17 for ’17, Cont.

Take it Inside

You can improve your short game indoors. Perhaps the most important factor in helping your touch around the greens is hitting the ball solid. To practice solid contact, hit a table tennis ball off the carpet. Pay attention to what you hear. Listen for the simultaneous thump of the wedge’s sole on the carpet and the click of crisp contact with the ball. Hearing those two sounds simultaneously ensures you have made solid contact—whether indoors or out. If you hit the ground first you will hear the thump and then the click. That’s a “fat” or “chunked” shot. If you don’t hear the thump and all you hear is the click, you’ve bladed the ball. At least with a Ping-Pong ball, you won’t break a window.

—Andy Hilts, GolfTEC, Centennial