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The drill is the three danger moves of wedge play.

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Now whether we're talking finesse wedges or distance wedges,

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if you struggle with your wedge play,

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I get almost guaranteed that you have one

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or all three of these movements.

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And these three movements tend to work really well for the driver,

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but they tend to cause a lot of contact problems with the wedges.

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And if you have contact problems with the wedges,

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it's next to impossible to build any kind of feel.

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So the three movements that are going to really kill your wedge play,

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are number one, the upper body getting closer to the ball

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during the downswing.

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Number two, the upper body moving away from the target,

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or away from the golf ball during the backswing,

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or during the downswing.

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Sorry.

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And then the third one is dragging the handle forward,

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or creating a lot of leg and shaft length.

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Usually, those three go hand in hand,

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because I would get closer to the golf ball,

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go back to help shallow it out,

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and then drag forward so that I don't hit behind the golf ball.

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In fact, many of us were encouraged by well-meaning instructors

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when we were taught more that block and hold-sile chip shot,

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where you would basically play it kind of like that.

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And you can see that you can hit OK shots that way,

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but you're going to tend to hit them higher up on the face.

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They're going to launch a higher with lower spin.

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That's great for the driver.

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That's great for your three would, not so good for wedges.

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And it takes away all bounce, so you get very little margin of error,

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especially on those thinner grass or tight lies.

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If you find that you're struggling with your wedge play,

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and you look and you see that you have all three of them,

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here's the normal progression that I would use

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with most of my students.

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And I will say it's changed a little bit over the years.

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In fact, early in my career, I was really unaware

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of the up movement during the downswing,

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but after looking at three days of some really good wedge players,

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the Stanutley's Brian Gay, Luke Donald,

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many of the best wedge players that I've seen,

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definitely at about halfway down in their downswing,

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their upper body starts elevating or standing up,

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where what I noticed was a lot of the golfers who kind of had

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the yips, their upper body would continue to go down

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and by continuing to go down, they had no chance

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but to sacrifice their release or drag the handle,

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they had no opportunity to really use bounce

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in an effective way.

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So I now tend to start by teaching the up movement

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in the cast pattern, because the cast pattern with the arm

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of unhinging without letting the face really rotate

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should be triggered a bit by working vertically

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with the upper body.

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So you've got that pattern like this.

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And what you'll see is if you hang back and you do that pattern,

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you'll still use some bounce,

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so your misses won't be terrible,

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but they'll just be high, you may hit them thin,

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you may hit them a little fat, but you will still use some bounce.

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So it'll almost come off more like a flop shot,

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and you'll start to ask, well, how do I flight it down?

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That's where the second piece of adding that third,

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or taking away the third dangerous moves of going backward,

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and adding the third move of going forward

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really helps tie it together.

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So you've got your upper body shifting a little bit forward

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especially during the backswing,

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and then the big two movements that clean up most wedge play

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is working on that cast sequence with the arms,

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and working on the upper body standing up

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during, especially the second half of the downswing,

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but the majority of the downswing to help with that cast pattern.

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If you struggle with wedge play,

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we've got lots of videos to help with,

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specifically the arms,

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especially the body staying forward,

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a little bit with the upper body moving away,

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because that one's relatively simple once you've identified it,

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but if you're struggling, take a look on video

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and see which one of those three, or if all of the three,

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see which ones you're struggling with,

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by working on that, it will hopefully improve

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your turf contact by getting you to use the bounce,

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help you work on solidness of contact,

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and that way you can search and develop feel

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and turn your weakness of wedge play into a strength.