Short Game

Short Game: Steady Head for Putting Success

Out on the LPGA Tour, if you’re averaging somewhere in the 28-29 putts per round, you’re considered among the best putters out here. Short putts, long putts, whatever length you may encounter, if you manage to keep your putts to under 30 in a given round, you’ll shoot a good score. Remember, a strong short game is key to going low — and that includes conquering the greens. So I’ve got some tips to help you get there.

Keeping the head steady starts with also keeping the lower body steady through the stroke.

Among the better putters I’ve seen (not just on the LPGA Tour, but other professional tours), not all two players have the exact same stance, putting stroke, rhythm or even tempo. But what they definitely have in common with one another is a steady head through contact with the golf ball. Often, in pro-ams I see amateurs try to steer the ball with their eyes, hoping to “push” the ball into the hole with the body. Doing that usually means that the body lifts up out of its correct posture, and the putterface either opens or closes at impact. Meaning, all sense of control for distance and direction is lost! Instead of trying to push the ball and opening your body through the stroke (like you would with any other club), allow the body to stay square and the head to stay relatively still through the stroke. Meaning, let the putterhead pass you from right to left and stay in posture until well after you’ve made contact with the ball. By the way, the lower body needs to stay stable through the stroke, too. As you can see in the black- and-white photo, my left leg isn’t visible after contact with the ball. This movement leads to all sorts of inconsistent putts.

This tip, albeit a simple one, will help you make more putts with better distance and direction.

Find Your Length
As you can see in the color photos, I like to set up over the golf ball with my eyes just barely inside the target line. According to my putting coach, that’s a good spot to be, and you never want to error with the eyes outside the target line.

I’m able to set up in this position pretty easily because my putter shaft is a comfortable length and lie. However, a longer putter may help you set up with your eyes directly over the golf ball (or just to the inside), like how I’m doing. A shorter putter usually helps with the opposite problem and will help move your eyes, if they happen to be too far away, more over the golf ball. Point being, get your putter fit for length and lie, and pay attention to your head position as it relates to the golf ball. A good/bad position can greatly affect your putting results.

Paige MacKenzie, LPGA, currently plays on the LPGA tour and is a familiar face on Golf Channel’s Morning Drive. For more info, visit paigemackenziegolf.com.

This story was updated on May 19, 2016

Score From The Sand

It’s one of the most menacing short game shots in golf for most average players: The basic, straightforward green side bunker blast. No matter how high or low the lip or how far to the pin, many of us tense up even thinking about escaping from the beach. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Basic sand success is achievable quickly and completely with just a few adjustments to grip, stance, alignment and stance. Here’s how to become a true master blaster.

How you grip the club greatly influence the type of shot you want to hit. Here are two grip positions. The circled grip is my standard hands position, and the inset photo above shows a faster hands position.

Faster, you ask? Allow me to explain. Typically, when we see a grip as pictured in the inset photo above, we think of it as a “weak grip,” since the hands are situated to release sooner and, in terms of full swings, produce weaker shots. In the sand, a weak grip actually can help you hit the ball higher and make the ball stop faster. Just remember, “weak” only applies to the early release of the wrist hinge, not actual grip pressure. Be sure, no matter what type of hand position you choose, you grip the club with enough tension so the wedge doesn’t slip in your hands as you make contact with the sand. Experiment and see what works best for you.

1 UNDERSTAND ALIGNMENT
Bunker shots can be awfully counterintuitive. It seems the more you aim left, the more your shots fly to the right. In reality, that’s how things are supposed to work, but it’s not impossible to hit straight shots. The key is in managing your angles. To keep it simple, consider that for every degree open you rotate your stance, match it with an open clubface. As you do that, situate the target right in between the two angles. From here, be sure to swing along your stance and not right at the target! You’ll soon see that your sand shots will fly better.

2 SET UP FOR IMPACT
The setup and impact positions may look similar, but they’re actually quite different. At setup, the body should look poised to make a hit, with your weight centered, the club hovering above the sand and the shaft vertical to the ground.

At impact, there are three main differences. First, my weight has transferred to my forward leg. You can’t hit great sand shots off your back leg! Second, the shaft is leaning toward the target. This is a must for consistency. In fact, it’s the loft of the wedge that will lift the ball, not a lack of shaft lean. And, third, because I need to hit down and into the sand, my knees are flexed more at impact than they were at address. If you can concentrate on making these three differences at impact, you’ll see that hitting sand shots is a lot easier.

