Golf Compendium

"15 Chips" is the name of a game for the practice green, a game that will help you improve your chipping over time. You can play this game by yourself, or you and a buddy can play it against each other.

Does your short game need a little work? Whose doesn't? Grab nine golf balls and head to your favorite practice green to work on it with the practice game named 22 (or Twenty-Two).

Do you fight a slice in your golf game? Most recreational golfers do. Or, at least, they suffer from a weak fade they'd prefer to turn into a draw. A common cause of both issues is the over-the-top swing that produces an outside-to-inside swing path, leading your club to swipe across the face of the golf ball. The "Up the Hill Drill" can help correct these issues.

What is a "sidehill lie" in golf, and what is the best way of playing a golf shot from such a lie? Let's define the term, and then we'll let Jack Nicklaus explain what adjustments to make in order to pull off a good shot from such a position.

Golfers have lots of different terms to describe lots of different ways the golf ball sits on the ground (the ball's "lie"). One of those terms is "bird's-nest lie." Do you know what it means?

By Karen Palacios-Jansen Here's a simple practice drill that will help you learn to keep the clubhead accelerating through the impact area when chipping — something you must do to avoid mis-hits (such as chunk shots and skulled shots ) on chip shots.

Do you know what hardpan is on a golf course? It's an area of very hard, bare ground, and most golfers will rue their luck if their golf ball comes to rest on it.

Do your putting fundamentals break down under pressure? Do confidence problems on short putts lead to a surplus of three-putts? What if we told you that there are putting drills you can do that will specifically target your under-pressure fundamentals and confidence on short putts? It starts by arranging your golf balls in a circle.

How do you hold the putter? It's not something you think about before you putt: You just grip the putter instinctively. You've placed your hands on the putter handle thousands of times, it's something you just do . A friend of mine has a dirty trick he sometimes plays on me when I'm about to attempt a key putt during one of our friendly-but-intense matches. He asks me, "How do you hold the putter?" And I am momentarily flummoxed because he has made think about my putting grip. Most golfers know that overthinking while playing golf is a bad idea.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of your work on the practice putting green, whether that's a standalone practice session or on the practice green at a golf course before the start of your round.

A "skull shot" or "skulled shot" in golf happens when the golfer lifts the club up off the ground at impact, resulting in the leading edge of the clubface striking the golf ball above its equator. That leading edge is sometimes called the blade of the clubface, which is why skulls are sometimes called "bladed shots."

Many recreational golfers struggle with shots out of the sand, so when you add a sidehill lie on top of the basic bunker shot that just complicates things more. But playing sidehill bunker shots doesn't have to be hard!

When you are trying to get the ball up-and-down from off the green, there are four types of shots you can play: putt, chip, pitch, lob. And that is the order in which they should be favored,

If you want good results on bunker shots around the green, you need a consistent point-of-entry. That means being able to repeat, bunker shot after bunker shot, where your club enters the sand relative to your golf ball — having the club enter the sand at the same point on every shot during the forward swing. That's where the Line Drill comes in.

Having to hit out of a divot is one of the more frustrating things that can happen to a golfer who is in the fairway. After all, you just knocked the ball right where you're supposed to hit it: in the fairway. But thanks to some rotten luck, your golf ball rolled into a divot hole. Now what?

What is a "snap hook" in golf? A snap hook is a hook that goes even worse. It is a really bad hook shot. Even the best golfers in the world sometimes snap hook a shot. Here is Tiger Woods doing it on a drive:

If you want to become a great putter — or even just improve from bad to average — you'll have to spend time on the practice green, bent over your putter, making strokes. Developing feel and touch in putting requires plenty of practice, but the long hours standing in a bent-over position on the practice green can wreak havoc on your back, hips and neck. Most golfers understand the need to stretch and warm-up before hitting full swings on the practice range. But did you know that it is just as important to warm up and stretch before practicing putting?

Many experiments over the years have been done to test the psychology of putting and, specifically, whether confidence in one's putting has a quantifiably positive effect on a golfer's putting success. One of our favorites was done back in 2011 and reported on by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

You know what a hook shot is in golf, right? Well, a duck hook is a really bad hook. But that's glib, so let's go a little deeper.

The chunk shot, in golf, is a type of mishit in which the golfer's club hits the ground behind the ball before hitting the golf ball itself. The result of a chunk is rarely good, and often quite bad. A typical outcome is that the ball travels a considerably shorter distance than the golfer hoped — just how much distance is lost being tied to just how badly the ball was chunked.