Basic short game advice saw instant improvements – Train like a tour Pro Ep 4

For all of your putting mat requirements please visit https://primeputt.com/

Subscribe to The Average Golfer for FREE now – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwfGb-FXG66ZCRrS-VMc4oA?sub_confirmation=1
———————————————————————

Stewart Golf Trolley Aff Link – https://stewardgolfuk.sjv.io/c/5384975/982136/12914

———————————————————————

Join The Average Golfers Club:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwfGb-FXG66ZCRrS-VMc4oA/join

———————————————————————

AG caps and merchandise – https://www.theaveragegolfer.co.uk/merch

Links:
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/averagegolfer99/
Twittter – https://twitter.com/AverageGolfer99
Website – https://www.theaveragegolfer.co.uk/
Media enquiries – averagegolfer99@gmail.com

———————————————————————

Just an Average Golfer giving unbiased opinions on all things golf, product tests, Golf travel vlogs and golf news!

20 days to the proam at Mount Juliet and the pursuit to train like a tour pro is in full swing i am back at Hezel Golf Club with head professional Tom Atkinson and like you I miss greens in regulation and I want to look at whether I have some room to improve my chances of making up and down or at least a chance and become more consistent and today I learn a whole new approach to my short game and once again thank you to Prime for sponsoring this series right welcome back to another episode i’m back at Hezwell Golf Club tom nice to see you again and you and we’ve got a next issue for you to sort you’ve cracked the last one have you well that’s sorted yeah don’t worry we’ve moved on we’ve only got 20 days now and then the next problem is uh I could I’m pitching sort of you know I missed the green golfers do and then how do I make sure I sort of get that ball close and try and save par or whatever it may be so I don’t know from 30 50 yards in yeah pitching i I define that as a pitch definitely from that yardage yeah so it’s just getting me sort of a more consistent approach again and something I can sort of rely on grab a club and and comfortably execute a shot is the plan let’s do it you can sort that can’t you uh yeah we’ll try right Tom a typical probably situation I’d find myself in really um 30 what do you say 35 yards yeah to the flag y um pull the ball left tendency of mind yeah and just that kind of you know having something like a go-to shot um if there is such a thing if if it’s always the same I know it’ll be depend on what green you’ve got to work with all those kind of things but why you’ve got Yeah yeah so a number of things to consider but again a bit of help really so first thing to do is look at the you know look at the lie look at the flag decide whether you’re shortsided uh there’s two elements really to pitch and we’re going to class this as a pitch okay for me a pitch is um a sort of a longer chip rather than a shorter full shot yeah think of it as a longer chip so it’s going to use the same sort of mechanics as a chip okay keeping everything nice and stable we talked about that when we we did some pitching um some some wedges sorry this is the pitching now um trying to get the the controlled strike trying to get the distance right so it’s as I say it’s more of a sort of control the distance rather than create the distance draw the good line in this situation so you know we’re all right we can probably be a little bit greedy with this live but that’s the thing so you’re going to look at either the the mechanics of the shot and or the the shot selection when you come to to have a lesson on a shot like this so most people will probably pick something with a lot of loft and try and hit it high and get it to stop and you know quite often that’s the what you need to do to get it close to the flag okay but do you need to get it that close to the flag at the risk of knocking it in a bunker or thinning it over the back and that’s the sort of situation we’ve got to try and sort of understand so if we were here now as we are on the golf course and you know you’re under a little bit of pressure and you had to get your ball up and down or you’re trying to get up and down what would you naturally try and do okay well I think similar for me when we started off the kind of um the uh the wedge full wedge thing i I only carry a pitching wedge and a 54 they’re the two wedges I carry and I try and make be versatile with the 54 so so I would be playing a 54 okay now we we might change that but but effectively that’s what I would play but probably in a number of different ways what bounces on your 54 10 10 degrees of I like the way you’ve got your yardages on your shaft very good there yeah that’s fine absolutely right yeah so let’s just see you play it okay watch you first it’s a short-sided shot but you’ve missed the green so you could put from there but you’re likely to have to chip again now you don’t see many of the top players chipping twice on the same so there’s a mistake in there somewhere bit embarrassing for them so a mistake in there somewhere is it a mistake in the shot selection the club selection or is it something you’ve done with the technique how did you feel you struck that okay and I think it was a case of you know overcooked it overcooked but I was happy with kind of like the contact yeah you committed to it yeah what I like about what you’ve shown me there is you you’ve used the bounce of the club very well yeah i don’t know how