing will hit a bad shot, so you'll have to make compensations to produce the desired results. And in the short game, a compensating swing is a bad swing.
Every time you practice, take a club you aren't going to hit and carefully lay it down slightly left of your intended target.
Finding the Center of Your Stance
Since without thinking, golfers move the ball forward and back a few inches in their stance, up and down along the target line nothing much looks different and they 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. You can get away with moving the ball back in the stance a bit--the shot would just be a little lower than normal. But moving the ball forward in your stance for short shots is asking for fat shots. The center of your stance is not halfway between your toes, because your feet are almost always angled in or out to some extent, and golfers tend to balance their weight on the ground through their ankles.
Perfect ball position for finesse swing
- 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.
- Distance wedge and pitch shots from normal lies: Position the ball in the exact center of your stance. Your front foot should be turned out toward the target by about 30 to 45 degrees (this creates a slightly open stance, which will encourage your hips to turn through impact without resistance from your lower body).
- Bunker shots: you want to contact the sand behind the ball, scoot the club under and past the ball, and use the sand to blow the ball out. To hit behind a ball from a good bunker lie, first aim to the left, then position the ball inside the heel line of your left foot.
A Concept of Stability
Good short-game players swing their short-game clubs in a stable motion. A "long to short" swing (long backswing, short follow through) is a common error in the short game and produces unstable wedges through impact (the opposite of what we want). The problem is the physical reaction of the club to the slowing of the hands and the shaft. Once the clubhead begins pushing, the motion becomes unstable, and unstable clubheads produce bad shots. If the clubhead is unstable through impact, then it is free to rotate as the force dictates, turning with a severity directly related to contact distance from the sweet spot. On the other hand, an accelerating clubhead won't rotate as much from a mishit, because it's trying to follow the pulling shaft, and less energy is lost. There's a great 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 finesse swing.
It will take time to attain stability with the clubface if shortening your backswing on short game shots is new to you. If you learn nothing else, learn this: A sure killer of a good finesse game is the overlong backswing.
The Synchronized Turn
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.
Eliminate all coiling and 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. Low power is what the finesse swing and the short game are all about. Combine a dead hand's swing with a synchronized turn. Let the momentum of your finesse swing get the hands moving. This well help develop tremendous touch.
Rhythm and Timing
Use the rhythm of a synchronized body turn. Keep the arms relaxed and extended and keep the hands relaxed/ "dead." Let the momentum of your finesse swing get them moving.
Cocking and Grip
The cocking of the wrists is up, not hinging back or through, and it should occur gradually throughout the backswing.
Grip is not the most important fundamental in the short game, as it falls somewhere behind alignment, ball position, and stability. Having said that, I think there is a preferred short game grip, and using it will make this game easier. The preferred grip is fairly weak where the Vs formed by thumbs and forefingers should point to the center or left side of your chin, with the palms parallel to each other and perpendicular to the target line. I would suggest sticking with your normal full swing grip.
Finesse Swing Plane
The finesse-swing plane is the very steep angle that passes through your shoulders and the ball when you are at address.
Hold, Watch, and Feel: Learning from Feedback
It's very important to hold your body finish position until the ball lands and you can see the results. The correlation between how you swung and how the ball flew will be fresher in your mind. That is just the feedback you need to prepare you subconscious to play your best in the future. As you hold your finish, feel the swing you just made and watch how the ball flies and where it stops. To become a great player, you've got to notice flight trajectories, carry distances, and how your shots react on the greens, and file those impressions away with your kinesthetic sensations of the swing--length, rhythm, and so on--so your brain can correlate the information for future benefit. You don't have to think about all of this, but you do have to see these results: feel your swings, watch your shots, and let your subconscious do the rest.
This is what learning is all about: assembling and assimilating information in your brain so it learn 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 you 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. Biofeedback studies have shown that a human's short term feel memory is very short: Every eight seconds you lose about 30% of the sensations or feelings you have generated--if no new ones have come along. If you do add new sensations, they immediately cover up the old.
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 that first eight 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. You can practice that way forever and never improve. But if you get to the follow-through, hold it, and watch your shot land (usually 4-6 seconds after you strike it), you'll probably hold on to 80% of the feeling generated during the swing.
You can't remember the feeling of a swing made a few minutes ago if you've made several new ones since. But if within eight seconds you see the ball land five yards past your target, which was at 43 yards, your mind will file away an input of that vision correlated with a strong set of feelings and sensations in a memory of what produced that 48 yard shot.
Watch great players. Both when they practice and when they play they hold their finish on shots until they see the results of their swing motion. In putting you should hold and feel your arm swing at the finish. In short game it's your finesse turn, you body's motion, that determines where your shot is going, and therefore that is what you must hold in your finish position. You can lower your arms after wedge shots, because they didn't control the shot, but you must hold and feel your final body position, letting your brain correlate the sensations with the result.
The World-Class Finish
I divide all finesse swings into two types, those for shots that carry over 30 yards and those fore shots that carry less than 30 yards. The distinction is based on how each swing should finish. For longer finesse shots, those between 30 yards and just short of your power-swing distance with same club--make a full, complete finish, transferring all your weight onto your forward foot. I've found that asking a student to concentrate on making a full finish removes his instinct to "hit" shots.
For shots under 30 yards, you can't use a full finish because you'll carry the ball too far. So between 10 and 30 yards, shorten both your back and through swing lengths, using shorter swings for shorter shots. For stability's sake, make sure your follow-through is always at least 50% longer than your backswing.