3 MAKE AN OUTSIDE-IN SWING
Hitting a great sand shot is one of golf’s greatest thrills. It’s also one of the most satisfying ways to save par or even make a birdie. But unlike shots outside the sand that typically require you to swing parallel to your target line, bunker shots are generally best played with a swing that starts outside the target line and moves to inside the target line.

Why, you ask? The main reason is that, with a typical bunker shot, you want to hold the clubface open longer than you would a normal shot–meaning, in order to hit the ball straight with an open face, you have to swing along the direction of your feet and body, and not toward the target.

If anything, play your next bunker shot as though you wanted to slice it toward the hole. This will instinctively help you both swing from outside the target line to inside the target line, as well as make it easier to hold the clubface open through the sand shot.

Just remember, a good bunker player doesn’t try to lift the ball from the sand; rather he or she uses the sand to push the ball up, and the clubhead slides through the sand and under the golf ball.

4 HOLD THE FACE OPEN
Need more proof? Because you swing along your open body line (open relative to the target), you have to keep the clubface open through the shot. It also helps get the ball airborne quickly, as well as imparts more spin for a quicker stop on the green.

That said, how much is too much? Eventually the hands will rotate, and the clubface will close. The key is in maintaining the rotation of your body. The more you rotate through the shot, the easier it is to keep the clubface open through the bunker shot.

Just remember, if your goal is to hit a high bunker shot that stops quickly, the trajectory and bite isn’t going to come from flipping your hands through impact. It’ll come from an aggressive rotation of the body through the shot with the clubface open.

5 FLAT-FOOTED SHOT

In the sequence above, check out my feet. Notice anything unusual? If you notice my back foot (my right foot), it stays flat-footed through the swing. I do this because first, by keeping a stable footing, I lessen the risk of slipping or sliding through the shot. Second, the more rigid my lower body is, the faster my upper body will rotate across the ball.

Try this technique the next time you’re practicing your bunker shots. Allow your weight to shift as it naturally would; just do it with both feet on the ground. I’ll bet you’ll pick up some upper-body speed in no time.

6 USE SPEED, NOT MUSCLE, TO REACH THE TARGET
Don’t dig a hole in the sand. Really, to hit solid shots out of the sand, the more you try to dig deep and use muscle to excavate the ball, the more likely you’ll find yourself hitting more than one shot from the same bunker.

The key is to think “speed,” not “strength.” By thinking speed, you’ll be more likely to make a more complete swing through the ball, as opposed to hitting down into the sand as you would in a chopping or hitting motion. And when it comes to speed, for that matter, we’re not just talking about the hands. As the previous tip alluded to, good bunker shots require the entire body to get activated and make a rotation. The bigger the body rotation through the shot, the less the hands have to get involved. The less the hands are involved, the easier it is to hold the clubhead open through the shot and the better your bunker shots will be! So think speed, not strength. You’ll find that type of mentality will help prevent you from stabbing into the sand and instead swing right through it.

This story was updated May 25, 2016

Bobby Hinds, PGA teaches at Woodley Lakes Golf Course in Van Nuys, Calif. His popularity is attributed to helping players of all ages play their best golf with easy-to-understand principles. For more information, please call (323) 363-7761.

Short Game Success!

In case you haven’t noticed by now, the fastest way to lower scores comes from having a tidy short game, specifically, a strong ability to hit effective chip and pitch shots from around the green. There’s also a residual effect from having a good short game. When you chip well, you don’t feel pressured to hit every green, which ironically, leads to hitting more greens! Let’s look at a handful of short shots that will help you gain confidence and shoot lower scores.

BETTER CHIPPING
I’ll tell you this, I’ve shot some pretty decent scores in my day, and some of them I did while hitting less than 50% of the greens. Sometimes, I’ve even been well below that 50% number and still managed to salvage some decent scores.

The key is having good technique. If you look at the sequence on the opposite page, you can see the classic “chicken wing” position post-impact. This happens when the mind and body both feel the need to lift the ball up, instead of allowing the loft of the wedge to do the work on its own. In this photo, check out how low the clubhead is post-impact. See how low it is? That’s what you want for solid chipping contact. There’s no lifting or pulling up with the hands–not ever, actually.

TRY THIS
You’ve maybe tried some unorthodox putting grips to help cure the putting yips, but have you ever tried one with your chips? The key to better chipping is quiet hands and wrists, and using an unusual putting grip like the one you see here actually can help you. Grip the club with your normal left-hand grip, and then put your right hand to the side and tuck the grip into the fold of the thumb and index finger. You can’t get cutesy with the hands using this grip, and you’ll quickly feel what a proper chip stroke feels like.

