Importance Of Practicing Your Short Game

If you don’t have the time to put into working on your golf game like many great golfers do then usually the part of your game that suffers is your short game, putting and chipping. Chipping is one of the most difficult parts of golf, but if mastered can drastically lower your score. The closer you can put the ball to the pin the easier putting is, and everyone knows that putting is difficult. There is so much that goes into knocking down a putt, the grass length, the weather, the slope, that even putting your shot 2-5 feet closer makes your putt a lot easier.

Chipping the ball accurately takes a lot of skill, but anyone that can put some practice into it will see benefits in their score quickly. I just mentioned the two reasons why it is difficult, it takes skill and people do not practice it enough. When you go to practice your golf game, what is the first thing you work on, and this is true among 90% of golfers, your drive. Chicks love the long ball right? It is fun to drive the ball 300 yards straight down the fairway. But your drive is only one shot per hole, so why are we putting most of our effort into practicing it? If you put half of the time you spend working on your drive into practicing your short game, your scores would improve much faster. On par threes you usually do not even pull out a wood, so practice your irons!

Do not always turn to your pitching or sand wedge when you are a short distance from the hole, these clubs require a lot of practice, most beginner or high handicap golfers will hit the ball far over the hole with these clubs. Get out to the range and start working on your high irons, a very under used club by beginners is the eight iron, with some practice this club will become your best friend.

Remember that when using an iron you want to be digging up some grass with your shots, this will get you under the ball. Hitting on top of the ball is the worst thing you can do with an iron, it is better to dig up too much grass than none at all. Practicing this is a little tougher because a lot of ranges have rubber mats to hit off of, do not use irons on a rubber mat. This will absolutely lead to you hurting yourself and your clubs. Find a course that has a practice hole that you can use to work on your short game.