Those of us who live in the UK, particularly in Southern England, are very aware of how hot the weather has been recently.

Many courses now have sun-baked, rock-hard fairways and, several areas around greens where tight and bare lies are plentiful.

As I have been having trouble hitting delicate shots, to tight pin positions, off these lies, I decided to put some serious practice in, this morning. My aim was to hit a high, soft landing shot from 10 to 20 yds off the green.

I used a 9 iron, PW and LW. I opened the clubface wide open, using an out to in swingpath. However, I started to s***k the ball. In an effort to find a cure, I set up with the ball about an inch or two off the end of the clubhead at address. My logic being that as I was swinging out to in, the clubhead would return to the ball in the correct place at impact.

Much to my surprise, this worked amazingly well. My concern is that, as a novice golfer, this may be a bad technique. Is this method going to lead me to have to make compensating "two wrongs make a right" adjustments as I improve?