Developing a solid short game is a must if you want to shave strokes off your golf handi-cap. As we’ve often said in our golf tips newsletter, a good pitch or chip from 100 yards and in turns three (or more) strokes into two. These saved strokes add up over the course of a round and can dramatically lower your golf handicap. But most short game shots are “in between” shots. That’s a problem. It’s much easier to make a full swing shot than a shot where you’re in between clubs.

Distance Control Is Key

The key to making these short-game shots is distance control with your wedges. Some players like to control distance by “feel.” But that can be difficult to do. An easier ap-proach is to control distance mechanically. You can do that by controlling the length of your swing. It’s the length of the swing with consistent tempo that creates the desired shot distance. If you can master this method, you’ll be able to dial in your shots from 100 yards and in, saving strokes.

Many players who have trouble controlling distance have two major flaws. They have a backswing and downswing that are not the same length and a swing tempo that varies significantly from shot to shot. Both are killers when it comes to distance control. Both are also the result of trying to hit shots with “feel” only. This method might work for Tour players, but its extremely difficult for weekend golfers to master. And judging from what we see in our golf lessons, few do. What’s needed is method that eliminates feel from the shot.

A Proven Method

A proven method for controlling distance involves three components: 1) where to place your hands on the club, 2) the width of your stance, and 3) the length of the swing. Each component contributes equally to controlling distance. Each changes based on the length of the shot. The method works well for many golfers because it is simple and easy to execute.

For example, if you were half the normal distance of a full wedge shot, your stance would be wide but not as wide as for a full wedge shot, and you’d choke down a couple of inches on the club. Your swing length would be shoulder height on both the backswing and downswing. These components would change if you had a shot that was 20 percent of a full-wedge shot. Your hands would be placed almost at the bottom of the grip, your stance would be narrow, and your swing would be short, both in the backswing and the downswing.

Keys To Method

One key to executing this method is that you must maintain a consistent tempo through-out your swing. Golfers at our golf lessons that often have a hard time achieving a consis-tent swing tempo. One way to overcome this is with a metronome. A metronome is a de-vice used in music to mark time. It’s a great way to train yourself to swing with a repeat-able tempo. When training yourself to do this, make a concerted effort to rotate your body all the way through to the finish while letting your arms and hands follow. This creates a smoother “connected” motion.

A second key to this method is to determine how far you hit the ball with each setup and swing length. That’s easily accomplished by going to the range or an empty field where you have plenty of room and hitting balls using the different setups and swing lengths. Once you learned the distance for each setup and swing length, you’re ready to dial in short game shots from any distance.

Developing a good short game is among the fastest way to chop strokes off your golf handicap. A good short game saves tons of strokes. One way to hit accurate short game shots is through feel. But this method is hard to master for weekend golfers. A simpler and better approach is the method described above. It enables you to control distance me-chanically and eliminates inconsistency. Once you’ve achieved these goals, your short game will take off.

Improving your putting is the best—and the fastest—way to cut strokes off your golf handicap. It has such a bearing on how you play that if you can only practice one phase of the game, putting is the phase you should work on. That makes sense when you think about it because you hit more putts per round than any other shot. If you two-putt every hole you’ll hit 36 putts during the round. If you shoot 100, that’s 36 percent of your shots. If you’re serious about improving your game, master putting.

Improving your putting requires practice. It’s not easy to become a better putter by just playing. But you can also improve your putting without ever visiting the practice green. Studying putting golf tips, such as those we have in our golf tips newsletter, can make you a better putter if you apply them. Below are five golf tips that we’ve gleaned from past newsletters that will help you not only improve your putting but also chop strokes off your golf handicap.

1. Develop A Routine

Better golfers all have routines. It doesn’t matter what type of a shot it is, they have a routine for it. When it comes to putting, having a routine is imperative. It’s necessary for making consistent strokes. That’s why we encourage players in our golf instruction ses-sion to develop one. What kind of routine should you have? That’s up to you. It’s your routine. You can incorporate anything you want into it but make it quick. The routine should never take more than a minute or two. And make sure you do it before every putt.

