"It wasn't lying badly, but the kikuyu grass made it a tough shot." This was how Sergio Garcia described the 20-foot chip which gave him a play-off win over Ernie Els for a $2 million bonanza at Sun City last Sunday. Effectively, the 21-year-old Spaniard had exploited what has become known as the last frontier of golf instruction.

The modest club golfer finds it extremely difficult to imagine how a tournament professional can expect to hole chip shots or bunker recoveries. The frequency of their success, however, would suggest that the professionals' optimism is extremely well-founded.

An American expert, Ralph Mann, claims the short game has been overlooked by instructors because it was assumed that each player executed wedge shots in a random, individual way. That there was no "model" for anyone to copy.

But in a study by Dr Mann of 30 US Tour professionals, including Jim Furyk and Jesper Parnevik, high-speed cameras and state-of-the-art analysis techniques discovered "great uniformity in how they play shots at all distances from 100 yards and in". Stance, posture and ball positions were all alike, and so were their swings.

As an example, from 15 yards and in, every player chose a spot, 25 per cent of the distance between the front edge of the green and the hole. He then landed the ball on that spot and let it roll the rest of the way. Dr Mann also noted the importance of club selection and club-ball contact, pointing out that tour players attained extra control by choking down on the club.

Finally, Furyk's method from 15 yards in is: Play the ball near the centre of your stance. Length of shot determines length of swing. Lean slightly to your left, open your stance and flare your left foot outward at a 45-degree angle so it will accept the extra wait. And it goes without saying that the other three key ingredients are practice, practice and practice.