Look Past the Pin on Short-Side Pitch Shots, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Look Past the Pin on Short-Side Pitch Shots, Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

If you have short sided yourself with your approach shot to the green, you have got a very tough pitch coming up, but here’s a little tip that can help make that pitch a little bit easier. Short sided is generally when you have missed the green on a side where the flag is actually, so you feel like you are near to the flag but it might be that there is something in between you and the flag that you have to fly over and because the flag is near to the edge, there is less green to work with now. So sometimes it’s actually better to be on the other side of the green, further away from the flag but with more room to work with, but if I have short-side myself here, I have got a bunker in front in a tight flag position, is not an easy shot to get this ball up and down.

One of the real issues as if you start focusing too much on getting the ball really close you might end up hitting the ball not brilliant context and knocking it in the bunker. So sometimes we just got to take on medicine, appreciate the pro-shot was the bad shot, I am in a difficult position short-sided, the safest thing to do is to chip the ball out, not necessarily close to the flag but to the flattest move in this area that would leave me the best chance of making my putt.

Sometimes this will be beyond the flag, so the approach here is to not necessarily look at the flag and try knock it stone dead but just look a bit beyond the flag, almost imagine that if the flag is stood up here in the cloth at the top of the flag is up, you are going to try and hit your ball to hit the cloth on the flag that would naturally mean that the ball would land a few feet behind the flag and then you can putt back, rather than trying to hole into the base of the flag which might bring in the bunker that might be too close.

So when you are short-sided and you got a really tight pin, try and fly the ball into the cloth of the flag, making the ball land a little bit beyond and then take your medicine and putt back up from there. And hopefully that will help you to stop compounding your problems, if you are short-sided that’s the bad shot, now get it back in play and come off with no worse than a bogie.

 2012-07-17

If you have short sided yourself with your approach shot to the green, you have got a very tough pitch coming up, but here’s a little tip that can help make that pitch a little bit easier. Short sided is generally when you have missed the green on a side where the flag is actually, so you feel like you are near to the flag but it might be that there is something in between you and the flag that you have to fly over and because the flag is near to the edge, there is less green to work with now. So sometimes it’s actually better to be on the other side of the green, further away from the flag but with more room to work with, but if I have short-side myself here, I have got a bunker in front in a tight flag position, is not an easy shot to get this ball up and down.

One of the real issues as if you start focusing too much on getting the ball really close you might end up hitting the ball not brilliant context and knocking it in the bunker. So sometimes we just got to take on medicine, appreciate the pro-shot was the bad shot, I am in a difficult position short-sided, the safest thing to do is to chip the ball out, not necessarily close to the flag but to the flattest move in this area that would leave me the best chance of making my putt.

Sometimes this will be beyond the flag, so the approach here is to not necessarily look at the flag and try knock it stone dead but just look a bit beyond the flag, almost imagine that if the flag is stood up here in the cloth at the top of the flag is up, you are going to try and hit your ball to hit the cloth on the flag that would naturally mean that the ball would land a few feet behind the flag and then you can putt back, rather than trying to hole into the base of the flag which might bring in the bunker that might be too close.

So when you are short-sided and you got a really tight pin, try and fly the ball into the cloth of the flag, making the ball land a little bit beyond and then take your medicine and putt back up from there. And hopefully that will help you to stop compounding your problems, if you are short-sided that’s the bad shot, now get it back in play and come off with no worse than a bogie.