Dan Grieve Answers Your Short Game Questions

Hi, I'm Dan Grieve and I'm very happy to be answering the questions of you, the Golf Monthly viewers

in terms of some tips around the green that are going to help your short game. Let's get into it

Hey Dave, thanks for your question on the Yips and this is a serious subject. It's not something

that any golfer wants and it really will curb your enjoyment of the game, I'm sure, but

you need to understand that really the Yips is 99% neurological, as in mental and 1% technical

but I'll run through some technical bits but really it's about how you approach the shot mentally

and you need to sort of be patient with it and rewire the brain

Starting some better shots, your brain starts to say maybe I can do this and you start to get away from it

but just technically if you're feeling a bit edgy around the greens and you've got the yips

I really would try and get as little loft in your hand as possible. That really is the first thing

You start using your wrist too much, it's very hard to manage what's happening at the bottom

and let's be honest, we get the yips because it's just a total fear of what might happen when you hit the ball and it's a

totally involuntary movement through the shot. It's not something you can control. I have people

say the yips and say my knees are driving and all that sort of thing. Well you can't do anything about that because you're doing that without really consciously doing it. It's just happening

because of the fear. So as least amount as loft as possible, feel like you're going to really keep

your wrists out the shot so just really concentrate on getting the club working low to low like super

simple very little nearly went in very little um hinge and just keep the club on the ground

for as long as possible then what happens is even if you just catch the ground a little bit before

the ball like i did there it's not the end of the world you've got to start trusting the ground

once you start trusting the ground you'll hit better shots and you'll start to relax again

but just something as well that might help in terms of moving away from internal thoughts with

the internal thoughts about what you've got to do technically you've got to try and get a little

bit more into the external thoughts and that's worrying less about what might happen in terms of

the strike and in terms of these technique and focusing more on about perhaps a rough area where

you'd like to land the ball and what sort of flight you'd like to land it so trying to paint

a better picture of the shot what you're trying to achieve can help you get a little bit more

positive in terms of how you see the shot. And I do think a practice swing is

important to try and get the noise. So if I've got someone with the hips I'll get

them to a practice swing and you hear that lovely noise and do it again So I got two great noises Now I gonna get over the ball all I focusing now is getting the noise Getting the noise and land it roughly where I like to land it

and then I get a nice result. So really let the noise, let the external, let the sense of sound

just try and help you a little bit. So hopefully that helps. A little bit less loft. Try and paint the picture a little bit more and work on that practice swing to get the noise

hey phil thanks for your question on club selection around the greens and although there's some merit

in certainly sticking to one club to try and get used to it and becoming familiar with how the ball

reacts i think if you're super talented and playing a lot i think that's maybe something

you can look at but for 99 of golfers it's so much easier using different clubs to get the ball to

different pins. For example the shorter pins are a little bit more loft and the pins that are further

away a little bit less loft. You're changing the spin of the ball and the speed of the ball for the

pin you're playing to. It makes life a lot easier. So we've got four pins down this green here. Just

to sort of quickly show you here I've got my sand wedge for this pin here. The pin is short

in terms of the distance from the fringe and it's downhill so I need a bit of spin

So I'm using my 56 and you can see how that's creating a bit of check so it's holding down the

slope there, any less loft than that the ball is going to run too much. So if I'm now going to the

next pin I don't really want to be using my sand wedge because it might spin too much and not reach

the hole so I could go with a pitching wedge now to try and create a little bit more ball speed

In it comes, there we go. So now let's use the pitching wedge, you'll see it'll have a little

bit less spin on it because I've changed to a stronger loft and you can see how that ball is

running out to the hole a lot easier. If I'm going to the next flag now, that's

sort of another 20 feet. Let's go for a 9-iron and the 9-iron will have even

less spin and more ball speed helping its way towards that pin. You'll see how

that's going to run run run run run run run run. Very little spin on it, pretty

good. And then if we go to the very back pin, I mean that's getting on for 30

yards, go to a seven iron and that gives me more speed that I need to get right out to that pin

there and down it goes running down there towards the pin, pretty good job. So really make life

easier, use different lofts to help you get to different pins. Graham thanks for your question the one thing not to do with short game obviously quite a broad question but I was going to pick one aspect I would say don grip it too tightly because most players do Now the problem when you gripping the club tightly you don get the ability to release the club head Release the club means as you move

