Golf Club Distance, Ultimate Control From 100 yards and in (Video) - by Pete Styles
Golf Club Distance, Ultimate Control From 100 yards and in (Video) - by Pete Styles

I see on a daily basis a hugely underdeveloped part of a club golfer’s armory is how well they play from inside that final 100 yards. They get the ball down there on the fairway; they get the ball pretty close to the green but from inside a 100 yards. They just aren’t able to attack as regularly or as accurately as they should be able to. Part of the issue here is the golf club distance control. The alignment of a 100 yard pitcher isn’t actually that tricky, it won’t curve too much, but the distance control becomes all important. One of the biggest areas I see in the problems is that a club golfer just doesn’t carry the right clubs in that area. They simply don’t have enough clubs. So now go and have a look in your bag or think through your golf bag and think how far does my pitching wedge go and how far does my sand wedge go. A lot of recent golf clubs have made the pitching wedge very strong, so the pitching wedge is sort of 46 or even 45 degrees. A well hit pitching wedge might go well over 100 yards, maybe even a 120, 130 yards. Sand wedge is probably going to be about 55 degrees of loft, 75-80 yards. But basically what you’ve got there is you’ve got one golf club that will do this inside 100 yard target area for your score.

And that’s just simply not enough. You don’t have enough options; you don’t have enough options for high shots and low shots, spiny shots and running shots. So what we need to look at though is putting more wedges in to the set. So if you’ve got space in your bag and space I mean your 14 club is the maximum you’re allowed to carry, if you’ve got 12 or 11 clubs in your set, consider putting in a gap wedge that goes between your pitching wedge and your sand wedge and the lob wedge that is more lofted than your sand wedge. So then you’ve got four wedges. Now immediately you’ve got four options of distances. They should be around about 10, 12, maybe 15 yards between each club. So depending on the distance that you now get on the golf course, you’ve got more options rather than just hitting harder or softer sand wedges and pitching wedges. You’ve lob wedges and gap wedges in there as well. The other thing that you can now utilize to control the distance of those new clubs is the length of your golf swing. So what I’d like you to go and do find some time on the driving and maybe through the winter months when you’ve got a bit of time to practice these parts of your game. Hit all of those shots full power with two wedges or three wedges or four wedges if you’ve got them. Write down the distance for the full shots. Then work out a three quarter and a half swing and write down the distances for those and you will soon end up with little matrix that says this four wedges, these three swings will give me these distances. And more regularly than not you’ll have one of those distances on the golf course where that club with that length of swing will get pretty close to the distance. So you’ve got your normal set up and you’d say well that my full swing. But if I’ve got maybe a three quarter swing and a half swing and I hit five little half swings, measure my golf club distance with four clubs, five little three quarter swings, measure my distance with those four clubs and five full swings, measure the distance with those clubs. Then you’ve got that matrix. When you find yourself on the golf course, you ether memorize the matrix or you literally have it written in you pocket then you go right 57 yards out, 57 yards out, that would be a 52 degree wedge with a three quarter swing, bang then I’ve got my distance. And it’s all about having options inside 100 yards. You can’t manufacture it all with one club so more wedges in the bag and more variation on the length of your stroke and that will make you deadly inside 100 yards. 2014-08-15

I see on a daily basis a hugely underdeveloped part of a club golfer’s armory is how well they play from inside that final 100 yards. They get the ball down there on the fairway; they get the ball pretty close to the green but from inside a 100 yards. They just aren’t able to attack as regularly or as accurately as they should be able to. Part of the issue here is the golf club distance control. The alignment of a 100 yard pitcher isn’t actually that tricky, it won’t curve too much, but the distance control becomes all important. One of the biggest areas I see in the problems is that a club golfer just doesn’t carry the right clubs in that area. They simply don’t have enough clubs. So now go and have a look in your bag or think through your golf bag and think how far does my pitching wedge go and how far does my sand wedge go. A lot of recent golf clubs have made the pitching wedge very strong, so the pitching wedge is sort of 46 or even 45 degrees. A well hit pitching wedge might go well over 100 yards, maybe even a 120, 130 yards. Sand wedge is probably going to be about 55 degrees of loft, 75-80 yards. But basically what you’ve got there is you’ve got one golf club that will do this inside 100 yard target area for your score.

And that’s just simply not enough. You don’t have enough options; you don’t have enough options for high shots and low shots, spiny shots and running shots. So what we need to look at though is putting more wedges in to the set. So if you’ve got space in your bag and space I mean your 14 club is the maximum you’re allowed to carry, if you’ve got 12 or 11 clubs in your set, consider putting in a gap wedge that goes between your pitching wedge and your sand wedge and the lob wedge that is more lofted than your sand wedge. So then you’ve got four wedges. Now immediately you’ve got four options of distances. They should be around about 10, 12, maybe 15 yards between each club. So depending on the distance that you now get on the golf course, you’ve got more options rather than just hitting harder or softer sand wedges and pitching wedges. You’ve lob wedges and gap wedges in there as well.

The other thing that you can now utilize to control the distance of those new clubs is the length of your golf swing. So what I’d like you to go and do find some time on the driving and maybe through the winter months when you’ve got a bit of time to practice these parts of your game. Hit all of those shots full power with two wedges or three wedges or four wedges if you’ve got them. Write down the distance for the full shots. Then work out a three quarter and a half swing and write down the distances for those and you will soon end up with little matrix that says this four wedges, these three swings will give me these distances. And more regularly than not you’ll have one of those distances on the golf course where that club with that length of swing will get pretty close to the distance. So you’ve got your normal set up and you’d say well that my full swing.

But if I’ve got maybe a three quarter swing and a half swing and I hit five little half swings, measure my golf club distance with four clubs, five little three quarter swings, measure my distance with those four clubs and five full swings, measure the distance with those clubs. Then you’ve got that matrix. When you find yourself on the golf course, you ether memorize the matrix or you literally have it written in you pocket then you go right 57 yards out, 57 yards out, that would be a 52 degree wedge with a three quarter swing, bang then I’ve got my distance. And it’s all about having options inside 100 yards. You can’t manufacture it all with one club so more wedges in the bag and more variation on the length of your stroke and that will make you deadly inside 100 yards.