Dial in Your Wedges

Sunday, November 17, 2013

I've found that on chips and pitches, I can increase my feel by progressively gripping down the closer I get to the hole. It's something I picked up watching Seve, who will sometimes go all the way down to the steel.

The principle is simple. The shorter the club, the easier it is to control. But getting the right feel for this system requires some practice, because gripping down makes the club feel that much lighter.

The more I grip down, the closer to the ball I have to stand, which also makes me feel more in control. I even narrow my stance as the shots get shorter. This whole process of closing in on the ball increases my sensitivity for the shot.

Gripping down and adjusting my stance also lets me expand my toolbox of shots.

For example, if the hole is cut close and my mind's eye sees a low-flying shot that checks up quickly, rather than a standard chip, I can choke down on a lob-wedge, play the ball back and pinch it off the turf. The result will be a low shot with extra bite.

Try adjusting your set-up and playing new shots.

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Downhill bunker shots - Chase it on out-2

With the wrists essentially pre-setting the club in that early move (2), the upper body can then take over to complete the backswing. This three-quarter position is as far as you ever need to go. My weight remains supported on that left leg – there is no shifting of weight in this swing – the left thigh braced for balance

Approaching the ball, your focus must be 100%on the point in the sand at which you intend to deliver the club. Clearly, the upper body is rotating to clear the path for the hands and arms to swing the clubhead down the slope – 'chase' the club down into the sand and beneath the ball

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Downhill bunker shots - Chase it on out

Any time you find yourself in this sort of position in a greenside trap, the only way to make a controlled recovery is to settle your weight firmly on your forward leg and then keep it there as you utilise a good wrist and arm action to avoid the back lip and then ‘chase’ the clubhead down the slope through impact

One of the most important aspects of hitting this shot is the proper positioning of the ball. That might seem obvious but almost more than any other shot I see players placing the ball in the wrong position. Far too many players play the ball back in their stance. Keep in mind, also, that this shot will fly on a much lower trajectory than a standard shot from a level lie – factor that in to your visualisation of the shot and where you intend to land the ball on the green for a safe recovery. After that, it’s all about developing the technique that enables you to ‘chase’ the clubhead down the slope, as I am here in this main image. The crossover of the wrists confirms the full release of the clubhead all the way through the sand and on into the follow-through. Note that my focus remains on the impact zone in the sand – my head has been still throughout. Study the sequence and you can see that the stance/body position has been consistent from the set up until well after impact. That’s one of the secrets to playing this type of shot and making precise contact with the sand.

Go with the flow: the most important lesson on any sort of uneven lie is don't fight it. The onus is on you to adjust your stance/posture in such a way that you work with the conditions. So, in this case, settle the front foot into the sand for stability, and then plant your weight on that left side......

With your body stable, the key going back is to hinge your wrists sufficiently that the clubhead works up steeply to avoid the back lip. Note that I have gripped well down the shaft – that assists you in working the club up quickly. There is barely any bodymotion here – it's hands and arms

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Fresh Approach-2

3) What you have now done is create a reference point from which the shaft angle of the club can follow into the backswing – so just allow the wrist to hinge as you swing the club back and match the shaft angle with your outstretched left arm. This should give you a terrific sense of where the shaft should be going and a genuine reference point for your backswing position 4) In this frame you can see that this plane theme is now extended into the followthrough. As the shaft exits the other side you can see that it has virtually mirror-imaged the profile it took during the backswing. This shows us that no crazy path ideas have been employed assisting in that low point staying the same

The Modern Stance for Bunker Play

In days gone by a typical bunker lesson involved being told that the best way to play a greenside sand shot was to set-up with a noticeably open stance, body aiming well left of the target, then pick the club up steeply and wipe across the ball in a ‘cut-up’ style of action. This one-shot-suits all type of approach gave you a get-out-of-jail free card that worked pretty well every time.