CHANGE YOUR SETUP FOR VARIETY

LOW
If you’re comfortable using one wedge around the green, so be it! Here are a few ways to make some setup variations to affect how the ball reacts to the face. To hit a low shot, play the ball back in your stance a bit, narrow your feet, and put the hands ahead of the ball so the shaft is leaning at the target. Don’t worry about opening or closing the face.

MEDIUM
For a medium-height shot, the adjustments are pretty simple. Widen the stance to just inside shoulder-width, and play the ball in the center of your stance with either a vertical shaft or a tiny bit of shaft lean toward the target. Again, don’t mess with the face angle.

HIGH
To hit a high ball, widen your stance considerably, play the ball more toward your left foot, and allow the shaft to lean away from the target a little bit. Just a word of caution: When you lean the shaft away like I am here, you’re adding extra bounce to the sole. This makes it tough to hit it high on tight lies. So try this shot only when you have a nice cushion of grass beneath the ball.

LOW SHOT
Once you get into the prescribed setup position for hitting a low shot, there’s one more variation I want you to include. Get the shaft vertical! When you do this, not only do you de-loft the wedge at impact, you allow it to be swung more like a putter, which will help keep the ball low. Remember to keep the hands quiet through the stroke, limiting wrist hinge on the backswing and into the finish. With practice, you may find this low-chip shot to be a very useful one when you have a shot that requires only a small amount of carry and a lot of rollout.

MEDIUM SHOT
To hit the medium shot, again, the key for success is to rotate the body and keep the hands nice and quiet. As you can see in this sequence, my wrists don’t hinge that much, and I manage to keep the clubhead low on the way back and low through the followthrough. You can see the back of my watch in all four photos. Also, notice how, through impact, my shoulders have rocked and opened, along with some opened rotation of the hips. That’s actually how I recommend you hit chip shots, and use the rotation of the upper body and not the small, hard-to-control muscles in the hands and fingers.

HIGH SHOT
Hitting the high shot means taking the high-shot setup and then lowering the hands so the shaft is on a flatter plane. When you do this, you allow for more wrist hinge going back and through, which helps hit the ball higher in the air. Notice, though, that my basic motion isn’t much different than the medium shot. I still rotate mostly with the upper body and use my body as the main source of momentum for the stroke, not my hands.

OPEN UP
Hitting out of the sand is one of those areas where I see students struggle. And the funny thing is, bunkers are where we tend to place the lowest expectations, meaning that most of us are satisfied just to get the ball out of the sand, and if we happen to knock it close to the pin, that’s a bonus.

To ensure sand success, I like to make sure we can get the ball airborne. Doing that means opening the face and using more bounce under the club. The more open you get the face, the more aggressive you can be with your shot, and I find that being aggressive is almost always better than getting too willy-nilly and trying to finesse it. So open the face and strike the sand behind the ball with more momentum than you’re maybe used to.

ACCELERATE
You’ve probably been told that it’s important to accelerate the clubhead when hitting in the sand, and while I agree with that, that doesn’t help if you tend to strike down into the sand on too steep an angle or you accelerate and then stop the moment the club enters the sand. Instead, I want you to use the wrists to accelerate the club, allowing the back of the clubhead to hit the sand, not the leading edge. This maintains and even accentuates the bounce of the club and prevents you from digging too much. It will also produce the “thump” sound in the sand, not the “thud” that amateurs often hear. So don’t try and dig or gouge the ball out of the sand. Opt more for bouncing the club off the sand and let it enter and exit the sand with an accelerating stroke!

TOSS SOME SAND
Want to make sure you’re in the right position at the top of your backswing when hitting from the sand? Try this fun drill. First, gather a clump of sand on the face of your wedge as I have here. The rest is simple. I want you to imitate your bunker swing in slow motion, and be sure you hold the sand on the face long enough so you’re able to fling the sand behind you as you can see in the lower-left photo. If you can do that, you’ll do a great job of holding the face open to your path, which then makes it a lot easier to get the ball up and out of the sand.

DROP IT!
By allowing the sand to fall behind you and not slip off the face early in the backswing, you’ll be less likely to strike the sand with a square or even closed clubface. It takes some repetition to achieve, but after practicing this drill a few times, you’ll develop a strong sense of the clubhead through the stroke and avoid digging too much into the sand. Give it a shot!

