Yesterday, I was sitting at home admiring how nice the weather was outside. I had decided that I was going to take it easy this weekend to heal up because I was a little sore and tired. But with the weather like that, I figured I’d head over to the driving range and hit some balls.

The way the range is situated at my club, it’s a couple hundred yards from the parking lot. So I walked out there, all the while admiring how nice the weather was. I went to the driving range booth, grabbed a large basket, and headed for the tee.

It wasn’t until that point that it finally occurred to me how windy it was (afterward, I checked and the wind was 19 mph, gusting to 29mph). That just goes to show how oblivious I can be sometimes to what’s going on around me. I set up at the tee hitting a few warm-up wedges and I couldn’t believe how windy it was. I was hitting directly into it too.

After a few balls, I started wondering if I should go back to the booth and beg for a rain check. I thought about it for a second, and I realized that I should be embracing the conditions. I’m going to end up playing in conditions like that at some point (and I certainly have before). Now, I know that in some parts of the country, winds like that are very common, but here in New Jersey, that’s just flat-out windy.

So I set out to try and learn as much as I could about the conditions.

I practiced my knock-down shots with a handful of clubs. I hit draws and fades to see how much the wind would affect them. I hit wedges that ballooned up, so I could see how my distances were affected. I hit drivers that were teed down and moved a little toward the middle of my stance, to keep them down. I tried to hit wedges on lower trajectories. This was all in addition to the standard stuff I work on (getting my lower body to fire and not stall out, and making more consistent contact).

I decided then: from now on I’m going to embrace the weather when I practice so I can be better prepared when I face it on the course.

A few days back, I discussed the 100 Putt drill that Jackie Burke showed to Phil Mickelson. For those who didn’t see it, the drill consists of lining up a series of three-foot putts. The object is to make 100 in a row. If you miss one, you start again. I promised to try the drill and report back.

One word comes to mind: humbling.

I had an hour to spare and in keeping with my rule to do at least one thing each day to contribute to my goal, the drill seemed like a perfect fit. I went down to my friendly neighborhood practice green and set up. I chose to set up five balls instead of the typical ten, mainly because I wanted to putt with the same balls I play on the course and I only had 7 game balls. I measured out five spots, one putter-length out from the hole and got to work.

I missed the first three. I swear. There was a little break that I just wasn’t seeing. Once I got that one down, I still wasn’t doing well. Eventually, I determined that the hole location I was using was cursed, so I moved on to another one. I did a little better there.

My top score was 24. Most of the time, I was only getting around eight or ten. I lost count of how many times I started over, but it had to be a few dozen. You can get in a lot of repetitions in an hour, especially when you’re hardly breaking ten in a row.

However, all is not lost. This was a valuable learning experience. The first thing I learned is that my address position is extremely inconsistent. Having hardly played in a couple of years, and only having done a couple of putting sessions this spring, it’s really to be expected. Remember when I discussed perception versus reality? Even though I’ve missed several short putts on the course this spring, my perception was that my putting is a little off, but still decent. Well, I was dead wrong. I was clearly not being honest with myself.

The second thing I learned is that my stroke is wildly inconsistent. After hitting so many three-foot putts in a row, I really developed a feel for when I was missing the sweet spot on the putter face. Early on in the drill, I was missing it most of the time. As time went on, I was hitting it much more often.

It seems bad, but over a single hour, I made a huge improvement. By the end, I was hitting the putts much more solidly and with more confidence. I also felt like my stroke was becoming more consistent. When I did miss, I pretty much knew I was going to in the middle of the stroke. I found myself getting outside the plane during the takeaway and having to guide the putter head back on line. These were almost always misses. After repeating the same putt so many times, I was really getting a heightened awareness and feel for my stroke.

My intention is to try to do this drill at least once a week. I think it might be the most valuable drill I do all year. In just the one session, the improvement was apparent. Grooving a solid stroke and good contact at three feet will help me be more consistent on putts of all lengths. Once those things are in good shape, then getting the feel for different distances will be a lot easier. I also definitely noticed the confidence I was starting to get near the end. It’s not like I was making a lot of them, but going from making less than five in a row to averaging around ten and even 24 once improved my confidence some. As I continue to build on the small successes, that confidence will continue to grow.

Effective course management means you should be playing the game like a chess match, thinking a few moves ahead. When you start the day, you know several things including your skill level and what your current tendencies are. For instance, maybe for the last week, your tendency has been to draw the ball, and your consistency has been off with a number of thinly-struck toe hits so your misses have been short and left.

You should be attacking every hole with that information in mind. Before you stand over every shot you should be thinking where you’re trying to hit the ball and where a miss is most likely to go. Then you need to evaluate how likely you are to miss, and what the consequences are for the next shot if you do miss. If you’re hitting a driver off the tee and a sweeping hook that goes shorter than you expect has you flirting with an out of bounds area, then you really should be thinking of a more conservative approach if you feel that your likelihood of getting into trouble is high enough.

Let’s say you’re hitting the ball extremely well and your odds of a serious miss are very low. That doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t be thinking ahead. As you hit every shot, you should be thinking about where that will leave your next shot and how that positions you for the rest of the hole. Say your second shot is to a green where the pin is tucked back right behind a bunker. Maybe your best approach is from the far left side of the hole, giving you more green to work with, a better look at the flag, and less bunker to worry about. That means you need to position yourself off the tee in the best spot to take advantage of that.

One important note: considering your possible misses and planning around them doesn’t mean you can give yourself the luxury of dwelling on negative thoughts. As Sam Snead once said, “Ya gotta dance with who ya brung.” That means that you work on your swing at the range and when it comes time to hit the course, you live with whatever you have going wrong at that time. There’s no room for dwelling on negativity, but acknowledging reality and planning for it will allow you to shoot the best score possible.

