The carry roll ratio with a GAF wedge is fifty to fifty. With a
six iron, it's twenty percent carry, eighty percent rollout. With an eight
iron, it's one third carry, two thirds roll. With a sand wedge
it's two third carry, one third roll, and with a loud wedge it's
eighty percent carry twenty percent rollout. See in my shipping system. Classical chipping
you only have those five clubs. Again, that's if it's a level green.
Obviously, if you play on medium sized greens, which is ninety nine
percent golf courses are medium sized greens, classical chipping will be the most commonly
used short game shot. All right, This is Jinny Harris from Gay to
Oklahoma and I played the shatted golf course. This is golf Smarter nine short
game tricks and tips you can use and myths to avoid with our old friend
Jim Waldron. This is Golf Smarter sharing stories, tips and insights from great
golf mindes to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. There's
your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Jim.
Great to be here, Fred. I think this is episode thirty or
thirty one for me something like that, seventy or seventy five, I don't
know. Yeah, great to have you back. You know, I've been
going Everybody the listening audience is aware that I've been going through stuff with my
arm. But it's about to end. I think I'm ready to start playing
again. And I yesterday was the first day I took full swings and it
was my back that was a little sore, but my arm was okay.
And so I'm going to try to play eighteen tomorrow. I go to physical
therapy today. See but where you know, of course, what I've been
doing in my head for the last four months is don't beat yourself up.
Don't get caught up in the fact that you're rusty and stuff. You know
what you have to do, you know how to do it. Just go
out there and you know, take it easy and be easy on yourself and
let it you know. Club up. That's good advice. Club up.
Take it easy, swing easy. Yeah, yeah for sure. But what
else? But what else? Coach? What do I need? How do
I how do I get bats this? You need a better working which is
the topic of today. But in terms of the health, I mean,
I'm actually a pretty good person asked that because I struggle off and on in
my golf career with low back and hip issues. But I think in general,
I do as I say, not as I do. I've I've always
tended to come back to early and re injure it. Really, as my
wife will tell you, I'm stubborn. So I'll just you know, physical
therapists will say give it three months and then and then slowly come back into
it. And I'll give it six weeks and come back to it, and
so yeah, don't do that. Give it time to for sure. Yeah,
this is I'm going on four months now, so since the last time
I played golf, so I you know, I took the Luckily, we've
had a lot of rain here in northern California, so I haven't missed much,
and I've been traveling a bunch. But I've also like tried to take
the mindset of my friends in the you know, the Midwest and the northern
Midwest and going like, hey, i don't get to play for five or
six months because of bad weather. So I'm trying to like, you know,
they do this every year, and I'm whining about it that I have
to do one time, I have to wait for a couple of moren Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, Florida, California, Texas,
Arizona, we get to play all year long. Mexico, Mexico exactly,
Hawaii. Yeah. But I'm like, I'm ready to thaw out here from
my winter. Cool. Cool. So let's talk about like where do I
start? You know, like short game is That's the one thing I started
practicing a week ago in my yard. I've been putting and just doing some
short game stuff. I feel if i'm i'm you know, if I'm tuned
in on that, I should be okay. Yeah, I think that's a
good way to look at it. Plus, you know, you could argue
that the short game, and there are a lot of good teachers, we
start with putting. They teach putting first, then they teach chipping and pitching.
So there's a kind of a developmental aspect because it's, you know,
the idea being the shorter the swing, the slower the tempo of the swing,
the less moving parts, the easier it is to learn to some level
master. So, m it makes sense. But I think the short game
is an under taught or poorly taught aspect of our sport. There's lots of
myths I think in traditional teaching about the short game. The big one is
that a short game swing, particularly like a like a like a less than
full backswing, so like a three quarterback swing or half a backswing, or
a one quarter length backswing like in a traditional shipping stroke, is just a
micro version of your power swing. That's the big myth. It's just not
true. There's more differences than there are commonalities between any short game swing that's
within about sixty yards of the pin or less. There's fundamental differences that I
spend a lot of time in my coaching practice pointing out to my students.
So, for example, the tempo's completely different. If you define one way
to confine tempo is the rpm speed that your upper body pivots significantly slower.
It's going to be twenty five to thirty percent slower rpm speed than your pow
that much. Yeah, and I see people come to see me with terrible
short games. I get a lot of people with short game yips, and
they're rotating their chest on a little chip shot that's only going to travel maybe
you know, ten yards in the air with like a gap wedge and they're
rotating their chest the same speed they would rotate on a driver, which is
crazy, right, But you should be rotating your No, you should be
rotating your chest twenty five to thirty percent slower our PM speed. You still
should be rotating. Well, shouldn't be like it's not all arms. Well,
god, no, it's definitely not all arms. In fact, that's
a That's another myth is that it's because it's a shorter shot you should use
the spoke called levers, and the levers and the golf swing are two upper
arms where they connect to our shoulder sockets, our trail, elbow folding and
unfolding, and of course our wrist cocking and uncocking. And the reality is,
at least the way I understand the short game and the way I teach
it is it's more pivot driven in the short game, with a few exceptions
than even your power swing. Now, as you hit the ball more with
your body turning through the through the shot on a little short shot than you
do on a longer shot. Really, yeah, the speed is, the
speed is obviously less, like we talked about a second ago. Yeah,
you're going to turn through at a lower rate of speed. But The contribution
was the relative contribution of the lever system versus the pivot system. There's less
lever action on most short game shots and more of action compared to your power
spling. It's just the opposite of what most amateurs think. Hmm, I'm
blown away. Keep going. Well, you know Roberto, you know you
know who Di Vincenzo is who lost the Masters in sixty eight because he signed
the incorrect squarecard you got from Argentina. Roberto DBA guy. Yeah. He
famously said he was referring to all his golf shots short game and longer.
