Tip #40: Difficult Lies

Once you develop shotmaking options, it's simply a matter of knowing when and where to apply them. Here are a few common greenside challenges and the best ways of handling them.

From any sort of hardpan or firm lie, your best option is to punch the ball. The idea is to trap or pinch it, by pulling the club into the back of the ball. Any other type of swing might cause you to bounce the club off the hardpan and belly into the back of the ball.

In heavy grass, the ball can either jump fast like a mini-flyer or just float out.

The same punch shot is best from a cuppy lie or a lie in a divot, where you have to go down and scrape the ball out. Play the ball back in your stance and lead with your hands into a low follow-through. These shots will not fly very high, and you can expect them to run a long way.

From the opposite type of lie -- heavy grass -- the ball can react in either of two ways. If you go at it aggressively, it will jump out fast, like a mini-flyer. If you play it with a soft, dead-handed swing, it will sort of float out.

If you want a shot that jumps out quickly, take a pitching wedge or 9-iron and playa punchy sort of chip with the ball well back in your stance and a brisk, stabbing swing. If you want the floater, play it more like a lob. Move the ball forward in your stance, open your clubface a bit, and take a slow, smooth swing.

If it's a short floater you want, here's a trick I like to use that helps me eliminate wrist action: I use my putting grip, a reverse overlap, with my left forefinger covering the first three fingers of my right hand. This, combined with an arm-and-shoulder swing, seems to deaden the impact. It's also a good technique to use from wet fringe grass where you won't get as much backspin as normal. The shot should be played with either a sand wedge or a 60-degree wedge.

When you have a lie in heavy grass and you need to move it more than a few yards, use the lob swing, and play it the same as you would a bunker shot. Take the sand wedge or third wedge, open it up and hit down and through the grass at a point an inch or two behind the ball. This should produce the high, soft shot you want.

Probably the most difficult situations for chipping are imposed by hilly lies, and of these, the toughest is unquestionably the downhill lie. The ball tends to shoot low and fast, so this is where you should soften your impact as much as possible. Use the most lofted wedge you carry, and if you're playing to a downward-sloping green, address the ball with a slightly open face.

At address, try to align your body parallel to the hill, and slant your left toe more toward the hole than usual. That will help prevent you from tilting down the hill during the swing. Play the ball just in back of its normal position in your open stance, and try to keep your wrists out of this stroke. The key here is to stay with the shot and not quit on it. You need to hit down and through this ball, difficult as that is with the downhill lie.

One strategic consideration: always leave the pin in the hole when you're chipping downhill. The far lip will be lower than the near one, so even a slightly firm shot will tend to roll across the top of the hole. With the flagstick in, you'll give yourself a margin for error.

When I'm chipping uphill, on the other hand, I usually take the pin out. In this case, the back lip is higher and acts almost like a backboard, allowing for a more aggressive stroke.

If my lie is uphill, I'll also make a couple of adjustments. First, I'll take a less lofted club than I would for a level-lie chip in the same situation. A 7- or 8-iron, for instance, instead of a 9-iron or wedge. The tendency from this lie is to leave the chip short, so the straighter-faced club will automatically add some distance.

Again, align yourself with the slope and flare that left foot toward the target to brace yourself both at address and during the forward swing. Take the club back down along the slope and bring it up through the same path. And since the common error is to be short, think "sink" and be more aggressive than usual.

The most common error on uphill chips is leaving the ball short, so be aggressive.

When you have a sidehill lie, take a little extra time to plan the shot, because you usually have to allow for the slope. If the ball is above your feet, choke down a bit on the club and aim a bit to the right, to allow for the tendency to pull this shot. From a lie where the ball is below your feet, beware of the dreaded shank. To avoid it, widen your stance a hair, bend from the waist a bit more than normal and keep your weight back on your heels. You'll have a tendency to push a shot from this lie, so aim a bit left of your target.

The trickiest situation is when you have to deal with a hill that intervenes between your ball and the green. In this situation, the best alternative is a bump shot, where you smack the ball into the side of the hill, then let it bounce up and onto the green.

There are a couple of different ways to play it. You can hit a hard shot into the top of the bank and play it to take one high bounce onto the green, or you can go for more of a skittering shot, with two or three bounces along the bank. The best way to make your decision is to take a good look at the grass on the hill. If it's long and thick, go for one bounce at the top. If it's short and firm, you can go for the two-or-more bouncer.

In either case, take a mid-lofted club, such as a 7- or 8-iron. First determine where you want the ball to land on the green, then ask yourself where you'll have to hit the bank in order to make it pop up onto that landing spot on the green. In effect you have two landing spots here, so this shot takes more planning than any other.

The shot called for is a punched chip, so play the ball well back, make a short, stiff-wristed swing and sock into the back of the ball. Then hope that your calculations were accurate.

Finally, here's the shortest of chip shots. In fact, although this shot is played from off the green, it's more like a putt than a chip.

The situation has your ball at the back edge of the fringe, resting against the first cut of rough. You can't get a putter through the grass to putt it, and yet a conventional chip shot would be a risk. The solution is to hit the bellied wedge shot. You actually putt the ball with the leading edge of your sand wedge. The heavy flange of the sand wedge will glide smoothly through the long grass and bump the back of the ball just as nicely as a putter.

This may sound like a tough shot, but you'll find after a couple of practice attempts that it comes off very easily. Just use your usual putting grip, stance, and swing, being sure to grip down on the shaft of the wedge so that it in effect becomes the same length club as your putter. A stiff-wristed motion works best on this, but the main point is to glide the club smoothly back and through the ball. Practice will tell you that because the wedge's clubhead is heavier than that of a putter, you don't have to hit this ball as hard as you would a putt of the same distance.

- Greg Norman