Distance Control is the Issue
Scoring is not about hitting every shot perfectly. Scoring is about getting away with your misses, avoiding penalties, taking advantage (by saving a stroke) of the good shots you hit, and getting up and down when you miss the green. Scoring is about optimizing your talents by playing to your strengths and away from your weaknesses, and lowering the number you write on the scorecard. You need to stick the ball in the "Golden Eight" range, consistently leaving yourself putts inside 10 feet.
We teach what our research shows us works for real golfers who practice and improve. I mention this so you know how my "3x4 System" for controlling wedge distances was discovered, and how it will help you learn to score better. This system works every time for those who learn it.
The ability to hit your short game shots specific distances--say 21 yards when the pin is 24 yards away, or 12 yards when you need to land the ball at that spot so it can roll to the pin--is what my scoring game system is all about. Once you begin mastering a solid grip, perfect ball position, clubhead stability through impact, short-to-long swings, and the synchronization of your finesse swings, this development and honing of yours skills allows you to bring more precision into your short game shot distances. You need to be exact enough to stick the ball in the "Golden Eight" range, consistently leaving yourself putts inside 10 feet. It's from 30 yards--or 60 or 47--where we can control the shot's accuracy within one or two yards, that we need to know the exact distance, because we can almost always leave our shots in the "Golden Eight" from there.
The only way I could think to teach Tour pros precision distance control was to take them out to a practice area, give them visible targets at known distances, and reward them with immediate, accurate, reliable feedback on each swing until they learned to do it right. After staying at a yardage for a few shots--giving the player a chance to become accustomed to carrying the ball say 50 yards (which he would do surprisingly well once he had the feel for the proper swing)--I'd ask Eddie to go to a new yardage--say 70--and we'd repeat the process. After another 20 to 30 shots, we'd move to say 30 yards, then 90, then 60, 25, 40 and all around They all hit thousands of wedge shots and received immediate, accurate feedback at the conclusion of each shot and, very important, while still holding their follow-throughs. It worked, although not immediately. We found that no matter how good a player became during a practice session he/she would have regressed by 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. So we kept on practicing with feedback, and the improvement began to be measurable on the course and in tournament play. More finesse shots began to finish close to the holes, more up and downs were being converted, and their bank account balances began to grow.
As time passed, I noticed that after a few wedge sessions, the swings of the players began to look more rhythmic. Each player seemed to be swinging with less effort, and somehow the wedge swings were smoother than they had been in the beginning. What I later realized was happening was that their subconscious minds were learning to correlate the feel of their swings with distance thier shots would fly. The smoother the swing, the easier it can be felt, recognized, and repeated. Herky-jerky swings are hard to "feel" and remember; smooth swings are easy. They were subconsciously developing synchronized finesse swings long before I knew what a synchronized finesse swing was. As I studied these swing changes, I realized they were no long coiling in their backsings, and the rhythm of their moves were becoming consistent with their personalities. I could see they were removing their hand and forearm muscles from supplying the power for the shots. They found subconsciously that their shots were more accurate more reliable, and more easily reproduced when they took their hands and the "hit" out of their swings. It's vital for you realize that this system of controlling the length of your shots with length of your backswing works only if you always swing at the same rhythm and always follow through to a full complete finish. The farther back you take it, the faster the clubhead is traveling when it reaches the ball. And the faster the clubhead is moving, the longer the shot. Short backswings for short shots, long backswings for long shots. It's a simple concept and it works so well.
As I developed my ability to predict shot yardages from swing visions, I began to name the different swings I saw. There was the full swing. Then there was the 3/4 swing, when the ball flew three-quarters (75%) of the full swing distance. And there was the 1/2 swing, when it flew half (50%) of the distance of the full swing. As I continued working with various Tour players, we needed to refer to swings between the 1/2 and 3/4 positions, and we named them in accordance to where the left arm points on a clock. There is the 10:30 position (full swing), the 9:00 position (3/4 swing), the 7:30 position (1/2 swing). If they wanted to hit the ball slightly farther than their 9:00 distance, they took their backswing to 9:15 or 9:30. A slightly shorter shot became an 8:30 swing. To set this concept in your mind, look carefully and imagine these three swings all in the same rhythm. It's that simple. With constant rhythm finesse swings, distance is controlled by backswing length or time.
Because of the shorter shaft, more upright swing plane, and the requirements of dead hands and synchronization, you should never take any club back past 10:30 in a short game shot. Begin each swing with a "slowish" one piece takeaway to the top of the backswing (slow by your standards, not in compaison to anyone else). Come down through the impact zone aggressively (not hard, but positive: Imagine "saawish-swish" is your backswing to through swing rhythm) and make a full, high, well balanced finish. You should be able to hold your pose with your weight fully on your left side and only the right toe touching the ground. Cock your wrists continuously, gradually as you make your backswing, and have them fully cocked before you get to the right backswing "time." If you wait to cock your wrists until you've reached the right time, the swing will carry on as you cock and get too long for the distance you want. Also, keep your left arm extended throughout the swing, until it folds at the finish. Not only will this keep your swing radius constant, but it's the easy way to judge backswing time and length.
It's 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 100 yards. Who do you think will win?
Like the pros, you'll probably find the 9:00 o'clock swings are the easiest to make and the 7:30 much more difficult. I've seen this over and over again with thousands of students. You especially want to think rhythm back and through with both your hips and upper body synchronized on the 7:30 swing.
