Back in 2005, my coach, David Whelan, gave me a challenge that seemed simple enough: to chip six balls from just off the green and get each up and down. It was the morning after my first missed cut on the LPGA Tour, and David was insistent that I spend my practice session on chipping and pitching. I told him I’d get all six balls up and down in three attempts or less; instead, I needed 57 attempts, and it took almost three hours.
This article was written by Paula Creamer with David Whelan for Golf Digest, September 2008.
From that day forward, we put a much greater emphasis on short-game practice. Today I start each session with the Six-Ball Drill. It might take me 10 minutes – or all morning – to complete, but I don’t stop until I convert six up-and-downs in a row. To lower your scores right away, spend most of your practice time on pitching, chipping and putting. Need proof? The week after I failed that chipping test, I won my first LPGA Tournament, the Sybase Classic. Here are some of my favorite short game tips and drills to improve my play inside 60 yards.
Paula’s Tips On Pitching
Open your stance
Because you need more body rotation in a pitch shot, you need to adjust your stance to allow your chest to turn through the swing. Place your feet closer together, and turn your feet, hips and shoulders so that they point left of the target. Both feet should aim toward a point in front of the ball. If your shoulders are square to the target and your stance is too wide, you will have a hard time rotating your torso and your hands will take over, leading to a thin or fat shot.
Rotate your chest
I don’t use a different club for each yardage; I can produce a variety of distances (30, 40, 50 yards) with the same club and same-length swing (e.g., 9 to 3 o’clock) simply by increasing or decreasing the speed with which I rotate my chest through the shot. The farther I want to pitch it, the faster I accelerate my upper body through the ball. 
Try it – you’ll see you can control distance and also change the trajectory of the ball flight (high and soft or low and running) to fit the shot.
Drill: Swing the Grip
Grip down on the shaft of a mid-iron, your hands about a foot away from the clubhead. Make half swings, working the club’s grip end around your left hip in the follow-through. If the handle hits your ribs, you’ve stopped rotating your upper body and your hands are doing the work, a major cause of scooping. Always feel as if your chest is turning around the left side of your body in the follow-through.
Paula’s Tips On Chipping
Create a solid left side
When I chip, I place my left hand on my left thigh before taking my grip. 
This tells me that my weight is on my left side and that my center of gravity is slightly in front of the ball, two keys to making crisp contact. You can’t hit the ball solidly if your weight is behind it at impact; the club will swing up into the ball instead of descending into it on the downswing. If I set up with a strong left side, my contact is much better.
Low or high?
To alter the trajectory of a shot, I change the position of the ball in my stance. When I want to hit a low, running shot, I move the ball back in my stance – in line with my right instep – so my hands are in front of it. When I need to get the ball up in the air, I move it forward so my hands are directly in line with or slightly behind it. If the ball is in thick rough, I’ll open the face more, move my hands back, and release my right hand under the ball to pop it out softly.
Six-Ball Drill
Drop six balls on the fringe or in the rough; your goal is to get each ball up and down, holing out with your putter. If you convert five in a row but miss the sixth, you much repeat the whole drill. Keep going until you get all size balls in the hold in two shots. You can do this from a bunker or on short pitches, too, to bring tournament-like intensity to your practice.
Paula’s Tips On Putting
Perfect Your Posture
I used to be a streaky putter, but with several adjustments to my grip and posture, I’ve become much more consistent. I grip the putter with my palms facing each other (left). This draws my elbows in and encourages my arms and shoulders to operate as one triangular unit during the stroke.
At address, I bend farther forward from the waist so my eyes are directly over or just inside the ball, which helps square the face through impact. The farther inside the ball your eyes are – often caused by your weight being back on your heels – the more face rotation you will have in your stroke and the harder it will be to hit your putts on line.
My Pre-Round Putting Practice
After putting along the chalk line, I’ll hit left-to-right and right-to-left breaking putts from four to five feet, making my way around the whole in a star-shaped pattern. Sometimes I’ll drop a coin a foot from the hold and another coin three feet past it, and hit putts from 30 feet, with the goal of stopping three consecutive balls inside the coins. I always finish by holing three consecutive putts from three feet. After running through these drills, not only do I have a good feel for the speed of the greens, I also have confidence in my stroke and my ability to sink any putt.