But I bring this up for a reason. He said, when I play
my best golf, I hit the ball of my stomach. So he was
identifying with the rotation of the mid section of his body, a so called
core right. And when you're doing your best short game shots. It's not
that there's no contribution. Well, there is on classical chipping. There should
be no risk action on classical chipping. We can go more in depth on
that in a minute. But on every shot other than classical chipping, there's
always going to be some degree of lever action, primarily how you use your
wrist. But it's still mostly your body most if you wanted to quantify the
motion, mostly a pivot motion. Whereas when I work with people who come
to seeing you either with chipping yips or short game yips, or just they
don't have yips, but they have really bad short games, it's like they're
they're trying not to turn their body hardly at all, and they're just sort
of throwing their arms at it, throwing their wrists at it, and they
can't make solid contact. And you know, the whole thing about the short
game is you've got to be able to control, which is what the ball
does three things with consistency, which are the carry distance meaning hitting your landing
spot, the trajectory, and there's four trajectories there's low, medium, high,
and super high, super high being a flop shot. And then the
spin, the amount of backspin which are low, medium, and high spin.
And the backspin along with the trajectory, determine how much roll out there
is after the ball lands right. So to do those three things consistently well,
you have to be able to make solid contact. And almost everybody who
comes to see me with short game issues, they're not making solid contact.
Now they may they have distance control, issues that they think are sort of
standalone flaws, but they're really The distance control issue is because they're not making
consistent contact. Meaning on one hip shot they'll hit a spin, it'll have
not it'll have too much overspin, it'll roll like twenty feet by the hole,
and with the same club on the next chip shot, they'll hit it
fat, they'll hit it heavy, and they'll be way short of the hole.
Right. So what I teach is on the short game, you've got
to be able to control to have solidness of contact, you've got to be
able to control the angle of attack, which is the angle that the club
head comes in from up from skyward forward ground level when it hits the ball.
So that could be either a shallow angle like on a flop shot,
or a steep angle like on a low spinning web shot right, and generally
speaking most short game shots, you want your angle attack to be somewhere in
between those two extremes, not steep and not shallow. On a medium you
have to be able to control where the club bottoms out, which is called
the low point. And since there are many many different types of short game
shots, they all have different low points, so you have to know,
where should my low point be on this type of a shot versus another type
of shot and be able to reproduce it. And I have when I work
with a new student who has short game issues, they can't make the club
bottom out where I want them to bottom out on all sings, well,
just even on power swings. Yeah, but it's almost always significantly worse.
People who have poor low point control in their power swing ten times worse than
their short game. Oh yeah. And the third issue is you have to
have the proper amount of forward chaffeling. Now that could be as little as
none on a traditional flop shot where the club chefts is ninety degrees to the
ground at the moment of impact, or you could have like you know,
like a low spinning wedge hitting like a gap wedge or a pitching wedge.
I actually had a lesson on how to do this from Lee Trevino twenty years
ago down in Palm Springs. Wow, where he has you know, he's
got his hands on this low spinning wedshot. He showed me his he's got
like ten twelve inches of forward chafflin in saying them out right, Yeah,
so where the shaftling is. That's a big part of it. I want
to go more into that. I want to take a break right now,
but I want to come back and talk about the shaftling because of what I've
observed so many amateurs doing. And we'll be back right after this. Jimmy,
you know, when I watch a lot of people that I play with,
you know, we're mid handicap, maybe some of us are high single,
but still mid handicappers. There's a lot of scooping going on. It's
you see, you see them trying to chip the ball or pitch the ball,
and they're they're trying to get under it and lift it up correct.
Right, So in short game here is it really Back to their conversation,
that's one reason why people don't hit the ball solidly because they're actually have they're
presenting the club face to the back of the ball with reverse shaffling, which
is deaf in golf. You could hit it either really thin and skull it
over the green, or you could hit it really fat doing that. Yeah,
there's actually some videos going around right now, Jim Venettos and even Mickelson
where they're talking about the shaffleing and the amateurs. You know, lean the
shaft back to behind them, and you know, it's like and pros don't
and lay they have that forward shaft lien and keeping the face of the club
and the edge of the club square to the target. You know, it's
interesting. There are often universal throughout the different skill categories flaws, but there
is one, and that is scooping in the short game. I've worked with
multiple tour pros who came to me with short game hips. These are guys
who have plenty of shaftling. When they're hitting an eye off the fairway,
like with a six iron, they'll have like, you know, eight inches
of shaffling, six inches of shaffling something like that, and then a little
delicate little chip shot. They have reverse shaffling and impact. They're scooping it.
I mean, really good ball strikers are scooping. And of course say
with a high handicapper that they scoop everything. So it's much more prevalent in
the short game that is in the power game. The scooping impulse interesting,
especially if someone has I've never and I've worked with hundreds of people in the
last decade or so who have severe short game yips. I've never had a
single one who did that scooping impulse. In fact, there's a funny story
about this. I'll tell you about two summers ago in Portland, I had
a guy who came to see me for three days with really bad He was
about a twelve handicap, really bad short game yips, and we identified right
away, you know you're scooping. You got to stop scooping. You have
to hit down on the ball to some degree, you know, coming in
at a somewhat moderately steep angled attack with you know, some amount of schaffling.