much you understand about the bounce of the club obviously we’ve got the loft at 54 the bounce at 10 you’ve you’ve bruised the turf we did talk about bruising the turf on the wedges but you’ve bruised the turf you’ve just either hit it too hard which is not a bad thing to do if you’re trying to commit to it or you’ve picked the wrong loft you’re more used to your 54 and you like to manipulate the face around a little bit and I never want to take somebody away from what they’re good at having said that you’ve employed me to to do this because you feel like you’re not as good as you could be so was it the wrong shot selection did you need to go straight for the flag from here what do you think about that with it being shortsided um I think on the idea we didn’t have a lot of green to work with I would have probably rather played the short the shot longer than short and not as long as it ended up being but that was my mindset with the swing was kind of you know let’s let’s be aggressive so to speak with this don’t kind of like quit on it yeah because you don’t want to be short again or in the bunker yes well I think it’s leaning towards I don’t know whether we’re going i mean in hindsight now it’s kind of like 58 which is the other wedge it is so for me it’s uh there’s a there’s a little bit of a compromise if you’re not so used to the 58 we’ve not done a great deal of work with it then the 54 is right but then you’ve got to think right well let’s ignore the flag and people think hang on a minute so I played a proam here a few years ago said to my playing partners after only three holes I said lads I said the flag just tells you where the hole is you don’t have to go for it yeah yeah do you mean yeah so amateur golfers tend to play directly to the flag yeah you watch Molinari when he won the Open i think it was 2018 he was he was a masterclass in firing away from the flag and trying to hold a P okay so obviously not obviously but statistically if you’re inside 8 ft on the green as a as a PGA Tour Pro you’re only holding 49% of your putts so for us we’re not PGA Tour pros it’s going to be higher so or you’re not going to hold as many so play the 54 but aim for a fatter part of the green the next thing you want to be doing after this shot is putting or play the same shot but go with your 58 so there’s a little bit of compromise a little bit for me you’re more than good enough to put a bit more loft in your hand loft generally speaking around the green is is like an emergency item to hit the ball up in the air from A to B via C is not necessarily all of the not necessary all of the time here if you want to get it close I would go to more off so I actually feel like your your chipping pitching stroke there was good do the same again with your Should I try with the 58 i would where were we look how you’ve drawn a nice line again there i got lucky there yeah very good right so 58 same shot just before you hit it you feel more confident less confident looking down on the 58 i just let less because it I always think with a 58 is the tendency for me or anything from the from 5860s is just whilst I like it in a bunker cuz I feel like it’s going to do that I have it’s the negative impact on me brain now which is just saying it’s going to do that you’re not going to reach the green and I’m just thinking yeah so so it’ be an adjustment for me in terms of um you know sort of swing length and whatever else there’s that little tendency to pull it slightly But that was a better result was it better result in as much as your putting [Music] prime put make the very best putting mats that are the closest to reality in a surface that resembles tall grade turf this is as realistic as it gets and with speeds that measure between 9 and 11 on the stimp you can be assured that your putting practice can make a huge difference when stepping out onto the golf course and into reality this is practice that really will help lower your scores [Music] thank you to Prime for their support on this journey please find out more on the link in the description so you see how shutting the face down a little bit caught it a bit heavy it sent it a little bit left and a little bit long but you’re still on the green that’s purely because you’ve picked up four degrees more the bounce of the club I didn’t check but that is a little bit a seven so it’s Yeah it’s a mid bounce club took a little bit more of a divot now I don’t mind that divot if the result is good if you start to take too much of a divot if the ball’s too far back in your stance your your shaft’s leaning too far forward then you’re going to really struggle if you don’t commit to it okay but generally speaking that was a better shot i would like to see Put it down again i’d actually like to see you bring the club a little bit inside on the way back what that’s going to do that’s going to give you that sort of draw spin type of situation i’d like to see the ball a little bit further forward Andy forward yeah in your stance so what that will do it will lean the shaft away from the target it will give you a little bit more of the loft it’ll put the bounce more into play at the time you impact it and I’d like you as as you do in there and again yeah well no I wouldn’t worry about that because if you start trying to change what you naturally do in the back swing okay okay you’re going to really really struggle consistently to actually commit to pulling the trigger okay so I’ve I’ve just detailed that there to say