Conventional chipping wisdom says that the best plan of attack in a chipping situation is to use a club that gets the ball on the green rolling like a putt as soon as possible. That means chipping with anything from a pitching wedge to a mid or even long iron. It’s not uncommon to see people chipping with woods when the conditions call for it.

Assuming conditions are right for running the ball, you want to land it a yard or so on the green and let it run. So if you’re just off the green, you might choose a longer iron that will carry less and roll more. If you’re a little further off, then you might want to pick a club that carries further and rolls less.

I’ve known all this for quite some time. But I have a problem: I’m a sand-wedge-chip-aholic.

Whenever I’m in a chipping situation, I automatically reach for my precious 54-degree Cleveland 588 chrome sand wedge. No matter the situation, it’s the first club in my hand. I’ve been that way forever.

I’ve read Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible cover to cover probably four times (I’m on my fifth read). I’ve read pages upon pages of analysis as to why it’s better to keep the ball as low as possible when chipping for accuracy.

Yet, I feel so much more comfortable chipping with my sand wedge.

It’s something I’ve been trying to change this year. I’ve found that when I use a pitching wedge or other club, my distance control is just abysmal. That’s obviously because my go-to club for years has been my sand wedge and I haven’t practiced any other way.

Tiger Woods, the enabler that he is, says in his book How I Play Golf that it’s OK to favor a certain chipping club. He says that short game artists vary their club to the situation, but that leaning toward a certain club is acceptable. That only feeds my disorder.

Decisions, decisions. Do I listen to possibly the greatest player ever and stick with my sand wedge (ignoring that he also said that the club should be varied when the situation calls for it), or do I listen to a man that I believe to be the best short-game expert ever?

Fine. I’ll listen to the experts and start working on chipping with other clubs right away.

What’s your favorite chipping club?

Since I began my comeback to the game this year, one thing I’ve noticed is that my putting stroke is very sloppy. I catch a lot of putts flush and a lot off center, but there’s not really a tendency one way or another.

My belief is that a good putting stroke involves a simple pendulum motion that originates at the shoulders. There should be no breakdown of the hands or any kind of motion in the body’s core or legs. The grip should be extremely light, but stable.

Though I practice a fair amount, I’ve not been able to groove a consistent stroke. It’s been improving some, but not to the degree that I’d like.

As I thought about it some on the putting green last night, I wondered if my basic stability didn’t have something to do with it. I’m working out a lot, but I’ve struggled with stability in the full swing because of my long layoff, and frankly it was never that great to begin with.

I started to experiment to see if I could improve things.

What I discovered was that when I consciously engaged my abdominal muscles, my consistency immediately improved. I felt more stable and stroked putts better. I won’t say that I’m “cured”, but it’s simply one improvement in what will prove to be a long string of them.

Now a few words of warning: tension is a killer in golf, in all the different swings. The last thing you want to do is tense up your body, especially your hands, arms, or shoulders. I simply contracted my abs (or sucked in the gut, if you prefer) and immediately felt a more stable core. That stability helped to even out my stroke, most likely by stopping a little bit of sway in my core that I wasn’t able to detect. You have to be able to find that contraction without introducing tension outside your core.

If you’re inconsistent with the putter, give it a try and see if it helps.

Many people think of golf as a game where you go out, play the holes, add up your score and that’s it. But there are many different types of play and scoring systems that add some flavor to the game. Some are derived from the rules of golf, some are alternatives to standard stroke tabulation, and some seem to exist just for betting.

The Basics

The rules of golf define both match play and stroke play, where match play is one side versus the other (side being a player or team) and stroke play is a competition where a player’s strokes are added and the winner is the competitor with the fewest strokes. Match play is played by holes, where each hole is won, lost, or halved (tied) by a side. The side that wins the most holes wins the match.

Those are the two forms of play that are most familiar to people. A stroke play tournament where each player shoots a score and the lowest score wins is what we normally see on TV each weekend. Match play tournaments are not as common, but not rare either as there are some to be watched. The Accenture Match Play championship and the Ryder Cup (every other year) come to mind.

