Short Game Style

I watched almost the entire broadcast of the Waste Management Open from TPC Scottsdale this weekend. That much golf made a strong impression on me in one regard. When a player had to chip onto the green from about 5-20 yards, he would, far more often than not, get the ball in the air just enough to land it on the green for it run the rest of the way to the hole. Only in a few cases where there was no other choice did anyone fly the ball up to the hole so it could land and stop. Even Phil played chip and run.

I noticed, too, this last summer when I went to the LPGA's Safeway Classic in Portland. Everyone was running the ball up to the hole if the option was there.

It wasn't hard to see why, after a time. They're not trying to get the ball close to the hole. They want it to go in. A rolling ball has a much greater chance of doing that than a ball that comes out of the sky and bounces a few times. They want their chips to approach the hole, instead, like a putt.

Now throwing the ball up there with a lofted wedge and having it land two feet away is impressive. You get lots of "Nice shot!" comments from your playing partners. The pros, even though they could stop it two feet away all day, clearly don't think they can make a living with that shot, so they don't use it unless they have to. Neither, I suspect, should you.

Part of the problem is that we have the idea that pros do all their chipping with a lob wedge or a sand wedge, so that's what we want to do, too. Maybe a few of them do, but that's not what I saw on TV. I saw them use just enough club to get the ball in the air and many times you could easily tell that they were using 7-irons, 8-irons.

If you're a flyer, even though you're good enough to get up and down, consider that you might be eliminating the chance of the "up" being the only stroke you need to make. There are lots of things about professional golf concerning the swing that many of us will never be able to do because of the vast differences in physical talents and abilities between them and us, but anybody can play the short game the way they do. And running the ball is how they play it.