He understood all intellectually, couldn't do it, and he had two ways
he was doing it. He was flipping his right wrist sideways like this right
and for the audio listeners, I'm showing how the club bad can past your
hands by unhinging the angle in the back of the right wrist. And he
was pulling his left elbow in. So both of those are common ways you
can add loft to the club face. So you again trying to add off
to scooping. So we fixed it. Took me about three hours to fix
both of those flaws. And I'm thinking, oh, he's done right now,
he's gonna start hitting the ball. Really solid. All of a sudden,
he starts tilting his right shoulder down too much. He wasn't doing that
before. He's still trying to scoop, still trying to scoop. Of course,
his unconscious mind says, proper proper behavior of the club just before,
during, and after impact is for the club had to go from low to
high as it's striking the ball. It's supposed to go from high to low
to some degree. Right. But because he had that image in his unconscious
mind, swing map, that's what his body was doing. So it took
me about another hour to fix the excess of tilting his spine to the right.
Thinking, now, now I think we're done, right. Then he
starts standing up. He starts popping up out of his spining. He wasn't
doing that before either. It was like putting on a balloon. You push
it one part in the balloon, and then you know, the forest goes
elsewhere, sort of like that. It took till the end of the day
to all the different wings he kept trying to scoop. He finally had nothing
left it. Finally he starts, yeah, but that's a that's a perfect
example what almost everybody I see who has any type of issue. Yips are
not in the short game. We have to get we have to address the
scooping impulse early on. Yeah. Yeah, Now, when you talk about
the controlling the spin, can you do that on all type of terrain,
all turf or is it really mainly on the fairly on good lies? Yeah?
I mean if you can't. If you're in the rough, you can't
control anything because you're not going to get any spin because the grass gets caught
between the back of the ball and the club face. And then when that
happens, when the two surfaces contact each other, the grass gets compressed and
grass juice comes out. It makes a film, and that film reduces the
spin dramatically. Right, Okay, So what that means is that when the
ball lands, you're going to get more release on it. The ball is
going to roll. So then don't be aiming at the hole, correct,
right? You want if you're coming out of the rough, off the rough,
yeah for sure. Okay, But when you're on the short grass and
you're inside of what fifty fifty sixty yards somewhere there? Yeah, Okay,
you want the ball, you want to try to get the ball to get
well, I mean, getting the amount of backspin that we watch on TV
is just you know, forget it. You ain't gonna We're not going to
do that for sure. You don't want too much. That's also a problem.
Most short shots you want medium spin. There are some shots where you
want no spin. There is classical chip shots who should be no spin.
By the way, there's gonna be a little spin anytime, even on a
putt, there's a little tiny spin that happens. But by the time the
ball lands, you want to backspin to have stopped. So when you get
a classical chip, you don't want back spin. It should land and roll
out like a putt. Right, But except step for classical chipping, every
other shorting shot, except for classical chipping, you're going to have either low
spin, medium spin, or high spin. Like on a cut lob.
You know what a cut lob shot, which is a type of a flap
shot. Well, the cut lob is where you take your lob wedge and
you do you basically take the club a little outside with the hand path and
clubbed path, and then cut across it kind of like over the top like
this, oh yeah, on purpose, and you pull your thing that we're
trying not to do well. You do it on the shot. It's a
specialty shot right again, you do it. You got to learn and do
it the right amount. You can obviously do it too much. But it's
a slight out to end clubbed path, which it's facilitated by bending your left
elbow a little bit just before impact. You pull your left elbow a little
bit and you roll the face open, so now you're coming in steep.
Anytime your path is out to end, you're going to have a steeper angle
attack. The steeper the angled attack, the more the more the edges of
the grooves on your wedge bite into the cover of the ball and creates spin.
And when you rotate the face open, when the club face angle itself,
you know the club face itself is rotating from square to open. That
also creates more spin. Right and the fact that you're cutting across the ball
from out in path also creates more spin. So you're doing three things to
create spin. So when I demonstrate that shot from my students, it doesn't
go as high as a standard slop shot. What, for Exampleevy, you
would call this parachute shop, which is like straight up in the air and
it just that's actually a low spin shot, but it just lands because it's
so it goes straight up, but its out comes into the ground of the
ninety degree angle. Yeah, spin just stops right. But on the cuplob
you're putting maximum spin, it'll actually land and then take take one bounce to
the right, you're right head of golfer, and then and then trickle out
and have hardly any rollout. It's got so much and it's a cool looking
shot. Yeah, And it's the work I'm always You have to have the
traditional flop shot. The ball has to be sitting up a little bit on
a toft of brass, right, because you're coming here with almost traditional flop
shot. You want like zero shaffling, and you want to be like straight
up and down, which means you have to come in very shallow, which
means the ball has to be sitting up a little bit. It can't be
sitting down on the tight line. It's a very goot to do off the
tight line. But the cut loob, you're coming in steeper and you're hitting
down on the ball. And so that's that's the only shot that will work.
