Golf Bounce, Used for Crisp Pitch Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Bounce, Used for Crisp Pitch Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

When you’re playing a short shaft around the side of the green, it’s quite important you understand how a golf club is made and why it’s made in such a way.

So if you look at the club from underneath, you’ll see it has a leading edge and a trailing edge. Now, the leading edge should be higher than the trailing edge, and that’s an angle what we called bounce angle. There’s a bit more bounce angle on your sand wedge, than your gap wedge, your pitch wedge, your lob wedge, that’s because we need more bounce when we’re in a bunker playing out of the sand.

But if I set up to a golf ball here and just make a couple little practice swings, I can actually feel a bounce is coming through my rescue there. It’s helping me to stop the golf club digging in particularly if I was on the wet cloggy fairway. If the club didn’t have any bounce, the leading edge would dig in to the turf and there’d be nothing to bounce the golf club back off the surface. So if I was to make swings with no bounce, if I have the club back here, it takes the bounce soft. If I was to hit down, that’s a much sharp sound, and if I did that on a wet fairway, the club would just dig in.

So I want to play the ball around about the center of my feet. My hands very slightly ahead but not too much and just bounce the golf club off the floor, and it just skims and zips forward, and I can use that when I’m hitting the golf ball to keep the club moving. If I have the ball to fall back, my hands too far ahead and I get too steep, the club drops into the floor. The bounce doesn’t work for me, it works against me, and the club just stops and it feels fat and chunky when I hit the golf ball.

So usually using the bounce to hit nice, soft, crisp pitch shots let the club bounce off the floor as you hit underneath it. The ball will pop up nicely and that’s the golf club helping you out again.

2012-12-03

When you’re playing a short shaft around the side of the green, it’s quite important you understand how a golf club is made and why it’s made in such a way.

So if you look at the club from underneath, you’ll see it has a leading edge and a trailing edge. Now, the leading edge should be higher than the trailing edge, and that’s an angle what we called bounce angle. There’s a bit more bounce angle on your sand wedge, than your gap wedge, your pitch wedge, your lob wedge, that’s because we need more bounce when we’re in a bunker playing out of the sand.

But if I set up to a golf ball here and just make a couple little practice swings, I can actually feel a bounce is coming through my rescue there. It’s helping me to stop the golf club digging in particularly if I was on the wet cloggy fairway. If the club didn’t have any bounce, the leading edge would dig in to the turf and there’d be nothing to bounce the golf club back off the surface. So if I was to make swings with no bounce, if I have the club back here, it takes the bounce soft. If I was to hit down, that’s a much sharp sound, and if I did that on a wet fairway, the club would just dig in.

So I want to play the ball around about the center of my feet. My hands very slightly ahead but not too much and just bounce the golf club off the floor, and it just skims and zips forward, and I can use that when I’m hitting the golf ball to keep the club moving. If I have the ball to fall back, my hands too far ahead and I get too steep, the club drops into the floor. The bounce doesn’t work for me, it works against me, and the club just stops and it feels fat and chunky when I hit the golf ball.

So usually using the bounce to hit nice, soft, crisp pitch shots let the club bounce off the floor as you hit underneath it. The ball will pop up nicely and that’s the golf club helping you out again.