5 Shots Every Golfer Needs And How To Play Them

Joe, I've been thinking a lot about golf recently, as I always do

Aside from the stock shots we always go and practice, right, there's a lot of shots that appear on the golf course that you never practice

but that are really vital to keeping a round going and keeping a score going. Does that seem fair

I would say that's fair. There's some essential skills you need to master to be good at golf

Shall we go and find some out on the course today and help some people out? Let's do it. Well, there comes points in rounds, doesn't there

And this is a good example here. We're on the 17th hole at Kedleston Park. Got a good round going

And I'm looking down the fairway and there's a lot of trouble either side. Left and right. It's very tree-lined, isn't it

It is very tree-lined, but it could be a really good opportunity because it's a short-ish par five if we can find the fairway

So aside from your normal stock drive that you might hit and practice all the time

I think it's really important to have a fairway-finding shot, if you like

And I'm going to demonstrate mine to you. There are other ways which we might get into in a second

But I'm just going to demonstrate what I do when I really need to hit a fairway. Okay, go on

A couple of little things I change at setup. Firstly, I peg the ball down just a little bit

Why do you do that? When I'm all pegged up a lot, it helps me sweep up on the ball

and maybe hit from the inside a bit and get a nice powerful draw. That can increase my dispersion a little bit

So when it's pegged down, my attack angle comes down a little bit and I start to sort of squeeze a little fade out

and then I know the ball is going to turn from left to right. So that gives me the confidence to aim just a little bit left, knowing the ball is going to squeeze out a little bit

And then from there, all I do is choke down on the club about half an inch. I stand a tiny bit closer to the ball because of that

So because I'm closer to the ball, I've got a better chance of centering the contact. I've then narrowed my stance a tiny bit

So I've got a slightly smaller radius of swing from the choking down and a slightly tighter swing radius from having a slightly narrower stance

So all that's kind of doing is inhibiting my speed a little bit, admittedly

So I'm taking a little bit off it. But exactly, that's okay for this shot. The priority here is finding the fairway

And you're more assured of what shot shape you're going to get. So you can know where to aim and where to find the fairway

Absolutely. And just pegging it down really helps me know that this ball is going to squeeze from left to right

So it gives me the confidence to aim up the left. So I'll choke down again, like I said. Show us the way then, son

Half an inch. I'm aiming just inside that tree there. slightly narrower stance than normal and i'm just going to make my smooth little

golf swing now it's going to bleed off that tree nicely just inside it perfectly that's that's a good example so really tight so it's just

past that tree and now i'm in really good shape to make a birdie right and joe found in your spiritual home the trees a bit harsh but yes probably accurate i know

we just talked about fairway finders obviously sometimes you miss that and this is a shot the

punch out from the trees that you just never i don't anyway practice do you don't go to the

range and start punching five irons off your back foot or whatever i see a lot of complacency on this

shot and i play a lot of pro-ams and play a lot of guys who sort of walk into this scenario and

just see it as a nominal shunt forward it's actually far more complicated than a shot from

the middle of the fairway where you're thinking about your yardage and the wind there's actually a lot more going on here to think about don't you think so let's do strategy first then and we'll

and we'll come onto execution in a minute and how to practice it. So let's talk about this situation we found ourselves in

Yeah, I mean, this is pretty standard. So I've cut it too much off this tee. I'm in the right trees

but it's, like I said, a little bit more complex. We've got the green is actually over there

behind this set of trees. But I've got the fairway here to the left and I've got a couple of options

To the right of this big oak tree there, I've probably got a five or six yard gap

You can't see that, do you? It's doable in the right situation, but is it at a percentage play

Probably not. Even if I hit that gap from a width point of view

there's some overhanging limbs further up that I've got to keep it under

And I'm only really gaining around 20 to 30 yards. So I think in this scenario

it'd be more prudent to go through this larger gap to the left. We've still got some issues there though to think about

And I always start with a lie. Whenever you get to a shot, you've got to assess what is possible from the line

I've got a reasonably clean lie here, so I can think of a lot to do. We've got some quite hard pan stuff

which you tend to find in these trees, which we'll talk about in the execution in a minute

but this is a very different shot to that, for example. So you've got to work out where you are first

So you've got to work out where you are and work out what's possible. We're going to base it on a reasonably clean lie here

