Sharpen your short game

As is so often the case when I read through Golf Monthly’s instruction pages, a sparkling and simple piece of advice jumped out at me this month. On page 96, Brooks Koepka talks about his approach to warming up before a round and shares advice with amateur golfers. Asked what the average player should focus on in the 20 minutes before teeing off, his unequivocal answer is short game.

Few of us regular golfers tend to focus much on short game. Pre-round we’re more concerned about hitting a few full shots to loosen off and gain a bit of confidence for the 1st tee.

But it’s short game that can really transform a round and a score. And that was driven home to me in a recent winter competition. My long game on the day was average at best and my inconsistent iron play meant I missed a high percentage of greens. That could have spelled disaster, but I chipped and pitched well and managed to get up and down six times. The result from a fairly poor round of ball-striking was 35 points and a top-ten finish from a field of over 100.

I’ll be following Brooks’ advice from now on. When possible, I’ll focus on sharpening my short game before each round. As he says, if we mere golfing mortals could get our chips three feet closer to the hole on average, we’d be making gains.

There’s good news this month for those of us who would like to improve around the greens (and that should be just about all of us, I’d think) as the short game is the main thrust of our instruction pages. Zane Scotland, the Golf Monthly Top 50 Coach who was recently appointed a diversity ambassador by The R&A, delivers ‘The Ultimate ShortGame Guide’ over five pages from page 85. It has some fabulous tips for finding greater consistency and performance when pitching, chipping, playing from sand and putting – there’s advice that could ease a multitude of short-game woes.

My advice is more general – make 2022 the year you focus on practising and improving your short game. For most amateurs, a concerted effort in that direction will knock shots off each round more effectively than any other technical approach. Our instruction pages this month are a good place to start.