that you do swing it a bit inside because I wouldn’t want someone to say don’t go away from it no wouldn’t want someone to say to you you can’t do that ball further forward so all you want to try and do here is just keep the club face as stable as you can through the hit using your big muscle groups to rotate now there’s that one that you’re fearful of yeah so what you’ve done there is you’ve left the blade a little bit open you didn’t commit to it as well you sort of you sort of didn’t quite chunk it but you definitely bottled out a bit yeah can we throw another ball down have another go yeah I’ve got one you got one generally speaking if you’re getting a reasonably good contact and you’re going to hit it a bit firmer with a lofty club like this it’s just going to rise up the face more go higher and stop quicker so you can commit to it Andy more like it now that’s good that’s inside 8 ft it’s around about there so you’ve got you know statistically more chance of holding that did you hear the noise sounded a bit heavy oh dear i like that but no the noise it sounded heavy that’s the That’s the bounce of the club interacting with the ground okay so as we move closer to the green shortly and we get into the real chip shots you’re going to hear me say that you know if I’m teaching you or if I’m out playing in front of the members on that balcony 18 and I need to hit a chip shot they’ll turn around oh this will be good we’ll watch Tom if I get it wrong I look stupid okay all I’m asking myself to do once I’ve set myself up properly and I’ve understood the bounce of the club is hit the ground taught my dad my dad’s a member i taught him to hit the ground before the ball counterintuitive what are you talking about the bounce so you interacted get one more ball out you interacted there with the ground the bounce helped you so as long as you’re not too far back in your stance and you’re digging at it I want to see you know really in in this sort of range of shot 35 yards you can probably with that amount of bounce pick a spot a quarter of an inch in front of the ball and hit it let the bounce work okay so pick pick a quarter of an inch hit the ground beautiful took a little bit of a divot good shot yeah you know this is this ball is never over this power going to send itself up in the air and stop on the seance there’s always going to be a little bit of release certainly as the ground gets firmer but once again we haven’t really changed your technique you mentioned that you’d like a sort of a go-to i’d like to see it you know at this level which is a good level but for you to go and enjoy it and and you know not sort of make a fool of yourself out in a PR or whatever pick up uh the right loft yeah you can do the same again if you want with your pitching wedge is just going to come off lower and roll more but have like one swing you all this manipulation of of Yeah which is what I’m doing with the 54 it’s it’s good over complicating it it is you don’t need to do that that’s why you should be carrying all your wedges and certainly using them but there’s no need to start messing with the the loft and the bounce and the shaft lean when you when you’ve got a purpose item for you yeah so that’s how I would ask you to play this shortsided pitch right okay Tom so you set us up in another little position uh little bit of fringe yes you want to know what I’d play i do yeah exactly yeah so you know I know we’re having a lesson here we’ve got a couple of balls but if you’re on the golf course now what are you going to play 54 54 play it yeah so this would be my kind of as I said go-to um Oh that stopped quick didn’t it but effectively that would be my that would be my shot in this kind of situation yeah and do you feel as though you get it close enough i don’t mind yeah I don’t mind this kind of position i kind of like that shot which I I would still consider to be a bit of a a chip and a chip and run so I I keep the ball fairly low in most of these kind of scenarios yeah well that’s good that that’s the sort of first thing I’d ask somebody you know what type of shot do you need to play and you know a lot of people if I said to you just bring your chipping clubs down to today’s lesson what would you bring and you quite often I hear you know lob wedge sand wedge pitching wedge uh okay and I and and and then they look at me and and I say “What do you think I’d bring for my chipping lesson?” Um I don’t know i said “Bring everything.” Yeah i’d start with the putter if I could put it I’d put it you know because the ball on the ground is the most controllable ball yeah no I’m all for that this type of distance this this is slightly different because we’ve got you know quite a lot of Yeah there’s a little bit of a rise quite a lot of fringe grass but essentially that’s the length of like a temp bowling alley yeah and if I went temping bowling and did it like this Yeah yeah people think I was dafted yeah yeah but because we’re playing golf and the word chip and pitch and everyone thinks got to use loft yeah no I agree i’ve already mentioned previously to you that loft is an emergency item so uh what would I use here yeah i I I would use something similar i wouldn’t use it because I need to get over an obstacle potentially like if we were stood behind this bunker here I can get over it with a with a rescue club but it end up by the clubhouse so it’s all to do with how quickly I want the golf ball to stop okay what’s happened there is you’ve you’ve you’ve