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If you are looking to sharpen your short game up, that really means that you need to focus on your putting, your chipping and pitching and the best place to do this is playing shorter holes.

Take the long game out of the equation, so rather than playing holes where you have got to hit a driver and a long iron or a fairway wood into the green, go to a course where you just have par 3s, so that you can work on hitting shorter shots into the green, with your shorter irons. What a par 3 course will also help with is the fact that when you have missed the green, if you are looking to make that par 3, you will now have to have a sharp short game because you have got to chip the ball close and then be able to hole the putt.

Similarly, if you have hit the ball on to the green direct from the tee, you have got to start holing some of those putts as well. The best place to go to sharpen your short game up is on a par 3 course. Now if you dont have a par 3 course local to you, one thing that you could do is go to your practise ground where there is a green and just set yourself a game up called Par 18. This is how Professionals would practise their short game.

In Par 18, you want to stand in the middle of the putting surface and then throw nine golf balls all in different directions and just let the balls go wherever they go, all different distances, different directions across the green, so that they all finish off the green at varying lengths. Now go to the first ball, and what you are looking to do is just make an up and down from that position. Play the ball as its lies, dont give yourself a good lie, just play the ball wherever it lies and then allow yourself to play the shot in.

Decide the type of shot that is required, the club that is required, go through your full routine and then play the shot. Once you have played that shot and the ball has finished rolling, then go to that ball and work on holing the putt. You are looking to make a par 2, one chip and one putt from wherever the ball was laying originally.

Do this for all nine different positions and if you do make a 2 from each of the situations you will end up with 18, hence the game is call Par 18. Work on that game and it will really help to sharpen your short game up. But also go out and actually play. Put this game into practise at a Par 3 course and it will really help shorten your chipping and putting shots, that you will need to improve, if you want to achieve a lower golf score.

Links courses tend to have large, flattish greens which may not give you optimum conditions in which to test your pitching and chipping.

Playing a hilly course can often give you poor feedback on your technique as the effect of the slope will override the result of the shot.

Championship golf courses tend to be very long. They prove a tremendous test of all of your game and you need to be playing well off the tee and into the green. These courses will really test your long game, so if you are wanting to sharpen up your short game, avoid this type of course.