Go to a practice range and hit between 10 and 20 solid shots with each finesse swing and each of your wedges. Walk off or laser the carry distances of the sold shots, write down the yardages, then average the numbers to determine your numbers for that particular finesse swing. Write these averages on a little piece of paper and stick it to the shaft of your wedges, or in a yardage book. Both of these are perfectly legal by USGA rules. It's very satisfyng to know you have the right club and the right swing for the shot at hand. It makes the swing easier to execute.
Preshot Preparation
Before you decide what shot to hit and how, you must weigh several-many variables.
- When you arrive at your ball, first look at the lie. Is it okay? If not, what compensations 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 (or if you aren't shooting at the green, to your predetermined target)? 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?
As you handle these considerations, your mind factors, calculates, and evaluates how they influence club selection. Sometimes it's easy, other times not so easy. 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. After making your first set of decisions--what shot to hit and with what club--the next step is to focus on visualizing the shot in your mind until you can see it clearly. Then imagine the swing that will make that shot happen. Make several practice swings to internalize the look and feel of the perfect swing, standing as close to the actual grass and slope as possible (But be careful not to move the ball; that's a penalty).
The goal of the preparation process is to see and feel the exact swing you are going to make before you try 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 two, or three, or four more, if necessary until you are completely comfortable. (This doesn't have to drag out your pace of play: start your preparation before it's your turn to hit.)
Preshot Ritual
The reason for a preshot ritual is simple: the rhythm you have immediately before a swing affects the rhythm of that swing. A good preshot ritual tells you when to start the swing. It prepares you both mentally and physically to repeat the swing motion and rhythm you have practiced so often, preparing you to succeed in executing the shot you want to hit. It's a habit you can develop if you use it religiously on every shot, every time, on the practice tee and on the course.
Chapter 6 Distance Wedges
The short game is more than choosing the right shot: You also have to plan for its reaction on the green. Sometimes it's wise to allow a margin for human error, as well as for nonhuman error. Re-examine that shot in detail. You thought the pin was 53 yards away, but really it was 51, a minor miscalculation. You hit the ball almost perfectly , except it carried 51 yards instead of 50, not bad. The green was slightly firmer than you expected, so your first bounce was harder, and went farther, then planned, four yards to the back of the green instead of three. And it rolled forward instead of biting like you wanted. And you didn't know the hill behind the green had just been cut, allowing the ball to find the water.
Nothing more than a combination of small mistakes and misjudgments, resulting in a double bogey instead of a birdie after a well-hit shot. It happens all the time. That's golf. In the short game, unlike the power game, what happens after the ball hits the ground is often as important to the final result as the way it was struck. Put another way, selecting the right shot often is as important as how you hit it. Your performance on every short-game shot will always be a result of not only how well you choose which shot to hit, but also how well you execute your physical swing. It is also the result of the ball's behavior after it leaves your club. (By performance I mean how close you come to achieving the desired result, the same as the PEIs.) It just isn't enough to make a good swing and clean contact: you also must have judged the behavior requirements of 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. The research proves it.
I've divided short game shots into four basic categories. Of course, within those categories are an infinite number of variations and modifications, depending on the conditions of play.
- Distance wedges (from 30-100 yards off the green)
- Pitches around the green (from inside 30 yards)
- Chipping (from within a few steps of the green) and the bump and run (from inside 100 yards)
- Sand shots (from inside 100 yards)
Luckily, the "generic" shots (good lie, no special difficulty) in all four categories can be handled with the same swing motion, the finesse swing I've been describing (a smooth, synchronized, thythmic turn with all parts of the body moving together). You must master the finesse swing before mastering the short game shots.
Distance Wedge Execution
Your stance should be 14-18 inches wide, just about shoulder width. I recommend having about 60% of your weight on your front foot to hit the ball slightly more penetrating with the wedges. For a longer shot (which calls for a longer backswing), you might stand a little wider for balance; for a shorter shot, slightly narrower. Your entire body should be aligned parallel left. Stand tall with your body in an athletic position--knees slightly flexed, upper body bending forward slightly from the hips, weight centered on the balls of your feet. Crouching or spreading your feet too apart restricts lower body motion and put control of the swing into your hands and arms. Your arms should hang loosely, almost straight down from your shoulders.
The ball should be centered exactly in the middle of your stance, which places it 2-3 inches behind the bottom of your arc.
Shot Behavior
The other half of a distance wedge shot is the behavior of the ball after it lands on, or just short of the green. While exact shot behavior is impossible to predict or describe in these pages, I can give a general outline of what to expect from your distance wedge efforts and a few numbers that may help guide you when practicing this part of your game.
The three wedges:
- 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 and then 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 against the wind. The PW is a good choice off tight lies, but expect a lower trajectory and more spin.
- Sand wedge (SW) -- creates a high, crisp trajectory with lost 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 wind, it will up-shoot with spin and end up short of the intended target. The SW has too much bounce on it's sole (bottom) to be effective from tight lies (pitch shots=difficult, chips shots=ok). However, the bounce makes the SW an excellent choice from deep grass/rough and soft sand.
- 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 pitck 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 good from deep rough or very tall grass.
The depth of your shot's pitch mark in the green can have a greater effect on the shot's subsequent behavior than backspin. The depth of the impact craters made by identical incoming shots can vary with the firmness of the green surface, influencing how far the ball bounces. The forward momentum of every short-game shot is affected by either the depth of the pitch mark it has made, or was not allowed to make due to the green firmness. Most golfers subconsciously understand this, especially in the context of wet, soft greens. With soft greens the shot behavior becomes very predictable because its like throwing darts (each shot sticks where it first hits the green).
