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I played today and if I already didn't know it was obvious this is a weakness in my game. I would be in great shape on short par 4's or long par 5's today with 40-80 yards and my distance would usually be way off. Any tips on hitting these shots?

Thanks

Scott

It may sound flippant, but it's really not bad advice.... simply try to avoid being in those situations so often. On short par 4's, leave the driver in the bag and hit something that will leave you a full swing with a wedge or short iron.

Meanwhile, practice those shots. Practice is really the only way to develop the touch or feel necessary to execute them regularly.

There was a lot of discussion of it in the "What's the worst part of your game?" thread.

To prepare these kind of situations, I record down my distance from each short clubs. For example:

For SW shots:
full swing - ##yards
half backswing - ##yards
quarter backing swing - ##yards
chip, half backswing - ##yards
flop, half backswing - ##yards

etc etc. you get the idea. The more types of swing, distances of backswing the better. I even recorded down something like: openned-stance, closed-stance, neutral-stance, direction of shots tend to go, % of going to intended target etc. Yes it takes forever so you better have a buddy to write down things for you, but it helps so much knowing your distance with each of your clubs. Personally I feel controlling backswing distance help my short game ALOT, same thing as putting.

On the golf course I often play flop shots in such distance, because personally flop shot is easiler for me to visualize compare with chip/pitch. Yes, I always visualize the shot 1st before any hitting, you will get better sense of where the ball will go as you play forward.

Invest in Dave Pelz's Shortgame Bible . Study it, do the drills, and you will improve in this critical scoring area.

Amen, preach on brother. I never thought reading a book would improve me game as much. I read it over and over just trying to get everything out of it I can. I actually go to the range now sometimes with nothing more than 4 wedges and a putter.

Two words "Dead Hands"

SHHHHHHHHHH.

But seriously, this along with a lot of hard work is the key to lowering your scores.

I have a couple:

Turn through with your body, less with your arms, and open your stance a bit with ball a bit further back in stance.

Keep your left arm straight as a board and use no more than a three quarter swing for the 80 yard distance, and a quarter swing for the 40 yard distance.

Practice on range first =)

1. Ball back in the stance will promote skulling and less than consistent results. Keep it in the middle.
2. Why open your stance? You're just creating more problems then solving.
3. His backswing is determined by how far he hits his wedges. If his PW is 120 yards, then an 80 yard shot should be 2/3 back.
4. Taking a quarter swing for 40 yard's is weird. That means your full swing for the club is 160 yards. That's not a wedge. More like a 5-7 iron, which is only good for maybe a bump n run.

The short-game 'systems' don't really work for me. Attempting to take a certain club back to a certain position (e.g. half-swing, 9:00 position, etc.) tends to make me miss. Instead I prefer to practice the short shots with the short clubs to develop some feel for them. Of course, to execute these shots successfully, I need to take a certain club back a certain amount, exactly like the users of the short-game 'systems'. What I am trying to say is that when I focus on achieving a certain position on the backswing instead of relying on feel, it tends to mess up my shots. Instead I like to take a good look at where I need to go, pick a suitable short club, take another look, and from there I try to execute what I feel will get me the correct result, as if I were throwing a golf ball towards the hole.

Helps get your left hip out of the way. If you don't clear the hip, your shot will miss right most of the time. I watched Tom Watson giving a pitching lesson... he sets up with his feet and hips open and his shoulders parallel to the target line. By doing that he minimizes the amount of lower body movement necessary to hit the shot on line... fewer moving pieces means less to go wrong. And he might just know what he's talking about, since he's been one of the premier short game wizards for 3 decades.

Regarding 1) I don't find that to be true at all. I do find that putting the ball farther back in the stance improves the sharpness and downwardness of the strike. The results in lower ball flight and sometimes more spin. Good when the wind is blowing, especially gusting, and you don't want to throw the ball up in the air. Also, there is a whole continuum of shots from chips, which are very far back in the stance to pitches which are usually done in the middle. Something half back would be a "chitch" shot, more height than a chip, but not as much as a full pitch. I find them useful from about 20 yards out or so.

Re 3&4) Very few people are going to be as 'linear' as you are suggesting. That is, a half back swing is not usually going to produce exactly half a full shot. Most people will actually be above linear. For example, a half lob wedge for me goes about 40 yards, but a full swing is only 60-70 ish.