through the ball, the club head flows through the shot, creating finesse, feel and touch, which is

so important for short game. If you're gripping that super, super tight, the club isn't going to

want to swing. You're not going to be able to get the control on the ball. You're probably going to

a lot of thin shots as well so just really make sure that you're letting your arms hang naturally

in fact if you let your arms hang naturally if you're just chilling standing there your arms have

a natural fold sim and that's really how they should sit on the grip whereas a lot of golfers

look like this very rigid not able to get any finesse in the action so just be really relaxed

another drill you can do if you hold the club up in the air and let it slide through your fingers

do it again and hold it just at the point where it's not sliding slowly slowly bring the club down

and the weight of the club will slightly strengthen your grip pressure and then that gets you to that sort of more or less 4 out of 10 position

and then once you get that nice soft grip pressure, the club, the rhythm of the swing

everything gets so much better and you can hit nice little spinny shots like that

Hopefully that helps. Hey Tom, thanks for your question on pitching

You say you're getting steep into it, big deep divots, struggling to get strikes. So basically steep means the club is travelling down for too long this way and it's getting caught in the ground here

So the best pitch and drill, if you want to shallow it, is to try and get away from the feeling of hitting down on it

We need to get the club releasing and feeling a bit more of a draw feel is the best way to do this

Most people that get steep are trying to play more of a cut shot which is a bit of a steepening ingredient

So if you do this, if you tee the ball up as if you're hitting a driver, wouldn't tee? driver height and then just get the feeling of hovering the club at the bottom of the ball

even maybe drop your trail foot back a little bit and just feel like you're going to clip the

ball off the t-peg and what you should find is your instinct will take over and just clip it

much shallower through the ball so if we give that a go we're going to just clip that off the t-peg

and you can see there's that little bit of draw on it and a ton of spin and that will help you

shallow it out and just pick the ball a little bit more rather than those big deep dimmers hopefully

that helps Hey Johan thanks for your question about how to practice you may be struggling a bit with confidence and do you practice off good lies or should you practice off poor lies well i think you should definitely practice off good lies because if you struggling with confidence you need to be giving yourself

a little bit of a help with how the ball's lying to try and get some good good results and then you

can start believing you can do it a little bit more so this is a really nice fairway lie here

i can then play some shots get some nice nice strikes and start building my confidence but when

you start doing that a little bit more often, hopefully doing that ability to strike a ladder

seven, eight times out of ten, then just move it into a slightly more challenging lie and then

learn how to adapt. Well, if that ball's sitting down in a little bit of sand, which that is

I can't play that same technique I just played from the good lie. I need to make an adaption

so I need to play the ball further back, a little bit more sharp lean, lean a little bit more left

and then from there I can start to get a bit more of a pinch down into it and still get a good

strike so I would definitely focus on the next period of time off good lies but then gently

start incorporating the odd bad one and learning how to adapt a little bit and then you know once

you really start getting it just throw them over your shoulder and just play them as they lie but definitely start with good lies and then make it more challenging as you get your confidence

Alexander thanks for your question on distance control out the sand Now, obviously, there's a feel element to this

You've got to be able to feel the speed, and you need to be able to make sure you're really getting that consistent point into the sand

Too much sand, you're going to struggle. But assuming you've got some feel and you're hitting the sand in the right spot

something I see golfers not doing enough of is actually changing the loft enough

So I've got a pin here which is on a really quick, firm downslope

which really needs a shot that's only going to carry around about five yards

So I would use my most lofted club, my 60, and that alone is going to help me hit this shorter shot

I might get a little bit further away from the ball, drop the hands down a little bit as well on these short ones

and I can just pop it out, and that's about as good as I can do to that pin, but I've used the right club

Now, if I'm playing to a pin that is a little bit further away

I don't really want to struggle with trying to use more lofts such as a 60

I'll go to my second most lofted, my 56. It helps propel the ball out a little bit further

with a little bit more speed without having to hit it harder. So a 56 more to the back pin

and that helps get it out towards that pin at the back. So really getting the right club in

your hand is the key to controlling your distances when playing for these greenside bunkers