Manage Your Way To Lower Scores

Bring these five attributes into your short game... and start saving shots instantly

- Gary Nicol

The object of golf is to get the ball in the hole in as few shots as possible. How strange it is, then, that achieving this is so rarely thought about by the world’s golfers. With long game power and full-swing technique dominating the hearts and minds of today’s club players, scoring can all too easily be relegated to an afterthought. That is a shame, because it is here – within 100 yards of the green – that we can really start to express ourselves as golfers.

Yes, of course, a base level of technical competence is helpful in scoring; but with elements such as awareness, creativity, course reading and mental state all playing vital roles, scoring is clearly more art than science.

In this article you will learn five key practices that will help you develop your art; and while better scoring is an obvious pay-off, so too is the broader and more fulfilling game you will find yourself able to play.

#1 BE AWARE

LOOK OUTWARDS, STAY AWAKE

Every short game shot you play is affected by a range of external factors. These include wind, ground conditions, gradients and, most importantly, the ball’s lie. Great short-game players stay awake to these factors, looking outwards to form a picture of how they will affect the shot. But if your attention is drawn inwards towards swing and technique, you will remain blind to all these important shot influences, and your results will inevitably suffer.

Learn to tell a lie