Monitor and Track Your Progress – In order to continue to take your game to the next level, a golfer will maintain a consistent practice routine, but also will reflect on their games by tracking their progress in specific areas. Assessing your strengths and weaknesses should be followed up by monitoring and tracking your progress to further refine areas of your game that need work. Tracking your progress allows you to maintain a regular training schedule to improve your skills while adding extra drills and exercise to improve your weaker areas. Unlike professional athletes, you don’t need expensive biometric measuring devices to track your game. There are many simple methods you can use to measure the success of your training regimen. Take a notebook, or, if you are more tech savvy, download a golfing app and write down your stats after every game or even every practice session. As you notice patterns in your performance, you can tailor your training regimen to suit your needs.  There is always room for improvement.  Most important is to know your strengths and weaknesses, stay positive, and have fun.  Understand this, and you will be able to play golf anywhere and truly enjoy this sport. 

Practice Around the Green – One of the best and most inexpensive ways to practice your game is around the green.  Walk up to any public golf course and utilize their practice green to get better. Don’t worry, more than likely there won’t be many people there as the majority are probably pounding balls at the driving range.  Here is where you can get your advantage.

Practice certainly makes perfect, so practice chipping in various situations. Although it can be frustrating, practicing difficult chip shots, bunker shots, and putts will help you to become a more creative player. Challenging yourself with some difficult chip shots means you will be prepared for almost any eventuality on the course. Improving your short game goes a long way to improving your overall performance.

Use the rule of thirds when playing a chip shot or pitch shot. A Chip Shot will fly 1 third and roll 2 thirds. Whereas a pitch shot will fly 2 thirds and roll 1 third. Use a chip when you don’t have to carry the ball over an obstacle, like deep rough or a bunker, and you have a lot of green between you and the hole.  Play a pitch shot when you have to carry over something or need to stop the ball faster. The extra height on a pitch shot causes the ball to land softer and stop faster. As you get better at playing golf you will become better at course management. Having good course management opens up another part to the joy of playing golf. Knowing where to aim so you can play to your strengths is key to reducing your scores.

Before choosing the club to pitch or chip with, take into account the green’s speed, how the first bounce will react and how backspin will affect the shot.

Take the club back as far as you need for the power you’ll use. Always follow through the ball a bit further than how far you brought your club back.

When you swing back, keep your shoulders and hips together. You want to synchronize them to where they turn together and eliminate any power from your lower body.

Use the Green: Using the green can be your biggest advantage when pitching. For example, if you have slope behind the hole, play a bit more aggressive. Try to use that slope to bring the ball back toward the hole. There is nothing worse than leaving a chip or pitch shot 20 feet short.

Use a less lofted club when chipping. Commonly, golfers automatically reach for a sand or lob wedge when hitting pitch shots. Although these shots may work occasionally, using a less-lofted iron is more effective and offers a higher percentage shot.  A solid fundamental approach is to chip the ball about a third of the way to the hole and let it run to the cup.

Hitting out of the rough ball should be on your back foot (Further back) and more loft.

Standard flop chip shot more in the center for height and able to stop it.

Don’t move your hands forward because that delofts the club. (Most important when you play the ball back in your stance)

Feet should be closer together and a little bit of pressure towards the front. 

Hit down and through(Descending), not just down into the turf.

When you start a chip shot the butt end of the club as well as the face of the club should both start on a backward movement

Loft of the club and bounce of the club (the curve of the club) the more curve is the more bounce.  When you lean the shaft forward you negate all the bounce.

Do not bend or break your wrists. You will get much better, and more importantly much more consistent, if you take a natural swing, keep your hands and wrists locked, and let the angle of the clubface and your swing loft the ball.

Control Your Speed in Putting – When a putt is hit with perfect speed not only does it increase the chance of the ball going in the hole, but it will help on those putts where you missed read the putt.  If you over read the break by 2 feet to the right, but hit it the right speed, let’s say from 20 feet, you will only have 2 feet left for your tap in. The key to stress free rounds are being able to create enough tap ins on your longer birdie putts.  If you can chip or putt the ball close from far away and have 3-5 tap ins for par throughout the round you will be setup for success.

Practice the short, short game. Short putts may appear easy, but, more often than not, missing “easy” short putts can ruin your score.

