Predictability in the short game

When you have a 6-iron from the fairway, there isn't much else to do but hit the ball straight at your target. Once in a while you might fade or draw it in, hit it a little higher or lower, but nine times out of ten a straight shot will do.

Around the green, it's different. You're trying to get the ball as close to the hole as you can, with obstacles along the ground that get in the way.

Right off, you can see what the two problems are, and they are different: (1) get the ball close, and (2) overcome obstacles.

Solving the first problem is a matter of technique. Solving the second involves imagination. You need them both to have a functioning short game. This article is about solving the first problem.

There is nothing about the shots of the short game that cannot be reduced to a science. Take greenside chipping, for example. It is quite possible to develop a chipping stroke, apply it to a number of clubs, and wind up with a shot that leaves the ball kick-in close more than half the time from a given distance. See my previous post on how I did this.

You can do the same for pitches from 45 to 100 yards. If you have three wedges or four, hit them all with the same swing length, but with three different swing speeds, and now you have nine or twelve different distances you can pitch the ball, guaranteed.

For the shots in between, do the same. Find a stroke for that shorter distance, then insert clubs and swing parameters that give you a variety of guaranteed distances.

All you need to do then is decide which shot you're going to play, and determine the distance it needs to cover. That tells you immediately which club and which swing to use. You don't even have to think about it, and you'll lay the ball close to the hole just like the pros do.

By following a routine like this, you do your thinking in advance. The less thinking and deciding you need to do when you play, the easier it is to play good golf.

Creativity and imagination are overused in the short game. You don't have to figure out every shot from the ground up.

There's no need to go through an intuitive process if you know that when the ball is just off the green, 23 yards from the hole, you can use your standard chipping stroke with your gap wedge to park the ball next to the hole, all things being equal.

Things are not always equal, though. There are those obstacles I mentioned, such as little changes in elevation on the green. Mounds to hit over and downslopes the ball will land on. Less than ideal lies, and so on.

You solve these problems by starting with a standard technique and modifying it as necessary for the shot at hand. You imagination will tell you how to do this, but starting from a know technique. That's the important part.

Deviating from a known solution works out much better than making up the whole thing at once.

But going back to the original point, the more short shots you have that you know exactly how they will turn out, the better your short game will be because it will be predictable.

Spend a few hours around the practice green to get this all worked out and you won't believe how easy golf just got.


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