Excerpt from Short Game Silver Bullet

If you're reading this book it means you want to improve your short game. Maybe you've already read articles and books about how to chip and pitch, yet you still struggle round the greens. Now that's frustrating! You know what you should be doing; head steady, weight forward, pick a spot and don't flick, but you can't improve. Even with practice, you still hit chip shots 'heavy,' or thin the ball past the flag with a wedge.
There are many people in the same position as you, but golfers in general can't be that inept! Something has to be missing from the catalogue of information on offer and the answer is simple. If a golfer misses out the crucial step of developing basic club head control, no matter how conscientiously they follow the instruction, they will not see much improvement. Given a great lie, with no need to elevate the ball quickly, most golfers can strike a chip shot adequately well, but normally you have to adapt to a tricky lie. In these circumstances club head control is vital, yet hardly any books cover the subject.
To explain further let me give you an analogy. Imagine an airline pilot wanting to land a jumbo jet on a runway in the desert. With nothing to obscure his view, he can see the landing strip from miles away. He can simply let the plane glide down using gravity. When it comes to touching down, he hardly has to use the joystick.
Now imagine the pilot having to land the plane in a city airport. He has skyscrapers in his way and his descent has to be much steeper. As he nears the landing strip, the nose of the plane is pointing down and to avoid crashing, he has to pull back on the joystick to level out the plane. The steeper his angle of descent, the more he has to use the controls.
Exactly the same theory applies to the short game. If a golfer uses a small pendulum swing, where the body and arms create the widest natural arc, all he has to do is let the momentum of the swing sweep the ball away. If the ball is sitting up nicely, this shot is easy. But normally chip shots are not that simple. Very often there's a tuft of grass behind the ball or the ball is sitting down on a tight lie.
On these shots the angle of attack has to be steeper, but to avoid crashing the club into the ground, a golfer has to know how to level out the arc as it comes into impact; the same way the airline pilot has to use the joystick to level out the plane. The steeper the angle of attack, the more a golfer has to manipulate the club through the ball. Whether this is carried out successfully or not comes down to their ability to control the club head through impact with their hands.
A golfer who has a really good short game can manipulate the club at will. Sometimes he might keep the face open through impact. Other times he might roll the club over to impart hook spin, or he might keep 'soft hands' and let the club bounce off the ground. All these techniques require great club head control. Irrespective of the skill involved, whether it's a violinist using his bow, an artist using his brush, or a surgeon in action with the scalpel—the more control you have

with your tools, the more success you will have with complex tasks.