What Style Of Golf Game Do You Play (Video) - by Pete Styles
What Style Of Golf Game Do You Play (Video) - by Pete Styles

I'm going to start by hitting a couple of shots for you here. I've got a sand wedge aiming for a flag about 75 yards out. Now I've hit down on that ball quite aggressively, taking quite a big chunk of turf after that one and then next shot. Same sort of shot, same sort of distance but actually a much shallower divot there, so this first divot so about the size of my hand and about half an inch thick. The second divot much lighter, much shallow, much more of a skid. Now the reason why those two shots were different, I was deliberately trying to play one shot as a digger and then one shot as a slider. Now golfers generally fall into those two types of categories when we look at how they approach the short shots that pitches in their chips. Now for myself I'm generally a digger, I get quite steep on the golf, being tall I get very much left side, didn’t really hit down into the golf ball quite aggressively. So I like to see my wedges with lots and lots of bounce. I choose high bounce wedges from my steep shots and that works better because the bounce angle on the bottom of my wedge being quite aggressive stops the club digging in too much. If I hit that first style of shot with a club that has less than 10 degrees of bounce in it, I generally find the club will never come back out of the floor. If I take a four degree wedge and hit that same shot it will just get stuck in the turf and actually could cause a few injuries.

The second style of shot because I was quite light and skidie on that one, I could have been able to play that shot quite nicely with a lower bounce wedge for a, six degree wedge. So hitting down on the shot being a digger you need a bit more bounce, been a bit more of a slide, been a bit more a skider you can get away with a lower bounce wedge. So spend some time practicing and hitting this shot but generally you can actually have to hit them off turf and quite tightly moaned turf. If you did it on a fairly fluffy turf you won really see the divot shapes too much. So get yourself to a practice area that’s quite well moan, quite well cut down and hit maybe half a dozen different shots with wedges and feel whether you're a steep divot taker or whether you're a shallow divot taker and then consider getting the appropriate bounce wedges to go with those different styles of your game. Now I've got Titleist wedges, the Vokey wedges. If you look at Titleist website and particularly the wedges page, there's a nice chart there, a nice graph. They’ll highlight to you which wedges are going to be more suitable, whether you're a steep divot taker or whether you're a shallow divot taker, a digger or a slider and they’ll give you the correct wedges or the correct options for those wedges. I'm not suggesting you have to buy eh Titleist wedges, lots of other good manufacturers do different wedges and most will now give you the correct loft and the bounce angle combinations to get the right wedges for your game. 2015-11-05

I'm going to start by hitting a couple of shots for you here. I've got a sand wedge aiming for a flag about 75 yards out. Now I've hit down on that ball quite aggressively, taking quite a big chunk of turf after that one and then next shot. Same sort of shot, same sort of distance but actually a much shallower divot there, so this first divot so about the size of my hand and about half an inch thick. The second divot much lighter, much shallow, much more of a skid. Now the reason why those two shots were different, I was deliberately trying to play one shot as a digger and then one shot as a slider. Now golfers generally fall into those two types of categories when we look at how they approach the short shots that pitches in their chips. Now for myself I'm generally a digger, I get quite steep on the golf, being tall I get very much left side, didn’t really hit down into the golf ball quite aggressively. So I like to see my wedges with lots and lots of bounce. I choose high bounce wedges from my steep shots and that works better because the bounce angle on the bottom of my wedge being quite aggressive stops the club digging in too much. If I hit that first style of shot with a club that has less than 10 degrees of bounce in it, I generally find the club will never come back out of the floor. If I take a four degree wedge and hit that same shot it will just get stuck in the turf and actually could cause a few injuries.

The second style of shot because I was quite light and skidie on that one, I could have been able to play that shot quite nicely with a lower bounce wedge for a, six degree wedge. So hitting down on the shot being a digger you need a bit more bounce, been a bit more of a slide, been a bit more a skider you can get away with a lower bounce wedge. So spend some time practicing and hitting this shot but generally you can actually have to hit them off turf and quite tightly moaned turf. If you did it on a fairly fluffy turf you won really see the divot shapes too much. So get yourself to a practice area that’s quite well moan, quite well cut down and hit maybe half a dozen different shots with wedges and feel whether you're a steep divot taker or whether you're a shallow divot taker and then consider getting the appropriate bounce wedges to go with those different styles of your game. Now I've got Titleist wedges, the Vokey wedges. If you look at Titleist website and particularly the wedges page, there's a nice chart there, a nice graph. They’ll highlight to you which wedges are going to be more suitable, whether you're a steep divot taker or whether you're a shallow divot taker, a digger or a slider and they’ll give you the correct wedges or the correct options for those wedges. I'm not suggesting you have to buy eh Titleist wedges, lots of other good manufacturers do different wedges and most will now give you the correct loft and the bounce angle combinations to get the right wedges for your game.