Pitch Shot from Greenside Rough

25 11 2011

What if I told you that you did not have to be perfect to hit a shot out of greenside rough?  You would then approach the shot with confidence.  Remember Tom Watson’s famous shot on the 71st hole of the 1982 U.S. Open?  Bruce Edwards, his caddie, said “Get it close” to which Watson responded “I’m going to hole it!”  And so he did.  Obviously Watson did it under the utmost pressure as he was battling Nicklaus for the victory and he was tied with Jack at the time.

The truth is that although these shots appear challenging, they are not that difficult.  I teach a forgiving short game technique on these shots where you slide the bounce of the club under the ball.  If you maintain constant loft on the club, the bounce will slide along the grass fro 10-12 inches providing a huge margin of error.  Take a practice swing and you will see the length of the brush mark.

Next time you get this shot, follow these steps:

1)    Take a lofted club like a lob wedge or sand wedge

2)    Play the ball forward in your stance

3)    Weaken your grip which will help keep the clubface open

4)    Firm up your wrists to keep the club from twisting in the grass

5)    Hit behind the ball

6)    Make a big swing

Distance control will come through practice.  Your confidence will grow as you increase your repetitions. Give yourself different lies and targets to simulate real golf conditions.  You have the forgiveness built in to the club and technique.  Go do it!

Josh Zander


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Trap your Wedges

3 05 2011

Trap it! No, that doesn’t mean put it in the trap. It means that great wedge players trap the ball between the clubface and the ground. The compression they create leads to wonderful distance control.

The biggest mistake I see amateurs make is to make full swings with their wedges and hit sky balls. Their distance control is too variable. The same swing with a 56 degree wedge  might produce anywhere from a 60 to 100 yard shot. This is not acceptable. After all, you are relying on your wedge to put you in range to make a putt and make a birdie or save par.

The reason for this inconsistent distance is because of the loft on the wedge. The increased loft leads to the ball rolling up the clubface at impact. This is much like what Phil Mickelson wants when he takes a full swing with a lob wedge and hits the ball 10 feet. Well, we don’t want this when we are trying to hit an 75 yard wedge shot. Tour players de-loft the clubface 20 degrees when they hit their wedges into greens from 75 to 125 yards. That means that they are turning their 56 degree club into a 36 degree club which makes the loft more like a 7 iron. The ball comes off with a penetrating flight and stops quickly due to backspin.

Make sure your technique is fundamentally sound with your wedges. First, make sure you keep your weight more on your front foot when you hit. As a right-handed golfer, I think about turning around my left leg. This guarantees that I will hit the golf ball before I hit the ground. This compression leads to very solid contact. Secondly, make a shallow 3/4 type swing into the ball. This shallower angle helps the ball rebound off the face as opposed to crawling up the face. Lastly, come into impact with a forward leaning shaft which de-lofts the clubface. This results in fantastic distance control. Never make full, all out, swings with your wedges. There is no need to. After all, if you need more distance, there is always a longer club you can use.


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Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction

Your Wedge Game

3 07 2009

How important is your wedge game? Just ask Masters Champion Angel Cabrera. After hitting a tree on his second shot of the first extra playoff hole, he hit a wedge shot to about 6 feet and holed the putt to stay alive in the playoff. The rest as they say is history. The bottom line is that your wedges are important scoring clubs. They can help you birdie par 5’s and save pars on par 4’s when you cannot reach the green in two. Tom Kite made a great living on tour being a master with the wedge. In fact, he pioneered the three wedge system as he knew that wedging it the proper distance was the key to scoring.

Notice that barring a miss-hit or miss-alignment, you don’t hit your wedges off line. The misses tend to be short and long. Do you know how far you hit your wedges? Can you hit a 55 yard shot, a 68 yard shot, or a 91 yard shot? The tour players can. It’s not because they have super-human talent, it’s because they practice wedging the ball different distances. I want my students to be able to land their ball within 2 yards of their target so they have no more than a 6 foot putt left. This gives them a reasonable chance at getting it up and down. When I was a touring professional, I had 36 distances that I knew I could hit right on the number. I was excited when I had a wedge in to the hole as I knew exactly the swing that would get me near the hole. At that point, it was all about execution.

There are a couple of very good methods to hitting wedges precise distances. One is to vary the length of your backswing. You can do this with several wedges to give you even more distances. This system made famous by Dave Pelz requires the player to maintain a consistent tempo.  Another system is to find a comfortable backswing position and accelerate through at different speeds to adjust your distance. Both are effective but require practice in order to achieve precise distance control. When you hear about a player having great touch with his wedge game, it means that he has great distance control. Cabrera had great touch on that wedge shot at Augusta National.

I have found that the best wedge players are the ones who trap the ball and bring the shot in on a lower trajectory with more spin. They de-loft their wedge which allows the ball to rebound off the face and produce more consistent distances. For those of you who may scoop the ball or add loft at impact, the ball tends to run up the face and lose it’s distance. Paul Azinger is a great example of a player who traps his wedges and has great distance control. Find your best way to control your wedge distances and lower scores will be right around the corner. -jz


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Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, pitch shot, short game


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