5-Minute Clinic

Add some confidence to your game.

- Dave Stockton

You aren’t always going to have your best game off the tee or into the green. Even tour players struggle sometimes. But short-game skill can turn bogeys (or worse) into pars. Feeling good about your play around the greens spreads confidence throughout your bag. Targets get a little bigger; hazards look less menacing.

What’s better than halving a hole against your buddy after he hits the green in regulation, and then you knock it stiff from a green side bunker?

Nothing. Trust me. Learn the art of saving par.

– WITH MATTHEW RUDY

1 SAND PLAY

Make a big enough swing in the bunker

- Green side bunkers present a problem for players who feel they need to make a fast, short swing to get the ball out, but not hit it too far. What you should do is set up with the club face open and make a big enough back swing so that it doesn’t feel like you have to swing super fast through the sand. Make a swing as if it were a normal pitch shot outside the bunker. The goal is to hit behind the ball in the sand and keep swinging to a full, high finish.

2 BREAKING PUTTS

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