Confident Golf – Your Short Game

/ The Grateful Golfer

It is time to stop messing around and start lowering my golf score. But where do I start? Do I hit the range and hit bucket after bucket to perfect the perfect swing? Or do I play more golf to hone my course management skills? It is challenging to discover what will make the most impact on our score, but whichever path you decide, be confident with your decision and start moving forward.

The most challenging part of golf to fix is the short game. The number of variables  of each short shot is something only a mathematician would love. Knowing and understanding how to play a shot comes from experience, knowledge, dumb luck and repetition. Regardless of which you have in abundance, all lead to one measurable tangible – confidence.

Confidence is a central key to a strong short game. It empowers players to make the right shot at the right time. Confidence opens up options of different clubs to achieve a visualized result. Your mental game flourishes when your confidence and swing mechanics seem effortless. Confidence is a short game changer.

How you think of your short game is very important to determining if you have confidence. Personally, I always think I have a great short game and believe me this is not always the case. But, I believe and that helps keep my confidence. Most people think they have an average short-game, is that true for you?

Building short game confidence is both easy and difficult. For me, increasing my confidence is a straight forward process and every year it gets easier and easier. The reason it becomes easier is that I keep a more and more from previous years. But, the process still stays the same. So here is what I do:

  1. Hit 25 balls with all of my wedges from 20 yards;
  2. Hit 25 balls with all of my wedges from 10 yards;
  3. Hit 25 balls with all of my wedges from the fringe; and
  4. Repeat at least 3 times before the end of the first month of the golf season.

Of course I spend an equal amount of time putting, but it is a given I would practice the most with my flat stick.

That is it. As  each of my practice session continues, my confidence grows. As my confidence grows in my practice, it transfers to the course.  As a result, I am able to consistently shoot in the 70s and sometimes in the 60s. because of my confidence in my short game. I identified early in my golfing career that confidence is critical to my success, thus I foster its growth each year.

Are you confident with your short game?

I am a grateful golfer! See you on the links!

10 thoughts on “Confident Golf – Your Short Game”

  1. Jim,

    You’re right, it’s all about confidence with the short game. Like you I am able to build my short game confidence through practice early in the season. I need to maintain this practice to maintain my confidence. Hope you’re going low out there!

    Cheers
    Josh

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  3. Jim, it’s a great feeling to have confidence in your short game because it takes pressure off your long game and allows you to relax. Love your wedge practice routine because it helps you technically and to build vision from all your distances and trajectories.

    As you know, I’ve had the chip yips for several years, but have always felt that I have the short game shots, but just couldn’t execute for some reason. Recently I made a discovery. The work that I’m doing with my instructor on my long game has corrected my short game problems. The issue was technical, not mental and is a huge relief. That and the return to my Cleveland Tour Action sand wedge has made the difference.

    Heading out shortly to test both long and short games. Thanks!

    Brian

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