Derek Nannen, PGA, is the director of instruction at the Eagle Mountain Golf Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona. Visit eaglemtn.com for more information.

Golf chipping tips: common denominators

Left is right!

If you want to hit better bunker shots (who doesn’t?), you have to eschew conventional swing wisdom and do things a little differently. For instance, in a normal swing, usually you shift weight away from the target going back, then toward the target on the downswing. With greenside bunkers, I encourage my students to do neither! If anything, the best advice I can give you for more sand success is to remember to favor your left side through the stroke.

Staying “left” means setting up with some forward shaft lean, your weight mostly over your left leg and through the stroke, keeping it there well into the finish.

What this does is steepen your angle of attack and help you better use the sand to lift the ball, not the clubhead. Just remember, when you do this, you have to be aggressive with the hands and accelerate through the sand as best you can. Allow the body to rotate as it normally does and the hands to release, again, as they normally would. You can see in this sequence of photos that I keep my weight mostly over my left leg through the entire stroke. If you haven’t tried this, it may feel strange at first, but you’ll quickly see how much more effective it can be. Also, notice how I made a divot under the ball, not behind it. Staying left will help prevent you from hitting too far behind the ball into the sand.

When you hang back on your right side and try and lift the ball out, you’ll run into trouble. But if you stay left, you’ll steepen your attack and have a better chance of extracting the ball from the sand. Remember, left is right for better bunker shots!

Pomp Braswell is the director of instruction at the Jim McLean Golf School at SunRidge Canyon in Fountain Hills, Arizona. Visit sunridgegolf.com.

Hitting successful bunker shots means not shifting your weight too much! Get left, hit left, finish left!

Drag + Tug

No matter what anyone else tells you, the key to shooting lower scores is having a tidy short game. That means you have to become a more proficient and consistent chipper. “Proficient” means you should know the right mechanics for successful results. “Consistent” means you repeat the same motion for steady results from a variety of places around the green.

Interestingly, I see some of my better students make the same mistakes when chipping the ball as my high-handicap and newbie students make. It first starts with the misconception that chips are to be struck more like putts than full-swing shots. That means, some of my students drag the club on the backswing, keeping the clubhead low to the ground. What happens next is usually pretty ugly, with the arms tugging the clubhead upward in an attempt to lift the ball into the air. It’s a move I call the “drag and tug” and, unfortunately, I see it a lot!

To fix this problem, the first thing I do is teach my students that it’s okay for the clubhead to move away from the ground and up into the air via hinging the wrists on the backswing and letting the clubhead release to the ball as the body rotates forward. As you can see in the opposite color photos, the club has hinged going back and my body has rotated through impact with the ball.

Simply put, allow the wrists to hinge naturally. Experiment with how much works best for you, and always rotate the body through the shot. A chip is much more like a mini-swing than a long putt. Follow that simple advice, and you’ll improve quickly.

Don’t drag the club! If you stay low, you’ll lift up.	The collapse of the arms is a sign of little rotation and a tugging motion.
Hinge the wrists! You need some hinge for crisp contact with the ball.	Allow your body to rotate toward the target. This keeps the club in front of your chest.

Jeff Yurkiewicz, PGA, teaches at the Grayhawk Learning Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information, visit grayhawkgolf.com.

Keep A Steady Head

Out on the LPGA Tour, if you’re averaging somewhere in the 28-29 putts per round, you’re considered among the best putters out here. Short putts, long putts, whatever length you may encounter, if you manage to keep your putts to under 30 in a given round, you’ll shoot a good score.

Keeping the head steady starts with also keeping the lower body steady through the stroke.

Among the better putters I’ve seen (not just on the LPGA Tour, but other professional tours), not all two players have the exact same stance, putting stroke, rhythm or even tempo. But what they definitely have in common with one another is a steady head through contact with the golf ball. Often, in pro-ams I see amateurs try to steer the ball with their eyes, hoping to “push” the ball into the hole with the body. Doing that usually means that the body lifts up out of its correct posture, and the putterface either opens or closes at impact. Meaning, all sense of control for distance and direction is lost! Instead of trying to push the ball and opening your body through the stroke (like you would with any other club), allow the body to stay square and the head to stay relatively still through the stroke. Meaning, let the putterhead pass you from right to left and stay in posture until well after you’ve made contact with the ball. By the way, the lower body needs to stay stable through the stroke, too. As you can see in the black- and-white photo, my left leg isn’t visible after contact with the ball. This movement leads to all sorts of inconsistent putts.

