My main goal with this weekly blog is to give you at least one little tidbit of advice or insight that will help you play better golfer. And there’s no better place to do that than to sharpen your skills inside wedge range.

In my 25+ years of specializing in the short game and its tools, I’ve had the opportunity to witness thousands of golfers struggle with their wedge performance.  Those years of observation lead me to outline what I call the “(not-so-magnificent) seven most common short game mistakes made by recreational golfers. 

Some golfers suffer from several of these, others just one.  So here goes, not in any particular order:

1. Tempo.  Maybe the most common error I see – especially around the greens -- is a tempo that is too quick and “jabby”.  Very simply, a slower stroke allows you to deliver more precision to the shot at hand.  Try hitting some short wedge shots in what feels like slow-motion – I think you’ll be amazed.

2.  Set Up & Posture.  To hit good chips and pitches, you need to flex your knees a bit more than with full shots, so you can get closer to your work for better precision.  Too many golfers I see stand tall and grip the club to the end, even on the shortest chips and pitches. 

3.  Grip Pressure.  A very light grip on the club is essential to good touch and a proper release through the impact zone.  It is very difficult to hold a golf club too lightly – your body won’t let you.  Concentrate on your forearms; if you can feel any tenseness in the muscles in your forearms, you are holding on too tightly.

4.  Hand position.  This is one of what I believe to be the keys to solid wedge play.  Watch the tour players hit short shots on TV, and you’ll see that their arms are hanging naturally so that their hands are very close to their upper thighs at address, and they “cover” that position through impact.  Copy that and your short game will improve dramatically.

5.  Lack of Body Core Rotation.  When you are hitting short shots, the hands and arms have to stay in front of the torso throughout the swing.  If you don’t rotate your chest and shoulders back and through, you won’t develop good consistency in distance or contact. 

6.  Club selection.  Every pitch or chip is different, so why try to hit them all with the same club?  Unless you are a very advanced player, it is much easier to get different results by using different clubs with the same technique than it is to manipulate that technique to get various results from the same wedges.  It is time well spent to go to your practice green and see what happens with different clubs, then take that knowledge to the course.

7.  Clubhead/grip relationship.  This error seems to fall into two categories.  The first is those golfers who forward press so much that they dramatically change the loft of the club . . . the second being that of allowing the clubhead to pass the hands through impact.  At address and impact the grip should be slightly ahead of the clubhead.  I like to focus on the hands, rather than the clubhead, and just think of my upper hand leading the lower through impact.  If you do that, good shots will begin to happen much more reliably. 

So, there are my Top 7.  Obviously, there are others, but if you figure out these your short game will get better in a hurry.