Improve your short game this season!

As the PGA Tour heads to the argued “fifth major” also known as The Players Championship at legendary TPC Sawgrass, most league play is beginning and hitting the links with friends and family hopefully is starting to become routine for the 2019 season. While the best players in the world travel to Ponte Vedra Beach, to begin practicing for the weekly tournament, chipping is always priority to keep them sharp going into an event. So next time you decide to take a lunch break to blast forty drivers at the range, spend this time on something more important…. short game.

For most amateurs hitting nine greens or more greens in regulation does not happen that often. Which means you will be chipping and trying to recover most of the round. Which is not a bad thing, if confidence is high with the recovery wedges but for most players is the most dreaded part of the bag. To improve your proximity to the hole to have shorter putts after using the recovery wedge begins with first stop pretending to be Phil Mickelson. For most players attempting the wide open clubface “mega flop” like Phil does not work but one out of every fifty attempts. While in chipping, consistency is the name of the game. I always ask players that attempt these shots over and over what they enjoy. The rush of finally hitting one solid or writing more pars on the scorecard because of controlling the clubface with a more simple motion.

A major problem with amateur chipping is inconsistent loft impact. More simply, this means that even though a player uses his sixty degree wedge every time he misses a green. While trying to recover, the impact with the ball is not returned back at sixty degrees. During their action, players add as well as lower the loft of their club without even knowing it. This results in an inconsistency of distance, trajectory as well as the ball roll out. To help solve this unknown of what the ball is going to do when holding the recovery wedge and raise the confidence of getting “up and down” comes with simplifying your practice habits. Rather than having no idea where a chip will land or if there will even be solid contact, improve your practice habits to be more quantity based from similar positions.

Too many players only bring a hand full of balls to the practice green and after hitting this hand full they transition to another flag stick. Most of the time not picking up two in next to one another and setting up the next set where the shot that got bladed across the green stopped rolling. So rather than focusing on different practice flags, focus on building comfort from possible “landing areas” and try to land thirty balls in the same spot not three. Begin your journey for a more consistent short game by scheduling a short game lesson with Cole today!