This tip, albeit a simple one, will help you make more putts with better distance and direction.

Find Your Length
As you can see in the color photos, I like to set up over the golf ball with my eyes just barely inside the target line. According to my putting coach, that’s a good spot to be, and you never want to error with the eyes outside the target line.

I’m able to set up in this position pretty easily because my putter shaft is a comfortable length and lie. However, a longer putter may help you set up with your eyes directly over the golf ball (or just to the inside), like how I’m doing. A shorter putter usually helps with the opposite problem and will help move your eyes, if they happen to be too far away, more over the golf ball. Point being, get your putter fit for length and lie, and pay attention to your head position as it relates to the golf ball. A good/bad position can greatly affect your putting results.

Paige MacKenzie, LPGA, currently plays on the LPGA tour and is a familiar face on Golf Channel’s Morning Drive. For more info, visit paigemackenziegolf.com.

A Plan In The Sand

A bunker shot should be one of the easier shots you encounter on the golf course, theoretically. It’s one of the very few shots that doesn’t require solid contact–in fact, in most cases, it’s preferred that you purposely miss the ball and hit the sand first. The key, however, is knowing what type of sand you’re dealing with and knowing what small adjustments you need to make to produce good results. Let’s look at three key sand types–fluffy, normal and firm–and learn how to play successful bunker shots from all three types.


Fluffy sand generally refers to sand that’s soft and has some cushion to it. Typically, fluffy sand is made of smaller, beach-like granules, and the club usually digs easily and quickly. However, because it’s fluffy, the club can sometimes dig too much, making it easy to hit heavy or fat shots.	Normal sand is made of slightly bigger granules than fluffy sand and, generally, presents decent lies to contend with. Usually, the top layer is raked and fluffy, whereas just below the sand it’s firmer (sometimes wetter) and more compact. This sand is the most common type you’ll face.	Firm sand is both dense and compact and usually wet. The ball tends to sit above this type of sand, with little to no indentation. Shots played off this lie generally are played as though you aren’t in the sand at all.

FIRM SAND
For all bunker shots, even from hard, compact sand, you want to try to hit approximately two inches behind the ball and create a divot that’s roughly 1.5 inches deep. Some have compared the divot size to a dollar bill.

For the setup, play the ball in the center of your stance with the hands forward. Keep your weight favoring your left side. And, unlike other bunker shots, you want to play shots from firm sand with a square or even slightly closed clubface. That’s because you want to reduce or eliminate the bounce of your wedge to ensure you get plenty of digging action. I tend to grip the club a little firmer, which helps prevent twisting through impact. By the way, make sure you have good footing in the sand. Just because it’s firm, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to dig the feet in a little to prevent slipping.

INSTANT TIP:
When you buy new wedges, buy sets of two or three, with varying bounce angles. That way, you have more options in different sand conditions.

GET VERTICAL

SQUARE OR LOSE THE FACE
A square or even closed face at setup will lower the leading edge closer to the sand. A lower leading edge means the club will dig more, which is exactly what you need here.

You also want to create a more vertical swing plane, which more likely resembles a Ferris wheel than a merry-go-round. This vertical swing motion will also allow for more dig, which is necessary to create a big enough divot to propel the ball out of this situation. Notice in the upper right photo how vertical my clubshaft is. That’s what you want!

In addition, you want to feel the hands staying more ahead of the clubhead through impact. This, again, allows the leading edge to enter the sand first, creating a digging effect.

In the above sequence, you can see I made a very steep swing into the sand about two inches behind the ball. The wedge was able to dig in the firm sand thanks to a lowered leading edge, and as you can see, I continued to dig even after the ball was airborne. There wasn’t a big flip or release of the wrists. If anything, I wanted to keep the face square and dig for as long as possible, even if that meant finishing low and with no release of the hands post-impact.

Give this technique a try, and don’t be afraid to hit the sand with some extra oomph. Remember, the sand is firm, so it will really slow your swing down the more you dig. So be aggressive and hold that face square through the dig!

NORMAL SAND
To play successful shots from normal sand, set up with the clubface slightly open and the shaft neutral (up and down) to slightly back at address. This will allow for more use of the trailing edge or the bounce your sand wedge has built in. The trailing edge is what will help the club “bounce” out of the sand and prevent too much digging action.

If you use too much of the leading edge in this situation, the divot will be much deeper than our 1.5-inch goal. The result will be a ball that doesn’t come out with enough energy.

