Try ‘ten to one’

Here’s a fun game I use around the practice green called ‘ten to one’. You start with ten balls and one club. Drop the balls in the same spot, play them as they lie and try to get at least one ball into a pre-determined ‘safe zone’, maybe 12ins from the cup or wherever you could reasonably call a gimme.

Chip, flop, straight-arm zipper, shank – it doesn’t matter as long as you stop one of the ten balls in the zone. As soon as you do, move on to nine balls and start again, but from a different spot. Then eight balls and so on. The pressure builds as the number of balls gets lower. When you have two balls left and know you need one in gimme range, it starts to get pretty tasty!

The aim is to complete it in ten shots, but that requires seriously good play and a Tiger-like nerve. The lowest I’ve managed so far is 19 shots. If your short game is the undoing of your promising medal rounds, try ‘ten to one’ and feel the pressure – it’s a great way to prepare for the heat of the battle.