SHORT GAME PROBLEM SOLVING

Top 50 Coach Alex Buckner on how to tackle those awkward lies around the greens 

- Alex Buckner

Reading a problem is the most undervalued skill around the green. No matter the level of player or your technical skill, if you’re not reading the situation you have to tackle properly, you’re reducing your chances of being able to put it close to the hole. Being consistent in a variable environment doesn’t equal a consistent outcome – we need to be adaptable. Reading and then adapting appropriately allows problem solving to happen. This is the big separation I see between amateurs and professionals.

Ball sitting up

Often we treat rough lies all the same, but in reality how the ball sits and the grass around it can really vary, especially when playing abroad (due to different grass types). In this case, the ball is sitting up, which most people read as a perfect lie and hit as if they were on the fairway. We then all of a sudden hit it high on the face and get the club caught in the rough, which leads to the club slowing down through impact and the ball falling short.

Sitting up in the rough is not the same as the fairway, due to how high the ball is sitting versus where the ground is. We need to match the level of the ball by standing taller and gripping down the club, so we can clip it off the top without the fear of going underneath it.

The nestled bunker lie