Finally, I like to keep my weight slightly favoring my forward side, with a neutral grip pressure. Unlike the firm sand shot, I want my hands to release.

INSTANT TIP:
Practice hitting shots from different sand in the same bunker. Use the rake and simulate firm, soft and fluffy sand. You’ll have a better understanding of how the sand reacts to different setups and swings.

USE YOUR NATURAL PLANE

SLIGHTLY OPEN THE FACE
The ideal plane for a bunker shot in normal sand is your natural one. Of the three, this shot is played most like a regular shot, only instead of hitting the ball first, you’re aiming at the sand an inch or so behind the golf ball.

Play this shot with the face slightly open. You want to add some loft and bounce, but not so much that the club bounces off the sand and doesn’t dig properly. How much should you open the face? That depends on your comfort level. Experiment with opening the face so you find just the right amount that works for you, only leave some room to open it even more (for fluffy lies).

Playing a bunker shot from normal sand should always be played aggressively. More often than not, I see my students get tentative and afraid of hitting the ball too far, or they hit too low in the sand. Both strategies lead to ugly results! Play your sand shots with some added vigor and don’t be afraid of hitting it long, and at the same time, don’t dig too much into the sand. Remember, 1.5 inches is plenty deep enough.

In the above photos, you can see I’ve made an aggressive strike and glided the club through the sand without slowing down. I’ve also released my wrists through the stroke since there’s no need to try to hold the face square or open. A good trick to speed up the hands is to remember to make contact with the sand using the trailing edge of your wedge. You’ll instinctively speed up the clubhead without excess digging.

FLUFFY SAND
Fluffy sand may appear easy to hit from, but don’t be fooled. Hitting successful shots requires more finesse here than hitting a shot from firm or normal sand.

However, the main objective in fluffy sand is simple: Don’t dig too much. To accomplish this goal, the face should be open, with the hands well behind the ball. The shaft will actually lean away from the target. I like to play the ball a little forward in my stance, with level shoulders. These setup factors will really help expose the trailing edge, allowing for more of a gliding (not digging!) scenario. My weight is centered, and like normal sand, my grip pressure is the same as it is for a regular golf shot.

INSTANT TIP:
Although weight shift is limited in the sand, you still have to rotate the body. Flaring the left foot will help make it easier to rotate without losing your footing in the sand.

GET MORE ROUNDED

OPEN UP THE FACE
Why open the face? You want as much bounce as you can get. Because the sand is soft and fluffy, it’s going to be very easy to dig and slide the club into the sand and underneath the ball. By opening the face, the added bounce will resist the tendency to dig, helping you hit less sand between the clubface and golf ball. Think glide and not dig!

The desired swing plane from fluffy sand is more rounded and flatter than both firm and normal bunker shots. Think of a merry-go-round, not a Ferris wheel. Again, you’re not going to have any trouble getting the club to dig and slide under the ball. A flatter swing plane will prevent you from, you guessed it, digging too much.

Hitting a shot with an open face at address doesn’t mean I have to hold the face wide open at impact. If anything, the goal is to release the clubhead as you normally would and allow the hands to cross over post-impact. If you try to hold the face open through the shot, guess what happens? You’ll most likely come up short of the flag.

It’s imperative to allow the clubhead to pass or swing beyond the handle through impact. This will feel similar to a scooping motion, allowing the wedge to glide through the sand without the clubhead slowing down. The result is a ball that’s propelled out and onto the green.

John Stahlschmidt, PGA, is a Top-25 Golf Instructor and is the Senior Head Instructor for the TOURAcademy TPC Scottsdale. To comment on this article, you can email John at johnst@touracademy.com.

The Chip Putt

When it comes to hitting the simple bump-and-run shot from just off the green, I teach it the same way to all my students. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Tour pro or a beginner, this shot requires the same basic fundamentals. The good news is, it’s one of the easiest shots in golf, as long as you know the right technique.

I like to see a basic bump-and-run hit with a club that gets the ball on the ground and running as quickly as possible. This means minimum air time and maximum ground time. I wish it wasn’t called “bump-and-run” actually, since there really isn’t a bump anywhere! If anything, it would be better if it were called a “chip putt” because I teach students to approach the shot like they would a putt, but hit the shot like they would a chip.