So the next thing you need to think about is how much you've got to carry

and how much run out you've got the other side. And that will determine the club that you're going to pick

So you've told me before that you quite often just walk in, you take your least lofted iron, your five iron

It's always five iron. It's just I go, yeah, five iron, whatever. But when that happens, if this rough is quite thick

which it is here, it's quite grabby, you've got to get that five iron carrying that rough

Otherwise you're going to stop in the rough here, not have a shot to that green because these trees will impinge you

But if you carry that rough, it's going to hit that fairway

and keep running and running and running and possibly run into the trees the other side. So I need to know here

I've got these over-arms that I've got to keep it under because if it pops up too high

and I pull out a nine iron or an eight iron, pops up too high, clips that

it's going to land there and I'm still in the same problem. So I've got to pick the right club that's going to give me enough carries to get past this rough

but stay under those trees. And from experience, I feel that's a six iron for me

So you've got to weigh up where you want to be playing your next shot from. There's a lot to think about

Like I said, it's far more complex than just a shot from the middle of the fairway. But people treat it like just a nothing shot and just walk up and shunt it and can still be in trouble

So it really key to give it the attention it deserves Pick the right club and pick your right strategy Sorry Joe it turned out impinged was a word I knew it was So I learnt a word now teach us how to play this shot Good idea Dad good segue

So, first things first, from a technical point of view, this shot's all about control, and controlling the flight

So the first thing I always like to do is choke down on the club, and it will always depend on the type of shot we're trying to play

All of these punch-outs are different, and they should be treated differently, they should be treated individually

If I had a little bit further to go, I might need to choke up a little bit more than I normally would for this shot because I need a bit more carry

So experience and practice is going to teach you that. Secondly, visualisation is a big key here

I need to get behind this. I need to look and I need to see the ball fly

I need to play a little picture in my mind of how this ball is going to take off

And then with my eyes, get that good message through my eyes to my brain, that should send the signals which put me in a good set-up position

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I like that. So it should be an athletic thing. So once you've got that visualization of where you need to go

we've choked down on the club, the ball's gonna be a little bit back because I need to keep it down here

How far back do you have it? It looks like front, back heel. Again, it's all shot dependent

People want kind of absolutes for these shots. Yes please. No, okay

But unfortunately golf isn't an absolute kind of thing. If I need to carry it a little bit further

the ball's gonna be slightly forward than this shot where I need to keep it very, very low

So how far forward and backwards in the stance is depends on what shot

How far you need to carry it. How far I need to carry it. How much room you have up here. How much room you have beneath those trees

So for this particular shot, and that's why we're saying you need to practice these shots. It will seem odd that say you're going to go

to the practice ground and hit bumps and punches and practice your punch out game

but it is key and it will save you shots. So if you start to understand your ball position

relative to certain flights, it's going to really help you in this situation. And that's what I mean about your eyes will start

to send the right messages to your brain and that setup will become more automatic

Right, I've learned a bit. Show us how it's done. of a club. Ah, well executed, sir

And that is gonna go, that's good. Deep enough in the fairway, just for the record

we hit a ball early, you just hit that ball. So that's why she's done the exact same shot

You're welcome. It's carried far enough to go under those branches, but far enough so you can go and hit the green

I'm gonna have a go now, cause you've taught me a lot today. You're choking down. I've pulled the six iron

You've seen the shot. I've done, I've sent messages to my brain. and you sent the right messages because that's just made the fairway you're in good shape

not my finest but again i've got to go practice that so hey i've got the fundamentals now

go and practice it it's a really useful shot to have all right next up joe really important shot um it's uh the chip and run the bump and run now i

think we get it a lot on the golf course i think a lot of people do practice this

but it's an essential shot. It's going to save you a lot of shots if you get up and down

How do we perfect it? How do we practice it? The floor is yours. Thank you, Dan

That's very kind. There are a couple of ways of doing it and I've got a simple way, I think

Someone like a Shane Lowry might disagree with this. So Shane Lowry, for example

he's a guy that likes to play all of these shots around the green with his 58 degree wedge

and he makes a lot of technical changes, putting the ball back, hands forward

changing things around to produce different flights and different outcomes. My personal opinion on it and a lot of other pros, we've got a bag full of clubs here

