Hey, Performance Golfers, Matt Walter coming at you with a great tip to put that golf ball
on a leash and make it stop like a tour pro.
So, what we're going to do is put this golf ball with a little drop-and-stop action.
We've got an 85-yard flag.
We're going to try and spin this wedge, nice little bit of sauce on it, and make this baby
stop and purr at the hole.
So, what we're going to do is, I'm going to give you some great nuggets about how the
club needs to work, and what we're looking for to make this ball get in the hole, and
do it with a lot more control.
So, one of the main things we look for when we're trying to launch our wedges is, there's
a certain window of launch angle, roughly 30 degrees, that we want to hit our wedge
shot.
Now, you say, "Coach, I'm not a TrackMan.
I can't measure that stuff."
Perfect, that's okay.
You can see how high the ball goes.
If your ball flight, what I tell my players is, "If the ball flight is getting a lot higher
than the tree line, you're in trouble."
So, I try and keep my wedges below twice the height of the trees.
If I can keep my wedge flight under two tree heights, I'm doing pretty good at keeping
the ball flight down with a good bit of spin.
And so, what we're trying to do with that is, it becomes a much more controllable launch
vector when it comes to distance control.
If we launch it too high, we'll lose some spin, but launching it a little bit lower,
we're also going to spin the ball a little bit more.
So, that's kind of a peak idea of when we're looking at this wedge shot.
Now, the variables we have to consider when we're hitting these wedges is, when we're
playing an early-morning day like we have today, the dew on the grass has water, right,
because there's dew.
That acts as a lubricant and actually reduces friction on the face, which is reducing spin.
So, early-morning rounds, you may not spin the ball as much as you would in the late
afternoon where it's nice and dry.
So, what you have to consider here is, what elements are we putting in front of us that's
going to prevent the ball from spinning?
So, the more grass we put on the ball or on the club face, between the club face and the
ball, that reduces spin.
So, shots out of the rough don't spin as much from the fairway.
If we can increase friction on the face, we can increase spin.
So, we want to hit a shot that allows us to reduce the things that are between the club
face and the ball, so we have crisp contact and we can spin this ball greatly.
Now, a big misconception that I hear all the time about trying to hit a spinning wedge
shot is that you have to hit down on the golf ball.
This is accurate when you look at TrackMan numbers.
The club has to be going down as far as the tack angle.
The mistake that is made...
If you learn nothing else from today's video, learn this.
Your hands cannot keep going down at the ball in order to try and hit it low.
I'm going to repeat that again.
Your hands don't keep going down to hit a low wedge shot.
To the opposite, they are rising up.
Hear that again.
Your hands are going up when you hit this golf ball.
So, when you hit this wedge, what I tell my players is, by the time your hands cross your
right thigh, roughly your right thigh, the hands should start traveling up and closer
to your body, so more this way, as you finish the swing.
Where I see a lot of my players fault is, if we had to imagine the golf swing traveling
on a plane, or a circular plane, the best we can - we know it's not really circular,
but going around in a circle for the sake of argument - is that our hands shoot off
the tangent line from here, and they go straight down the target line, the club head keeps
going straight to the right, and the golf ball shoots to the right, or we sometimes
catch that ugly hosel shot.
So, the key to this is, we have to feel the club come around our body and up, and we want
to do that with some shaft lean.
So, we want our hands in front of the ball a little bit.
As we hit this shot, we'll have a little bit of shaft lean, hands coming up and around
as we go to the finish.
Now, a great little piece of information that I've picked up along the way that I like to
think about when I do this is, when I hit this nice little wedge shot, I want to try
and take as little grass as I can.
I want a nice brushing with the surface.
So, I'm not trying to pick it.
I'm trying to get a nice interaction with the turf, but it's not going down into the
ground.
I don't want to take a large pellet when I hit this little wedge shot.
I want to kind of nip it because, again, the more grass I put around the ball, the less
it can spin.
So, if I want to hit this little wedge at our target, let's see if I can get one to
spin real quick for us, about an 85-yard little wedge.
And you can see it has that nice little drop-and-stop action on it, right.
Barely any divot, but now I've got something on my club face, so I need to take that little
extra time, clean the club face off, get the grooves nice and clean, so I can hit this
wedge shot pretty crisp and pure.
Now, one other little nugget.
Hitting a draw-like shot typically produces a better spin on the ball than that little
fade shot from this range.
So, what we're trying to do is maybe think more draw biased, so when we're set up to
hit this shot, we can kind of feel that inside-out motion as we go through delivery.
So, the big thing, again, is we want to get good compression on the face, some friction
on the face, so nothing interfering with the blades of grass, and we want to make sure
we're going to a good finish.
We want to finish with a great turn, hands coming in and up to the finish line, not down
and out, because that's when we start to flip.
Also, if you try and get a forward press, another fault I see is, if we try and get
too much shaft lean forward press, I'll see players lean back.
Well, the problem is, when we start to lean back, put pressure on our back foot, we'll
have a better tendency to flip it than lean it.
So, one last final little nugget.
Get set up and put a little more pressure towards the lead foot, maybe 60%, 65% towards
that front side, just to ensure that you get a little bit more in front of the ball and
get a nice crisp hit on it.
So, again, we get a little pressure forward, we're going to try and finish more up and
into our left hip pocket, and try and hit a nice little draw spinner.
And we do all that, the ball hit, spun nicely, had a little crisp bite on it.
We'll throw some darts at the flag, giving ourselves a couple of nice sweet putts.
If you like the video I just gave you with all the great nuggets, please like and subscribe
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Leave a comment if you have any questions.
I'll answer them to you the best I can in a timely manner.
We'll get some great, also, some great nuggets in there to help you really learn how to do
this.
And I hope you enjoyed it, and I look forward to having some more out there for you in the
near future.