Pitch mark depth is also affected by a shot's angle of impact. It shows that on surfaces of the same firmness, three different approach angles can have a dramatic effect on pitch mark depth. Pitch mark depth affects the first bounce forward. I emphasize pitch mark depth because it especially controls how quickly your shots will stop when you are hitting distance wedges and pitch shots to elevated and lowered greens. Hitting a 31 foot high distance wedge shot to a soft green elevated 30 feet above you is like hitting onto a cement hard green. Your shot will make no pitchmark crater and will roll like you can't believe.
Minimum vs. Maximum Spin
To consistently pitch and wedge your shots and stop them withing the "Golden Eight" feet surrounding the flagstick, you should be aware of how much/ how little backspin can be imparted on shots from different lie conditions.
- Low Spin = when there is nothing beneath the ball to pinch it against (ex: when the ball sits up high in the grass).
- Medium Spin = when the surface is beneath the ball is fairly firm so the ball can be pinched against it (ex: a normal lie in trimmed fairway grass).
- High Spin = when the ball is in direct contact with something hard like hardpan dirts or sand. It's very easy to pinch the ball against the dirt or drag it through the sand with any downward attack angle.
Begin by understanding that a golf ball bounces off a firm surface (when there is no significant pitch mark) like a beam of light bouncing off a reflective surface (where incoming angle = outgoing angle).
When the slope of a landing area is changed by 10 degrees, the ball's bounce angle is 20 degrees.
- On a 0* slope, the forward bounce angle is 45* (the ball bounces forward as expected).
- On a 10* upward slope, the forward bounce angle is 65* (the ball stops much more quickly than expected).
- On a 22* upward slope, the forward bounce angle is 89* (the ball bounces straight up, then rolls back toward the golfer).
This effect is exaggerated/ much more noticeablt with wedges because their approach angles are so steep.
To be a good short game player you must be able to hit the shot and know what's going to happen to it. You need to practice enough to learn which combinations of pitch shot 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. I recommend landing all pitch shots at least 3 feet onto the green surface and not in the fringe. The fringe will produce more bad bounces than will the putting surface (especially when they have a slightly downslope built into them. I've notice that the best finesse players use shot trajectory more often than spin to control the bounce and roll on greens. Soft high shots are very predictable when well executed. A well struck, low spinning shot is completely dependent on the amount of spin and the condition of the exact spot on the green where it makes contact.
Distance Wedge Swing Variations
The Grip Down
You never want to "hit" the shot a little harder, or "take a little off" your swing, or decelerate into impact or shorten your follow through to reduce carry distance since those have adverse effects on a rhythmic dead hands finesse swing. The other way to adjust distance is to change the length of the club. To take 4-5 yards off a shot, grip down on the shaft about four-five inches, move a little closer to the ball and make the same swing. Just find a grip down position that feels comfortable and see how many yards that grip takes off your shots.
Low Trajectories
The easiest way to vary shot trajectory from a normal lie is to change the loft of the club you use. It is a lot easier than creating a different swing. However you'll face situations when you want to change the character of a shot, which is done by making slight changes in technique.
When hitting into crosswinds or headwinds we would generally like to lower wedge shot trajectories. Either move the ball back 2 or 3 inches in your stance or lower your follow through and finish with your hands low, shoulder high at most. Either change will slightly reduce the wind effects on your shots. Remember that it's about a 1:1 yard to mph ratio for hitting into a headwind or with a tailwind, and a 1:2 yard to mph ratio for a cross breeze. If you want a more pronounced effect, make both changes, which creates a "knock-down" wedge shot. The trajectory is even lower while maintaining a fair ability to stop shots on the green with lots of backspin. *Note: you must not you your hands in the knock down shot. Be sure to wing through impact keeping your synchronized body turn, but let your hands keep going out toward the target on the follow through rather than folding up and finishing high, as in a normal distance wedge shot.* Go with this shot only when a low shot is absolutely necessary and a lower lofted club won't get the job done.
Judging Shots
To be a good short game player you must be able to hit the shot and know what's going to happen to it. You need to practice enough to learn which combinations of pitch shot 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. I recommend landing all pitch shots at least 3 feet onto the green surface and not in the fringe. The fringe will produce more bad bounces than will the putting surface (especially when they have a slightly downslope built into them. I've notice that the best finesse players use shot trajectory more often than spin to control the bounce and roll on greens. Soft high shots are very predictable when well executed. A well struck, low spinning shot is completely dependent on the amount of spin and the condition of the exact spot on the green where it makes contact.
If you're not sure about a shot, give your subconscious a chance to help you decide. Imagine the shot, try to make a preview swing and feel it, and see how your subconscious feels. Remember that if you bring your shot in higher, the ball will make a deeper pitch mark in the green and will stop faster.
Balls can be stopped faster on Bermuda grass greens than on bent grass greens of similar speed and firmness. The higher the pros hit their shots, the less effect spin had on where the balls stopped. The should prove to you that the higher your shots come into greens, the less important spin is. The pros often get their best results by bringing shots in high, landing them close to the pin, rather than the edge of the green and not worrying about how far they will roll.
The Grass Menagerie
To be a complete player you must be knowledgeable about the different results produced by the types of grass you're likely to encounter. In the U.S. that usually means bent, ryegrass, bluegrass, Bermuda, and Kikuya grasses.
