CharlieKing

Shindig, I'm glad you are this motivated to work on your short game. It looks to me like you are going to have to do a mix between one that is a longer drive for the quality practice and pick the less desirable closer one so it's more convenient. The other question is what and how are you going to practice. I wrote a book that is a system for how to improve at your short game called Golf's Red Zone Challenge . Part of my philosophy is explained by clicking on the following link, Red Zone Short Game Instruction . It has a link to the right if you want to buy the book through amazon.com and it has a pretty extensive set of video lessons. Good luck with your golf game this year.

You've gotten plenty of advice so far. A quick note, Check out my video golf lesson I call it Golf's Most Important Lesson and pay particular attention to the Line Drill. It is a simple drill, but has been one of my most effective over the years. The Line Drill is a task oriented drill that can help you teach yourself between lessons.

Those are good questions. I deal with them every day as I teach. My perspective comes back to teaching golf as a series of skills. Swinging the club is at times difficult because our instnct is telling us to muscle the ball. To learn the skill of swinging the club take a look at my video golf lesson "Is Your Golf Swing a 'Swing'?". When you talk about hinging happening on its own on the backswing and the unhinging happening naturally on the downswing, we get a little confused in golf because good players do articles and tell you what they "feel". Hinging and unhinging is certainly second nature to them, but it got that way through practice. For well timed unhinging on the downswing, there are very things better than hitting delofted low punch shots. To have the club delofted and hit it low the wrists remain hinged longer into the downswing. This is the skill of striking the ball solid which I talk about the video golf lesson I call Golf's Most Important Lesson. I hope this helps. I wish there was a way to completely avoid thinking while you swing, but it is a necessary evil as you are building your skills. Good luck.

Jambalaya, Good question and some good advice from other forum members. My 20 years of teaching experience tell me that trying to lift or "scoop" the ball is the biggest fault in golf. I've written more on this subject and taught more on this subject than any other. Go to my video golf lesson I call Golf's Most Important Lesson. It will explain my thoughts and drills that help this issue. I also wrote a book called You're NOT Lifting Your Head to talk about this and what I considered poor instruction. It's now available as a free download on my website www.reynoldsgolfacademy.com .