One aspect we need to control in bunker play is the LOW POINT of the strike. We cannot have this aspect moving too much whilst trying to hit any type of bunker shot because nothing about your technique will be bankable until this critical feature is stable.

As you can see here, I have adjusted my stance so that while my shoulders are just slightly open in relation to the target my feet are more or less parallel with the line to the flag. There are two good reasons why I believe you, too, should adopt a philosophy that gradually moves away from the seriously open stance.

(1) To control that LOW POINT in the swing you must anchor your weight onto you left side or lead foot. (Things get interesting when you try to do this with an open stance – you can’t!

Effectively an open stance takes away your left side and makes the task of settling into a stable position over the ball virtually impossible. In fact, the more open your stance becomes, the more you fall back into your right side…try it, you’ll see what I mean.)

With your stance and foot positioning taking on a more square to shut position you will immediately have a ‘left side’ to lean in to (Ben Hogan used to do this with his long game so he could rotate and collide into a closed left side and not fall back from an open one).

(2) The second point also has its roots deeply in maintaining that low point: With the left knee flexed and out in front of you a little it provides the perfect ‘pillar’ against which you can swing into. As long as the flex in that left leg doesn’t change in height you can virtually guarantee that the approach of the club into the sand will be fairly shallow and on a good plane/path. The last thing we ever want to do in a bunker shot is stand up and loose all of our posture angles since this will have the effect of dumping the club into the sand steeply and early.

Get your feel through your sole, brother!

If there is one communicator, or portal, through which you can derive your feel and feedback in bunker play it is found in the sole of the clubhead. I have always believed that the truly great short-game exponents, like Seve or Tiger, not only have the ability to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ the clubhead entering the sand but they also cultivated the ability to know what the club should be doing through the sand well after contact has been made.

For 90% of the time you will want the clubface open and the bounce (which effectively increases as the clubface is opened) working for you; for the other 10% you will have to reduce the bounce exposed by squaring up the face to produce a more Vshaped attack. This is basic stuff you need to grasp: the more open you have the face, the more likely the club will skim across the sand using the whole of that sole; the squarer you have the face the more the leading edge will dig and gouge the sand. As you work on your sand play experiment with these adjustments and think of those two strike patterns – develop all of your feel from those two spectrums. You either dig…or you skim: what does the shot need?

The more time you spend in the sand learning from the feedback the sole of the clubhead gives you the more you will come to appreciate the importance of having that feel. Think of the sole of your sand iron as the fingertips of the golf club; feel everything through it!

Summary

Here are the key points I’d like you to take away from this article and consider when you next get the chance to go out and practice in sand:

• Go to a square to slightly closed stance in which you anchor and stabilise your body.

• Get to know the bounce in the clubhead and feel every shot through the contact it has with the sand.

• Cultivate a simple swing path back from the ball and through; no extreme chopping motions or scoops.

Bunker play gets a heck of a lot easier when you have the right tools and the right ideas. The only way to become competent in the sand is to spend a lot of time in there and experiment with different lies and contacts.

Hopefully you have access to a practice bunker that will allow you to do this. (I didn’t, but I’m making up for lost time!)

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Fresh Approach

I have an unhealthy fascination with bunkers – I love the variations in design, I love all the different textures of sand and I love the strategy they dictate when correctly positioned. The origins of this can perhaps be traced to the fact that the course I grew up on had one solitary bunker, on the 2nd hole, and at the end of a day’s play I would sneak out there and hit bunker shots until I couldn’t see the ball anymore.

I remember having a sand-wedge with little bounce and a sharp leading edge and because of this I had to really control the low point of my strike and the angle of attack; looking back, as a pretty decent bunker player today, it was probably better training than I then realised. With the equipment available today, the facility to grind and shape the sole of the sand-wedge to suit different types of sand, becoming a good bunker player becomes a matter of having the right concepts and some time practising them.

