{"id":2470,"date":"2014-03-21T14:44:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T14:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/?p=2470"},"modified":"2023-12-01T01:21:53","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T01:21:53","slug":"tips-that-can-instantly-improve-a-bad-short-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/tips-that-can-instantly-improve-a-bad-short-game\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Tips That Can Instantly Improve a Bad Short Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2504 alignright\" title=\"short golf game\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Screen-Shot-2014-03-12-at-6.10.05-PM.png\" alt=\"short golf game\" width=\"279\" height=\"207\" \/><\/p>\n<p>For some people, putting and chipping naturally come easy. And by some people, I mean hardly anybody. For the rest of us, we&#8217;re forced to chop our way around the green and hope that our ball eventually falls into the cup. So if you&#8217;re one of those golfers whose game progressively gets worse as you get closer to the hole, use some of the tips below, they&#8217;ll help.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Use Less Lofted Clubs<\/strong> &#8211; Many golfers that struggle with their short game &#8212; chipping especially &#8212; tend to use high lofted clubs around the green. The sand wedges and lob wedges are great if you know how to properly strike the ball but if you don&#8217;t, they can produce some absolutely awful shots. So next time you have a fairly straightforward chip, take out something less lofted (a 7 or 8-iron) and take a bump-and-run approach. You won&#8217;t have to take as big of a swing and by getting the ball rolling early, you won&#8217;t have to be nearly as precise to put your ball close to the hole.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Use Your Putter WHENEVER You Can<\/strong> &#8211; Sometimes referred to as the &#8220;Texas Wedge&#8221;, electing to use your putter even when you&#8217;re not on the green is never a bad idea, especially if you struggle with chipping. By taking the wedge out of play, you don&#8217;t have to worry about chunking it or hitting one of those thin rockets that ends up on the other side of the green. You might not end up with a tap-in every time, but more times than not you&#8217;ll have a good shot at getting up and down. As the old saying goes &#8212; &#8220;A bad putt is always better than a bad chip.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Focus on Speed, Not Aim &#8211; <\/strong>How much a putt breaks\u00a0is a product of how fast your ball is rolling and if you find that it frequently takes you more than two putts to get you&#8217;re ball in the hole, your speed is off. So instead of focusing on getting your ball in the hole, focus on getting your ball to roll a foot or two past the hole. If you can even read the break with some degree of accuracy, you&#8217;ll find that a lot more of your putts will end up going in. And you won&#8217;t even have to putt the ones that don&#8217;t go in because your playing partners will be giving them to you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don&#8217;t Try to Make Everything<\/strong> &#8211; Sometimes you have to know when to be conservative. You&#8217;re not going to make every 20-foot putt you stand over. In fact, you won&#8217;t even come close to making half of them, so don&#8217;t try to. If you&#8217;ve got a big swinger, try to leave yourself a tap in. If you consistently roll the ball with good speed, you&#8217;ll make a lot of birdies. If you&#8217;re overly aggressive, you&#8217;ll bring those round-killing 3-putts into play.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For some people, putting and chipping naturally come easy. And by some people, I mean hardly anybody. For the rest of us, we&#8217;re forced to chop our way around the green and hope that our ball eventually falls into the cup. So if you&#8217;re one of those golfers whose game progressively gets worse as you&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,483],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-2470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-golf-tips","category-tips","tag-short-game","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2470"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8759,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions\/8759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shipsticks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}