got real good strike on that you’ve probably hit that for that club too soft but with really good strike and it spun up a little bit so are you brave enough to hit the same shot and fire it closer to the flag you’ll see that with the real clever people and it starts to spin up quickly or would you think with still plenty of loft in a pitching wedge or a 50 and we’re going to get that little bit of extra release out of it uh again big sort of advocate of using the bounce of the club you you know it’s there you’ve got to use it yeah so let’s let’s just play the same sort of shot but just pick your 50 going to come around and watch you from the front here Andy okay main reason why you need to have a little bit of a front look at this is is for ball position if you were not hitting this shot well would you feel as though you fatted it or thinned it if I get it wrong if you get it wrong would you fatt it or thin it um yeah it’s a good question that cuz I think I can do both to be quite honest with you but I would I I would say more likely on you’ve got to have all the shots to be a good Yeah you have yeah but I can do both quite well um I suppose fatt is a kind of you chunky i’d have put my money on chunky i’d leave it here i’m going to tell Go on play the shot this is So with the 50 now it’s going to come off the face lower uh which is what we’ve asked ourselves to do with the 50 it’s going to roll a little bit more yeah so you’ve got that one actually wasn’t as good a shot no the strike was But but the loft was better choice of shot again the choice of good the choice of shot was better so you got it clear rolled out more you left it under the hole which is you know probably not something you did on purpose but you know that that’s helping you so for me can I jump in and show you yeah yeah so what you’ve got in your setup and this is something that I’ve seen a lot in fact I see it far too often and if I see somebody setting up like you’ve just done for a chipping lesson like this I know that I’ll be all right and they’ll be all right they’ll have a good lesson because it’s an easy sort of fix so what you’ve got come and stand in front there you’ve got your ball slightly further back in your stance than I would like to see it yes I do so what that does that pretty much takes your 50 down to like a 46 maybe even less than that so yeah I don’t mind the fact that you’re taking loft off cuz we want the the run you’re actually starting to eliminate the use of the bounce now bounce is your friend bounce is a forgiving piece of kit on the bottom of a wedge and as you start to tilt that club forward and you’ve got your hands forward ball back see how you’re you’re sort of not employing the bounce so now you’re a skillful golfer but you’re asking yourself to be skillful to the tune of about 3 mil yeah I get that whereas the bounce of the club you know what’s that nearly an inch wide okay and not even that you can like we again like we did back in in the in the wedge shot and a little bit in the pitching if you’ve got the ball further forward yes it’s going to come off the the face a little bit higher because you’re going to employ more loft with the pin at the front but you can be a little bit sloppier with your strike okay now you’re not going to try and be sloppy per se but you’re going to be sloppy around the golf because we all are and as you if you’ve got a good score going or someone’s watching you you’re going to be under a little bit of pressure so if you put that ball slightly further forward in your stance what you can allow yourself to do is to pick a spot before the ball bruise the turf you watch as I play this one it’s come off a little bit higher than yours bruised the turf i’ve over pitched that but I’ve got it pretty close to the flag you hear the noise yeah very good job and if you’re Thanks very much yeah very good if you hold it you nearly hold it if you’re a chunker Yeah it’s You can’t take the ground eliminates yeah it eliminates strong word eliminates but you’re sort of going to be a lot more confident with the chance of not so all I well I’ve done there I’ve not changed or I won’t be changing your technique okay i’ve slightly altered your loft into a 50 but I’m going to put the ball further forward in your stance and I’m going to ask you excuse me counterintuitively or not to hit the floor further yeah and you know what’s interesting it’s a again kind of a mindset situation it feels to me like when I’m when when you’re when you’ve done what you just did it feels like to me I’m presenting the blade and it’s the complete opposite really is what you’re saying aren’t you absolutely right yes so that’s one of the things that I actually I forgot to say it to you last time but I’ve heard a few times you say “I think if I do that I’m going to do X Y and Zed.” And what you’re doing is you’re reacting to something in the future when I went to watch the lads on tour in Dubai years and years ago one thing that I noticed and we’ve used that word commitment before is that if they’ve got to hit a golf ball they’re hitting the golf ball they’re not thinking of the consequence of not hitting they’re going to pull the trigger Andy okay so and if you if you’ve not practiced it fair enough you you might think well I’m going to do X Y and Z but we’re here to practice it so ball further forward just on that now where I’m at if you is that is that correct in in in interpreting what you’re saying yeah it is yeah you know correct is a strong