Without question, this is one of the books that changed my golfing life. Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible brings science to the game of golf in a way that is easy to understand and practice. It helps take guesswork out of the short game by providing an understanding of the finesse swing and the statistical realities of the game of golf from 100 yards and in.

Pelz left a career in NASA to pursue his love of golf. His scientific background and love for the game come together perfectly to bring order to the short game, where before there was chaos.

Chapter Listing

1. Score Counts in Golf
2. Understanding the Game and Its Realities
3. The Five Games of Golf
4. Mechanics of the Short Game
5. How to Score
6. Distance Wedges
7. The Pitch Shot
8. Chipping and the Bump-and-Run
9. The Sand Shot
10. Short-Game Equipment
11. Everyone Has a Short-Game Handicap
12. Secrets of the Short Game
13. The Future

Highlights

As would any book that covers the short game, this book covers the swing technique for every shot you’re going to face within 100 yards of the pin. He gives extensive coverage to the finesse swing, pitching, chipping, sand play, and several other short game shots. Techniques are clearly defined and described in a way that’s easy to understand. But to me, the scientific and statistical concepts are what makes this book worth it’s weight in gold.

Percent Error Index

Pelz introduces us to the PEI as a way to statistically measure the performance of a golf shot. For instance, if a player has 100 yards to the pin, and hits a pitching wedge to 7 yards, it can be said that the PEI for that shot is 7% or 7 yds. / 100 yds. Using this, it’s easy to evaluate any shot, since a PEI of 0% means the ball went in the hole. Any other result is a miss and the PEI is used to judge how bad the error was.

The Golden Eight Feet

Through many, many hours of research and observation, Pelz discovered that regardless of skill level, the chances of making a putt rises drastically when the distance of that putt is within eight feet. As the distance becomes shorter, the chance of sinking the putt nears 100%. This led him to the conclusion that putting technique is less important than where you putt from to begin with. This is why the PEI and short game precision are so important for shooting better scores. All the techniques introduced in the book are geared toward reducing PEI for all short game situations. If you’re taking fewer putts, you’re obviously shooting lower scores.

The 3×4 System

While I consider all the information contained in the book to be fascinating, I find the 3×4 system to be most important. The idea is that you imagine your left arm (for a right hander) to be a hand on a clock with the left shoulder being the center of the dial. The back swing length can then be measured as a time on the imaginary dial. A short swing might register as 7:30, a half swing would be 9:00 (with the left arm parallel to the ground) and the longest back swing would be 10:30. This gives three back swing lengths that are easily repeatable. He then recommends carrying 4 different wedges: a pitching wedge, sand wedge, lob wedge, and an extra lofted wedge. Combined together, you get three repeatable back swing lengths times four different lofted wedges for a total of 12 repeatable short game distances. Practicing each of these wedge/swing length combinations until it is easily repeatable removes a lot of short game guess work and gives the best chance to get into the Golden Eight Feet.

Conclusions

If you’ve read this far, then you already know that this book gets two thumbs up. It’s very easy to follow with plenty of photos and diagrams. While it does take a mathematical and scientific view of the short game, by no means is it dry or boring. Pelz has a knack for turning a technical analysis into an interesting read. This book changed the way I play the short game. When I first started practicing the techniques outlined in the book, it didn’t take long before I began to see my PEI drop drastically.

The Good

• Easy to follow
• Lots of technical information
• Gives comprehensive techniques for every shot you’ll encounter within 100 yards
• His techniques are proven on many tour players

The Bad

• The only downside to this book that I can think of is that some people might find all the technical analysis to be a turn-off. If you prefer to cut to the chase and just learn the techniques, you might get bored with all the explanations. To me, this is a plus because I want to know why AND how. I recognize, however, that some people won’t like that.

How well do you know the rules of golf? There are only 34 rules defined by the USGA (not counting Appendix I, II, and III which involve local rules, conditions of competition, and equipment). Unfortunately, it’s easy to encounter situations where it might not be apparent how to score a specific situation, so there’s a whole book covering decisions on the rules.

Many people have a vague understanding of the rules. The major stuff, at least. However, having a solid understanding of the rules, and playing by them, will help you post an accurate score. This is critical if you ever hope to play in serious competition. First off, your handicap will more accurately reflect your real skill level. Secondly, while it’s important to know when to penalize yourself, it’s just as important to know about the things that will work in your favor.

For instance, did you know that if your ball is in or lost in a water hazard, you have two options of how to proceed (not counting playing it where it lies if you happen to find it) but if it’s a lateral water hazard, since it’s not practical to drop behind the hazard you have two additional options? Did you know that you have three options of how to proceed when your ball is unplayable? Do you know when you can clean your ball when lifted? Did you know that water (outside a hazard) that becomes visible after you take your stance is still considered casual water and you are entitled to relief?

The rules work nicely with our recent discussions about gamesmanship. A person who is well versed in the rules is better prepared to call their opponent on the carpet for violations. Seems picky? Tough. We’re supposed to be on a level playing field. I’m not calling a penalty on myself and then standing by and watching my opponent take improper drops or do anything else that gives him an advantage over me.

I try to play by the rules most of the time. About the furthest outside the rules that I go is playing practice shots where I re-hit a bad shot (still counting and playing the first) or maybe trying the same shot different ways to see what will happen, but always playing the original ball. If I’m posting a score I especially try to play by the rules. I think in the long run it’s going to make me better because when I play competitively, I’ll be better prepared to deal with the strict scoring of tournament play.