How to Hit A Flop Shot Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
How to Hit A Flop Shot Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

So, let's look at the flop shots or the parachute shots or the high, sort of, cut shot that we'd often see the better players perform. Phil Mickelson’s famous for this one, playing around the side of the green, just flopping it up in the air. Now, the first thing I want you to remember with this shot is you don't need this shot very often, so only play this shot when it's required. It's not an easy shot to play well and when you play it badly, it's going to go badly wrong and it might cost you a couple of extra shots. So let's make sure you're not going to use this shot too often. But when you do play it well, it's almost like a get out of jail card where you can really play the shot nicely, cut it up an over the bunker, over the pond, land it on the green, and it stops really quickly on the green due to the trajectory that it's played with.

The first thing is make sure you've got the right club. Let's pick a sand wedge, maybe even a lob wedge if you've got it; something with a roundabout 58 degrees of loft going up to 60, maybe even 64 degrees of loft to the very severe cut lob shot. Now, if you play that shot from the middle of your stance with a normal approach, you still got the same loft on the club. So for me here, I've still got the same 60 degrees. And although that will give me some height, I want a little bit more height, so I need to create an extra little bit of loft. Now, quite an easy way to do that would be to twist the golf club to the right hand side. So, effectively, I'd take the handle and I'd turn it clockwise and I open the club face and that's going to have more loft on it now. But if the face is pointing to the right, the ball will go to the right, so I need to have a compensation for that, really, and I'm going to do that by changing the angle of my feet, changing the angle of my shoulders. So, my club face is pointing right, I'm going to now point left. So I'm aiming down the left hand side. I'm aiming there with my feet; I'm also aiming there with my shoulders. That will now produce a ball that goes quite straight. Somewhere between the face and the feet, the ball will come out quite straight now.

An extra way of getting a bit more height on this ball would actually be to play it in the front of your stance. Now, that's not something we would normally encourage you to do when you're hitting a pitching shot or a chicken shot because playing it near to the front of the stance makes the contact of it more difficult. So if you've got a good lie and the ball's sitting up nicely on the fairway or in the semi rough, you can play it nicely near to your front side and just slide the club nicely under the ball and that can work for you. If the lie isn't very good and it's sitting down, it's a bit tight; I would think it's quite difficult to play it from the front of your stance. Play it form the middle, maybe even play it slightly back but an extra bit of open club face because the more back it goes, the more that club face would shut down. So, if you can, front of the stance, open the face, open the feet.

So just to see what that looks like from down the line, the face is going to point to the right, the body and the shoulders and the feet are going to point to the left, you play the ball off the front of your stance and then you kind of swing the club outside and across. Now, outside and across sounds quite complicated, but it's actually following my normal shoulder alignment. So my shoulders are aiming down the left hand side, so my swing is now up and across. The reason it's described as up and across or out and across is actually not going to swing in the direction of my target. So, my target would be in a straight line in front of me here following the edge of the mat and I'm going to swing across that mat line, which is actually going to encourage a little bit more height on the shot.

One last thing to consider as you're hitting this shot is try to play it without too much rotation in the forearms. Anything where the forearms rotate over would actually close the loft off the club face and we really don't want to see that. So, we play it forwards in the stance, open with the face, open with the feet. Nice, long, hinged back swing, cut under the ball and don't let the club face rotate over too much because that would close the loft off. So if I just slide the club under the ball here, you'll see the ball parked nice and high up into the air without too much rotation into the follow through. Now, when this ball comes down and lands, it really lands quite softly and just settles nicely on the green. So, playing it from the front of the stance, nice and open, slide the club under the ball, up she goes, comes down, and just settles nicely. Remember, it's a high type of shot; only play it when you've got loads of confidence and when you needed to play it.

 2012-04-03

So, let's look at the flop shots or the parachute shots or the high, sort of, cut shot that we'd often see the better players perform. Phil Mickelson’s famous for this one, playing around the side of the green, just flopping it up in the air. Now, the first thing I want you to remember with this shot is you don't need this shot very often, so only play this shot when it's required. It's not an easy shot to play well and when you play it badly, it's going to go badly wrong and it might cost you a couple of extra shots. So let's make sure you're not going to use this shot too often. But when you do play it well, it's almost like a get out of jail card where you can really play the shot nicely, cut it up an over the bunker, over the pond, land it on the green, and it stops really quickly on the green due to the trajectory that it's played with.

The first thing is make sure you've got the right club. Let's pick a sand wedge, maybe even a lob wedge if you've got it; something with a roundabout 58 degrees of loft going up to 60, maybe even 64 degrees of loft to the very severe cut lob shot. Now, if you play that shot from the middle of your stance with a normal approach, you still got the same loft on the club. So for me here, I've still got the same 60 degrees. And although that will give me some height, I want a little bit more height, so I need to create an extra little bit of loft. Now, quite an easy way to do that would be to twist the golf club to the right hand side. So, effectively, I'd take the handle and I'd turn it clockwise and I open the club face and that's going to have more loft on it now. But if the face is pointing to the right, the ball will go to the right, so I need to have a compensation for that, really, and I'm going to do that by changing the angle of my feet, changing the angle of my shoulders. So, my club face is pointing right, I'm going to now point left. So I'm aiming down the left hand side. I'm aiming there with my feet; I'm also aiming there with my shoulders. That will now produce a ball that goes quite straight. Somewhere between the face and the feet, the ball will come out quite straight now.

An extra way of getting a bit more height on this ball would actually be to play it in the front of your stance. Now, that's not something we would normally encourage you to do when you're hitting a pitching shot or a chicken shot because playing it near to the front of the stance makes the contact of it more difficult. So if you've got a good lie and the ball's sitting up nicely on the fairway or in the semi rough, you can play it nicely near to your front side and just slide the club nicely under the ball and that can work for you. If the lie isn't very good and it's sitting down, it's a bit tight; I would think it's quite difficult to play it from the front of your stance. Play it form the middle, maybe even play it slightly back but an extra bit of open club face because the more back it goes, the more that club face would shut down. So, if you can, front of the stance, open the face, open the feet.

So just to see what that looks like from down the line, the face is going to point to the right, the body and the shoulders and the feet are going to point to the left, you play the ball off the front of your stance and then you kind of swing the club outside and across. Now, outside and across sounds quite complicated, but it's actually following my normal shoulder alignment. So my shoulders are aiming down the left hand side, so my swing is now up and across. The reason it's described as up and across or out and across is actually not going to swing in the direction of my target. So, my target would be in a straight line in front of me here following the edge of the mat and I'm going to swing across that mat line, which is actually going to encourage a little bit more height on the shot.

One last thing to consider as you're hitting this shot is try to play it without too much rotation in the forearms. Anything where the forearms rotate over would actually close the loft off the club face and we really don't want to see that. So, we play it forwards in the stance, open with the face, open with the feet. Nice, long, hinged back swing, cut under the ball and don't let the club face rotate over too much because that would close the loft off. So if I just slide the club under the ball here, you'll see the ball parked nice and high up into the air without too much rotation into the follow through. Now, when this ball comes down and lands, it really lands quite softly and just settles nicely on the green. So, playing it from the front of the stance, nice and open, slide the club under the ball, up she goes, comes down, and just settles nicely. Remember, it's a high type of shot; only play it when you've got loads of confidence and when you needed to play it.