We've got potentially 10, 11, even 12 clubs we could play bum-bums with, including three-wood

for example. So what I like to do, I have a formula in my brain. I like to, number one

my key is to get the ball on the green as quickly as possible and get it rolling as quickly as

possible. So to do that, you need to know what club is going to produce the right amount of

carry to get it just on the green and then produce the right amount of roll. So I kind

work on a formula basis i like to have a 50 50 club which i know in normal conditions flat

conditions on around a 10 stimp green will provide me with 50 percent of carry and 50 percent of roll

for me that's my pitching wedge okay then i can work in the variables around that if the green's

firmer those percentages might change a little bit so from there though is your then your 9 iron 60 40

correct sorry 40 60 and so on basically pretty much so so it's actually the other way so 9 is

less loft so it would be 40 carry and 60 roll keep up thank you professor hawkins you're very

welcome so from there like i say factor in the variables whether the greens are firm whether the

greens are soft whether we're going uphill whether we're going downhill but as i said number one key

get the ball on the green as quickly as possible and get it rolling and it's worth then for people watching going and practicing and figuring out what your 50 50 club is or what your 40 60 club

is because it's gonna be different to yours absolutely could well be but i'd say that that's

the key is practicing that because the technique which we'll talk about now isn't actually that

complicated it's a fairly i like to think of it as just an extended putt so what we're talking

about here i have a ball that's fairly centered maybe even just slightly forward in my stance

i try and keep the shaft pitched up a little bit higher sort of more in the lie angle of a putter

and then it's literally just a rock of the shoulders and i'm trying to get this club just coming in dead level with the ground and brushing the turf i don't want any sort of

pinchy strikes when i'm taking divot joe show us this why have you picked a iron i'm gonna have a

go as well actually talk us through it a time wise so i'm looking here and i'm thinking we've

probably got about 20 to 25 percent of carry here and then maybe 75 80 percent of roll okay going up

quite a steep slope but we've we've played on these greens today and they're relatively quick so

it's an experience thing and that's where the practice has to come in yeah not necessarily as

i said it's not necessarily you need to be grooving a lot of technical practice with with

with the bump and run, because it's quite a simple technique. It more understanding those relationships between what club you pick and what role and carry percentage it will take so very good for me here based on my experience i fancy a time is the right club and i not looking at necessarily an exact blade of grass or something i just looking at an area

which is around two to three feet on the green try and land it in that area and get it rolling

the rest of the way and like i said nice neutral stance look at my landing area rock my shoulders

get it just going two or three feet on the ring. That's barely, yeah, and that's just going to cuddle up pin high

Pushed it a little bit, but it's dead pin high, so I've probably got, what, four or five feet there for par

Yeah. Eight out of ten, but it's a very safe, fail-safe shot

Interesting, and this is just something, again, get yourself to the chipping green and practice, because it's a shot I don't practice with an eight iron

or whatever club you might have used. So once you've got that formula you've just said

go and practice it, because you can work out the relationship with the ball and the face, how quick it comes off

Okay, so a little bit central, bit of shaft vertical. Just brush the grass

Lovely. Three or four feet on. Steady now. You've absolutely shown it up there

I've nailed that. Steady now. I'm inside the pro. I'm inside the pro below the hole as well, mate

Well, I mean, it's a good shot. It just shows what an excellent teacher I am. What a great teacher you are

So take all of that there. Go practice it. Go work out that ratio, the relationship with the ball

with some of these different irons around here, and you'll be up and down more often than not. Next then Joe, on the green putting and I'm going to give us something pretty basic here

but it's something that you need to master, you need to get right, practice it alongside everything else. It's just holing out from really short range. How do we do it? I put

more in a hole obviously. I meant more how do we practice it

The process of getting better at it I assume is what you're asking here. That's what I'm getting at

So yeah I mean it's something again I see it a lot playing in pro-ams, playing with amateur

part that's missed a lot from this range and I think there's a couple of things I'd like to talk

about. Number one, there's just some fundamental technical issues and one of those technical issues

I think is centering strike. I see so many people hitting off the heel toe, low or high on the face

and what happens when that takes place is the ball doesn't come off at the pace it's supposed to and

if you've got a breaking putt it can veer offline because it's not going to have enough momentum to

stay online because you don't have the same energy from strike. Also on sort of less high MOI putters

heel and toe strikes can kind of open and close the face a little bit so it's really important to

get centered contact and one of the best drills for that is the Tiger Woods drill you might have

seen a few times over the years so he does it as part of his warm-up all the time when he's playing

just getting a couple of tee pegs probably best to start with a little bit of margin for error

