Gary Moran looks at a book that will well and truly get you into the swing of things around the greens.

It is the final hole of the Captain's Prize and you need a par four for victory. You push your second shot to the right of the green where it settles on a slight downhill lie and there is a bunker between you and the tight-cut pin. To make matters worse, the grain of your club's new, bent-grass greens is running away from you. It's a dry day and even as play draws to a close, they are running at 10.0 on the stimpmeter.

Some class of a flop shot would be useful and if only you'd put your copy of Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible in your bag you could take a quick look at Chapter Seven to find out exactly how to execute it.

Had you missed the green in some other direction you might equally have ended on a hardpan lie, a nesty lie, in tall grass or short grass, poached in a bunker. You could have been one-third, two-thirds or, God forbid, fully submerged in water. Same solution. The Bible is comprehensive and factoring in the grain and all those other variables, you could choose to "drop", "chop", "rip", "chip" or "blast" the ball towards the pin.

Pelz harboured genuine ambitions of making it on the tour over 40 years ago before using his science degree to get a job at NASA. His sporting interest switched from golf to motor racing but he caught the bug again and qualified for the 1974 US Amateur.

Dabbling in equipment design and teaching, he gave up NASA and his pension, remortgaged his house and lost a lot of investors' money before carving out a niche as a short-game instructor. He has a successful chain of specialist schools and a client list that includes Vijay Singh, Tom Kite and Lee Janzen.

Pelz's "Eureka" moment came when watching the 1967 Masters champion Gay Brewer out-score his more athletic playing partners at the Kemper Open. Brewer's swing was gammy by comparison but he scored better, much better, and Pelz put his scientific mind to work.

He caddied in PGA Tour events and drew up statistics on many thousands of shots to find out what made the difference between success and failure. In a nutshell, he found almost two thirds of shots (including putts) are played from inside 100 yards and the aspect of the game that most closely correlates with low scoring is not driving and not putting but precise wedge play.

In particular, once you are inside the range of a full pitching wedge, distance control is paramount and Pelz goes into great detail on the techniques he has developed to achieve this. He was among the first to advocate the carrying of a third wedge and now favours four. All can be used with the same "finesse swing", which to Pelz is almost as distinct from a regular swing as putting. The "finesse swing" takes up a good third of this book with an equal amount given to troubleshooting. That brings us back to the Captain's Prize. Against all Pelz's advice you try to scoop the ball and end up skulling it. Your stomach heaves as the ball screeches into the face of the bunker in front of you, but joy of joys it pops up and stops eight feet from the hole.

Time to reach for the for the companion volume, Dave Pelz's Putting Bible.