As many of you sophisticated, data-driven golfers probably know, the biggest indicator of your scoring potential is how many greens you hit in regulation. If you are hitting three or four per round the chances of you being a single-digit handicapper are eerily similar to you scaling Mount Everest. But even the Tour players that you watch on television only average 13 to 14 greens hit per round. But in their case, if they weren’t getting up and down the vast majority of the time they would be playing for club championships and not US Opens.
Oftentimes I will hear instructors say that if you want to knock a shot or two off your scores in short order start with the low hanging fruit. And that, for the vast majority of golfers, would be chipping and pitching.
Let’s start with setup. For chip shots have the feet close together with maybe a clubhead of space between them. With pitch shots a little bit wider. Your weight should be 60–70% on the lead foot and the ball just slightly back of center. Depending upon the lie you will usually have the hands slightly ahead of the ball.
An enormously important aspect of improving your short game to know how to assess a lie. A 30-yard shot where the ball is sitting up in 2-3 inch rough actually gives you more options than if you’re on an ultra-tight fairway. Learning assessment takes some practice and experience. When you are practicing don’t move the ball around until the lie is perfect. Make shots difficult so that you learn. As Nick Saban often said, “We make practice hard so games will be easy.”
In the setup we are creating the letter “Y” with our arms and the shaft. We maintain that “Y” throughout a chip shot. With pitch shots we form the letter ”L” between the lead arm and the shaft at the top of the abbreviated backswing. There is an “L” in the backswing and an “L” in the through swing. I always want to see the backswing and through swing lengths to be the same. And this goes with every shot in golf from a full swing with the driver to a 3-inch tap-in.
Raymond Floyd was inarguably one of the greatest chippers ever. He got as close to the ball as possible to the point that the shaft of his club was almost vertical and the heel of the clubhead was slightly off the ground. He felt this was a chunk-proof set-up and for him it was. It might be for you as well.
Setup basics for chips and pitches:
1. Feet close together for chips; a little further apart for pitches.
2. Have 60-70% of your weight on your lead foot for every short game shot.
3. Ball position slightly back of center with chips; pretty much centered with pitches.
4. Hands slightly ahead of the ball.
5. Shirt buttons vertical with pitch shots and tilted toward target with chips.
A frequent mistake that many higher handicappers make is for their chest rotation to stall in the downswing. When that happens, there is a much greater tendency to scoop. It is virtually the same as casting in the full swing but on a much smaller scale. If the body doesn’t rotate, we will throw the club from the top, which will almost never end well.
So even on a chip shot where you are only flying the ball less than 10 yards in the air, we still need to have some amount of chest rotation through the impact zone.
To maximize quality of contact, I often have my students think about the buttons on their shirt. When setting up with the driver, the spine is tilting away from the target to encourage an upward angle of attack. This means that the buttons are angled away from the target as well. In the set up for full swing iron shots the buttons might be stacked on top of each other. But with short game shots, if the button line is angled slightly toward the target, it becomes much easier to make ball first contact as we have moved the low point of the abbreviated swing to the target side of the ball.
Occasionally a student will ask me if I believe in using the same grip for every shot. Generally speaking, yes, but if they want to weaken it slightly (hands turned a little more left for a right-handed player) with short game shots it can be beneficial. This will encourage a slightly open clubface through impact resulting in less chance of digging into the turf. If you watch the best players in the world hit short pitch or bunker shots, they will often have the clubface pointed nearly at the sky in their finish position. This enables them to use the bounce on the wedge most efficiently.
When it comes to club selection, always remember that the less loft you use the less risk you take. Chipping with a hybrid (try it and I bet you’ll like it) is pretty much risk proof whereas the same shot with a lob wedge off a tight lie can be terrifying if you haven’t practiced it much.
Last, but certainly not least, use your lead arm to dial in distance control with pitch shots. When your lead arm is parallel to the ground, call that 9 o’clock and determine how far you hit the golf ball from that position. When you go to 9:30 or 10:00 or 10:30, calibrate those distances as well. But keep in mind that this only works if you are making solid contact.
No one has ever gotten good at the short game (or any element of golf) without practice. Always make practice challenging so that shots on the golf course are easier.
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