Shots hit from bent, ryegrass and bluegrass are relatively easy to predict because the grass (unless extremely long) doesn't grab the clubhead as it heads into and through impact. They are finer, weaker blades, so the club slides through them without much eggect and the moisture content and firmness of the dirt below your ball are the main outside influences you need to worry about.
Bent Ryegrass
Bluegrass
Bermuda is much more difficult to pitch from, especially in southern and coastal climates where the grain (the direction the grass grows) runs strongly in one direction or another. Chipping from Bermuda fringe is easy because the ball tends to sit on top of the short, thick, snarly blades. Pitching is a different story, particularly against the grain. Take several serious practice swings when pitching from Bermuda to judge the effect of the grain on your clubhead through the impact zone. Get as close as you can to an exact replica of the grass where you ball lies without moving it. Always move the ball back slightly in your stance to assure solid contact from a more descending blow. You want to get the ball up and out as quickly as possible so that when the club gets caught in the grass and slows down, the shot is already away.
Bermuda
Kikuya grass is the rarest of the grasses mentioned. It is the dominant grass in Japan and is featured in many courses in California. Kikuya plays like triple strength Bermuda with similar grain effects. It is tough even when pitching and chipping with the grain. To handle Kikuya, use very short clubs and practice making clean, crisp contact with the ball. If you're tall, grip down so your lower hand is completely on the shaft, below the grip; shorter players can get away with a few fingers of the bottom hand actually on the shaft.
Kikuya
Chapter 8 Chipping
Chipping is the second easiest motion in golf. Only the putting stroke is mechanically and physically simpler to perform. And yet for many golfers chipping is their worst shot. New golfers have no idea how costly poor chipping can be to their games. 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. But the chip shot is a simple shot made with a simple swing. It's easy to learn, easy to hit, and crucial to your success.
Dead Hands...Quiet wrists
The chip swing is a finesse swing, rhythmic and smooth, employing a body turn away and a return-turn through. There is no coil, so no power is generated by the lower body. The low-power turning motion helps maintain the synchronized swing rhythm of your arms, shoulders, and club. This motion also allows you to adjust the power transferred to your shots in small, controlled increments by changing the length of the swing. You do not use your hands or wrists for power.
I can explain a good chipping swing very easily: imagine that your arms form two sides of a triangle, with the line across your shoulders the third 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 or cock. Avoid the temptation to "hit" a chip with the muscles of your hands.
Clean Contact
Crisp clean contact is the number one requirement for good chipping. From normal fringe (fairly short grass) just off the green, you need to make a slightly descending blow to hit the ball cleanly. You don't want any grass getting between your clubface and the ball.
The Grip Down
You never want to "hit" the shot a little harder, or "take a little off" your swing, or decelerate into impact or shorten your follow through to reduce carry distance since those have adverse effects on a rhythmic dead hands finesse swing. The other way to adjust distance is to change the length of the club. To take 4-5 yards off a shot, grip down on the shaft about four-five inches, move a little closer to the ball and make the same swing. Just find a grip down position that feels comfortable and see how many yards that grip takes off your shots.
Low Trajectories
The easiest way to vary shot trajectory from a normal lie is to change the loft of the club you use. It is a lot easier than creating a different swing. However you'll face situations when you want to change the character of a shot, which is done by making slight changes in technique.
When hitting into crosswinds or headwinds we would generally like to lower wedge shot trajectories. Either move the ball back 2 or 3 inches in your stance or lower your follow through and finish with your hands low, shoulder high at most. Either change will slightly reduce the wind effects on your shots. Remember that it's about a 1:1 yard to mph ratio for hitting into a headwind or with a tailwind, and a 1:2 yard to mph ratio for a cross breeze. If you want a more pronounced effect, make both changes, which creates a "knock-down" wedge shot. The trajectory is even lower while maintaining a fair ability to stop shots on the green with lots of backspin. *Note: you must not you your hands in the knock down shot. Be sure to wing through impact keeping your synchronized body turn, but let your hands keep going out toward the target on the follow through rather than folding up and finishing high, as in a normal distance wedge shot.* Go with this shot only when a low shot is absolutely necessary and a lower lofted club won't get the job done.
Distance Wedges from
Difficult Lies
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.
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.
From Deep Grass
Two comments when playing from grass: (1) the taller the
grass, the shorter the shaft and the longer the swing you should use; and (2)
never try to curve a shot when you can’t get clean contact between clubface and
ball. When there’s a lot of grass around
the ball, you won’t get good results, or maintain control, if you sweep the
club through and trap grass between clubface and ball. The grass and consequent moisture on the
clubface produce “flyer” shots, which have slightly more carry and significantly
less backspin than normal, solid contact shots.
They usually don’t stop rolling until finding trouble behind the
green. The setup changes to make from deep
grass are to grip down on the shaft, effectively shortening the club, and to
play the ball farther back in your stance.
These adjustments create a steeper angle of attack and minimize the
grass compressed between the clubface and the ball. Although these shots are never easy, they
become more predictable as you learn to make better contact.
Against the Grain
Always consider the grain of the grass from which you are
hitting. If it's growing towards you/ against the grain, you must swing as if your shot distance is 25% to 50% farther than what
it measures. (Example: 50 yard shot becomes a 62.5-75 yard shot) The grass is going to grab
your wedge and try to stop follow through, so always take a little longer
backswing and try to continue all the way to a full finish: if your club doesn’t
get out of the grass, your ball might not either. When grass grows toward your target, it may
make your shot fly and roll a lot farther.
