Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of Best Young Teachers in
America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America.
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Master Your Distance Wedge
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Nothing strikes more fear in the eyes of my students when I they ask the question, "is that the same for all the clubs?". The simple, honest, answer is no. Since you are trying to do something slightly different with each club, there will be slight variations. But it works on the perspective of a spectrum. At one end is the driver, where you want to hit slightly up on the ball and be as powerful as possible. On the other end is the putter, where you want to start the ball as close to online as you can and only need to hit it a short distance, so you do things to make yourself "weaker". Wedges are closer to the putter. We want to be weak, because if you make a small change to a weak swing, the net effect will be minimal. So you have to make bigger changes, which gives you a comfortable buffer. Simply put, with the wedges, we are giving up power for the sake of control.
Tags: Pitch, Drill, Intermediate
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The drill video is arms going left to shallow your distance wedge swing.
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So I like to think of it as just arms left.
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And just like we did in the finesse wedge swing.
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Anytime that your upper body is going to be closer to vertical and more on top of your lower body and on top of the golf ball,
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you're going to have to create the shallowness from somewhere else.
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So with the full swing, we create a shallowness because of this tilt of the body,
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the delaying the arms and the arms end up working up and left.
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With the wedges, or sorry the arms end up working up and right.
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With the distance wedge is because you're more on top of the golf ball,
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the arms have to work a little bit more in and left.
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So I'll demonstrate in two different directions.
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If I'm facing this way and this stick is roughly on top of the grip,
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what you'll see is because I'm more on top of the golf ball,
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when I'm going through impact instead of letting the grip and my hands kind of extend out like so,
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they will tend to go much more left.
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The movement that I measure is more this angle of the left shoulder,
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dropping down like so.
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So it goes across just like so.
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When I'm on top of it, it ends up looking like that.
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Now just because my hands are going left,
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the club can continue to work slightly more toward the target.
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If I let my hands extend to neutral,
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so if I let my hands just kind of extend out as they're going left,
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it doesn't make the club go quite as left as my hands are doing.
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So from the face on view, it ends up looking pretty normal.
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There's no real appearance that my body is going left or that my arms are working more away from the golf ball.
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But that's what's happening.
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And it has to happen because my upper body is ahead of the golf ball.
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And if I kept my arms moving into out,
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I would tend to expose a lot more bounce and tend to hit a little bit more.
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Too much behind the golf ball with too much shaffling.
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So it could be fine on fairways like this,
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but on wet grass, really tight fairways, it would be no bueno.
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So make sure that through the release,
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the arms are working down and in,
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and that will help you shallow out your swing in a more effective way for the distance wedges
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than if you were to do it from the lower body and from access to it.