word in golf because we all do it differently but if I’m asking you to stick it further forward you’d be happy with that i’d be happy with that all I want to see is that you’ve got less forward shaft lean and therefore more bounce okay so pick your target quarter of an inch before the ball bruise the turf yeah don’t be scared of hitting the floor beautiful okay took a bit of a bad bounce not your fault but you see how you had the control on the strike the ball still obviously took off high enough with it being a 50 that’s another worry if people put less loft in their hand they feel like it’s never going to get off the floor 50° is a lot of loft you could even go down to a pitcher mode for this shot you probably a got to be a little bit tighter with where you land it with the pitching wedge go again but the key there was that the strike so further forward further forward less shaft lean using the bounce ball will pop up a little bit but the strike was ball and turf together it was it was use of the bounce oh that’s beautiful nice little Yeah see a little bit of friction a little bit of grab on it so now we’re in sort of two foot range tapping them in yeah that will vary uh depending on where the flag is depending on what lie you’ve got so if you’ve got a little bit of a bare lie you might want to just tip a little bit of more shaft lean in just to get make sure that you don’t actually bounce it okay if you’re in a bit of a fluffier lie you know a bit more of a semi- rough type maybe a bit more loft but hopefully ball forward one technique two or three different wedges now not just your 54 that’s the question I was going to ask so so if I use if I use any of those three wedges or a pitching wedge setup is the same yeah you got another ball yeah yeah try another club you mean try another club we’ll play to you know we’ll play to the back of the green what should I try try your pitching wedge you know nine irsided for a wedge let’s just play to the middle of the green in in the direction of the clubhouse there okay but yes you’ve got bounce on a pitching wedge you’ve got less bounce than on your lofty wedges so you have to be a little bit closer to the ball when you’re hitting the ground let’s say eighth of an inch type of stuff not that you can measure it but go with it let me just check your lean yeah you’ll be you’ll be prone to leaning on the shaft too much but as long as it’s in your mind sir okay take the ground good so see it still goes high yeah yeah it’ll go higher than you’re used to because you’re used to delofting it that went as high as me 54 when I delofted didn’t it at the beginning absolutely right yeah so what you’re doing you know in in in manipulating lofts and bounces and face angles and stuff you’re making you know you’re changing your 54 into a 50 or a 46 and you you’re you’re altering the bounce you’re making it harder for yourself get a sort of standard set of rules and just vary your loft all the way through ball position like I said I I I play I play like I said virtually all them shots with the ball middle to back probably nearer the back like you say uh eliminating that bounce which is the kind of the help the bounce is there for a reason and you know you’ll turn the TV on and you’ll watch the best players in the world they can do whatever they want these are the most skillful people you’ll ever see they can put it in the back of the stance and spin it they can put it high and Mickelson flop it but for a for a bog standard keep it simple keep it simple and use the the club properly yeah love this Tom genuinely loved it i mean it’s been uh couple of couple of lessons in and uh I mean these are I don’t know I’m being more distressful to hear by saying this these are basic things aren’t they that I’ve been playing a game for 35 years and you think my god why don’t I why why aren’t I doing this you know you’ve never had a lesson you don’t know do you no and you do what you used to yeah brilliant you’ve revert back to tight but no you’ve hit what you sort of eight 10 shots and the beauty there for me is you’ve not I don’t like divots in chipping and pitching you’ve not taken too many divots that’s but you’ve hit good shots you’ve not thinned all the balls so you’ve not thinned any of them so you you’re interacting properly with the turf and and that’s not going to compromise strike and you’ve got to strike it well to get your distance control well I think the kind of mechanics of the has been okay as say just adjusting ball position and more importantly maybe for me uh that shaft lean and and using the bounce a little bit more so ball position will almost sort of predetermine your shaft lean or you know your lack of shaft lean if you like so you’re right and then it’s all about you as a golfer uh which we’ll do on the golf course yeah picking the right shot yeah yeah brilliant thanks again and I hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am and and also learning uh like I am because I’m pretty sure there’s a lot you can take from this and the other uh lessons that I’ve been having there’s every likelihood is these are kind of common situations that you might be able to resonate with yourself so we’re now I think it’s 20 days to go i’m got a heck of a lot more practice to get in in a very short space of time i’ll see you in two days from now and we’ll have another episode of me training like a torpo but for now Tom thank you very much and I’ll see you in a few days time thanks Andy cheers other