This happens because so much grass gets trapped between clubface and the
ball that all backspin is removed from the shot. It also doesn’t help that the ball squirts
out on a lower trajectory, further increasing shot distance. Once you have a practice green to hit to, try
to find some long grass rough 30 to 100 yards away. Don’t worry about the grain of the grass, but
do notice which way it’s growing then go ahead and hit your shots; either
direction is good practice. The more
shots you hit out of unusual situations, the more you’ll plan your shots
accordingly.
From Serious Greenside Rough
I don't want to mislead you: these are difficult shots. There is no surefire way to free you ball and get it near the hole every time. However there are four shots you can play, one of which should get the ball up and out and onto the putting surface.
Hardpan Lies
From a bare, hardpan lie on hard dirt, move the ball back 3 inches from the center of your stance, open the clubface slightly, and aim a little left. Make your normal dead hands finesse swing. These adjustments will prevent you from hitting the ground behind the ball, bouncing the clubhead into it, and skulling the shot. You'll produce a slightly lower trajectory with more backspin than you normally get from a good lie.
To hit the ball higher, open the face of your wedge more. Each wedge has a different margin for error due to its different sole configurations (Bounce) in the square face position. You want to maximize the margin for error in hitting a shot high. So take each wedge in turn and open the face slowly, back and forth while looking at the height of the ball in comparision. For a good margin for error, when you open the face the center of the ball must be below the leading edge of the wedge. You can practice this shot with a plywood board.
These hardpan concepts also work well off of concrete cartpaths. However, instead of using the bounce by opening the face, we just want to use the leading edge of the club.
Ball Above Feet
When the ball is above the feet, with a larger lofted club like a wedge, the loft angle of the face actually aims more off to the left even though the leading edge may be facing the target straight ahead. You must compensate by aiming further right. The ball will still fly straight since the club is so lofted, you just have to hit an intentional pull.
Ball Below Feet
When the ball is below the feet, the alignment problem is not nearly so bad. Play the ball slightly back in the stance so you do not catch the heel of your club on the ground before impact.
Downhill Shot
Changing your orientation to the ground is the biggest solution to hitting downhill shots as long as the slope isn't too severe. The ball will come out lower owing to the slope of the hill, but you can plan for that by using a more lofted club or allowing for more roll after impact. Set your shoulders parallel to the ground, keep your balance on your backswing, then make a good through swing allowing yourself to walk forward on the follow through to keep from falling over and to ensure you hit the ball solid.
When the downslope gets too steep to stand with your shoulders parallel to the ground and make a walk through finish, go to this plan B: Stand vertically, but aim way to the left, opening the clubface, and hit a cut shot from the sidehill lie you created. Aiming far left changes the downhill lie to a sidehill lie, with the ball below your feet.
From Sand
When facing a 30-100 yard distance wedge shot from the sand, use your normal distance wedge swing and move the ball back 1-2 inches from your stance center (this will ensure solid contact). Set the face square to the target and make a normal finesse wedge swing. This slightly more descending blow adds backspin and takes off about 10 yards off the shot. Make either a slightly longer backswing or the next longer club.
Chapter 7 The Pitch Shot
Introduction: From Inside 30 yards
A pitch shot is a wedge that is lofted onto the green from about 3 to 30 yards away. After landing, it normally rolls about the same, or a slightly shorter distance than it flew in the air. You can and will use all of your wedges for pitch shots (the conditions of the shot dictate which wedge is best).
Execution of the Pitch Shot
The mechanics of the pitch closely resemble those of the distance wedge in many respects. Your feet should be fairly close together, anywhere from 10-15 inches apart. They can't get too close together since your stance needs to provide balance and you need to be able to rotate your lower body in rhythm with the shot. Position the ball in the center of your stance. You need enough lower body motion to keep your body parts synchronized during the swing.
The Cut Lob
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 means of getting a higher trajectory. You will either hit it thin or catch it fat if you do so. For a higher shot, the first choice is always 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.
For any cut shot, you must open the face of your wedge which can be done many different ways. I suggest simplifying your options by adopting the "45 degree open" look as your standard. Start with a normal finesse grip and square club address position, then rotate the shaft to open the clubface and retighten the grip normally (never twist open the clubface with your hands--you must rotate the clubface open and then grip it normally). Find your calibration aim and distance by hitting cut lobs to a target. You need to calibrate how much less the ball flies with your 9:00 swing and also how far to the right the ball flies (because the face is open). *Note: we are not swinging "out to in" or "over the top" with this shot, we are simply swinging squarely onto the ball with an open clubface. This will be the easier, standard cut lob shot.*
When the clubface is wide open, it's not unusual to need a 9:00 o'clock backswing to fly the ball just 15 yards. Try hitting cut lobs with your eyes closed. This will reveal if you've been compensating for poor ball position (by using your small muscles or leg drive). If you hit good shots with your eyes closed, the ball position is fine. If however you tend to hit behind the ball, move it back a little in your stance.
From Serious Greenside Rough
I don't want to mislead you: these are difficult shots. There is no surefire way to free you ball and get it near the hole every time. However there are four shots you can play, one of which should get the ball up and out and onto the putting surface.
- The Drop
- The idea here is to drop the club cleanly on the ball, but this shot requires two circumstances to make it possible. First, the ball can be no more than six to 12 inches into tall grass: the shot comes out so softly the ball cannot travel through much more grass than that. Second, the grass has to be growing straight up so you can drop the club down throguh the blades and cleanly onto the ball. That won't happen if the grass is folded over.
