Nothing can boost your confidence like tapping on a 4 or 5 footer. But those shots are not fiction. Here’s how to make more of them.
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Nothing can boost your confidence like knocking on a 4 or 5 footer. But missing too many of those shots can crush your spirits, sending your psyche into a tailspin.
These shots—out of the stride range, but not necessarily easy to make—are essential to your scorecard, and your success from that range can be what separates a great round from an average one (or an average from a bad one).
For example, the best players in the world are approximately 8 out of 10 under 5 feet. of PGA Tour Avg this season it is 82% (with Denny McCarthy leading with 92%). Even the lowest-ranked player who qualifies for this statistical category, Kevin Streelman, made 63% of his shots from 5 feet. And if a two-time tournament winner is 6 out of 10 from that range, can recreational players expect to make more than half that?
Good news – we’re here to help.
Shawn Callahan is a Top 100 GOLF instructor working out of Monroe Golf Club (Pittsford, NY) and Abacoa Golf Club (Jupiter, Fla.). Last year at the Top 100 GOLF Instructors Summit he offered his proper drill to squeeze more short shots. Here’s how it works.
Callahan takes a 4-foot T-Square and lays it on the green with the long end pointed at the cup for what would be a fair and/or slightly uphill putt. He then traces around the visor piece to create an escape to the hole.
It adds four stakes to the outside of the traced line: two to create a gate where you place your ball and two more to form a gate about a foot in front of your line of scrimmage. Then it’s just a no-brainer. (Watch the video below to see one of Callahan’s students practicing the drill.)
“It’s designed to get the face square and get the ball on line, and that’s it,” says Callahan. “Squaring the face, putting the ball on the line, honestly, as long as you’re just working on short shots, you don’t have to work on long shots because your feeling goes away after a few hours or a day anyway. If you nail it well from 20 yards, long shots are a lot easier.”
Callahan says an ideal ball position is different for everyone, but once you find it and feel comfortable, this drill should activate your swing.
“The inserter goes up and down in a pendulum and also comes around your body,” he says. “So you want to find the tip of that arc and the bottom of that pendulum.”
