You're Correct!

If you find that you are wasting too many shots from inside 100 yards, or the scoring zone, it is really important that you start to learn how to control the distance that you are hitting the ball on a less than full shot.

The first thing you want to do is to go to the driving range and work out how far you actually hit full shots with your wedge, your 9 iron and your 8 iron. With anything less than a full shot distance with your wedge, you need to work out how to hit those yardages under that, so that you can hit every 10 yards under it, consistently. So for example, you may hit your pitching wedge 100 yards with a full swing. A full swing with your sand iron might go 60 yards for example, so you need to know how to hit 90 yards, 80 yards, 70 yards – you know 60 yards is a full sand iron, but you also need to know 50 yards, 40 yards and 30 yards.

You need to go to the driving range, or the practise ground. If you are on the practise ground, take a few umbrellas with you and set them up at particular distances away from you - for example set one at 40 yards, one at 60 yards, one at 80 yards and then play shots at them. As you do this, work on swinging to certain positions on your back swing. With your pitching wedge, imagine a clock in front of you so it is 6 oclock down by the ball and 12 oclock up by your head. As you are looking at that clock in front of you, if you are right handed, you will swing the club head on your back swing moving around the clock at 5 oclock, 4 oclock, 3 oclock and you will then swing back down, strike the ball at 6 oclock and as you follow through you will find that you are swinging to 7 oclock, 8 oclock, 9 oclock.

Take 10 balls and swing to a 3 oclock back swing position, or you might want to term this as a half swing position. Hit 10 shots with a half swing position on your back swing and then half swing position, or 9 oclock on the follow through and notice how far the balls go. Do not force them to one of those umbrellas, just notice how far that shot goes and to which umbrella. Now jot down how far that swing length went with your pitching wedge. Do the same for different swing positions so do it for a 2 oclock position which is more a three quarter swing. Do it for just a quarter swing, for a 4 oclock position and note down on a piece of paper how far those shots go with an average of 6 to 10 balls for each shot. If you find your pitching wedge is not going too far then do exactly the same thing with your 9 iron and then also do exactly the same thing with your 8 iron and you will start to notice which swing position and which club gives you a particular distance, so that you can write that down for 30 yards, 40 yards, 50 yards, 60 yards and so on.

Write down which club it was you used, which swing position you went back into and the yardage it produced. Then take that yardage chart out on to the course with you the next time you are out there and you will stop wasting so many shots inside 100 yards.

If you have at least a pitching wedge and a sand wedge, you should be able to play a vast number of shots from inside 100 yards but the addition of a gap wedge and lob wedge would also be recommended.

You may well be able to play some really nice golf shots that are struck cleanly, have a great high flight and are really straight. So you know how to actually play the golf shot.

But if you are unable to control the distance that the shot flies, no matter how well you execute the technique, you will waste shots from inside 100 yards.