1) What you see here in this sequence is a really easy way to picture the plane of the shaft back and through. Start right here, in a good set-up position, with your feet nicely square to the target line, upper body fractionally open 2) From the address position, simply take your left hand off the grip and extend the arm, palm flat, toward the ball. Try to match the angle of the arm with the shaft angle of the club as I am doing

This article is designed to give you a basic starting point from which most bunker shots can be learned and developed. It revolves around three basic laws I believe are all you need to employ to get started:

1. You don’t need to radically open your stance to bunker shots

2.To become a master bunker player you must feel the shot through the sole of the clubhead

3. Learn a simple one-planed action and evolve from this point

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The Golden Rule

Open the clubface before you finalise the details of grip and set-up; that's the No.1 rule when you are in the sand.

Pre-set loft and 'bounce'

OK, so you've caught me on the beach having a laugh up here at Turnberry. But where better to explain to you the secret of good sand play?

Using the so-called 'bounce' on the sand-iron is the key to splashing your way out of trouble, and to do that you have to open the club-face before you fix your grip. Lay it wide open like this, with the handle running low in the fingers of the left hand.

When you then complete your grip, the loft and the 'bounce' (i.e. the extent to which the heavy flange sits below the leading edge) is pre-set. With a slightly open stance, making your regular swing is all it takes to skim the flange through the sand.

I have laid the club on the sand here to illustrate a point - but remember, the rules do not allow you to touch the sand when you are on the course playing these shots for real. Then you must hover the club slightly behind the ball

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Hit Solid Wedges

My three wedges play a vital role in keeping me right in the battle for tournaments. If I average three or four birdies a round, at least two of these came from good wedge play.

I devote a lot of practice time to my wedges and as a result can create a variety of shots with each individual club.

However, each and every shot has something in common: the wedge has to be hit solidly to achieve the desired result.

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Hitting the Highs and Lows -2

Even though this feels (and appears in these pictures) like a much wristier swing, Edoardo's focus is on creating a wide sweep with the arms working in tandem with the rotation of the upper body, while his overall swing sensation is to keep the knees as quiet as possible and keeping his weight behind the ball as he swings through to a finish (you'll never play this shot if you get ahead of it!!).

When we work on elements of technique, the most important feeling is that the upper body is turning through impact and keeps on turning all the way to the finish. The hand/arm action is then coordinated with that body turn. The great danger (and common fault among amateurs) is that the body stops turning and the hands carry on independently, flicking at the ball. That leads to all sorts of inconsistency.

The impact position here is fantastic, and full of all the clues you need to take away and work on your own technique. In the moments immediately through impact, the feeling you want to cultivate is that the right hand works underneath the left, so that as you arrive at the finish the palm of the right hand faces directly up to the sky. This will influence the natural rotation of the forearms in a full release - totally in contrast to the low shot, where the release was held off'.

As I mentioned earlier, the problem for many amateurs is that they believe this type of shot requires a lot of wrist action, often picking the club up very early in the takeaway and destroying any hope of creating width in the backswing. So take your cue from Edoardo, and discipline yourself to set the loft at address and then trust it as you work on a controlled technique that returns that loft beneath the ball. The more accomplished you get at this the less divot you will take and the better will be the quality of the strike.

Width established early as Edoardo turns and extends hands, arms and the club in the backswing - the key is to take the wrists out of the equation. Wrists remain 'quiet' - the length of the swing is controlled by the rotation of the shoulders/upper body

Look at how flat the clubface is here as it is released under the ball - maximum loft has been applied!. Natural release of the hands/forearms is encouraged as the body rotates through and the club swings freely to the finish (gripping well down the club helps you do this, too)

During practice I will often hold out a cane like this to challenge Edoardo's skills and see how quickly he can get the ball to rise. From this angle you get a great appreciation of the way in which the body rotates all the way through the shot to finish facing left of the target.

