Playing Short Golf Iron Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Playing Short Golf Iron Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

One of the nicest feelings in golf is when you are 100 yards away from the green, you had a nice easy wedge shot in your hand and you execute that shot really nicely to set yourself up with a good opportunity of making par or birdie. One of the worst feelings in golf is having that shot and screwing it up, knocking yourself in the palms, shot of green when you have the hole at your beckoning. So it’s important we get this short iron shots correct. So one of the things we want to consider is how the angle of attack changes when we’ve got a shot iron in comparison to a long iron. The angle of attack of the long iron should be a lot steeper, and often the set up position is going to dictate that to us.

So the set up position with a short iron, the ball is going to sit about around about the center of the stance, the body weight is going to sit 50/50, and the hands are going to sit slightly to the left side for the right handed golfer. Then during the swing, nice smooth back swing, we don’t need to a make a long here, if you need to be really long in your swing and trying to head the ball too far, you’ve probably got the wrong club. So you are better off taking a slightly bigger club, maybe a nine iron instead of a pitching wedge, swinging nice and easy, then in the down swing, drive the body weight to the left hand side, get everything turning over that left leg, make sure it’s a nice solid contact of ball, turf, impact position. So ball and then a nice big divot afterward maybe a divot the size of a dollar bill after the golf ball to make sure we are staying down for a good impact position. So ball in the center, hands and body weight slightly ahead, and a good hit down and you can see there is a nice big chunk of turf flies off as the ball flies away, and I don’t know if you can see the divot here, but its about the size of the palm of my hand. But quite importantly the golf ball was positioned at the start of the divot and then the divot came from after it, it wasn’t the ball that was in the middle of divot or at the end of the divot, it was the ball, turf and that is dictated by ball position, body weight position, moving forwards. So be quite confident with your short irons, that you are really trying to hit down on the golf ball. Just one other word of warning when you are hitting these shots, is don’t get too aggressive in terms of where you are playing I often see that because people have got short clubs in their hands, they think they are Tiger Woods all over sudden, and they can go straight at a flag. What they often find is that is they the short shot margin of error wasn’t quite right, they land in the front bunker, they land in the water, and they make double boogie. And often golf is not about how good are your good shots, its how bad are your bad shots. And if you’ve had a relatively simple shot to a green, a nasty top, and mess it up in a server fashion, put yourself in quite a punishing position, you could make double boogie from an easy position. So even though its a relatively confident shot, you should be quite good at it, don’t get too aggressive, and risk making double boogie, sometimes just middle of the green eliminate the disaster middle of the green, taking your putts from there and you'll score better. 2015-11-04

One of the nicest feelings in golf is when you are 100 yards away from the green, you had a nice easy wedge shot in your hand and you execute that shot really nicely to set yourself up with a good opportunity of making par or birdie. One of the worst feelings in golf is having that shot and screwing it up, knocking yourself in the palms, shot of green when you have the hole at your beckoning. So it’s important we get this short iron shots correct. So one of the things we want to consider is how the angle of attack changes when we’ve got a shot iron in comparison to a long iron. The angle of attack of the long iron should be a lot steeper, and often the set up position is going to dictate that to us.

So the set up position with a short iron, the ball is going to sit about around about the center of the stance, the body weight is going to sit 50/50, and the hands are going to sit slightly to the left side for the right handed golfer. Then during the swing, nice smooth back swing, we don’t need to a make a long here, if you need to be really long in your swing and trying to head the ball too far, you’ve probably got the wrong club. So you are better off taking a slightly bigger club, maybe a nine iron instead of a pitching wedge, swinging nice and easy, then in the down swing, drive the body weight to the left hand side, get everything turning over that left leg, make sure it’s a nice solid contact of ball, turf, impact position.

So ball and then a nice big divot afterward maybe a divot the size of a dollar bill after the golf ball to make sure we are staying down for a good impact position. So ball in the center, hands and body weight slightly ahead, and a good hit down and you can see there is a nice big chunk of turf flies off as the ball flies away, and I don’t know if you can see the divot here, but its about the size of the palm of my hand. But quite importantly the golf ball was positioned at the start of the divot and then the divot came from after it, it wasn’t the ball that was in the middle of divot or at the end of the divot, it was the ball, turf and that is dictated by ball position, body weight position, moving forwards.

So be quite confident with your short irons, that you are really trying to hit down on the golf ball. Just one other word of warning when you are hitting these shots, is don’t get too aggressive in terms of where you are playing I often see that because people have got short clubs in their hands, they think they are Tiger Woods all over sudden, and they can go straight at a flag. What they often find is that is they the short shot margin of error wasn’t quite right, they land in the front bunker, they land in the water, and they make double boogie.

And often golf is not about how good are your good shots, its how bad are your bad shots. And if you’ve had a relatively simple shot to a green, a nasty top, and mess it up in a server fashion, put yourself in quite a punishing position, you could make double boogie from an easy position. So even though its a relatively confident shot, you should be quite good at it, don’t get too aggressive, and risk making double boogie, sometimes just middle of the green eliminate the disaster middle of the green, taking your putts from there and you'll score better.