How To Practice Your Short Game – To Actually Improve!

You could go and practice your short game for an hour and completely waste your time.

Or, you could practice your short game for 20 minutes and make a massive difference to your game.

When you practice your short game (I’m talking within 30 yards of the pin) you need an intelligent way in which you’re doing it to benefit your game on the golf course. That’s what I’m going to give to you today.

Let’s say, for this example, you have an hour to spare practicing your short game.  So here’s what I suggest you do.

10 – 15 Minutes – Block Practice

This is where you work on your technique and intention of what you’re trying to do. You should first do this without a target. You’re not trying to hit good shots to a target.  You’re simply working on your technique and either trying to make a change to it or focusing on hitting shots with the technique you want. If you’re not sure on the best technique for short game shots I suggest you check this out.

To finish off this block practice get a pretty straight forward 10 yard shot and then with a wedge practice playing shots to this pin with 3 different trajectories.  One standard. One low and the final one high. To do this you should have the same swing and just alter your setup to get the trajectory you want. Keep doing this for a bit to get used to altering the flight of the ball.

Next up we have…

30 Minutes – Random Practice

This is where you get 10 balls and chuck them around a practice short game green.

You want to have high shots, low shots, medium shots. Shots where you where you have to change clubs. Shots where you are on different slopes.  When doing this, do not alter the lie of the ball. You will get bad lies and good lies. Just like on the golf course.

When you’re doing this you want to practice every short game situation and every shot.

15 Minutes – Gamify To Finish

This is where you play games and you can only finish practicing when you complete the game you’re playing.

Here are some examples of games you can play.

21

This game involves you playing 9 short holes. These holes should all be under 30 yards in length. You can do this on the golf course if it’s quiet or on a short game practice area.

To do this game you want to select 3 easy holes. 3 medium holes. And finally 3 tough holes.

Try and get a good selection of shots when you do this.

So for every hole you go through your full-on course routine and play the shot and then you putt out and record your score.

The goal is to score 21 or less for 9 holes. When you can do that consistently then your short game is pro-level.

Must Make To Leave

Find a pretty simple 10-yard shot. A shot, you’d think a good short game player would try and hole. Put 15 balls down in the 10-yard vicinity. Now, your goal is to try and hole at least 1 shot from the 15 shots. And you can’t leave until you do that. So if you don’t do it within the first block of 15 shots then try again. Again, you can’t leave until hole a shot.

Landing Spot Drill

For this drill throw 10 balls random only around the green. For each shot you need to assess the trajectory you want to hit the ball and where you want to land the ball for it to roll out and finish near the hole. Before you play the shot walk up and put a ball marker on the landing spot. Then play the shot and the goal is for the ball to land within 1 foot of your ball marker and for the ball to finish within 2 feet of the hole.

You can’t finish your practice session until you’ve done this.

So there you go. That’s the 3 part process you should go through every time you practice your short game…

Block Practice
Random Practice
Gamify Practice

If you do this consistently then you’ll greatly improve your short game. And remember, if you need further help with your short game go here and check this out.