The short game (short irons and putting) accounts for most of your time on the golf course. That’s why going to the driving range is only going to help so much. Guys out there like to practice having the biggest, longest drive off the tee, but their score may be suffering due to the fact they don’t practice their short game as much.
Sure having a great drive is sexy, and it can lower your score, but with a bad short game, those guys who spend all day at the driving range with their new, flavor of the month drivers who don’t have a short game worth talking about are going to have higher scores than someone with a moderate drive and a good short game.
Click Here To Learn How To Improve Your Short Game
So, the number one rule for improving your short game is practice.
Try to find a driving range that has a chipping green with bunkers. Not all of them have this, especially the ones you see on the side of the highway while going to work. Also, make sure the range has clear yardage markers from 50 to 100 yards. Some ranges only start posting yardage at 200.
The second rule is to know your clubs.
That doesn’t mean going out and buying the brand new clubs as advertised in Golf Digest, nor does it mean being able to talk about the graphite shaft’s particle density or the whether the club has titanium plating.
Know YOUR clubs.
Know how the clubs you have right now in your bag handle for you.
For example, how many yards does your nine-iron shot go? What about a five-iron? When practicing to improve your short game what you’re going for is not the same thing as on the driving range, where most golfers just want to see how far they can hit the ball with their big drivers.
What do you practice for when improving short game?
What you practice for is a 100 yard shot. Start with this because it’s an easy distance to judge and it’s a common shot to have to make in an actual round. Most golf courses have markers for 100 yards from the green. For some golfers, a 100 yard shot would be made with a pitching wedge, for others it may be a seven iron. Find the club and swing you need to consistently get a 100 yard shot.
After you find that club, practice that swing six thousand times. Well, practice it as much as you have time for. Save that swing in your muscle memory so that you could do it in your sleep. It is your benchmark. On the course you should feel confident knowing that you can hit the ball exactly 100 yards if you need to.
When that swing is saved to your muscle memory, go up one club. From a pitching wedge, move to a nine iron, from a nine iron to an eight iron, and so on. Use the same swing, and see how much farther the shot goes. For most golfers, this isn’t very much. Twenty five or fifty yards. Make mental, or even better, written notes on how much each club increases distance.
If you practice like this, you will be able to not only judge the distance to the green, but place a shot right on it consistently. Then you can show your friends who have the long drives that getting the ball on the green will lower your score much more.
If you would like to learn how to shave strokes off of your average, I would recommend watching the videos The Golf Swing Secret. Golf Swing Secrets not only covers how to lower your score but it covers a lot of other issues that you run into playing golf. They are instantly downloadable videos so you can actually see what you should be doing instead of just reading about how you should be doing it.