- The drop swing is fairly simple. Position the ball off your right ankle, take a narrow stance, and lean as far forward as you can without losing your balance. Take a finesse backswing, fully cocking your wrists and drop the club onto the back of the ball. The downswing should drop as straight down as possible. You're trying to slide the clubhead between the blades of grass not cut through them. There is no follow through and the ball will come out of the rough low and soft, so don't try to hit it through too much grass or very far.
- The Chop
- The chop works from a lie similar to the drop shot except that the ball can be more than 12" in the deep rough. Again you want to get the clubface cleanly through the grass and down onto the ball. But the chop has more power and a follow through and you'll probably have to cut a little grass since you're going to drive the ball out of the rough.
- Play the ball well back, take a slightly wider stance (but still less than shoulder width), and lean forward slightly. Then make a longer backswing than on the drop shot and make certain your wrists are fully cocked. Chop through the grass, delivering a descending blow through the ball trying to take a divot, then follow through at least two feet past impact. You probably won't make a divot, but trying to swing through will let you feel the power. You should see the ball fly out well ahead of the clubhead with plenty of speed. The heavy grass will take all the backspin off the ball, so it's going to come out hot. Don't choose the chop to tight pin positions, you need room for the ball to roll after it lands.
- The Rip
- When the ball is lying so badly, so far down in the grass that neither the drop or the chop will work, try a rip swing. I really don't consider the rip part of the short game. It's more a power swing than a finesse swing but it can be effective from a few yards off the green. The plan is to take a short club and rip through impact, ignoring the fact that there's a lot of grass in front of, around, and behind your ball. Rip through impact and move everything: ball and grass forward. This is not a delicate shot that can be controlled with precision. That's okay, it's purpose isn't control, just making sure you get the ball out and forward so you don't face a similar shot again.
- Play the ball from the center of your stance with a wide shoulder width stance and choke down on the shaft as far as you can while still making a reasonable swing. Make a big backswing, slightly past 9:00 o'clock and then rip through impact and don't worry about where the ball is going to land or stop.
The Blast
Use the blast when the ball is deep and the grass is lying over or clumping around the ball. The pin should be no more than about 30 feet from your lie. The blast from the grass is virtually identical to the blast from the sand where you take a long backswing with a long club and "scoot" the clubhead under and past the ball. The clubface never actually touches the ball and like sand the grass blasts the ball softly onto the green.
Hardpan Lies
From a bare, hardpan lie on hard dirt, move the ball back 3 inches from the center of your stance, open the clubface slightly, and aim a little left. Make your normal dead hands finesse swing. These adjustments will prevent you from hitting the ground behind the ball, bouncing the clubhead into it, and skulling the shot. You'll produce a slightly lower trajectory with more backspin than you normally get from a good lie.
To hit the ball higher, open the face of your wedge more. Each wedge has a different margin for error due to its different sole configurations (Bounce) in the square face position. You want to maximize the margin for error in hitting a shot high. So take each wedge in turn and open the face slowly, back and forth while looking at the height of the ball in comparision. For a good margin for error, when you open the face the center of the ball must be below the leading edge of the wedge. You can practice this shot with a plywood board.
These hardpan concepts also work well off of concrete cartpaths. However, instead of using the bounce by opening the face, we just want to use the leading edge of the club.
Ball Above Feet
When the ball is above the feet, with a larger lofted club like a wedge, the loft angle of the face actually aims more off to the left even though the leading edge may be facing the target straight ahead. You must compensate by aiming further right. The ball will still fly straight since the club is so lofted, you just have to hit an intentional pull.
Ball Below Feet
When the ball is below the feet, the alignment problem is not nearly so bad. Play the ball slightly back in the stance so you do not catch the heel of your club on the ground before impact.
Downhill Shot
Changing your orientation to the ground is the biggest solution to hitting downhill shots as long as the slope isn't too severe. The ball will come out lower owing to the slope of the hill, but you can plan for that by using a more lofted club or allowing for more roll after impact. Set your shoulders parallel to the ground, keep your balance on your backswing, then make a good through swing allowing yourself to walk forward on the follow through to keep from falling over and to ensure you hit the ball solid.
When the downslope gets too steep to stand with your shoulders parallel to the ground and make a walk through finish, go to this plan B: Stand vertically, but aim way to the left, opening the clubface, and hit a cut shot from the sidehill lie you created. Aiming far left changes the downhill lie to a sidehill lie, with the ball below your feet.
From Sand
When facing a 30-100 yard distance wedge shot from the sand, use your normal distance wedge swing and move the ball back 1-2 inches from your stance center (this will ensure solid contact). Set the face square to the target and make a normal finesse wedge swing. This slightly more descending blow adds backspin and takes off about 10 yards off the shot. Make either a slightly longer backswing or the next longer club.
Chapter 7 The Pitch Shot
Introduction: From Inside 30 yards
A pitch shot is a wedge that is lofted onto the green from about 3 to 30 yards away. After landing, it normally rolls about the same, or a slightly shorter distance than it flew in the air. You can and will use all of your wedges for pitch shots (the conditions of the shot dictate which wedge is best).
Execution of the Pitch Shot
The mechanics of the pitch closely resemble those of the distance wedge in many respects. Your feet should be fairly close together, anywhere from 10-15 inches apart. They can't get too close together since your stance needs to provide balance and you need to be able to rotate your lower body in rhythm with the shot. Position the ball in the center of your stance. You need enough lower body motion to keep your body parts synchronized during the swing.
- The arms move with the rest of the body (they neither initiate the motion nor add any power)
- The fingers and hands are dead, being used only to hold on to the club and cock the wrists.