You've given yourself no margin for error there but you are the pro. I've been a bit tight on myself

here and it's just simply find a nice straight putt and start stroking putts and trying to miss

those tees so we're centering contact and that's just really good habit it's part of whether it's

part of practice or warm-up or both just learning to center that contact is absolutely critical

and i would heartily recommend a good five or ten minutes a day yeah and that's uh you like to talk

about uh the computer up here yeah i think seeing the ball go in the hole a lot whether that's before

four round or practicing, it's a good vibe. Good subliminal messages, yeah

Gives confidence and gives everything you need to say. And that works on longer putts as well, just striking the putt out of the video

100%, yeah. So it helps your hole in. Sorry, go on, mate. So yeah, another one on that, if you do want to do it from further away

another one of my drills, I do a bit with a putting mirror. Another one I like to set up

maybe double this, maybe six feet. Find a straight uphill putt, relatively flat putt with no break

And I like to practice hitting three balls, one that's going to just drop in the front edge at no pace

The next putt that's going to go in at a more mid-level pace and make sure the next one hits

off the back of the cup and then work up and down that scale. Then you're really fine-tuning your feel and when you've got the option of hitting it in

at pace or dropping it in, you can pick the break you want to play a little bit more easily

if it's a breaking putt. So you're really, again, sending good messages and fine-tuning your touch and feel

While we're talking about breaking putts, my next tip for practice on these is something

I'm going to get you involved. Go on then. I'm going to make you do it. Another reason I see a lot of amateurs missing short putts is they just assume every putt's straight

You get close and you think, well, if I hit it firm enough, it's straight enough. That's just not the case

It's a good example here. We're on probably for the aim pointers amongst those

Probably a 2% slope here from our left to right down here

A really good way of practicing these short putts is if you get a standard length putter

generally 33 to 36 inches, just around the three-foot mark, So you can grab a few tee pegs and set up a little clock face

Put the putt out in the hole, drop a tee down at the end of it, you've got three feet

Drop another tee. I see where you're going. You can do four, you can do quarters and just keep dropping those round in a different area

I'm going to set you up three here, and I'm going to go this way. So what you'll do here is you're going to get these three foot putts

but they're all going to be different breaks. This one's going to have a touch of right to left in it

which is from this side, we're gonna have a touch of left to right. We've got a downhiller

Just changing the pace a little bit from the one we would have had down there. Exactly. And what you'll do is you keep

you hit some putts away for me here. I'll get the balls out for you. But what you'll do as you're sort of going through this drill

lovely putt. Now give me a downhiller. You'll start to eventually over time

you'll figure out some tendencies and you'll notice maybe you're better on right to left

or left to right putts. We were doing this before we filmed this now

and I was just pulling these, wasn't I? the ones that just did that along the break. Correct, and now you've been able to correct that

a little bit as we're going along. So you'll start to notice some tendencies, you'll identify some weaknesses

and if you're really careful, someone like a Matt Fitzpatrick would document some of these things and write down this practice and go okay I missed X amount right or left of the hole and you can begin to work on those tendencies So getting a bit more clinical and statistical

with practice from this range, if you can get sharp from here and get your percentages up

in the 90s from this range, it is huge for most club golfers

So I think those are really good ways of making that happen. Love them, Joe. Two really good drills there

to work on what is a fundamental part of the game you need to get right to get your scores lower

Right, Larson Joe, we're in a bunker. What I want to talk about here is just a fail safe

get out of the bunker option. A lot of people are scared of bunkers, we're on the 17th here

you don't want to ruin a round by knifing one through. So we're going to talk here about just a fail safe thought and technique, not necessarily just to get up and down all the

time and nip one in there, it's just to even get up and two putt and not mess it up. So

give us some nice thoughts to have when we're on the course. I think this is a really good example. You've picked a good shot here as well because

we're short-sided we hit it in the left bunker the pins on the left the greens all running away so

with the best will in the world even if you're one of the better bunker players in golf

this is a really tricky one to get up and down so primarily target number one is be out of this trap

