Stinger Golf Shot, How Can I Learn To Play It? (Video) - by Natalie Adams
Stinger Golf Shot, How Can I Learn To Play It? (Video) - by Natalie Adams

How can I learn to play a stinger golf shot? A stinger golf shot is just really a term that was introduced by Tiger Woods when he started playing this shot to give himself more control off the tee. And he called it his stinger and so the term stuck, and you hear commentators saying, “Oh there’s a stinger” all the time now. And basically what a stinger is, it’s a punch golf shot, a deliberately controlled, low trajectory golf shot but played with your 3 wood, which is something you wouldn’t normally do. But it gives you a lot more control, it makes the ball go out very low, and Tiger finds it a lot easier to control that shot than he does with the driver. Because you get the lower trajectory, the ball obviously rolls on a lot further and you create distance with it.

So, to play that stinger golf shot, usually you would tee the ball up quite low with your 3 wood and you would play the ball off the inside of your left heel. But to hit a stinger you need to play the ball back more in your stance. So, half the ball back in the stance of a lot more. The next difference is we’ve really got to keep the hands forward and we’ve got to keep the shaft leaning forward. We’re going to have a very abbreviated follow through when we play this shot because we really want to come back into this impact position. So we’re going to swing into this position with the shot and maybe finish here, really maintaining the straight line with the left arm, the club as much as possible rather than releasing the club head up above the hands as you normally would. Also we’re going to have a much shorter backswing, so we might feel we’re only in a sort of ¾ position, because we don’t want to hinge the wrists, we really want to keep that wrist leaning forward or the shaft leaning forward as we hit. So, the ball is further back, the hands are forward, we make as full a backswing as we can but without hinging the wrists, and we hit through into an abbreviated finish. And that really hits a very low trajectory shot out. It’s much easier to control it and you’ll get a lot more run on that golf ball. And that’s how to hit a stinger golf shot. 2014-07-30

How can I learn to play a stinger golf shot? A stinger golf shot is just really a term that was introduced by Tiger Woods when he started playing this shot to give himself more control off the tee. And he called it his stinger and so the term stuck, and you hear commentators saying, “Oh there’s a stinger” all the time now. And basically what a stinger is, it’s a punch golf shot, a deliberately controlled, low trajectory golf shot but played with your 3 wood, which is something you wouldn’t normally do. But it gives you a lot more control, it makes the ball go out very low, and Tiger finds it a lot easier to control that shot than he does with the driver. Because you get the lower trajectory, the ball obviously rolls on a lot further and you create distance with it.

So, to play that stinger golf shot, usually you would tee the ball up quite low with your 3 wood and you would play the ball off the inside of your left heel. But to hit a stinger you need to play the ball back more in your stance. So, half the ball back in the stance of a lot more. The next difference is we’ve really got to keep the hands forward and we’ve got to keep the shaft leaning forward. We’re going to have a very abbreviated follow through when we play this shot because we really want to come back into this impact position.

So we’re going to swing into this position with the shot and maybe finish here, really maintaining the straight line with the left arm, the club as much as possible rather than releasing the club head up above the hands as you normally would.

Also we’re going to have a much shorter backswing, so we might feel we’re only in a sort of ¾ position, because we don’t want to hinge the wrists, we really want to keep that wrist leaning forward or the shaft leaning forward as we hit. So, the ball is further back, the hands are forward, we make as full a backswing as we can but without hinging the wrists, and we hit through into an abbreviated finish. And that really hits a very low trajectory shot out. It’s much easier to control it and you’ll get a lot more run on that golf ball. And that’s how to hit a stinger golf shot.