Types of Matches

There are several types of match play, not just head to head. The rules of golf define the following variations:

• Single: A match in which one plays against another. This is what we normally think of as a head to head match.
• Threesome: A match in which one plays against two, and each side plays one ball. In this type of competition, each player plays a ball, and the lowest score for each side is counted.
• Foursome: A match in which two play against two, and each side plays one ball.
• Three-Ball: A match-play competition in which three play against one another, each playing his own ball. Each player is playing two distinct matches.
• Best-Ball: A match in which one plays against the better ball of two or the best ball of three players.
• Four-Ball: A match in which two play their better ball against the better ball of two other players.

Bogey, Par, and Stableford

These types of competition are defined in Rule 32. These competitions are relative to a fixed score for each hole. Players are scored for each hole in relation to the fixed score.

Stableford scoring uses the following point system:

• More than 1 over fixed score: 0 points
• One over fixed score: 1 point
• Fixed score: 2 points
• One under fixed score: 3 points
• Two under fixed score: 4 points
• Three under fixed score: 5 points
• Four under fixed score: 6 points

The PGA Tour used to play a Stableford competition at The International for many years until it was discontinued for 2007.

Off-the-Record Fun Stuff

The forms of play in the previous sections are all that are sanctioned by the rules of golf. However, there are literally dozens of other forms of play and gambling that take place unofficially all over the world each week. Here are some that you’ve probably heard of.

Skins

Skins matches pit players against each other where a purse amount is assigned to each hole. Whomever wins the hole wins the purse. If there is a tie, then the skin carries over to the next hole, where the winner wins the skin for that hole as well as the carry over. If there is still no winner, then both skins carry over. This continues until someone wins. Typically, the prize amounts for each hole gradually increase through later holes, though this isn’t always the case.

For some skins action on TV, tune in during late November for the LG Skins game, a $1,000,000 skins game featuring four popular players.

Scramble

The scramble is what is commonly played during charity outings at many courses. Each team of players plays their shot from the tee, then they determine which shot was the best, then everyone plays their second shot from there, and so on. Each team turns in a single score. Naturally, scores get quite low in these sorts of competitions.

Nassau

Nassau isn’t really a form of play, it’s a form of betting. Chances are you’ve heard the term and might have wondered about it.

In a Nassau, each round is played like three competitions: front nine, back nine, and all 18. Whichever player or team wins each segment, wins the prize for that segment ($2 each is common, but the amounts can get ridiculous). To throw a wrench in the works, the concept of “presses” comes into play. The losing team has the option to “press” or open up a new bet that runs concurrent to the original. With all the pressing and re-pressing, the totals can be big even on a $2 bet.

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There you have all the forms of play that the Rules of Golf allow for and a few that aren’t so “official”. There are dozens upon dozens of variations of formats, scoring, betting, etc. out there. It’s hard to keep it all straight. There’s a nice extensive list of formats over at About.com, if wacky betting scenarios are your thing. I zone out at the start of a match when someone starts laying out the bets and I hear stuff about greenies, polies, sandies, presses, and whacks in the head with a hammer (just seeing if you’re still with me). It’s fun to lay a little something on the line every once in a while, but it can get really complicated.

Have fun and always keep it friendly.

We’ve all been there. What a bad feeling. Especially when it looked like it was a good shot. Bad breaks sometimes leave us under a bush, against a tree, or in rough deep enough to lose a child.

Lucky for us, Rule 28 covers situations where the ball is unplayable. It is completely up to the player’s discretion when to declare a ball unplayable.

Before declaring a ball unplayable, you should carefully consider why the ball is unplayable. If it’s because of interference from an obstruction then you need to have a look at Rule 24. And if the ball is in an abnormal ground condition such as casual water or ground under repair, check Rule 25. In those cases, you are entitled to relief without penalty. If your ball is in a water hazard, check Rule 26.

If you’ve grasped at all the available straws and you still have to declare the ball unplayable, then you have three options. Under penalty of one stroke, you may:

• Play your next shot as nearly as possible to the spot where you played your last shot.
• Imagine a line between the hole and your ball, then drop anywhere along that line, no nearer the hole.
• Drop within two club-lengths of the spot where the ball lies, no nearer the hole.

Those of you who play belly putters get an extra bonus with the third option, because any club can be used to measure the drop. The rest of us will probably use our drivers.

One important thing to remember is that if your ball is in a bunker, you may proceed under any of the three options, but if you choose the second or third options, you must drop within the bunker.

When all is said and done, there’s one thing you have going for you: the ball can be cleaned when you lift it. It doesn’t take away the pain, but hey, it’s something.

