One of the great players on the PGA Tour was Chi Chi Rodriguez. In his heyday, Chi Chi could play and hit the ball as well and as far as almost anyone, even though he was smaller in size.
For a long time I’ve been doing a drill that I like to call Milking the Cow. From the photos, you probably can guess where it got its name. Why is it important to milk the cow in your swing? Because it creates a 90_¡ angle between your left arm and your club shaft and, in golf, that’s what we call lag.
On the PGA Tour, the ability to get up and down consistently from around the green is critical, and being a good pitcher of the ball makes saving pars a lot easier. The three basic shots you need to know are high, medium and low pitches. Master these three, and you’ll be able to handle just about any situation.
Learn the keys to high and low pitch shots
If you want to control your shots more effectively around the greens, the best thing you can do is set up with a narrow stance and always remember to keep the shaft leaning toward the target. Since it’s a chip shot, you don’t have to worry about releasing the club; instead, you want to hold the face square to ensure optimal directional control. This setup position also helps to avoid flubbed chipped shots—one of the most embarrassing and avoidable shots in golf.
One of the absolute basics of good scoring is solid putting from short to medium range. If you’re confident from these distances, it will take pressure off all your other short-game shots and make you a better lag putter as well.
Playing well from within 100 yards is a must if you want to score well. Just look at the best players in the world. They all miss the fairway sometimes, but from within 100 yards, there isn’t a player out there who doesn’t expect to knock it close from a hundie and in. This is golf’s scoring zone, where the difference between a long birdie putt and a short tap-in can be made up by hitting the right kinds of shots.
One of the keys to accurate pitching is getting the clubhead moving consistently down the target line. A great way to practice this is to take a 10-foot piece of string and stretch it out directly on the target line of a pitch shot._Ê
When someone refers to saving your score on a particular hole, it typically requires a chip, pitch or bunker shot to get the ball up and down. These three shots can have the biggest impact on your score when learned and executed properly, since you can only do so much to make up strokes from the tee box or on the green.
How you make a practice swing when chipping from off the green is especially critical. First of all, you’re not just trying to calculate how far you need to hit the ball, you’re also trying to determine how high the ball should fly and how much roll you want it to have. Also, a practice stroke helps you to assess the lie, which can range from having a ball that’s sunken down in the rough to one sitting high on the collar. All these variables come into play when making a practice swing, which is why I think it’s critical that every golfer learn my rehearsal technique before hitting a chip or pitch shot.
