Swing Easy Golf's Short Game Timing Drill

Having trouble making solid contact with your chipping? Here's an easy fix. Move to a place on the range or chipping green where there aren't people around. You're going to shank and skull a few until you get the hang of this. This is a bit easier the first time if you hit off of a mat, or work with practice balls in the back yard.

Set up to hit a high soft lob shot with your sand or lob wedge. Take your lower hand off the grip and take it back with the lead hand only. This is the left hand for righties and right hand for lefties. Use your body to turn back and then just let the club drop back down onto the back of the ball, but keep turning through the shot and finish high. Keep your extension and stay connected the best you can. It takes a little time. If you try to help the swing with your hand you won’t be able to make consistent solid contact, so you have to create the swing with your body. After a little effort you’ll start to make solid contact and then as you continue, you can wait longer with your body and start to hit nice high soft landing shots. This really helps your timing when you go back to using both hands.

I was at Muirfield Village a couple of years ago watching the past champions clinic and with binoculars I was looking down at the end of the range where the other pros had been moved to continue their practice. John Daly was down there hitting these nice little lob shots onto the practice green. All of sudden I noticed he was just holding the club with his left hand. He continued to do this for ten minutes or so. I looked back in a little while and he was in a practice bunker doing the same thing. I was amazed, nice high soft shots one handed out of a bunker! When I got back home I went out to try it. It took some time but then I started to hit the ball with my body and I was again amazed at how easy it was to get the ball up in the air that way. I went on to try it in a bunker and let me tell you. That’s tough. You have to be a pretty strong hombre to get any good at that one. You can try this with longer clubs too, just remember to go slow and realize you can only hit it about 60 or 70 percent of your normal distance this way.

Take your time and Swing Easy!