Your long game (tee shots, approach shots) give you the opportunity to shoot a good score. Your short game is how you make that score. The more kinds of short shots you can hit, the more pars you are going to make.
This is true: you will only be able to hit short shots that you have hit in practice. When you look at the situation you are facing, you can only pull solutions out of your mind that are already in there.
You know this is true by remembering the times you had no idea what to do from where you were.
Let’s say you were chipping out of greenside rough, and you know how to do that. But instead of being level, the green was sloping away from you. You know that if you play the shot you know, the ball will run way past the hole.
And believe me, this is an entirely different shot, and you won’t discover the solution in the thirty seconds you have to make your stroke.
The best thing you can do to shoot lower scores is to give yourself problems around the practice green and learn how to solve them. Get a short game playing lesson if you are really stuck.
Become a GOLFER.