The fastest way to lower your golf scores has nothing to do with hitting your driver 300 yards. It’s about mastering the finesse shots from 100 yards and in. Consistently getting up and down, hitting crisp chips, making confident putts - this is what turns 95s into 85s and 85s into 79s. This guide will break down the essential areas of your short game - pitching, chipping, bunker play, and putting - into simple, practical advice and drills you can take to the practice green today.
In simple terms, the "short game" includes every shot you hit from within roughly 100 yards of the green. This umbrella covers four distinct skills:
While a crushed drive feels amazing, it only counts for one stroke. The short game, however, can account for over half your shots in a round. Improving here is about building touch and creativity, not a ton of power, which means *any* golfer can become a short game wizard with the right approach and a little dedicated practice.
A good pitch shot can turn a missed green into an easy tap-in par. Unlike a chip, which is low and running, a pitch shot flies higher through the air and stops more quickly once it lands. Control is the name of the game here.
Making a good pitch shot starts with a setup designed for crisp contact. You don’t need your full-swing stance. Instead, think of it as a miniature version of your normal iron swing.
The biggest mistake amateurs make with pitching is trying to control distance by hitting the ball harder or softer. Pros control distance with the length of their swing, keeping the tempo smooth and consistent.
Imagine your arms are the hands of a clock. To hit a short pitch, you might only take the club back to where your lead arm is at 8 o’clock. For a medium pitch, take it back to 9 o'clock. For a longer pitch that requires more power, take it back to 10 o'clock. The key is to match your backswing length with your follow-through length and keep the rhythm consistent through the ball. Don't slow down at impact, accelerate smoothly through the shot.
Head to the practice green with a bucket of balls. Place a towel or an alignment stick at 30 yards, another at 45 yards, and a third at 60 yards. The goal is to calibrate your "body clock."
This drill trains your body to connect a specific feel with a specific distance, replacing guesswork with confidence.
A chip shot is your friend when you’re just off the putting surface with no obstacles in your way. Think of it less as a "swing" and more as a "stroke." The goal is to get the ball onto the green and rolling like a putt as quickly as possible.
For maximum consistency, you want to remove moving parts. The "one-lever" method uses your shoulders and arms as a single, stable unit, eliminating the small, twitchy muscles in your wrists.
Great chippers don't aim for the hole, they aim for a landing spot. Your job is to choose a spot on the green where you want the ball to land, and then pick the right club to let it run out to the pin. Here’s a simple guide:
This is a classic. Go to the practice green and lay a towel a few feet onto the fringe. This is your landing zone. Practice chipping with different clubs (PW, 8-iron, 6-iron) from the same spot just off the green. Try to land every ball on the towel. Your only goal is to hit the towel, after that, just observe. You'll quickly see how a 6-iron rolls out much farther than a PW, even with the same stroke. This engraves the "land on your spot, let it roll" mentality and teaches you to read the green on chips.
Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a golfer like a greenside bunker shot. But the secret to bunker play is surprisingly simple: You don't hit the ball. You hit the sand. The club slices through the sand *underneath* the ball, and it’s the resulting explosion of sand that throws the ball gently onto the green.
A bunker shot requires a different setup from every other shot in golf.
Now, take aim at a spot in the sand roughly two inches behind the ball. Your entire swing thought should be to splash that spot of sand onto the green. The most important thing here is to swing with speed and commitment. A slow, tentative swing will cause the club to dig, but an aggressive swing that accelerates through the sand will let the bounce of the club work its magic. Swing fully and follow through!
This drill provides immediate feedback. In a practice bunker, draw a line in the sand perpendicular to your target. Plop a few golf balls *on top of the line*. Now, set up to the balls and focus solely on entering the sand just before the line. If you do it correctly, your divot will start behind the line, go under the ball, and send a beautiful splash of sand (and your ball)softly onto the green.
Putting can make or break your entire round. The two fundamental skills of putting are speed and line. Most coaches agree that speed (or distance control) is far more important. If you can get your speed right on every putt, you’ll never be more than a few feet away, eliminating those dreaded three-putts.
Like chipping, the best putting stroke is one with few moving parts. Think of a grandfather clock’s pendulum swinging back and forth from a single pivot point. For putting, that pivot point is your sternum, and the pendulum is the triangle formed by your shoulders and arms.
Working on your short game is the most direct path to shooting lower scores. Mastering these core shots comes down to understanding the simple mechanics for pitching, chipping, bunker play, and putting, then using targeted drills to turn that knowledge into real feel and confidence around greens.
Perfecting these areas takes practice, and having an on-demand coach in your pocket can greatly speed up your learning curve. This is exactly why we built Caddie AI to act as your 24/7 golf expert. You can ask for specific drills to cure your chunked chips, or when you’re on the course staring at a tricky lie in the rough, you can snap a photo to get a smart, simple strategy for how to play the shot. Our goal is to take the guesswork out of these critical scoring moments so you can execute every short game shot with more confidence.
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