Stick it Stone Dead

The object of golf is to get a little white ball into a little white hole in as few strokes as possible.  Given that fact, common sense should dictate that the closer you get to the hole on any given shot, the better your odds are of making that shot, or at least getting it close enough to make the next shot a formality.  Close is good, except when it’s not.  Here’s the common problem:

For a great many golfers, the most difficult shots in golf are those in which they have to make something less than a full swing. This problem is so commonplace that many players (when they can’t reach the green) lay up to a distance that allows them to make a full swing.  For a great many of us, when we are closer to the green than what our shortest iron goes on a full swing, a Pandora’s Box of problems tends to open up.  Doubts creep in, second-guessing begins, and Chunks, Skulls, and Chili-Dips soon follow as players decelerate, over-accelerate, or use the wrong club in response to their inability to execute in this range.  In a situation when good players are licking their chops, a great many of us feel our collars tighten and our palms start to moisten.  And as a result of this, we often intentionally hit a shot that is actually farther away from the hole than we have the ability to.  With a slight change in approach, however, and a little different practice routine, you can easily turn these dread-inducing shots into an actual strength of your game, and start taking advantage of those opportunities by laying up closer.

The Approach

I came upon this more than 20 years ago by watching and working with a player who made it to the PGA Tour on the strength of his game inside a 100 yards and have tweaked it just slightly over the years.  This guy was best wedge player I’ve ever seen, a player who rarely hit it outside of 10 feet.  How did he do it?  By developing a clinical approach that heightened an awareness of where the club was in his swing, while taking much of the guess-work and reliance on his innate sense of feel out of the equation.  The first thing he did to accomplish this was to make every swing an abbreviated version of his full swing, insuring that he would always be accelerating through impact (the de-cel is the biggest death move under a 100).  The second thing he did was to control his distances by having a slightly longer backswing for every ten yards beginning at 30.  As I watched him do this, I made note that his club-head would stop going back in almost the exact same place every time at a given yardage. If it was a 30 yard shot, the club-head went back as high as his right knee.  For 40 yards it was about mid-thigh.  At 50 yards the club-head never went higher than his beltline and at 60 yards it was half-way between the beltline and his right shoulder.  At 70 yards he was shoulder high and at 80 it reached his right ear.  At 90 yards the club-head was just above his head and finally at 100 yards he was using a full swing.  He hit all of these shots with the same club (a 56-degree sand wedge) and he hit a lot of them, spending about two hours of every practice day hitting these types of shots over and over again.  And it showed.

The Routine

While mechanically, the approach set him up for success, and helped develop the club-head awareness that all great players have, the routine was the real key to what made him so deadly inside 100 yards.  He started his practice routine by placing range buckets at 10 yard intervals beginning at 30 yards all the way to 100.  He would warm-up by hitting about 5 balls to each bucket in succession from the shortest to the longest and then back down to the shortest.  Then, if I was standing nearby, he would ask me to randomly call out a number like 50, 70, or 90 and he would hit a shot to that bucket.  If I wasn’t there, he would just alternate by hitting one say 40, then one 70, then back to 50, or up to 90.  This sort of random practice has since been proven to be incredibly effective by the folks in the brain science field when it comes to long-term retention, but when you asked him it just helped to break up the monotony and kept him mentally engaged, rather than getting into a mindless groove.  If he noticed there were one or two particular distances that he struggled to consistently land the ball within a few feet of the bucket, he would go back at the end of the session and practice at that distance by hitting an additional 50 balls or more, just to make sure he was consistent with his backswing length, it was where he wanted it, and that he was consistently accelerating through impact.

Now I realize that this is a pretty methodical approach, and that most of us don’t have 2 hours a day, six days a week to practice period, let alone practice just these types of shots, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a couple of things from this approach and routine to start making this an area of strength in your own game.  The reference points for backswing length on the body may not be exactly the same for you due to your individual club-head speed and what loft your wedge of choice is for these situations, but if you just make a practice of assigning a different length backswing for every 10 yards and making sure you always at least slightly accelerate through the shot you will start to get rid of some of the aforementioned colorfully-named ugly shots that had your collar tightening in the first place.  Then practice these shots, whenever you can, in ten yard increments, randomly, and while paying attention to which length of swing produces which distance and it will start to take a lot of the guess-work and second-guessing out of the equation once you’re faced with them on the course.  50 yards?  Belt-line backswing. 70 yards?  Shoulder high. Etc., etc. etc.  Do both of those things and you will begin to develop some actual confidence when you’ve got a wedge in your hands and the type of club-head awareness that is the hallmark of a better player.   Make a habit of this approach and routine for shots under 100 yards and don’t be surprised if before long instead of negatively thinking “Oh, great, I’m dead!” the next time you’re faced with one, that you suddenly start licking your chops and thinking, “Great!  I’m gonna’ stick it stone dead!”

Cover Photo via Flickr