I don’t know why but sometimes I can play a great punch shot and other times my ball is up in the air rattling the lampshade, but I just don’t know why?
A post about the importance of playing a punch shot well and a plea to seriously handy golfers to come and give us all some insight into ways to improve our punch shot abilities.
Like most mid-handicappers I have a reasonably good grasp on how to approach the game, certainly to the point that I know roughly the right shot to play, the problem is executing the shot the way I’m drawing it in my head.
Most times when I use a punch shot I’m either a little too far out for a pitch-and-run so I use the punch shot as a heavy-gauge pitch-and-run shot, with reasonable success mostly.
The problem for me is when I’m say, 100-150 yards out from the green, or I’m in the rough (light rough) playing my second shot, or thirdly facing the green in a brisk wind.
Now I know what I’m supposed to do, I think..
I normally take the club back short, i.e. not a full take back, and I try to stop the club as soon as I can after I’ve hit the ball – you know, like slam the anchors on – emergency stop style.
Now I must be reasonably proficient at making contact with the ball, because it’s not that often that the ball gets a mind of it’s own and absconds into the never never squirts off left or right. The contact for the most part is decent, the problem is that my punch is more akin to a fast chip, it springs up to a height that even the dodgiest salesman would have trouble selling as a punch.
Consequently, the distance control is awful and because of the height I don’t get any real run-on.
There must be a reason for this, because my club action doesn’t seem so bad – possible I’m using the wrong club? But I’ve never really understood the formula that you follow for selecting a club for a punch shot – do you go up a club or two? or down a club or two?
Hopefully, one of you swinging ninja’s will help me out here and anyone else that reads this post
Do you have some advice to contribute? Maybe a comment, if you do then tee it up below, and rip one!