That's the only super high trajectory shot that will work, uh in a
typical round of golf where the ball's not sitting up a little bit. So
it's a good shot to learn the cut level. Yeah. Yeah, and
it'd be a good thing to know, Like I know that I've had the
results. It's like, oh wow, look at that. The ball hit
right here and stop right next to the you know, the divot. It's
like an inchoay, how did I do that? I wish I knew how
I did that? And then I watched and I you know, it's so
bad to watch golf on TV because you're not learning things. You're just figuring
out what you don't know how to do, and then you don't even practice
it. But like when these guys, like they have all seven, they
rarely have seventy five yards to the pin because they're either two hundred yards out
or they're on the green. Sometimes there's seventy five yards from the pin on
a shorter part four. Yeah, right exactly now they are we had a
forty yards yeah, yeah. But what they do is like let's just say
they're at seventy five yards and they're like, okay, the pin is at
seventy five yards I got to hit it seventy nine yards because it's going to
spin back. Yeah, those four yards, and it's like that just is
amazing to me that that happens. It's interesting that because generally speaking, they
don't like that shot. Sometimes they'll do that shot really on the option that
they have, but generally they're trying not to put too much spin from that
distance. From about sixty five seventy yards to about one hundred and twenty yards
a category of short game called distance wedges. Have you heard that term distance
wedges? No, the turn that Dave Pel's came up with about thirty five
years ago and pretty much everybody today uses it. But when you're in that
sort of sixty five seventy do whatever your full gap wedge is. So for
me, that's one hundred yards. For a long it might be one hundred
and twenty. There's a particular type of shot in there, and it's you
want basically, you want a medium spin type of shot. You don't want
to suck it back unless you absolutely have to. Yeah, And what is
that wait? When you say you absolutely have to, what are the conditions
that you face that you're going I absolutely have to spin it bit. It
could be that because of it, it could be like water in front of
the green, or some other type of hazard beat in the back of the
green where like like tall grass or something. In other words, it might
be a situation where the only shot that you feel that you could stick it
close would be a shot with high spin. But in general, a tour
pro is not trying to hit that shot. They talk about it a lot
on TV because it looks cool, but top players don't like to have that
much spin. They can't control the carry distance as well when there's that much
backspin, and often it spins back too much right. So what they're generally
doing on a distance wedge they're trying to take spin off, and the way
they take spin off is they don't complete their backswing. They don't do quite
full turn on their backswing. So a normal backswing is says one hundred degrees
of shoulder turn right, they'll do ninety degrees of shoulder turn okay right.
And they'll also there's something called the kinematic sequence of you know what kinematic sequence
means? Keep talking. Kinematic sequence is the technical term for how you transfer
energy from one body part to the next and eventually down into the clubbed during
the downswing, during the forward swing, and the typical kinematic sequence is on
a power swing shot is your lower body starts first than your mid body,
than your upper body, than your arms, than your wrists, than the
clubhead, So there's a transfer of energy, sort of like when a whipmaster
cracks a bull whip, there's a transfer of energy. There's much less transfer
of energy on a distance wedge, which is why it flies at a lower
trajectory and has less spin, so the ball doesn't stay on the face quite
as it stays on the face for a shorter interval of time than on a
power the same guy with the same club well even with a power swing,
whereas it the ball will compress against the face more on a power swing and
therefore have more spin. So some people call the distance wedge that shot like
the Pels years ago called it a finesse swing, and the way he tried
to get people to learn it was you want to feel like the rpm speed
of your hips and your core and your chest are all moving at the same
speed both on the backswing and the forward wing, which is kind of one
way you can do it. Where's a normal swing. Your hips fire first,
then they decelerate in the power swing and the core fires. Then it
decelerates a little bit, and then the energy from the hips transfers to the
core. When the core slows down, it transfers to your upper torso,
your chest, your shoulder girdle, and it slows down as the wrists are
uncocking. So again it's that whip cracking thing. So it's about taking some
of the whip cracking element away so it feels like a well again, it
feels more like a finesse swing. Some people call it a more armsy like
Tiger calls it more armsy swing. You know, it's a softer type of
it's a softer version of your full swing. Is one way you can think
of it. Yeah, awesome. And then if it applies more on shots
within sixty five yards of the whole where I want my students to feel like
the rpm speed of their chest on the forward swing and their hands, slash
arms and the clubhead are the same. Now the clubbed will always be moving
a little faster in RPM speed unless you're doing classical chipping where there's no rist
action. Classical chip shot, which is a good example. There's no risk
action. So in a classical chip shot, the clubhead and your hands and
your chests are all moving into same rpm speed just before, during, and
after impact, whereas hardly any amateers know this, and so they're trying to
make the clubbed move faster than their hand, which again is in other ways
you could describe as scooping, or they're trying to make their hands move faster
than their body, which they disconnect, their arms come off their chest,
their chest slows down or stalls, they have an armsy release. Yeah,
amazing, All right, another time out. We'll be back right after this.
I love talking about the short game with you. It's something we really
don't spend enough time on, but I think it's so important because there's so
many, like you said, myths about the short game that we need to
figure out and get past. But I want to go back to you talked
about distance control, trajectory control, spin control. We talked a lot about
the spin. Let's talk about the other parts of that as well, the
distance and trajectory control. Yeah. Yeah, Well again, except for a
classical chip where there's no riskcock except for that one shot, every other shot,
since there's some degree of riskcock and not only be a quarter of a
risk cock. So what I teach is that there's several different types of riskcock.