2. Practice The Right Putts

Watching students in golf lessons practice putting is instructive. Many start with long putts, say 45 feet or so. While these are fun, how practical are they? You could go a whole round and not have a putt that long. So while you want to put time in on those long putts, make sure you practice the shorter putts. Odds are the vast majority of your putts will be from about 15 feet or so in. So start there and work your way in. Force your-self to make three in a row before moving to a shorter distance.

3. Maintain Your Confidence

Confidence is a big factor in putting. If you lack confidence when putting, you won’t sink many. So if you’re putting poorly these days, work on getting your confidence back. One way to do this is to make a change. Try a new grip, for example. You could try a claw grip or a low left-hand grip. Just make it different. New grip styles take the focus off your stroke itself—and often that helps. Also, work on making solid contact on short putts. That’s something we focus on in golf lessons. If you don’t hit the ball on the sweet spot, you’ll miss many of those short putts that we all need to make to drive down our golf handicaps.

4. Relax When Putting

If you’re tense when you hit the putt, you’ll probably be tenser after you’ve putt. You can’t be tense and be a good putter. If your arms and hands are too tense, you’re more likely to make a quick, jabbing strike through the ball, rather than a nice flowing stroke. To release tension, take a few practice strokes. Focus on feeling the weight of the club-head. Try to lag it behind the ball on the forward stroke. This promotes better speed and direction control. It also helps feel.

5. Use Alignment Aids

Every putter has some sort of alignment aid. It could be something as simple as a line on the putter. Don’t be afraid to use them. Confirming your aim helps you focus on other equally important things, like speed and making solid contact. Align the alignment aid with a mark on the ball from behind the ball. Make sure it’s aiming at either the hole or where you want to start you’re putt. Using alignment aids increases your chances of hol-ing more putts.

These five golf tips will help you sink more putts. That in turn will impact your scores and golf handicap. But you do have to put some time in on the practice green. So try to set aside some time each week to practice your putting and incorporate these golf tips in each of your practice session. Also, practice the putts you’re most likely to see during a round. Regular practice will pay off.

Professional golfers are incredibly talented. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be on the Tour. But they also spend a lot more time practicing their games and honing their skills. Week-end golfers often don’t get the kind of practice or playing time they really need to put a big dent in their golf handicaps. So the learning process is slow.

Weekend golfers speed up the learning process by watching the pros. That’s why we en-courage students who take our golf lessons to observe the pros carefully, whether watch-ing them on television, online, or in person. It’s amazing what you can learn by simply watching the best golfers in the world. And what you learn isn’t always about shot me-chanics. Here are some things we observed the last time we watched a pro tournament:

Power And Control

Tour players exhibit power and control with their shots. Key to doing this is the release of the club through impact, as we’ve mentioned in our golf tips newsletter. Some players, like K.J. Choi, like to hit lower piercing shots with a strong left to right ball flight. The key: his arms and club go immediately left aft impact. Other players like Luke McDonald approach things differently. His arms and clubs go out and away from his body after im-pact. This allows his club to transfer the stored energy into the ball. It also increases the shot’s trajectory.

Releasing The Putter

In golf lessons on putting, teachers often talk about how important it is to release the putter. Releasing the putter is actually a simple concept. It basically entails keeping the butt end of the putter pointed at a fixed throughout the stroke. This is a key putting fun-damental and something professional golfers are work on religiously. It allows the put-terhead to swing on plane while the putter ace travels naturally through the stroke.

If you want to get a feel for this, try practicing with a belly putter, as we have some of our students do during golf lessons. The belly putter is attached to the your navel during the stroke—just the way it should be. It’s a great putting tool for golfers who struggle with releasing the putter, even if you want to continue putting conventionally.

Power And Consistency

If you watch the pros you’ll see that they exhibit power and consistency. One without the other doesn’t really help your golf handicap. But watch closely and you’ll see that both qualities actually start at the feet, not with the hands. The body needs to lead the hands on the downswing and that motion begins with the feet. Tour players move aggressively toward their front foot without spinning to begin the downswing. This maintains the club on the proper angle, shifts the player’s weight into the ball, and let’s her snap the club-head into the ball through the use of the body pivot.

