Golf Instructions For The Short Game.

May 18, 2010 by Parshooters

Golf Instructions On Improving Your Short Game!

Learn Your Short Game Mechanics For Improved Play!

Most of us golfers will struggle mightily with trying to lower our golf scores, and our handicaps to the point of frustration. What most golfers don’t stop to realize is that your short game is at least 50% of your golf scores. Without a good short game which includes anything within 100 yards of the pin placement on the green, chipping, pitching and putting, your ability to score well will diminish significantly. For most average to high handicappers the ability to scramble is paramount to what you do on each and every golf hole. You can expect to miss the green during a golf round more than two-thirds of the time.

We will spend endless hours on the driving range hitting drivers, to the point of exhaustion. We’ll work diligently on our golf game to prove to ourselves that those new hybrids really are much easier to hit than our long irons. We hit golf ball after balls trying to gain some much needed confidence in our fairway metals, and we are quick to buy that new set of irons that is guaranteed to be much more forgiving and deadly accurate.

I have been fortunate over the years to watch, learn and implement the same golf instructions and tips from some of the best short game artist on the tour and amateurs alike. I’ve played on my home golf course where the greens were very narrow width wise and had a lot of different kinds of mounds around them. In order to score you had to learn how to chip, and putting played a huge part in the scrambling of getting up and down. Hitting a long ball off the tee and in the fairway does make playing the golf hole a lot easier. No Question! However, in order to improve your golf scores it’s a lot more than just being able to hit good quality golf shots.

I’m sure when your watching golf on TV you’ll notice that most pros hit consistent quality golf shots most of the time. What separates their money earnings comes down to who is hot and who is putting consistently the best over a period of time. Besides putting in the the time on the driving range, they also are putting an equal amount of time in putting, chipping and sand blasting. For most of us who work we don’t have that luxury to spend quality time in improving our game at a practice facility. That’s why as much as you’ll try, you’ll never improve to the point that you can feel good about the finesse aspects of your short game. You’ll always have a 3 putt or missed chip shot that will pop up unexpectedly.

Then what’s the real problem with our golf game? Why do our scores remain higher than we can stand? Why isn’t all that practice time and new technology paying off for us? How can we best diagnose the problem with our golf game? Perhaps we don’t really know what’s wrong with our golf game. Maybe we really don’t know what needs to be fixed, without some type of coaching on how to fix our problems.

Know Your Golf Clubs. One of the first golf instructions I learned was knowing yardages to the green and distances to the pin. This is important so that we can know which club to select and how long to make our back swing to get to the pin. As you watch the professional golfers you will notice that ideally they want to put themselves in positions where they can come into the green with a full swing of the golf club. The reality is that as weekend golfers we seldom achieve that perfection. We are often faced with situations where that full swing will actually get us into big trouble even with a high degree lofted club. This is where the short game practice is critically important. If you want to improve upon your short game, then knowledge of your own golf swing in terms of yardages for each golf club is vital. This is necessary so that you can develop repeatable short swings with different clubs to give yourself an arsenal of strokes for your memory banks to repeat. On most driving ranges there is a short game practice area, that is marked with some of the distances to the different pins. Those distances are usually from the practice tee to the practice green.

Learn To Visually Judge. Armed with the knowledge of how far a golf ball will travel you can begin making some good sound decisions when you are close to the green. You need to develop a golf swing to match your judging distances. Most of the teaching pros will teach some type of variations of this method. For each of the wedges you carry and even your 7,8,9 irons do you know how far they will travel with a quarter or a half or three quarter swing? This is something you might have to take your time to learn but when you know it, the information is very valuable to you. This is probally the single hardest part of the golf game to learn. The finesse is something you just can’t pick up and learn how to. It takes a lot of energy, time and experience to develop the know-how.

Learn to Execute the Golf Swing. You will find all kinds of opinions on alignments. I like the open alignment which is probably the best in keeping your body from blocking the golf shot. The hands should always lead the club-face, and there should be no movement with the lower body when chipping. This means that you set up with the golf ball closer to the back of your stance and your hands will be in front of your front target-side leg. With your weight shifted in favoring your target side you will then hit through the ball and finish high for the typical chip or pitch shot. This setup will also tend to de-loft the club meaning that the angle of the club face (being more upright) will now act like the next lower club number which means more distance.

Golf Mindset and Self-Confidence. This is critical in how well you actually play. For most of us we’ll never know what it’s like to stand over a 5 foot putt to win a golf tournament, or needing to get up and down to win a $ million. Instead we’ll mis-hit shots around the greens or 3 putt when trying to make our first putt for birdie. The hardest part about golf is focusing on the moment, and not allowing little mishaps get us down. When you blow up on a given hole to just forget about it, and go onto the next one. This is extremely difficult and we do allow it to build up inside of ourselves to the point of explosion. Which causes us to lose our self-confidence, especially when it comes to our short game. That’s the difference between amateur and professional, we don’t have that capability to overcome our mistakes on the golf course. The pros can because they have studied, practiced and implemented the changes necessary to improve on any given weakness in their golf game. They also have coaches, strength trainers, masseuses and manufacturing sponsors to help them with anything they need to remain competitive.

What’s In Your Golf Bag? For my short game I carry 4 different wedges. A 48,54,64 degrees and a Texas wedge. I play with the putter off the green every chance I can get. It’s the easiest club to work with, it’s just knowing how far to stroke the golf ball. Putting has always been my strength, and it can help reduce your scores a lot by making up for a lot of bad mistakes. To make your own putting better, you need to have a putter that you have self-confidence with. Being fitted for the ideal putter is a great idea. Once you become used to it, you will notice a greater amount of putts being made, that will amount to better scores. If your having problems with making putts, then the way your putting may need to be changed. You might need to learn how to read the putts better, and be sure to pay greater attention to detail of the greens itself.

Developing your short game is essential to playing the game of golf well, and being able to enjoy playing with friends or family. When you can find out what you are having trouble with, and fix it, you will develop the self-confidence needed that goes into improving your golf game. Your short game is very important to deciding if you will have a good day or a terrible one. When you are playing well with your short game, you are chipping well and making some long putts. When you start to believe in your golf skills, and with some dedication to practicing, over a short period of time you will begin to know which wedges you’ll need for every short yardage golf shot. You will know how to hit a low backspin shot, a pitch and run, a high backspin shot, and lots of other advanced techniques around the greens.

Do you want to learn how to play the best golf game around the greens! Then you can’t afford not to click on the following link to start enjoying this great game, and be the envy of talk amongst your friends. Playing for quarters around the greens will more than pay for this DVD, as you clean their pockets of extra change.

Golf Instructions On Improving Short Game Finesse!