The loft on the clubface is maintained throughout, and at the finish the palm of the right hand mirror's the position of the clubface, looking up towards the sky.

THE LOW KNOCK-DOWN These comparative views of the finish position reveal the key areas of technique that you have to work on. In the case of the low spinner here, you can sense there's been no release of the right wrist - the club is said to be 'held off', which minimises the loft. With this advanced technique, the choice of club is generally a lofted wedge even though we are looking to keep the ball down. Having that loft is essential if you are to generate spin, while the trajectory is a factor of the crisp, downward strike into the back of the ball. THE HIGH FLOP-SHOT This is a great angle to appreciate the way the right hand works beneath the left to fully release the open clubface through impact. The palm of the right hand mirrors the clubface - that's a good feeling to go after as you work on this technique. Bear in mind that the highflying flop shot is a high-risk option, and you should only take it on when conditions are favourable (i.e. you have you a good lie) and there is no other percentage option. It's a 'go-to' shot only when the situation demands it, not a crowd-pleaser when your ego feels like it!

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Hitting the Highs and Lows

Moving to the arena of the short game, the other half of Italy's winning duo - Francesco's older brother Edoardo - demonstrates the pro technique for playing two vital scoring shots: the low spinny pitch and the super-soft, high-flying flop shot. Studying the sequences and comparing the positions in these very different swings will reveal the secrets to mastering these skills. The most important thing I would stress is that in both of these shots (and chipping/ pitching generally), wrist action must be kept to a minimum. Good wrist action softens the stroke - it does not make it.

A fluent hand/wrist action guards against your movements being 'wooden'. Typically, I see a lot of amateurs who over-involve the wrists in the takeaway, in the change of direction and, of course, at impact (the temptation to try to lift the ball into the air on the higher shots). A fundamental premise of the short game skills you are about to study is that you 'set' the loft at address and then influence the ball flight with the way you return that loft at impact.

'Quiet' wrists, active knees

As Edoardo prepares to play a low, spinning greenside pitch shot, the first thing to notice is that he is actually using a fairly lofted club. It is the way he sets up to the ball that dictates the nature of the strike and trajectory, not the loft: his hands are set forward, leaning the shaft gently towards the target, while the ball is played slightly back in what is a very narrow stance. His weight favours the left side, absorbed by the flex in the left knee.

This is a set-up position designed to produce a controlled stroke that delivers a crisp downward strike on the ball for a low trajectory and heavy backspin.

Looking at the technique itself, the backswing is notably wide, and going after that shape enhances the feeling of playing this shot with 'quiet' hands and wrists. There is no leg action as such; the feeling you want to have is that the knees just push forward as you return the club in the downswing so that your weight is on the left side at impact.

For the tour pro this is a staple shot, one that is often used on the longer par fives - holes out of reach for even these guys - an aggressive, pin-seeking shot played when you have a fair bit of green to work with or perhaps into a wind.

Visualisation of the shot is vitally important - the trajectory is low and the ball flies with heavy spin, so you have to identify your landing area and practice until you have a real sense of feel for the distance the ball will travel upon first hitting the green.

To the casual observer it might look like a player has hit it too hard, perhaps a little thin...that is until the ball bounces, checks and comes to a halt by the flag!

Take a comfortably narrow stance and ease your weight into the left side. With the ball back, the hands lean the shaft toward the target - clubshaft and left arm more or less in a straight line. Weight remains on that left knee as the stroke is made by the rotation of the arms/ upper body. Wrists are 'soft', but not actively involved in making the backswing

Subtle knee action is key to this technique; through the downswing, the knees work towards and then left of the target, promoting the downward strike on the ball. Note the hands lead the club all the way through

Release the loft to play the ultra-soft high, floating, flop-shot

Once again the set up is the key to the execution and success of this high-risk/high-value shot. And immediately the contrast is obvious when you look at this sequence and compare like-for-like images with the low pitch on the previous spread. At the set up, Edoardo now has the ball pushed way forward, the stance is a little wider, and the loft is set way open as he lays the club behind the ball.