You've got zero on a classical chip, so no risk action. You've
got a quarter riskcock, which is a tiny amount obviously, and I will
call it chip hyphen pitch, also called modern shipping. Modern shipping which is
what you see in the younger players mostly today, is where they fly the
ball about eighty percent of the way to the hole when they're chipping, and
it trickles out to the other twenty percent, whereas classical chipping they might fly
it only halfway to the hole or less or a third of the way to
the hole, and then it'll roll out two thirds. What I call modern
shipping chip hyphen pitching because it it has a pitching aspect which is there is
some risk. Therefore there's some riskcock release on the forwards wing. So a
quarter riskcock would be the second type. Then there's a half a riskcock,
right and which pitches would work, and then there's a full riskcock on longer
pitches. Okay, well I'm going to stop you here because you keep saying
riskcock and you're doing stuff with your hands. I can't see your hands,
nor can the audience. So define what you what you mean by riskcock?
Are we talking? Please explain? Sure? Sure? So from from setup,
from address position, if you simply moved your wrists straight up toward the
sky, so the club because your wrists are hinging or cocking straight up.
Yeah, okay, that's called cocking and golf instruction versus flexing versus some people
call flexing. I prefer the old school term hinging. When you go back
with your risk, that's called hinging, okay, and power swing, you
hinge back until your lead risk bows or flattens a little bit while you cock
up. So it's a combination of hinging and cocking in your in your normal
power swing. In the short game, there are some shots where you'll only
hinge and then hold the hinge angle without cocking, which is one way to
do classical chipping. There are short game shots where you'll do a little bit
of hinge and a little bit of cocking, like I said, like a
chip pitch, like a quarter, or you could add more cocking. So
there's always some degree of hinging in any short game shot, right, But
you could have either no riskcock, quarter riskcock, half a riskcock, full
riskcock, and the riskcock. The more the more riskcock you add on the
backswing, the higher the ball goes in trajectory, the further it goes and
carry distance, and the more spin it has. Quarter riskcock will fly much
lower than a full riskcock. It won't go nearly as far in the air,
right, and it'll have way, it'll have you know, much less
spin than a full risk cock. Yeah, and we're talking on the on
the pitching and chipping side. We're not talking full swing or we are well
again, we're talking well in terms of what I just said about the zero.
What we're talking mainly short game and your power swing. You're always going
to do a stock movement with your wrist, which is cocking fully full range
of motion, full cock, along with hinging back enough to flat or slightly
bow your lead risk. There's some advantage. I think that most teachers would
agree to have a slightly bowed lead lead risk right. Intend to get It's
been a very it's been very challenging for me to get that bow because I
always had a tendency on my lead risk too top. Yeah, hinge you
back cup it back and I've worked very hard on that over the years,
and I've always seen the difference. It's just, you know, something that
I had that problem when I was taking piano lessons as a little kid.
They were like, lift your risks, lift your wrists. And then when
I was taking typing class, we actually had typing class in school. When
I went there and she didn't, I failed, and again I was like,
had these little I had to say, limp risks, but I was,
you know, hinging back, and so I noticed I've done that,
you know, and everything I've done so it's been very hard for me to
get that motion correct. Yeah, but it pays off, you know.
Along with scooping what we see in terms of flaws, we see a lot
of overuse of the risks. So a lot of people they're also scooping generally
along with this, but they just don't know how to use the risk properly
in the short game. They don't know about what I just said about.
You could have zero one quarter risk cock, half a risk cock. But
it's not that hard to learn how to do it. I mean, most
of my students can learn to do it in a couple hours. They can
alter on command, they can do a half a risk coock, they can
do a quarter, they can do it full, they can do none and
it. Once you've mastered those four risks setting angles, it makes a huge
difference on the quality of your short getting shots. It really doesn't incredible.
Yeah, okay, So now is that we were talking about trajectory and we
did spend control. Now distance control, that's a critically important, critically important
Well, let me tell you how I teach you. The first thing I
tell people, Look, distance control. You're wasting your time trying to learn
it if you're not making solid contact and then not only center face contact between
you know, the club face and the back of the ball, but also
having such good control over your angle attack and your low point and your shaffling
that the interaction between the soul of the club and the turf is also an
important part of the short game, right. You need to know how how
the club had interacts with the ground just before in most cases, or just
after impact, or while while the club, base and ball are touching each
other. How does that bottom of the club, the bounce of the club
especially interact with the turf. That's a big part of it. But once
you can correct because if you don't make so if you if you send you
hit the first wedge, the first pitch shot a little thin, it's going
to travel too far, it's going to carry too far, and it's going
to roll out too far too doesn't have enough spin. And if you hit
the next one heavy, it's going to travel way short. It's going to
carry short of your landing spot. So you've got to be able to make
solid contact first. But once you do that, the way I teach distance
controls and one of the miss is that you should change your tempo. And
I hear people say I don't want to have a system because I'm a field
player, And my response is every good player is a field player. The
story we tell ourselves can be had a conversation with Felder about this years ago.
You can tell yourself that you're an analytical player, someone like Bryson de
Shambo right. The story he says to explain his success is analytical, scientific,
technical, versus someone who's more intuitive, like a Sevy biosterops. They'll
talk about fields all day long, but the reality is everybody who's good plays
from the field. But that doesn't mean you can't have a system. Which
is mainly centered around how big a backswing you make right. And when I
work with someone who tells me that they're decent at distance control, particularly within
the distance wedges from that, like sixty five to one hundred and twenty yard
range, they're usually terrible at it. That's been my experience. And the
guys, guys who actually have a system based on length of backswing are good.
