By JIM SUTTIE, Scripps Howard News Service

How many times have you hit a perfect drive only to proceed to hit a thin or fat iron shot to the green?

Generally speaking, a thin or fat shot is caused by having your swing center too far behind the ball at impact. This error causes your club to bottom out too far behind the ball and will cause you to hit the ground first (a fat shot) or hit the top of the ball (a thin shot).

Most golfers have gone through a period of bad putting. And some of us have had the putting yips and not been able to make it from two feet.

So what are the putting yips? Well, here goes.

Last week, I was sadly watching Ernie Els play in the PGA Tour event at Firestone Country Club.

I say sadly because he was hitting the ball 8 to 10 feet from the hole every time and then missing the putt. I am sure you have occasionally experienced similar problems and said to yourself: "What in the world do I have to do to get the ball in the hole?"

I just received an e-mail from a student that says he thinks too much while he is trying to swing.

There are probably many of you out there who suffer from this problem. Maybe you read too many golf books or magazine articles.

One commonality in all great golf swings is good balance. You will never see a great ball-striker falling all over himself at the finish of his swing.

Just watch the pros. They will hold their finish for at least two seconds. Great balance starts at the setup. The weight will be distributed between the balls and heels of the feet.

A shot we all face on the golf course periodically is one where your ball is close to the green but you must go over a large bunker right in front of the green and land your ball soft enough so it doesn't roll over the green.

This shot calls for a lob shot. The lob is a very high shot with minimum spin on it. Here's how to hit this very precise and difficult shot:

Look on any professional golf tour. The swings all look different. But any consistent player has one thing in common: They have the ability to get the club in the slot on the downswing.

Recently, I was speaking at the German PGA Annual Conference and was asked, should a woman swing like a man? This question seemed to generate quite a bit of interest. My answer was if your body strengths and weaknesses are the same, then yes.

Good or bad, courses are getting longer and longer and we must hit it further if we are to keep getting better.

On the PGA Tour, if you hit it between 275 yards and 285 yards you are considered a short hitter. It seems that the golf course architects are building the courses for the professionals and not for you, the amateur.

One of the most frustrating shots in golf is the fat shot just off the green. After a great second shot into the green you leave yourself with about 25 yards to the pin. So what do you do? You hit behind the ball and it goes about four yards. The result is the fat shot in pitching. About this time, you are saying to yourself, "Why am I playing this game?