The key to scoring the best you are capable of on a given day is how well you get the ball into the hole from inside 80 yards.  If you can get off the tee reasonably well, three quarters of your handicap is taken up with shots within 80 yards of the hole.  This is where most people should spend most of their practice time. 

I love teaching the short game because this is where most people have the biggest room for improvement.  If I can help someone develop a basic chip shot, a basic pitch shot, a bunker shot and a simple reliable putting stroke, they can halve their handicap in 6 months.  Course management and strategy becomes much easier when you have a good short game.

The most important element to developing a killer short game, is understanding what happens to the club when you stick it into the turf or the sand.  If you understand how the bounce or the leading edge of the club is going to behave on contact with the ground, shots around the green suddenly become simple.  If you don't understand what is going to happen when you hit the ground, you are going to have problems. 

Most of the short game troubles I see are down to this basic lack of understanding.  We fear what we don't understand, so once a golfer duffs a few chip shots, blades a few wedges or starts shanking his bunker shots and doesn't know why, the problem becomes a huge mental issue.  But the underlying cause isn't mental, it is usually poor technique.

Most of the problems come from bad setup. If you put the ball on your back foot and open your stance to chip or pitch you have a situation which is going to go wrong most of the time.  It is very hard to make consistent contact with the ball from this set up.  Why people are still teaching this method I don't know, but it keeps me busy so perhaps I shouldn't complain.  The method I teach is much simpler and gives you a much bigger margin for error, which is perhaps why it is used by the majority of the world's Tour Pro's, rather than by some of the nation's club professionals.

If you would like more information about my short game coaching, please get in touch via the Contact page, or call 07976 401 545.