Stack and Tilt seems to be the hot golf concept right now. Since my original two articles, I continue to get a lot of traffic looking for information about Stack and Tilt. I’d like to look at it a little closer.

I’m not going to give a tutorial on the technique. I can’t do better than the original article at Golf Digest. What’s more interesting to me is the reaction I’ve gotten from people in person as well as what I’ve been reading all over the web. Many people seem to have a misconception about what’s going on in the swing.

Some people have looked at the photo sequence of Aaron Baddeley in Golf Digest and have trouble seeing the real difference between the Stack and Tilt and the typical modern swing. Some people claim that Baddely isn’t actually doing anything different except taking a shorter back swing.

So what I wanted to do is grab a video of Tiger Woods and a video of a Stack and Tilter and compare them. The Stack and Tilt guy in this case is Will MacKenzie. I actually used two clips of Tiger Woods because neither of them had everything I wanted to show. The first clip shows his address, while I used the second clip to show the top of the back swing and the impact position.

Let’s have a look.

This first image shows both players side by side at address. MacKenzie is on the left, Tiger is on the right:

There are several big differences here. First, you can see how Tiger’s spine angle tilts much more to the right. In both cases, the player’s spine angle extends through the ball. But look how much further back MacKenzie is playing the ball. Also, notice the pronounced tilt in Tiger’s hips. MacKenzie’s are almost level.

Here are the two at the top of the back swing:

Again, there are fairly significant differences. MacKenzie’s back swing is somewhat shorter. Here’s where we see the “Stack” in the Stack and Tilt. The center point of MacKenzie’s shoulders and hips are still in a line. Compare that with Tiger who is really on his right side there. His shoulders are centered over his right hip.

Another important distinction: I’ve heard people ask where the “tilt” is in the Stack and Tilt. The spine angle is tilted ever so slightly toward the target. Now, I admit, that looking at this photo, it looks like his spine is straight up. But imagine it this way: pretend you’re standing right behind MacKenzie in that photo and used one finger to touch the small of his back and the other finger to touch the spot right between his shoulder blades. The tip of the finger touching the spot between his shoulder blades would be a little closer to the target than the other finger. Try it for yourself (disclaimer: you should probably warn strangers before laying hands on them at the driving range. Saying, “Hey, I was checking you for Stack and Tilt” is a lame pick-up line).

(Update:  After watching the instructional DVDs, I have learned that the above analysis is, in fact, not where the “tilt” comes from in the name Stack and Tilt.  The left-tilt of the spine is not in relation to the target, but is in relation to the rest of the body.  This is part of what allows the shoulders to turn in a circle instead of shifting laterally.  Plummer and Bennett do a great job of explaining this in the DVDs.)

Finally, let’s look at the impact positions.

There are some very pronounced differences here. For instance, look how far behind the ball Tiger’s head is. MacKenzie is still almost right on top of the ball. Also, you can see that MacKenzie’s hips are still virtually level, while Tiger’s hip tilt has actually increased. MacKenzie’s left side is already straight and Tiger is still getting there. This is due to the can-crushing move with the left leg (see the Golf Digest article). That’s what allows him to get those hips thrusting upward, allowing him to shallow out his swing path to keep from smothering the ball.

It looks like MacKenzie is going to make impact with a slightly descending blow, while Tiger is level or slightly ascending. I don’t know how typical this is for the Stack and Tilt, or if it was a mistake. That could cost MacKenzie a little distance.

There you have it. I hope that clears up some of the misconceptions about the Stack and Tilt versus the modern golf swing. Keep in mind that when you watch Tour pros play, they have such incredible grace and tempo that their swings can look very similar, especially when the finish positions might be fairly close. But when you look at the detail, the differences become much more clear.

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Further Reading:

Effectiveness of the Stack and Tilt Swing (Life in the Rough)
Stack and Tilt Instructional DVD Set (Life in the Rough)
Golf Digest Revisits the Stack and Tilt (Life in the Rough)
Stack and Tilt: A Follow Up (Life in the Rough)
The Stack and Tilt? (Life in the Rough)
The New Tour Swing (Golf Digest, June 2007)
Stack and Tilt Part 2 (Golf Digest, September 2007)
Stack and Tilt Critics Speak Out (Golf Digest, September 2007)