Yeah. So in my pitching system, there's two lengths of backswing right
which are using you know how the clockface analogy works. For a right handed
player, the left arm is the clockface, the clock the hour hand.
So you go seven point thirty would be a short pitch right, and that
when you move your left arm to seven thirty in the clock face, you're
doing it with your pivot. You're not doing it with your arm muscles going
on. You're not moving your arm sideways across your chest. It's a way
of measuring how big a pivot. Seven thirty with the left arm is about
a forty five degree rotation of your torso roughly right. And then there's nine
o'clock, also called a three quarterback swing. That's about a seventy five degree
rotation of your torso. Yeah, So in my pitching system, you have
to learn how to do a seven to thirty backswing, and you have to
learn how to do a nine o'clock backswing. And there's three baseline distances.
There's a short distance pitch from seven to thirty with a half a risk cock,
there's a medium distance pitch from nine o'clock with half a risk coock,
and there's a long distance pitch which is nine o'clock with a full risk coock.
So, for example, with my lob wedge, which is sixty degrees
lost, my full long distance longer pitch, which again is nine o'clock full
riskcock, flies exactly fifty yards. Basically, it goes almost straight up in
the air, traveled fifty yards. My media, which is nine o'clock with
half a riskcock flies twelve yards less it flies thirty eight yards, and my
seven thirty with half risk gott flies twenty five yards. So I've got three
baseline distances with that club and with my fifty five degree sandwich. Right.
Practice, Yeah, and so important to practice this information. Don't believe this
BS that you can you can get a good short game in terms of distance
controlled by just going by field. It's it's it's just not true. You
have to have a way of regulating it, a consistent way, and it's
it's two things. It's length of it's length of backswing meaning length of pivot,
and how much risk copy use. Those two things are what create the
carry distance. What you don't do is you change. You never change the
rhythm and you never change the tempo. Those have to be a constant to
be consistent. That makes sense, so that the rhythm is the relationship.
There's there's more than one way to define rhythm, but the way I most
commonly do it for short game students is the relationship in terms of the rpm
speed of your chest rotating on the back swing versus the forward swing, and
that relationship should be two to one, meaning we call it five to ten
rhythms. So if your backswing with five RPMs chest rotation on a chip or
a pitch, your forward swing speed should be ten twice as much five to
ten. Whereas typically when someone has poor short game techntic, even when their
risks action is better and their length the backswing is pretty much where we want
it, they can still hit a chip or a pitch. Poor distances because
the rhythm might be five point fifteen and they'll hit it too far on the
first shot, and the next shot it'll be five to seven, which is
a dso on the little too short. So you have to have that,
you have to practice through repetition. You have to master that five to ten
rhythm. Yeah, and the tempo basically means the length of time of your
back swing and your forward swing in the short game, especially within sixty five
yards, should be identical. In that length of time is going to be
about roughly three quarters of a second, so three quarters of a second backswing,
three quarters of a second forward. So it's very common for people to
over accelerate their pivot because they don't understand what I'm talking about in terms of
rhythm and tempo, and so they if they over accelerate their pivot, they'll
they'll do five to fifteen rhythm and they'll hit the ball too far right,
and the next shot they'll they'll decel, they'll they'll stall their pivot and they'll
do five to seven rhythm and they'll hit the ball too short. So having
a consistent tempo, which again the tempo itself in terms of the overall RPM
speed is going to be about twenty five to thirty percent slower than your power
swing. So it takes a little bit of practice to learn how to make
your chest rotate on a consistent basis around twenty five thirty percent slower. Awesome,
awesome, All right, one more time out. We'll go back right
after this. This is one of those episodes, Jim, and it probably
happens on your episodes more than most, well because you're on more than most.
But you got to listen to it multiple times because there's so much to
absorb, and it's like, wait, I got to take notes on this
now, and I think now. The Apple podcasts they put transcripts up.
Yeah, yeah, there's a transcript going. So you don't want to be
watching your phone while you're listening to the podcast. But the transcripts are there.
But when you said you know that you ask students is like, how's
your doing? Oh, I'm pretty good in my short game? Right.
It frustrates me to no end when I'm playing with guys who are you know,
within fifty sixty yards and they get all excited because they're on the green,
and it's like no, no, no, no, no no.
When you're there you're you're supposed to be able to put the ball in a
place where you can one putt. Right, it's turning three shots into two.
That's where you're scoring. Is So if you're on the green, it's
you know, okay, way celebrate, except the pin is on the complete
opposite side of the green of where you are. Just because you're on the
green doesn't mean it. So just you know, it's not about getting there
and then two putting it thinking you've had success. Yeah, you'll know your
shortcam for the rest of your life if that's your short shortcating goals after what
you think is a decent shortcam cut. So well, my recommendation sort of
my guidelines for this issue if somewhat depends on your skill level. But let's
say you're about a five handicap or better, right, yeah, yeah,
if you're doing a chip shot within say twenty yards of the hole or less
and not I'm talking about decent lie chip shot, not not in the rough,
not super tight, but you know, come a deep average line,
you've got to be chipping it within three feet of the hole. Lets you
be your goal three feet right when you're in that sort of twenty to like
fifty yard range, you want to be within five feet of the hole.
Wow, a little bit longer that because bunker shots are a little harder to
control distance, maybe more like six or seven feet from a greenside bunker.
And when you get in that sort of like you know, sixty to ninety
yard range, you want to be like in you know, eight or nine
feet from the hole because your odds of your odds of making a putt if
you're if you're outside six feet are a little less than fifty percent. Right,
you're outside six feet, and that's if you're pretty decent at short putting.