and have a putt of some description for par target number one take the target out of it

yeah i would agree with that entirely if we can i would agree with that yeah very much so so we're

not even focusing on the pin here all our focus is getting the correct strike on this ball so it

pops out of the bunker and we're taking no more than three. Correct

We always talk about getting up and down, but sometimes three shots from particular situations

is good and this is it. And for me, from a technique point of view, a fail-safe way of doing that, I like to envisage

and I'll draw it now for illustration purposes, a little circle around the ball

So it's about an inch and a half, probably, either side of the ball

So it ends up looking a bit like a fried egg and that ball sat on a little island in the middle of that circle

and again you're talking about taking the target out of your sort of um consciousness i want to

take the ball out of consciousness here okay all i am focusing on here is slapping this little

island of sand i've created and i want to land this sand by the hole okay so many people i see

get a bit tentative in this scenario and that you see where that sand landed about here yeah

we don't get enough speed speed is underrated in bunkers you need it to get out so we're actually

going to hit this shot quite hard but to counteract that and you know I've heard it a million times

the club face needs to be a little bit open if we're too square you get too much club face on

the ball and that's when you send it rocketing over there so we're going to open up the club face that activates the trailing edge so the club will go in at the back of this island and it will

have the pace and the bounce to come back out and the ball should travel out not focusing on ball

not focusing on target just going to take my normal wide stance open up that club face and

All I want to do, like I said, is slap that sand. Slap that sand

And throw it up to the pin. It's come out great. It's run on a little bit far. So what, we've kind of eight foot from there

That's a really good result. I'd have taken 25 feet, if I'm telling you honest

That's it. You've hit a really good bunker shot there. It's still got eight foot past. You try and get too cute with that

trying to make up and down your back in here, aren't you? And you're facing the same thing again. So we're just going to get it out and take it from there

What are you doing here, Dan? I'm here to experiment. So that's a nice fail-safe one when you've got a good lie

Can I just give you a bit of a one of them? Just a bit of a fried

egg. Yeah that's deeply unpleasant actually. So I need another fail safe option here. I need something I can

fall back on when I'm out on the course and I'm panicking. Perfect. So number one here

this ball is now sat below the surface level of the sand so we know we need to have the club

under the ball to propel the ball up so so many people see this and think it's going to come

out low and horrible and try and help up in the air. Worst thing you can possibly do. You're bringing

the equator into play there and you're going to be sending a rocket through into those

trees there. Contrary to the first shot here, you still need the pace, but I'm not too worried about

throwing the sand all the way here. My first thought whenever I'm plugged is to drill the club

into the sand as hard and as steep as I can, and I try and leave it there. So I stick it in

so it will look a little something like that. The sand does come out, it proposes it with a lot of

pace, but it just makes sure that I'm keeping that club travelling downwards, downwards, downwards

under the ball and you actually need to hit down to make it go up not up to make it go up so same

again fairly wide stance generally speaking i open the club up a little bit still some people recommend

playing it with a square face you want to try and bring that leading edge in a little bit yeah i think maybe if we're talking maybe the sort of mid to high handicap ender of the spectrum yeah i

think that would be useful you probably would just square it up a little bit to ensure the leading

edge will help you dig under the ball if you've got a bit more speed and you're a little bit more

accomplished you can still open the face up a little bit so depending on your your level of

ability that's probably something to think about we're just talking fail safe here so i'm going to

square it up and i just want to make sure this gets out so i'm square square blade i'm looking

at that little line behind the ball and i'm just going to dig stick it in there come out lovely

but you can see how much deeper that divot is i've just stuck it in and the club barely moved past

So just concentrate on that, drill the club under the ball, and I think that's a pretty fail-safe way that the ball will get out every time

Brilliant. Great work, Joe. There's two fail-safe swing thoughts and feelings to have there

when you get a bit nervy toward the end of the round, you get in a bunker you don't like the look of. Get up. If you hold one of those putts, great

Two putts in there is fine as well. So, Joe, thank you very much. Great work today

I'd take both of them. You'd take both of them. Good work today. Go practice these shots. Go work on this stuff

Alongside your normal game, if you get these shots to talk about today right, your score's going to come down, aren't they, Joe

100%, yeah, 100%. These basics will stand you in very good stead. Well, thank you for watching

I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time