To start, before you even make a stroke, closely read the length and break of the shot, with emphasis on the last four to six feet when your ball slows down, since this is where your ball breaks the most. Pick your intended line and stick with it. Next, choose the right club for the shot. I like to use anything from my pitching wedge all the way down to the 7-iron. The key is in how much green you have between the ball and the hole. If it’s a long shot, try less loft. If it’s closer, say, within 20 feet, try a higher loft. Just don’t bother with anything more than 56 degrees. You don’t need it here.

Set up to the ball with a narrow stance and place the majority of your weight on your lead foot. Here’s the important part: As you make the stroke, you have to accelerate through it, so don’t feel as though you need a big, long backstroke. Keep it on the shorter side. Second, keep the club low to the ground as you make a shallow–but still descending–stroke into the back of the ball. Don’t feel as though you need to lift the ball up. Remember, this shot is a lot like a putt, so keep the club low and shallow out that angle of attack. I like to think of giving the grass a little haircut. There’s no digging here.

Third, and probably most importantly, keep your body and head QUIET! As you can see in the photos, I like to tell my students to “listen for the ball to land on the green” prior to coming up and out of your posture. You want to avoid jumping up and out of your posture prematurely. Instead, listen for the ball to land. In the photos, you can see my eyes haven’t moved as the ball is chipped and on its way to the hole. That’s what you want. The bump-and-run usually rolls more than most pitches and chips, so practice how far the ball rolls with different clubs. Keep your stroke the same length; adjust your club instead. This makes it a cinch when the time comes to guess the right yardages. The stroke always stays the same!

Finally, I love teaching my students the Feedback Drill I’m demonstrating here. The goal is to learn terrific distance control. Lay a club down three to four feet behind the hole. Hit five to six chips, with your goal of getting all the balls either in the hole or between the hole and the club. If you miss one, start over again until you reach your goal. You’ll quickly see that focusing on how the ball rolls and how far it goes will help you take focus off the stroke and more on the shot at hand. It always ensures you get the ball to the hole more often, helping to make it easier to get up and down.

Give this drill a whirl. I know it will help your “chip putts” from various places around the green.

Barry Goldstein teaches at Inverrary CC in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and at the New England Golf Camp in Maine. For lesson information, email Barry at DRFORGOLF@aol.com.

Smooth Operator

Before your next round, here are two simple drills I want you to do on the practice green. Don’t worry, they’re simple and they’re both designed to help you make smoother, more rhythmic strokes, as well as hone in on your distance control.

First, I want you to ignore the cups on the practice green and putt a ball about 15 to 20 feet. Once you do that, I want you to take two more balls, and try and roll them out to the exact same distance. This will help you develop a better idea for the speed of the green, and because you’re not fixated on a target, it will help you develop a better sense of distance control. Practice this for five minutes, and you’ll be good to go.

Second, I want you to stroke a few putts from 5, 10 and 15 feet using the same baseline stroke for each putt. Meaning, whether you’re 5 feet or 15 feet away, I want you to swing the putter from shoe to shoe and not take the putterhead farther or shorter back and through. Practice this drill, and you’ll see that your tempo increases on short putts, but your putter swing stays the same. Do that for another five minutes, and you’ll have a better day on the greens.

Andy Patnou, PGA, teaches at the TOURAcademy at the TPC of Scottsdale in Arizona. For more information, visit touracademy.com.

5 Shots! You Need To Know To Score Like A Pro

Having played on the PGA Tour for many years, I can tell that the area around the green is what separates the truly great from the really good players. Great players not only know how to get up and down from more places, but they also have the creativity and confidence required to hit shots that help them lower their scores. The following five shots may not seem all that out of the ordinary, but they’re the shots you need to master if you want to start shooting lower scores right now.

1 THE PITCH & BITE
So you missed the green. It happens to all of us (even Tour players) more than you might expect. Even when I played for a living and posted some low scores, I rarely played without missing a few greens per round. That said, the trick is to first accept that you’re going to miss some greens, and second, be ready to hit the right shot afterward. In this instance, I want to hit a pitch shot that has some check on it. I want it to fly, land, bounce and grab the putting surface with minimal forward roll.

To hit this shot successfully and add some bite to your shots, the key is to always accelerate through the hit and allow the body to rotate through to take the flip out of the hands. The less you flip your hands, the longer the ball can stay on the face and increase the backspin for that added bite. Sounds easy enough, right? Here’s the trick.