- Begin your wrist cock as soon as you start your takeaway, it should be accomplished gradually and be completed by the end of your backswing.
- Keep everything synchronized as you swing through the ball. Your body rotation and short to long swing will produce the natural, muscle free stability necessary for efficient and repeatable pitching.
Cut Shots
The Cut Lob
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 means of getting a higher trajectory. You will either hit it thin or catch it fat if you do so. For a higher shot, the first choice is always 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.
For any cut shot, you must open the face of your wedge which can be done many different ways. I suggest simplifying your options by adopting the "45 degree open" look as your standard. Start with a normal finesse grip and square club address position, then rotate the shaft to open the clubface and retighten the grip normally (never twist open the clubface with your hands--you must rotate the clubface open and then grip it normally). Find your calibration aim and distance by hitting cut lobs to a target. You need to calibrate how much less the ball flies with your 9:00 swing and also how far to the right the ball flies (because the face is open). *Note: we are not swinging "out to in" or "over the top" with this shot, we are simply swinging squarely onto the ball with an open clubface. This will be the easier, standard cut lob shot.*
When the clubface is wide open, it's not unusual to need a 9:00 o'clock backswing to fly the ball just 15 yards. Try hitting cut lobs with your eyes closed. This will reveal if you've been compensating for poor ball position (by using your small muscles or leg drive). If you hit good shots with your eyes closed, the ball position is fine. If however you tend to hit behind the ball, move it back a little in your stance.
Judging Shots
To be a good short game player you must be able to hit the shot and know what's going to happen to it. You need to practice enough to learn which combinations of pitch shot 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. I recommend landing all pitch shots at least 3 feet onto the green surface and not in the fringe. The fringe will produce more bad bounces than will the putting surface (especially when they have a slightly downslope built into them. I've notice that the best finesse players use shot trajectory more often than spin to control the bounce and roll on greens. Soft high shots are very predictable when well executed. A well struck, low spinning shot is completely dependent on the amount of spin and the condition of the exact spot on the green where it makes contact.
If you're not sure about a shot, give your subconscious a chance to help you decide. Imagine the shot, try to make a preview swing and feel it, and see how your subconscious feels. Remember that if you bring your shot in higher, the ball will make a deeper pitch mark in the green and will stop faster.
Balls can be stopped faster on Bermuda grass greens than on bent grass greens of similar speed and firmness. The higher the pros hit their shots, the less effect spin had on where the balls stopped. The should prove to you that the higher your shots come into greens, the less important spin is. The pros often get their best results by bringing shots in high, landing them close to the pin, rather than the edge of the green and not worrying about how far they will roll.
The Grass Menagerie
To be a complete player you must be knowledgeable about the different results produced by the types of grass you're likely to encounter. In the U.S. that usually means bent, ryegrass, bluegrass, Bermuda, and Kikuya grasses.
Shots hit from bent, ryegrass and bluegrass are relatively easy to predict because the grass (unless extremely long) doesn't grab the clubhead as it heads into and through impact. They are finer, weaker blades, so the club slides through them without much eggect and the moisture content and firmness of the dirt below your ball are the main outside influences you need to worry about.
Bent Ryegrass
Bluegrass
Bermuda is much more difficult to pitch from, especially in southern and coastal climates where the grain (the direction the grass grows) runs strongly in one direction or another. Chipping from Bermuda fringe is easy because the ball tends to sit on top of the short, thick, snarly blades. Pitching is a different story, particularly against the grain. Take several serious practice swings when pitching from Bermuda to judge the effect of the grain on your clubhead through the impact zone. Get as close as you can to an exact replica of the grass where you ball lies without moving it. Always move the ball back slightly in your stance to assure solid contact from a more descending blow. You want to get the ball up and out as quickly as possible so that when the club gets caught in the grass and slows down, the shot is already away.
Bermuda
Kikuya grass is the rarest of the grasses mentioned. It is the dominant grass in Japan and is featured in many courses in California. Kikuya plays like triple strength Bermuda with similar grain effects. It is tough even when pitching and chipping with the grain. To handle Kikuya, use very short clubs and practice making clean, crisp contact with the ball. If you're tall, grip down so your lower hand is completely on the shaft, below the grip; shorter players can get away with a few fingers of the bottom hand actually on the shaft.
Kikuya
Chapter 8 Chipping
Chipping is the second easiest motion in golf. Only the putting stroke is mechanically and physically simpler to perform. And yet for many golfers chipping is their worst shot. New golfers have no idea how costly poor chipping can be to their games. 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. But the chip shot is a simple shot made with a simple swing. It's easy to learn, easy to hit, and crucial to your success.
Dead Hands...Quiet wrists
The chip swing is a finesse swing, rhythmic and smooth, employing a body turn away and a return-turn through. There is no coil, so no power is generated by the lower body. The low-power turning motion helps maintain the synchronized swing rhythm of your arms, shoulders, and club. This motion also allows you to adjust the power transferred to your shots in small, controlled increments by changing the length of the swing. You do not use your hands or wrists for power.
I can explain a good chipping swing very easily: imagine that your arms form two sides of a triangle, with the line across your shoulders the third 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 or cock. Avoid the temptation to "hit" a chip with the muscles of your hands.
Clean Contact
Crisp clean contact is the number one requirement for good chipping. From normal fringe (fairly short grass) just off the green, you need to make a slightly descending blow to hit the ball cleanly. You don't want any grass getting between your clubface and the ball.
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