[To play the extreme version of this shot, the hands can even be behind the ball at the set up, with the shaft leaning away from the target - more experienced players should experiment with this. The practice ground trick of having the ball pop up almost vertically and catching it as you take a step towards the target in the same motion is one most tour players can pull off, and learning how to do this gives you wonderful feel for your swing and the clubface.]

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How to shoot low numbers-2

Bunker Play

Just take the sand out of the box...

Just like the lob shot, the key to playing a regular bunker shot lies in opening up the clubface and trusting your swing through the impact area. What I do is set the club-face up first, laying the blade wide open so that the leading edge is aimed a little to the right of the target. Then, to offset this, I set my body lines running to left of the target, leaving the arms plenty of room to swing freely.

A good tip here is to feel like you are reaching for the ball just a fraction - that gives you all the room you need and also gets your hands fairly low. Once you are set up and ready to go, remember that a still head is the secret to you delivering a consistent 'low point' through the sand.

One of the biggest problems I see amateurs struggle with is the issue of hitting a couple of inches behind the ball. They are told to focus on hitting a point behind the ball and that's exactly what they do: they hit down into the sand two inches behind the ball. What they forget is that you have to take a shallow divot of sand all the way beneath the ball.

One way to get over this when you practise is to draw a box around the ball and work on removing a shallow cut of sand from it either side of the ball itself.

Fluffy rough - Like a bunker shot

Nick Faldo once showed my what he called a 'scything' shot from fairly thick rough. It's a shot I really like and one I use often from this sort of fluffy lie - even if I have a lot of green to play with I will take my sand iron and try to fly the ball most of the way. The key is to stay aggressive through the shot.

You don't want to be decelerating through it, otherwise the grass gets caught and you get the classic goofy one that doesn't quite get out. What you have to remember is that you're not setting up to hit the ball here.

It's exactly like a bunker shot, except that you are substituting fluffy grass for sand. From the way I place the open clubface a good inch or inch-and-a-half behind the ball, it's the same drill as in the sand: open stance, hands fairly low, and a long smooth swing along the line of my toes that pops the ball out. All you have to do is focus on making a good contact with the grass. In fact, if you get into the habit of making a practice swing to the side of the ball you can actually hear good impact as the open face scythes through the grass.

Putting - Why the belly putter gives you a 'tick tock' stroke

The belly-putter doesn't suit everyone, but I like it because it teaches you to release the putter properly. With the butt-end secure in your belly, you create a pure pendulum stroke with the arms and shoulders. And whether I use a short stick or the belly-putter, that's what I am looking to achieve.

Where a lot of people go wrong with the belly version is they believe you must move your body in tandem with the putter. Wrong. The key to this is that your body must stay very still, leaving the arms to swing freely.

When I work on my putting I focus on keeping the butt-end fixed and my head perfectly still throughout. When I achieve those twin objectives I am pretty confident that I will create a repeating pendulum stroke.

Think of a grandfather clock. At the set up you want the putter shaft to be standing pretty much straight up. You also want to create a nice base here with your legs. The palms of the hands should be neutrally opposed as

they meet on the grip, and the result is a very orthodox position over the ball, which I play just forward of centre. The grandfather clock analogy helps me to create pendulum motion with the putter as it swings back and through. If you try the belly putter, put your hands on where they feel comfortable.

Monty has his quite high, Vijay (when he uses it) is a little lower. The key is that you then get this pendulum motion going, the butt-end secure all the way through the stroke. To do this, think about keeping your stomach and your body real still - all that is moving is the shaft. The result is that the putter-face remains square to the path along which the putter is swinging (correctly, it appears to be opening and closing, just like a swinging door).

A lot of people think the face must end up looking at the target, but it doesn't. It finishes square to the path, looking left. As it should in a naturally correct action. 

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