So you really have to think of it like that. I got to
hit this thing pretty close to get up and down. I can't. I
can't be expecting the one putt from twelve to fifteen feet. I think.
I think the average make percentage from fifteen feet in the PGA Tour is around
sixteen to seventeen percent something like that. Now it's that high, yeah,
I mean that low. That low. I'm sorry, I'm meant to say
that, like I thought, like I thought ten foot putts are like fifty
percent on the tour. It's actually I think I think on the tour right
now, the fifty percent markus six and a half or seven feet something like
that. Wow, and why do we beat ourselves up? We can do
a whole other podcast just on putting. That's one of the big things we
see in putting. People have amateurs have insanely unrealistic expectations. Yea, because
when the typical amateur golfer is watching a PGA Tour event, he sees these
guys that are on the leaderboard making everything they look at pretty much on the
putting green, right, So it creates the illusion that that is sort of
normal for them to be making ten footers or fifteen footers, whereas the actual
average is much less than that, right. Yeah, So people get this
idea that they're supposed to make every time they have a six seven eight foot
pot, that they're supposed to make it. They don't even realize for an
amateur golfer, that's not it's more likely than not you're going to miss that
putt, even if you're good at putting. Yeah for sure. Yeah,
are you all caught up on this lie angle balance the lab putters? It's
an Oregon thing. But yeah, I probably need to educate myself more about
but I've been hearing more about it just in the last month or so.
Yeah, well, you know, because Lucas Adam Scott does it, and
will Zola Taurus came back from his injury. He's got the lab putter.
But what Lucas Glover did last year after having severe yips and then coming back,
and their whole thing is is you're just they say, untorque yourself because
with with face balance and heel balanced putters, you're you know, there's a
lot of torque that you have to do when you're putting, and these just
wherever your point in your putter, it's going to go in that direction and
you just fai doesn't rotate relative to the path. It stays neutral to the
path. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, Oh, you should definitely
get in touch with Sam. He's he's in Oregon. He's right where you
are, so Portland, do you think, No, he's not in Portland,
he's near you. He's outside of Eugene. Oh outside Eugene, Okay,
yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a great guy. Great yeah.
Yeah. So so let's let's talk about one of the parts about about chipping
that there's a lot of dispute or you know, approaches to it and that
is just off the green. Yeah, you know, and it's not necessarily
just off the green where you can putt from just off the green that you've
got maybe you've got some rough or you've got you know, something a little
ditch or something. One of the things that Tony Manzoni instructed me to do
years ago was take my eight iron, use it like a putter with the
toe toe down, heel up on it and get it close to my feet
and just do a putting motion. And that that has worked very well for
me in the past. Yeah, that traditionally is people call that a put
chip. It's also called the Paul Runyon put chip method because Runyon back in
the nineteen thirties kind of came up with it. Because if you're hitting it
a little hit it a little toward the toe, there's less likely good that
you'll hit it fat because the heels up in the air a little bit.
It won't work if it's a bad lie. The ball has to be a
pretty decent lie for that to work. But yeah, and if you're just
off the green, that can definitely work using literally using a putting stroke.
So I consider that one of the one of the essential, not the essential,
but one of one of the little bit more advanced type of a shot
that you can call a specialty short game shot, the put chip. Yeah,
we're seeing today as a resurgence, thankfully, finally, because I've been
a big preacher on the I've been a big advocate for traditional or classical or
Scottish chipping also called chip and run shot, which kind of fell out of
favor or starting about twenty years ago. In fact, you won't see it
that often on the PGA tour wells as until about a year ago. Now
we're starting to see some of the younger players do it. Jordan Spieth will
do it whenever he can. Justin Thomas will do Scottish chipping whenever he can.
I saw who was it the other day, Actually it was Xela Taurus
doing it. They were talking about it. Where you have a little what
looks scott Is shipping is it looks almost like a putting setup your except your
feet are very close together. You have about twenty percent more weight on your
front foot, so you're you're kind of leaning forward a little bit, and
you have about four inches of shaffling that's set up and you want to maintain
that four inches of shaffling, you don't. You don't change it throughout the
stroke. Forward shaftling, Yeah, forward chaffling and risks arched up a little
bit, so the handles about an inch an inch or two higher than neutral.
When you raise the handle, that automatically shallows your angle attack. So
it's less likely that the leading edge will dig. The traditional critique of Scottish
chipping, which how it fell out of favor about twenty years ago, is
that the leading edge will dig, particularly in tight lives. So and very
tight lives, particularly if the ground wet, the leading edge would dig and
you would leave the ball be way short of the hole because you'd be hitting
it fat. But I think some of that was because I think at the
time where it Scottish shipping got the bad rep that it got, it was
because people were teaching it wrong people. I don't want them to name names,
but there were some famous teachers who were teaching ball way way back in
the stands, in line with your right heel or even further back than that.