Especially reagarding that last point, it really comes down to what straightshooter said, you need to go out and develop a feel. Opposite of SS there, I actually really like the Pelz system, and I used that as my starting point. I staked out 10 yard intervals in my side yard, and hit full, three quarter, half, and one quarter wedges and then took the average for each shot to know the average distances. But, that was just a starting point, from that base, I have practiced hitting targets from all different angles and distances and with different clubs. Today, I don't know exactly the distances, I know the ballpark, but I know the feel of each club.

The real answer here, and maybe this isn't what the OP wanted, but it is practice. At the range, in the backyard, at the park, it takes time to get it down right. I further vote for the post above that suggests Watson as a great starting point. There is a great archive of Watson's columns at golfdigest.com. Watson also has a great and pretty cheap book Getting Up and Down. Your library probably has a copy, and it is well worth a look.

One of the tricks that hasn't been said yet is to get and keep your weight on your front side. (Both Watson and Pelz emphasize this.) This will also help promote crisper and more downward strikes. Plus, like a poster above said, it helps lock down that lower half of the body, so you dont try to use your knees to help the ball up.

But really, the answer to this is practice, practice, practice. Just like all the other aspects of this game, you can only improve if you practice.

Hear, hear. Take the club halfway back and accelerate through the ball is more accurate and controlled close to the green.

Putting the ball back in anywhere but the center of the stance leads to using parts of your body that aren't wanted in a dead-hands 40-80 yard distance wedge. Also, when you play the ball too far back you have created a two-inch margin of error, leading to inconsitent results. Other bad symptoms include the golfer instincivley feeling the need to reverse weight shift to get the ball higher in the air, this produces low-liners. All of this has been proven over and over in tests, and it's not close.

Why wouldn't they be? If you are using the same swing, and the only change is the length of the backswing, then it should be directly proportional. Mine are all directly proportional, within a couple yards.

Feel is great, but if you are using bad technique, what is feel going to get you? You need consistent results to gain feel, and this is not done by opening your stance, playing the ball back, and doing whatever other stuff you've seen on tv.

I agree. Practise is good.

Ahh. You need to get "back and through" for all short game shots. There is no coil, but there is still a slight weight shift. Not doing this leads to a swing that is all arms and hands. I don't think you know Pelz' as well as you think.

The reason it isn't linear, is because it is almost impossible for a human to keep the exact same constant acceleration through the entire downswing. If you can, more power to ya, but most people cannot. Most people can continue to accelerate through a shot, but most people cannot keep that acceleration rate exactly the same. And, if the acceleration is not exactly the same constant, then the veloctiy will not not be linear with backswing distance, and the ball's flight won't be linear with backswing distance.

Also, I think you are quite wrong in not moving the ball. Again, both Watson and Pelz play chips off the back ankle. And pitches from the middle of the stance. What if you want a shot that combines aspects of both? A chitch like I said? Plus, having low-liners (which is the point of moving the ball back), can be good on a very gusty day. When the wind is inconsistent, why would you want to through the ball up in the wind, you leave a lot more to chance that way. Hitting a lower ball will help limit the influence the wind has on the ball. Granted, if someone is just starting to learn the pitch shot, they shouldn't be moving the ball around, but with practice and experience, one can easily learn how to shape the kind of shot they want or need. There are pretty much no absolutes in this game. There are people who are physically built that putting the ball back 3 inches is the absolute best spot. There are people who are physically built that putting the ball forward 3 inches is the absolute best spot. This can only be learned through trial and error. There are general rules, but each person is different and needs to learn what works best for them. I think that the best example of this is all the apparantly contradictory advice given in this, and many other threads. Each person needs to find what works best for them, and then experiment to see what the different positions do for the ball flight. Like I said, there are times when the best shot is a low-liner, and most people find it far easier to hit that low liner with a ball placed back in the stance.

Also, I can't find my Pelz and I've loaned out my Watson, but looking at a recent article by Stan Utley, (Golf Digest March 2007), "Start with your weight favoring your left side" later on "With your weight left, you're going to feel a reverse pivot at the top. That's good -- you're keeping your pivot point consistent throughout the swing."

I never said you don't need a coil. (Where do you think I did?!?) I just said that keeping your weight on the left side takes a lot of the bottom half of your body out of the swing. You don't want to be bobbing or swaying or anything esle. The weight help keeps, as Utley puts it, a consistent pivot point throughout the swing. I like to keep it as simple as possible, and that includes having a consistent pivot point.