ELIMINATE DOUBT AND GET COMMITTED TO PUTTING – I have found that golfers need to become a more committed putter of the golf ball. Commitment is less about outcome (i.e., the ball going in the hole) and more about process (i.e., doing everything in your control to be successful).

So how do we eliminate doubt when putting? Doubt creeps in when we question our decisions or when we are not sure if we are doing the right thing. Remember all of the steps you took and all of the decisions you made before hitting the ball were taken and made because you believed they gave you the best opportunity to be successful. If not, why have you done them? With this in mind, do not second-guess the decisions you made in good faith based on the outcome of the putt. Remember the outcome of the putt provides you with more information than you had when you chose how to hit it.

Let’s split the act of putting into two parts-line and length. Line refers to the path you wish the ball to follow. Length refers to the speed of the putt or how hard you need to hit the ball to achieve the desired result. I think it can be universally agreed that all putts depend on these two factors. We usually experience doubt about one or both of them. So if a golfer can commit fully to each part, he or she can become more comfortable with the whole act of putting. I suggest following these guidelines to simplifying putting and develop commitment to the process:

• Mark your ball on the green and look at the putt from all angles to get an understanding of the situation (slope, grain, pitch-marks, potential line, wind, )
• Imagine the path the ball will have to travel to go in the hole. Once you have this, replace your ball with a target in mind, perhaps a spot 3 or 4 inches in front of the ball that you need the ball to roll over to follow the correct line to the hole. Use the line or the brand logo on the ball to aim along your target line. This helps you line up your putter head at address.
• With the marker still behind the ball, take a step back and look at your line. Is it the line you want to take, and are you aimed appropriately? If not, realign the ball and check again. Once you are satisfied, use a positive affirming statement (either in your head or verbalized) such as “yes,” “that’s it” or, my personal favorite, “I’m going to make this!”-and remove your marker.
• Trusting you have done everything you could to pick the right line, address the ball and go through your practice strokes in an attempt to judge the appropriate speed. When you are happy and ready to hit the putt, address the ball using your target line and say, “Commit.” All you have to focus on now is striking the ball solid and getting the length (speed) of the putt right. No need to think about the line. You already know where you want to hit the ball.  A more committed golfer is a more successful golfer!

IMPROVE PUTTING ACCURACY BY MAKING THE TARGET SMALLER – Smaller targets can help your golf game.  Think of putting in golf as having two targets:

• The ball is the target because you impact with the club
  • Place a black dot on the back tip of the That will help you make square contact when you putt, and you will strike the ball with the club’s sweet spot more often.
• The hole is the target on straight putts (for breaking putts, it’s a spot on the green)
  • Also, don’t just aim for the cup on short Instead, aim at a specific one-inch section of the rim of the cup. This will help you to zoom your eyes in on a smaller target.

A MENTAL APPROACH TO PUTTING – Golfers need to remember “one shot at a time”-which is sound advice when directed towards focusing on the current shot and leaving the previous one behind. All golfers can benefit from applying it to their iron shots. However, since putting has a definite outcome, golfers continually think, “this is my first putt, this is my second putt, and so on.” They believe that one-putting is great, and two-putting is okay, but three-putting should be avoided at all costs, because in almost all scenarios, a three-putt results in a bogey or worse.  The process of “putt counting” produces an unfavorable mindset for golfers of any skill level. Try changing your mental approach to “one putt,” where each putt is treated as a single event-because it is. Remember, no other putt, past or future influences your “one putt.” Many golfers approach their “second putt” differently, becoming concerned about not making par. This negative focus causes them to be anxious and think about things unrelated to the putt, like missing. And it’s a mental distraction.  I recommend golfers to think of every putt as their first putt-which technically it is, since it’s their first attempt to sink that specific putt.  Here are some tips to effectively practice the “one-putt” mindset:

• Evaluate each putt as a separate stroke, taking into account all variables- line, speed, wind, grain, slope,
• Define each putt as your first putt
• In rhythm with your breathing, repeat “one-putt, one-putt, one-putt”
• Regardless of the outcome, start the process

If you’re not sure which way the ball will ‘break’, putt it at the hole. Learning to read how the greens is difficult. You’ll soon get the hang of how to read greens and this advice is something I still do to this day when I’m not sure

Play more break than you think when you are learning how to read the greens.  Many beginners will see a line they think the ball will travel along, yet underestimate the amount the ball will break on a given slope.