And when you have the ball position that far back in your stands,
of course the leading edge is going to dig. Because you're coming in too
steep. The angle attacks too steep. Right, Whereas the way I was
taught to do as a kid is you put the ball in the middle of
your stands. Your stands, your feet are about six inches apart, balls
in the middle, twenty percent weight on your front foot, four inches of
shaffling, and simply maintain the four inches of schaffeling right along with the slightly
arched list which had been raising the handle. So now you're coming in in
a five to a ten degree angle attack instead of more than ten degrees,
and the leading edge doesn't dig right. So we're finally seeing this. In
the last year, more and more of the younger pros I realized that that's
actually an easier shot to do under pressure. And when you use that shot,
what's up? Where do you use that shot? How do you it's
the you know the instance of that you need it? Would you would do
it for any type of chipping situation where you have some green to work with,
Right, we'll say, you know ten feet or more of green to
work with, and the lies DC it doesn't work out of the rough right,
it has to be a normal fair away lie, but would be within
typically when you're about anywhere from about ten yards away from the pin up to
about thirty five yards away from the pin. In that range, okay,
and involved again, depending which club you use. In my system, there's
several different clubs. You use a six iron, eight iron, gap,
sand wedge, lobwards only those five clubs. So look with the gap wedge,
which is the one you're going to use the most. If it's a
level green, no wind, and the green's running sort of average speed maybe
ten on the stimpmeter, the gap wedge will fly like mine flies fifteen yards
in the air from a classic from classical chipping backswing at seven to fifteen on
the clock face with my left arm, it'll fly exactly fifteen yards in the
air and will roll out fifteen yards. So the carry roll ratio with a
gap wedge is fifty to fifty. With a six iron, it's twenty percent
carry eighty percent rollout. With an eight iron it's one third carry, two
thirds roll. With a sand wedge it's two third carry, one third roll,
and with a lob wedge it's eighty percent carry twenty percent rollout. Again,
that's if it's a level green, obviously, so you only in my
shipping system, classical chipping you only have those five clubs, and that turns
out once you're once you've mastered that technique, if you're playing a normal greens,
not ginormous you know, Jack Nicholas Pete dye greens where you might have
you know, one or more big swales between you and the pin, in
which case, now you've got to figure out how much how much break the
chip's going to have after it starts the roll, it's better just to pitch
it airmail it. They're right doing a classical chip. So if they're not
big greens or not really small greens, like my home course here in Enterprise
is probably smallest greens of any golf course in the country. They're insanely small
and they're like inverted saucers. Oh wow, it's hard to do classical chipping
because there's hardly any there's not enough greens you could be blowing it by if
you play on medium sized greens, which is ninety nine percent golf courses are
medium sized greens. Is it turns out classical chipping will be the most commonly
used short game shot for sure. So to me, I consider it the
foundation of the short game technique, classical chipping. Well, time to go,
But again I want to thank you and just let you know if you're
new to golf Smarter, then you've got to just go back in our archives,
because Jim's been here since almost the beginning early two thousands, and we
get together regularly, including episode four hundred where we had what Chinese food together?
Thai food? Right, we went for Thai food in Oregon. That
was it? Eight hundreds where I got to interview you, right, that's
right, eight hundred you interviewed me. That's right. Oh my gosh,
Jimmy, thank you so much. Balancepoint goolf dot com. Right, correct,
that's the best way to reach me. It's always it's always a lesson
in an education when we get together, and I truly appreciate your friendship.
Man. Thanks man. Likewise, so I need to clarify a comment I
made early in the interview about my ten elbow recovery. Yes, I did
play two and a half weeks ago, and you probably heard that I had
my PXG driver fitting a couple of days after that, but since then,
no golf. I did go to the driving range to test out my new
driver and honestly, going up against my trusted Callaway ex hot, the PXG
black Ops driver was longer and straighter every swing, but the pain in my
arm persists. I'm going back to physical therapy tomorrow and I have asked my
doctor about doing something more aggressive, but I have yet to hear back from
her. I say that because I am absolutely determined to get some rounds in
this spring, because I need to be one hundred percent ready for our golf
Smarter Royal adventure to Northern Ireland. I really want to play golf and hang
out with you for a week. You know, I've never played there before
and this is a total bucket list opportunity for me. Hopefully it is for
you too, but even if you've already played there before, please join me
this July for five rounds that includes the number one course in the world,
Royal County Downs, the host of the twenty twenty five Open Championship, Royal
Port Rush, and what a rush that would be to be able to watch
it and say, yeah, I played there last year. Also one of
the most beautiful courses you'll ever see at Ardglass, and we'll even play a
parkland course with the oldest clubhouse in the world, Royal Belfast. I've partnered
up with TMI Golf and we only have room for two foursomes, but the
clock is ticking. You can get all the information at tmigolf dot com,
slash golf Smarter, or at golfsmarter dot com to hear our featured conversation about
the trip that was released just a few minutes after episode ninety with Tara Fox
last week. This Friday is part three of our annual series with the late
Tony Man, and since Tony passed away in twenty eighteen, we've been playing
select episodes each year to get back into playing shape for spring. What's different
this year is that we're playing every episode in order that we did with Tony
between twenty ten and his final appearance in June of twenty seventeen. The huge
difference is Golf Smarter Mulligan's is no longer a separate podcast. Now it's included
in your free Golf Smarter subscription and is released every Friday, so Golf Smarter
is really twice a week. Tuesdays are the brand new episodes, and then
we dig into our archives each Friday. This week's episode is just after Tony
released his book with Paul Servante's The Lost Fundamental, One Simple Move, Better
Golf Forever. And even if you've heard any of these before, there's always
a golden nugget tucked away that reminds you of one more effective insight to bring
to your game. If you're one of our Golf Smarter Ambassadors that is opened
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I do want to thank our newest Golf Smarter Ambassador, Denny Harris of Gaye,
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