hi guys alex forte here the art simple golf so i'm answering a question that i get a lot but very recently from uh one of our members which was about how to flight the wedges now the thing is the wedge game is too often overlooked but it's also i think too over complicated too frequently so what i'm going to do today is i'm going to give you some pointers some simple tips to gain a bit of control whether you know whatever clubs you have let's really simplify this to give you the right flight and control that might not make you into mickelson overnight but is going to give you the consistency that you want all right so we're going to go through point by point but let's get into it okay so let's kind of focus on the mate the first sort of point which is the length of swing right let's just say you've got three wedges i've got 58 54 and a mid wedge here right if i give myself three swings and what i mean by that is three links of swing here here and here whether you want to use a clock face or whatever but give yourself three lengths of swing with every wedge shot you hit it really simplifies it it simplifies the technique it does everything that is just your first swing here to here that's going to give you a certain distance the second length to swing is here to here that's what feels good to me my third length of swing is with the the right shoulder sort of the club at least getting to shoulder height that's my third swing that's going to give me a distance with my 58 the same swings are going to give me different distances with each wedge now you might not know those to precision you might not get it right every single time but it's going to give you a good sort of baseline and consistent foundation to lead from all right that's as far as sort of distance control okay and we will go into that more in another lesson but the we've got two more sort of elements to think about here one if we want it to fly a bit higher and we want one to cover it a bit lower either can work but more often than not people kind of take the highest wedge that they've got and almost kind of do like a full length swing and swing up and try and sort of flight it all the way to the top try almost treating it like a a full golf swing that is kind of hard to do so really more often than not the general rule of thumb is let's make the swing shorter more controlled easier so even for this same length of shot i could quite easily take my mid wedge and just do my first level of golf swing now the first level of golf swing just to make sure that we're not just using hands okay we're not just flipping the hands through we are certainly making sure that everything is working in unison that we're using the hips thoroughly through the ball kind of sticking that finish that's what's going to give us that control so the second kind of point is just club up make this a lot easier for yourself and if it's going a bit shorter okay and that was almost like an extended pitch shot but the result was considerably better and i didn't even practice it like it was just a first instinct while i'm waffling on here talking to you and it kind of worked out because there wasn't much that could go wrong see what i mean so we don't always have to fly it high we can control the flight now so just to recap choose your length to swing or like just practice them a little bit practice them a little bit the three lengths of swing that you're comfortable with try them out with different clubs now when you're out on the course refer to one of those that you think is the nearest match that you're most comfortable with it might be the most lofted one with the fullest swing i doubt it but it might be so the next element is what do we do to alter the flow i'm going to choose the 54.
Too many people would put the ball way way too far back kind of stab into the ground if we're trying to hit it a little bit lower it doesn't really have to work like that because we still just want the club to be bouncing off the turf we don't want to be taking big pelts a divot digging all the way down so as the general rule i want you to have the ball over the sternum no matter where what kind of shot you're gonna do we want a consistent foundation you don't want to be remembering all these tweaks and adjustments that's fine for the people you know scratch golfers people on tour who are practicing all the time we want a solid consistent foundation and that's when golf gets really fun okay because then you can start tweaking and manipulating a little bit all right so as you set up to the ball try and get your feet about width you know slightly narrower than shoulder width i would say definitely more weight over on the lead side as with most iron shots then we want the sternum just over the ball all right now let's say we want to hit a low one what we're going to do and it might take a bit of practice for you to get this nothing changes on the backswing nothing changes on the the setup nothing like that i'm actually going to give you a little bonus tip at the end that is going to work for probably about 60 i would say 70 percent of you and transform by which game but we'll get to that in a second so let's say i want to hit this little bit lower all i'm going to think about is this club head at the end where is that going to be pointing so i'm going to try and feel like i'm allowing the hands just to turn over a little bit more so this the club face is almost pointing down a little bit okay that's going to give me a slightly lower ball flight and just almost give it a slight little hook spin it won't really but that's the kind of feel and idea so i'm going to go for the second level second sort of range back swing second range through swing but i'm just going to try and allow the hands to roll through just a little bit more and that might give me if i do it correctly a lower ball flight which will have spin but you know this is actually something like woods does he actually tries to kind of hit a lot of his pitch shots with a little bit of spin whether it's chip shots or anything because too many times people kind of cut across it and get that glancing blow that's out the toe and kind of spins off and balloons up into the sky so we're going to try and add that little bit of wrist roll here but we do not want to be flipping okay that's what we don't want the feel that we're going to have is that the butt of the club is still ahead of the clubhead i wish i had two cameras but i'm lazy so but we're going to try and have this feel here okay but we're going to allow the wrist to roll so it's there the hands are ahead of the shaft but the wrist is rolling to give it a slightly close face so let's try and execute this into action always choose my intermediate point okay i'm gonna make a little backswing now i'm just going to allow those hands to roll and that got a nice flow and that's gone to about maybe four feet but hopefully you can see my club head i sort of finished around there and for a you know high lofty club that flew low with spin okay so i'm going to show you what it's like to do the second one which is flighting it a bit higher now there's a couple of elements to this because i want us to really feel like we're holding on to it i don't want you to be freaking up trying to get that height that's very important so we make sure that we've got the sternum over the ball okay we make sure that we have um the precision and consistency of that just to make sure it's here then we know before we try to execute the shot what length of swing whether it's one whether it's two whether it's three whatever it is for you okay that's what we're dialing it remember the one carries on to there the two goes on to there and the three carries on to the it's the same sort of sensation but we're just increasing the distance in the range so to get that little bit of extra height all we want to try and do is enable the club head to stay a little bit more open that's what we're trying to accomplish here everything else is the same but like we're trying to turn it over where the club face is a little bit more shut as we come through we're not flipping it and we're not flipping it up this way okay we are just allowing the club face to not pass the hands which is meaning that and we're keeping it pointing to the sky that is essentially all we are trying to do from here to here pointing up to the sky the same strike the same sensation the same distance control we're just altering the height that literally is it so i'm going to show us here where we're keeping it up to the sky all right everything's the same see that it's going to give you that extra little bit of flight now there i did come across it a little bit full disclosure so i'm actually just gonna try and wait a little bit more but keep everything working together all right and i'm actually going to apply the secret tip that i'm going to explain in a second i'm actually going to apply that myself before i tell you exactly what it is see if you can notice it right that worked just fine so the secret tip is not actually that secret but um old sort of european tour player gave me this a challenge to a player gave me this tip many moons ago and i was just trying to become a good golfer and it was about the wedges and the grip with the wedges all you need to do to kind of enhance a bit of bryson de chambeau not the distance wise but a bit more control is grip the club more in the palm of the hands all right so basically we're just trying to shift it more in the palm of the hat what's that going to do what that is going to do is enable you to have a little less wrist action and enable you to hold it off just a little bit more so we are now going to be swinging more with our bodies rather than anything else so it's not so much wrist we're not trying to flip it's a bit harder to create wrist hinge it's just encouraging more passiveness so grip more in the palm of the hands and you'll notice it might be a bit easier to keep the face open and it does actually work with the lower flight as well but what it will encourage you to use your body a little bit more a bit more that way okay a little bit less risky a little bit more larger muscle dominant so try that and see if it gives you the extra control that you're looking for all right so there you have it the kind of tweaks and tips to flight the ball and a bit of distance control as well and that grip adjustment that really might help you know 60 70 percent of you so if you liked it um please put it into action and let me know below like subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and there's a really cool link below as well for a fantastic series to help you with every facet of your game anyway thanks for watching and i will see you next time my friends you