How To Knife Pitches & Influence Scorecards

Welcome to this week’s tutorial, How To Knife Pitches & Influence Scorecards, in which I present a masterclass in short game ineptitude. By the end of this session you too can have playing partners laughing up their sleeves at your greenside shenanigans.

Preparation is key. Any duffer worth his salt must at least pretend to be half decent even if they wouldn’t recognise one end of the club from another. So 1) tuck your golf glove into your back pocket with the fingers dangling out like the pro’s do, 2) hitch your jersey’s sleeves halfway up your forearms and 3) get down on your haunches to study the contours between your ball and the pin (even though you’ll be taking the undulations out of play with a jet speed thinner).

Now to the shot itself.  Remember three key words; stance, tempo and contact.

Starting with stance. For maximum effect you must ensure the ball is played off your front foot. Any temptation to play it from the middle of your stance, or worse, from the back foot, brings into play the possibility of a conventional, lofted pitch resulting in an arced trajectory enabling the ball to drop like a stone near the flag. We can’t have that. Instead, play off the front foot ensuring the clubface is so far advanced in your swing’s follow through that you virtually miss the ball altogether.

Next we’ll look at tempo. It is absolutely imperative that your swing has all the composure of a cat on a hot tin roof being pursued by a bull mastiff. You must exhibit frayed nerves and a very obvious lack of confidence, as if this were the first golf shot of your entire life. Draw the club back in a deliberate fashion but begin a jerky downswing  before the backswing has had time to be completed. And here, critically, is the key. You must now accelerate the pace to turbo charge, frantically lurching at the ball as if it had just insulted your granny. As you approach the ball at breakneck speed, dip both knees nervously, wear an anguished facial expression and say your prayers.

Now we’ve reached the moment of truth, the connection, the final act in this helpless exercise in short game buffoonery. By now your hands, arms, torso and legs should be utterly out of synch with one another and past the point of no return, . Your hands will be behind the ball as you present the clubface at entirely the wrong angle, halfway up the spherical object before you. Your shoulders should be rising prematurely causing the club to rise six inches higher than it should and your sphincter  ought now to be twitching furiously. Lean all of your weight onto your right foot and instead of allowing the loft of the clubface to do the work, attempt a wristy flick, as if you’re going to slam dunk the ball parachute style from the heavens.

Your clubface should now be in perfect position not to meet the back of the golf ball where it junctions with the turf, but instead halfway or three quarters of the way up. This way you can be assured  of the classic knee height knifing , travelling like an exocet  across the green, sending your playing partners scurrying for cover. As you follow through, maintain the look of terror and prepare for a sharp pain in your right hand as you thin the ball to within an inch of it’s life. Look up following impact, forcing yourself to watch the full horror of your handiwork as the ball careers through the dance floor and skips into the scruff at the back of the green. Look to the skies, close your eyes and wish you were somewhere else in the world before trudging to the rear of the green to continue the torture. Standard practice is to now, somehow, nurdle the ball onto the putting surface, race your bogey putt past and end up with a triple.

Congratulations! You have perfected the kneecap knifer, the hand wringing thinner that means despite being greenside after two shots, you’ve walked off with a seven. Repeat this farrago several times in the round, march directly from the 18^th green to the changing room toilets, slam the trap door, sit on the throne and weep gently into the crook of your arm.

Next week – How To Shank Your Putts.