As you practice hitting pitch shots, I don’t want you to think about the hands and preventing them from flipping over. I want you to concentrate on placing the majority of your weight over your left knee, which should have some flex through the shot. Some of the best short games I’ve seen on Tour come from players who retain some left knee bend through the shot. Doing so actually makes it easy for the body to rotate and for the hands to clear through the hit without needing to flip and/or lift the ball into the air.

Try keeping your left knee flexed well into the finish. You’ll see how much easier it is to rotate the body versus having a straight left knee, which stops the body and forces the hands to flip.

2 CHIP FROM THE ROUGH

Hitting delicate chips from the rough can be tricky. It’s even more difficult if you try and use the smaller muscles in the hands to get the ball airborne. For me, and for many of my colleagues, hitting crisp chips is a lot like what I just talked about in terms of hitting pitches. You want to keep some flex in your left knee and play your weight slightly favoring your left side. But with chips, there should be even less hand rotation, meaning you want a rock-solid left wrist to prevent the club from twisting as it brushes through the rough. Here’s what to do.

As you hit small chips around the green, concentrate on the back of your left hand facing the target at impact and keep that left hand staying above your right through the entire chip. There shouldn’t be any big “release” here, as you would do with a full swing or even a pitch shot. Instead, hold that left wrist firm and rotate the body over your left knee.

A great drill to firm up that left wrist and get a feel for a flexed left knee is to practice hitting chips (and pitches, too) on just your left leg with just your left arm. You’ll immediately get a sense for how it should feel to have a firm left wrist as you hit chips from the rough.

3 BEAT THE TOUGH BUNKER
Whether you encounter wet sand, a fried egg or an embedded lie, there are a few must-know moves to ensure you hit the shot correctly. First, lower your expectations a little bit. Even with perfect mechanics, some lies in the sand are going to be unpredictable no matter what. Second, don’t play the ball back in your stance as I see many amateurs do. If anything, you want to play the ball forward of center in your stance. Third, use a wedge that has a little less bounce in the sole grind. In this case, I went with my 56-degree wedge, not my 60-degree. The reason for this is because I want to hit this shot not with an open face, but with a square clubface. Why? Because hitting this shot with a face that’s open makes it even more difficult to use the sand to your advantage and lift the ball into the air. Instead, I want to play the hands a little forward of the ball, square up the face and make an aggressive swing and hit about two to three inches behind the ball and try and blast a divot about one inch deep.

Because you’re hitting this shot with less effective bounce and a square clubface, the clubface is going to dig into the sand very easily, so there’s no need to feel as though you need to dig low to lift the ball airborne. It’s going to happen anyway, meaning the most important component of this shot is to swing aggressively and be ready for some added resistance in the sand.

I recommend you practice this shot a few times and get a feel for hitting bunker shots with a square clubface and the ball a little forward in your stance. Sometimes you’ll actually want to hit open-faced shots, but with tough lies in the sand, a square clubface is often the right way to go.

4 AGAINST THE COLLAR

We Tour players don’t have the luxury of the ol’ foot wedge! When faced with a shot up against the collar like you see here, I can either try and putt it and risk the putter getting stuck in the grass, or I can try and get creative and actually try and blade the shot using my wedge. In almost every instance, I’ve opted for the latter and hit plenty of great shots doing just that.

The trick is a simple one. You want to catch the ball at or near its equator with the leading edge of the wedge. To do that, play the ball back in your stance and make a low swinging stroke. Don’t lift the club any higher off the ground than necessary. In fact, keep the clubhead as low as you can as you make the stroke. For me, I like to align my body a little open with the face of my wedge aimed at the target, as it helps me make a lower, smoother stroke. It’s more or less a putting stroke, if you will.

5 BACKHANDED WEDGE

We Tour players don’t have the luxury of the ol’ foot wedge! When faced with a shot up against the collar like you see here, I can either try and putt it and risk the putter getting stuck in the grass, or I can try and get creative and actually try and blade the shot using my wedge. In almost every instance, I’ve opted for the latter and hit plenty of great shots doing just that.

The trick is a simple one. You want to catch the ball at or near its equator with the leading edge of the wedge. To do that, play the ball back in your stance and make a low swinging stroke. Don’t lift the club any higher off the ground than necessary. In fact, keep the clubhead as low as you can as you make the stroke. For me, I like to align my body a little open with the face of my wedge aimed at the target, as it helps me make a lower, smoother stroke. It’s more or less a putting stroke, if you will.

Dan Pohl is a two-time winner on the PGA Tour and also has competed on the Champions Tour. He resides in Phoenix, Arizona, and is an ambassador for Hopkins Golf.