Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
When Dave Pelz speaks, golf pros like Phil Mickelson listen!
Dave is one of the leading authorities on the short game. So, listen up, Dave is going to tell you via GOLF.com 3 things on how to “One Hop” your wedges into the green!
Photo: Leonard Kamsler
Tour players knock wedge shots taken from 50 to 100 yards in the fairway to within 17 feet of the cup on average, and the best in the world can stick it to within 10 feet without batting an eye. Call me partial to the short game, but for my money, there’s no better feeling in golf than catching a wedge right in the middle of the sweet spot and watching it fly high and stop next to the pin. Pulling this off is both athleticism and art. What’s more, an accurate wedge player has the ability to set up easier scoring chances and to keep big, card-wrecking numbers at bay.
The “secrets” to catching wedges crisp and knocking them close are anything but secrets.
Here (in no particular order) are the three most important basics for hitting your wedges flush:
1. Play the ball in the middle of your stance. This will encourage you to strike the ball with a descending blow so you get less grass between the ball and the clubface.
2. Make your follow-through longer than your backswing. This will help you accelerate into and through impact.
3. Clean the grooves on your club-face after every shot and opt for a higher-spinning, urethane-covered ball. These gear adjustments will ensure a Tour-style “one-hop-and-stop” landing with limited rollout.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
We all want to putt better, that’s for sure.
To putt better, we need to improve our green reading. Dave DeNunzio, the contributing writer for GOLF.com, has put together a list of 7 great putting tips by 7 of the top putting instructors around. (I wonder why he didn’t pick me?) After checking out these tips, I can guarantee that you will putt better in your next round. (But you must practice first!)
Adam Scott is one of the first to use “Express” green reading by AimPoint Technologies. Has his green-reading improved?
You read almost every putt, but if you’re like most players, your routine is guesswork disguised as green-reading. That won’t get you close to the hole, let alone “in.” You’re not the only one reading, and weeping, on the greens.
A new Golf Magazine study shows that America is massively misjudging the slope under its collective FootJoys, under-reading putts by a whopping 65 percent, on average. As a new season beckons, now’s the time to raise your reading level—and save a fistful of strokes. PGA Tour star Adam Scott has cracked the code, becoming the world’s best green-reader, so start by trying the 11-time Tour winner’s groundbreaking method.
Beyond Scott, we have six more easy-to-learn techniques from golf’s keenest putting minds. You’ll soon detect the subtlest bumps, bends and breaks, learning to read the trickiest greens as if they have subtitles.
7 Ways to being a Better Putter – #4 is a Gem!
FIRST THINGS FIRST: We Seriously Under-Read Our Putts!
Sixty-five percent of golfers under-read the break on a typical putt, according to a Golf Magazine–sponsored study conducted at the Pinehurst Golf Academy. All of these flawed reads add up to lots of lost strokes, even with perfect putting technique. In our study, we assessed the green-reading skill of 72 golfers just like you. Initially, our research team simply sought to determine the ideal position from which to accurately detect slope (behind the hole, behind the ball, etc.), but results showed view position to be meaningless to good green-reading. Our study subjects misread everything, no matter where they stood or crouched. Some 25 years ago, Dave Pelz told everyday players to triple the amount of break they saw, and that’s as true now as it was then.
Here’s how to see the correct line every single time!
Chipping with the flag In or out – that is the question?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
When I watch the PGA and LPGA players, they all seem to do it differently.
Some like to take the pin out. Others prefer to leave it in. Which, however, gives the ball the most chance of going in the hole. World-renowned short game expert Dave Peltz gives us the definitive answer via golf.com.
Dave Pelz has always recommended leaving the flagstick in the hole if you are off the green. Being Pelz, he researched the outcome of balls headed for the green, with both pin in and pin out. The guru of the short game says, “Leave the flagstick in whenever the Rules allow unless it is leaning so far toward you that the ball can’t fit.” I agree with Mr. Pelz. I think the pin can also help stop your ball if you have pace or speed problems, which may aid new golfers with distance perception. Here is Dave’s full take on the subject.
Chipping with the pin in.
A few years ago, I was asked by GOLF MAGAZINE to answer an age-old question: When chipping, should you leave the flagstick in the hole or pull it out? I conducted a test and was surprised by the results.
It was impractical to hit shots from the fringe, fairway, or rough because no human (not even Perfy, my putting/chipping robot) could hit the flagstick often enough or accurately enough to run the test in a reasonable amount of time. However, by precisely rolling balls on a green from a short distance, I could measure how the flagstick affected the results. To guarantee measurable, reliable results, I used a putting machine called the “TruRoller,” which I invented to roll balls precisely controlled directions at carefully controlled speeds. For each test, I set the TruRoller about two feet from the cup and measured 1) how far the ball rolled past the hole when the hole was covered, 2) how many putts stayed in the hole when the hole was not covered and the flagstick was out, and 3) how many putts stayed in the hole when the flagstick was left in.
Chipping with flag out!
Each test was run at three different speeds: On a perfectly flat green, the speeds were fast enough to send the ball three feet past the hole, six feet past, and nine feet past. Each test also had putts that went toward the target at different parts of the hole: dead center; left- and right-center of the pin; left and right edge of the pin. Finally, the tests were run, first on level greens, then on ones where the slope was sharply uphill and downhill. (The speeds would stay the same, but because the slope changed, the balls, if they did miss, would finish considerably farther away on downhill putts and closer on uphillers. But it is the speed, not the final distance from the hole, that matters.)
All told, TruRoller launched thousands of “shots” at the hole, an equal number with the flagstick in and out, on several different greens, at five different parts of the hole.
Once that was complete, PGA Tour veteran Tom Jenkins, the lead instructor at my short-game schools, did his best to duplicate those tests. Although Tom couldn’t control his putts as precisely as the TruRoller, I felt it was important to compare machine and human results. Tom hit more than a thousand putts, and support results of the TruRoller.
Of course, there were variables in conditions, including imperfect green surfaces, the edges of the cup becoming worn, the hole being higher in back than in front and acting as a “backstop,” and so on. What did I learn?
Leave the flagstick in whenever the Rules allow, unless it is leaning so far toward you that the ball can’t fit. Here are a few exceptional cases.
Perhaps most surprising, when the flagstick leans either slightly toward the golfer or away, the odds of it helping to keep the ball in the hole increase: With the flagstick leaning away from the golfer, the hole becomes effectively larger; when the flagstick leans toward the golfer, the ball rebounds downward, again helping shots find the hole.
Only in the most obvious case, when the flagstick is leaning so far toward the golfer that there isn’t enough room for the ball, is leaving the flagstick in a bad idea. Check the flagstick before you chip to be sure it is sitting properly in the cup. (The Rules of Golf prohibit you from positioning a flagstick to your advantage. But you may leave a tilting flagstick as is or else center it in the hole.)
Even if you don’t hit the flagstick dead center, it still will aid you. It proved especially advantageous when chipping downhill and at faster speeds.
The flagstick will help you make more putts unless it is leaning severely toward you or it’s so windy that it is moving and might knock your ball away.
Tour players knock wedge shots taken from 50 to 100 yards in the fairway to within 17 feet of the cup on average, and the best in the world can stick it to within 10 feet without batting an eye. Call me partial to the short game, but for my money, there’s no better feeling in golf than catching a wedge right in the middle of the sweet spot and watching it fly high and stop next to the pin. Pulling this off is both athleticism and art. What’s more, an accurate wedge player has the ability to set up easier scoring chances and to keep big, card-wrecking numbers at bay.
