Fall in Love with the Short Game

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Yeah, I know, you’re tired of hearing me say how important the short game is.  It seems to be the conventional wisdom and rightly so.

It’s impossible to progress your game without a solid short game.  I learned something interesting over the weekend.  Not only will a good short game bail out our pitiful swing flaws.  It will prevent us from reaching the next level at the exact same time.

Indulge me in a little personal reflection so I can explain what I mean by that.

Over the winter, I came to the realization that I have not been putting enough work into the short game.  Putting, chipping, pitching, finesse wedges, bunker play, the whole works.  I’m certainly proficient in the techniques and have passable skill, but not the kind of refined technique that leads to serious scoring.

The first thing I did when winter broke was spend about 2/3 of my practice time around the practice green.  And this is on top of the fact that I committed a LOT more time to practice this year.  I worked a lot on chipping and short pitches, and put some work into putting, as well.  I didn’t put as much time into finesse wedges as I wanted, because my range time was spent working on retooling my swing.

My full swing work has been heavily documented, so I’ll leave that to you to go back and catch up if you wish.  I was having serious problems early this year.  Time spent on the course was painful.  I chose to spend much of the time working hard on the range, with the guidance of my pro.

When I did get to the course, though, it was clear that all my short game work was paying off.  Even though I was having such a terrible time with the full swing, my scores were basically where they were last year.  I was in the mid-40′s (I play a lot of 9-hole evening rounds by myself). All the work I put into chipping was bailing me out because I wasn’t hitting any greens in regulation.  I was sinking putts or avoiding three-putts, at least.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

As I continued to work on my full swing, I began to see definite improvement.  I’ve put in a lot of work trying to beat some bad habits.  I have the blisters to prove it.  I was slowly doing better and better at the range, but wasn’t taking it to the course.  So I put in more work.

Gradually, over the last few weeks, I got to the point where I felt that I could go out to the course and play at a respectable level.  My swing was by no means where I wanted it to be, but I was hitting good shots, and my terrible shots were becoming fewer by the day.

I headed out for an evening 9-holes and found out something fascinating.  Aside from a couple of dumb mistakes and a couple bad shots coming from my old swing flaws, I hit the ball reasonably well.  I hit five greens in regulation and hit five or six fairways.

Wow, with that kind of performance, I must have shaved five or six strokes off my score.  Unfortunately, no, I didn’t.  My score was right there where it always was, in the mid-40′s.

Why is this?  My short game held me back.  The same short game that kept me in the game with a disastrous full-swing was now keeping me from rising to a new plateau.

What I found was, my wedge game was imprecise.  Instead of missing the green, chipping close, and taking a putt or two, I was getting on the greens, but 40 or 50 feet away. I even duffed a couple of wedges where I wouldn’t normally.

My lag-putting was not adequate and I had a couple of three putts that I don’t normally have.  I had a chance to get up and down from the sand, but blew it because I haven’t put much work in from the sand.

The fact is, the swing flaws I’m working to overcome did cost me a few strokes in the form of a lost ball and another poor iron from the tee that led to having to wedge back out to the fairway.  But instead of my short game overcoming those mistakes, my improvement in the full swing just exposed holes in my short game that I didn’t anticipate.

My short game work this spring was really subconsciously targeted toward overcoming my massive swing flaws, not toward having a well-rounded game.  And it did just that.  Now, I’m not as prepared for the eventual swing fixes as I thought I was.

It’s OK, though.  I’m just going to head back to the drawing board and devote more time and effort to the short game.  I’m going to fall in love with it again, and this time, I’ll plan for all possibilities.

The moral of the story is, it is absolutely, positively impossible to spend too much of your practice time working on the short game.  When your full swing fails you, it will be there to bail you out.  And if you’re not careful, when you’re trying to reach a new plateau in your game, it will hold you back, as well.