Practice Shots You Use

One key thing that separates pro golfers and weekend warriors—and something we strive to emphasize in our golf instruction sessions— is practice. When the pros practice, they not only practice shot mechanics, they practice shots that they will actually need to hit during a round. Many weekend golfers don’t take this approach. They go to the range instead and bang out a bucket of balls—with very little thought to hitting shots they might need during a round. That’s a hard way to shave strokes off your golf handicap.

Weekend golfers don’t usually have the skills that the pros do. They also usually don’t have the time needed to hone their skills at the range. But they can shortcut the learning process is by closely watching the pros play with a goal of picking up golf tips that can help them shave strokes off their golf handicaps.

Here’s a question often get asked in golf lessons. What’s the most difficult shot in golf? Some say the downhill bunker shot. Others say driver off the deck. Then there are those who say a high soft lob over a short-sided bunker. The most difficult shot in golf is the straight shot. If you’ve been trying to hit dead straight shots, the effort could be costing you strokes on your golf handicap.

A dead straight shot is hard to hit. Everything in your swing has to be absolutely perfect to hit the ball dead straight. That’s why many great players hit fades and draws. They are easier to hit when it comes to precision and timing, and easier to repeat. And that is a big plus when it comes to playing well and/or shaving strokes off your golf handicap. You need consistency to shave strokes from your scores, as we tell student in our golf instruc-tion sessions.

Among the keys to hitting a fade or draw with control is the downswing. How the body initiates the downswing is critical, as are attaining specific positions at key points in the downswing. And while the differences in hitting the fade and draw are subtle, they are substantial. Below are some golf tips that will help you master the subtleties of the down-swing when trying to hit fades and draws.

The Fade

To hit a fade you need a steeper swing plane into the ball than with a draw. The steeper swing plane lets you to hold the clubface slightly open at impact. To achieve that steeper swing plane, the hands need to be high above the head at the top of the swing, your gloved hand cupped, and the left elbow (right for left-handers) flared out. In addition to coming in at a steeper plane, you must also maintain a more upright plane midway through the downswing. (Here’s a golf tip: If you look in the mirror you’ll see the shaft bisecting your left arm, ensuring the steeper angle into the ball.)

It’s critical at this point as you come into the ball that the body rotates fully to meet the clubface. To do that with a fade, you must use more of an upright angle to get to the ball. You can’t hit a fade (as a right-hander) if you never get to your left wrist. Simply put: A strong lower body rotation is critical to avoid hitting blocked shots.

The finish position for the fade is with the hands held high, the torso fully rotated, and the head facing the target. For more fade, simply open the clubface more. Whatever you do, don’t try to over manipulate the your body. You don’t want to get too upright and/or too steep into the ball. That will cause you to slice. One drawback with the fade: it doesn’t usually travel as far as draws because of the ball’s backspin. On the other hand, fades tend to stay in the fairway. A good swing thought to have when hitting a fade is to remember to keep the clubhead high after impact.

Hitting The Draw

Let’s look now at the same key areas of the downswing and how they differ with a draw. The key to hitting a draw is the position of the upper body at the top of the swing. To hit a draw your hands must be lower at the top than when hitting a fade. That’s because your downswing doesn’t need to be as steep as with a fade. You also need a flat left wrist and a more rounded swing plane.

The draw is more of an arms-driven swing. And you need to come from the inside. If you can’t get there, you won’t be able to start the ball to the right (left for left-handers) and draw it back toward the fairway. Unlike the fade, the bottom of your swing arc is charac-terized by a more active rolling of the hands. Since you can’t hit a draw with an open clubface, the clubface must be square or slightly closed at impact.

The finish to a draw mimics the lower position you were in at the top and midway through the downswing, like the finish on the fade. This helps flatten out the downswing, so it becomes more rounded. If you want to adjust how much draw to put on the ball, close the clubface a little more at impact.

These golf tips will help you hit better fades and draws. Hitting a crooked shot with con-trol is much easier than trying to hit a dead straight shot. So if you’ve been trying to hit your shots dead straight and that strategy hasn’t done much for your golf handicap, do what we often tell students at our golf lessons: try hitting fades and draws.