This week on the Fully Equipped podcast, GOLF’s managing editor for equipment Jonathan Wall spoke with PGA Tour player and short-game coach Parker McLachlin, aka the Short Game Chef, to discuss everything from the best ways to optimize your wedges to how to handle expectations on the course. McLachlin
With McLachlinn’s coaching duties becoming more in demand, one of the first topics they dug into was how to stay sharp.
“What is more difficult to maintain for a Tour pro,” Wall asked. “Is it harder to maintain the short game and keep that in a good spot, or keep the putting in a good spot?”
“I would say the putting because you have such high expectations and you think you’re going to make everything inside 10 feet, and that’s what PGA Tour players think, (even though) obviously the stats don’t show that,” McLachlin said. “But, if you’re chipping and ‘bunkering,’ you understand that the lie might not be that good and the goal might be to get it inside a 4-5 foot circle. If I’m in the rough and it has an unpredictable lie, your expectations go down. It’s the same for the bunker in that when you get it inside a 6- to 8-foot circle, you’re fine with that.”
McLachlin added: “When you’re on the green, and the greens are perfect and they’re rolled and they’re all uniform, you’re expecting to make a lot more putts. So, when you start missing putts… you start to question whether it’s your will power, your stroke, your read — and when you begin to question all those things, putting can kind of go away because you think you should make every putt.”
It just goes to show that even for some of the best players in the world, managing expectations on and around the greens can help have a downstream effect on your overall game and performance.
You can find the entire interview with McLachlin below, or anywhere you listen to your podcasts.
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