Stop Throwing Away Shots: Short Game Shot Savers

Is your short game letting you down? If you feel like you’re throwing your score away as soon as you reach greenside, then listen up. Here are some tips that are going to save your bacon around the greens and get your scores tumbling down.

Bunker Play: Dance Your Way to Success

To give yourself mental backup, don’t skip a pre-shot routine. Add a practice swing outside the bunker, rehearsing a solid contact with grass and a good finish before taking on the sand.

You must wiggle your feet into the sand. If you don’t settle yourself lower than the ball, chances are you’re not going to hit what’s underneath it.

Golfers who balance on the surface of the sand often thin the ball over the back of the green, they fear hitting it too far and decelerate. So remember, it’s all about hitting the sand before the ball and trusting this.

But how much sand is there? We feel with our feet when we shimmy into the sand and this action gives us confidence. If you wiggle your feet and immediately feel a hard pan base under the sand you know there’s not a lot to work with, so perhaps you need to chip it out.

If you wiggle in and sink like you’re in quicksand then be mindful there’s a lot of sand and you need to be a little bit more shallow with your entry. The more sand there is in the bunker, the more it will gobble up the energy of your shot, so take just a bit.

It’s all about committing to the shot, but so many golfers are scared of bunker shots so they immediately quit on them, worried the ball is going to soar over the back of the green.

Trust the loft of the sand wedge and also trust the bounce by opening the face a fraction at address. By doing this you invite the club to splash through the sand under the ball and it will come out on a lovely cushion.

Hover the leading edge over the sand you want the club to enter and trust the fact that the sand will gobble up so much energy of the shot, you can really afford to give it some beans. If you hover the club over the ball, you’ll hit the ball first.

Unlock Confidence Around the Green

Building a reliable short game from anywhere off the putting surface comes down to trust and solid contact. Clubs like the XXIO 14 wedges make this much easier - their weighted sole naturally encourages you to hit down on the grass, which is something a lot of golfers don’t do enough.

Golfers often try to help the ball up in the air and flick their wrists as they go. This is a recipe for disaster. There is enough loft on the wedge to pop the ball up in the air. All you’ve got to do is hit down on the ground, so follow these guidelines:

Shrink the set up - grip down the club and keep your feet closer together.

Ball position - keep it central, but plant a bit more weight onto the front foot, almost as if you are a flamingo. This will encourage your club to hit down steeper and give the grass a bruising effect.

Short and sharp - Tick, then grit your teeth on the Tock. It’s important to keep the backswing short. One of the biggest mistakes golfers make is going too far back in their backswing and then decelerating. This causes chunky chip shots or bouncing thinned shots through the back of the green. Keep your backswing shorter than you think it needs to be, you can use your feet as markers.

Get an image in your head of where you want to land the ball on its first bounce. Once you’ve worked out your landing spot, rehearse those little practice swings behind the ball. Try to get a feel for how much you’re going to give this, keep the tempo smooth yet accelerated, and focus on that.

You can utilise the XXIO 14 wedges in your back garden by chipping balls into an umbrella. It is a brilliant way to groove your ability and trust of where to land the ball on its first bounce.

If you master this you can then visualise your umbrella on your landing spot on the course. This helps you focus on where you do want your ball to bounce, not on how many ways this can go wrong!