Playing with your long and medium irons, as a right-handed golfer, you are focusing on achieving a type of crisp, solid contact with the ball to generate tremendous speed in the pull down of the left arm, the driving action of the legs onto the left heel right through impact, a really firm grip throughout and lastly the concentration and determination that you really are going to stay down and see that divot taken.

When playing an iron from the tee-box, usually for a par three, you want to use the same type of swing as you do for your fairway shots, so don’t tee the ball too high.

The Long Irons (3 and 4) are used when the lie is quite good and you can sweep the ball away from the natural bottom of the swing by clipping the grass on which it sits. The more advanced golfer can squeeze the ball slightly on the downswing, followed by a small divot.

The Medium Irons (5 and 6) are used the closer you get to the green and need a higher lofted ball to drop onto the green. They can also be used successfully when playing from fairway bunkers – as long as the ball is not too close to the lip.

The Short Irons (7, 8, 9 and pitching or sand wedge) are used very close to and around the green. The 7 iron is probably the most used iron – besides playing on the fairway and getting you out of the rough, it usually starts your warm-up on the driving range and does most of the chipping off the green. These short irons help you get the back-spin you need when landing your ball on the green. The sand wedge, of course, is your bunker iron – preferably from bunkers around the green but also for tough or ‘impossible’ lies in fairway bunkers.