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Finesse Wedge - Chipping and Pitching
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I think an important zone in wedge play is "the corner". Training backswing length helps with distance control and training the awkward transition zone when the swing starts working more vertically is a great place to focus.
Tags: Poor Contact, Practice Strategies, Drill, Intermediate, Beginner
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This wedge drill is practice turning the corner. So this is more of a concept of how to practice.
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So if you're making relatively solid contact, your next goal is to work on distance control
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and controlling your landing spot and turning that basic technique into a really good skill.
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So with a lot of my golfers, I have a phrase of practice turning the corner.
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There's what I mean about that. With your standard finesse wedge shot,
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if you're hitting really close, kind of bump and run style, then you're going to take
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practice wings where the club is going to stop before the wrist do a whole lot of hinging.
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There might be just a slight amount in that takeaway, but it's going to stop basically before you get
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to about hip height. So it ends up looking something like that. Well, what ends up happening is
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golfers get really good at controlling their landing spot on these shorter shots.
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But then when you have to go a little bit further, instead of making a bigger swing,
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what they do is they try and speed it up. And yes, I mean, it's all in contact there, but
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overly accelerating is going to tend to lead towards distance control problems, especially under pressure.
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So what I prefer is you keep the same tempo and you work on lengthening the swing.
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What that means is you're going to work on what I call turning the corner or starting to get some
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hinge. Because most golfers are comfortable hitting these little pit shots where you're down here.
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And then they're comfortable hitting, say, 50, 60 yards shots where you're up here.
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But in between is that corner. So you want to get comfortable making back swings where you're
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somewhere in that corner and still being able to hit the ball solidly so you can control your
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distance control. So when practice, that would look, we'll go one,
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before and then we'll do one in the corner. So that went, good five yards further.
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And then we'll do one where we go past the corner. And by working on that range of short of the
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corner in the corner, pass the corner. That'll make you more comfortable changing direction
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with the cast pattern from different length backswings. And that's really going to give you a leg
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up when it comes to dialing in your distance control around the greens. So you've got short of the corner
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and then you've got in the corner.
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You can see that goes just a touch higher and a little further and then you've got past the corner.
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Again, going a little bit higher and a little bit further. So that'll help you with your
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distance control with your finesse wedges.
