I think if there is one club that golfer shank more than any other club in their bag, is generally the wedges. When they get down to their wedges, and they are just trying to hit those little fine shots around the side of the green, a little 20, 30 yard is more golfers are prone to the shank there than any other part of the game. And I think there is two reasons for that, one is when we address the golfer with a wedge we often courage golfers to get nearer to the ball than normal. So, we actually stand quite close and there is not so much room between the hands and the legs and as we swing the club through the hands get near the legs, they go out that way to find a bit more space and push the hosel towards the ball. So, first thing is, make sure you create a bit of space for yourself so you got enough room to swing the hands through.

Second consideration is when we are chipping and pitching, we very rarely want the club to release, very much want to hold the club off in this position, we pitch the ball up here without releasing the hands. Now for a lot of golfers that lack of release actually turns into a push out. And they sort of throw the hands and arms away from the body and sometimes we see the club coming from inside to outside throwing the heel in there and rather than striking the ball from the middle, we strike it from the heel part and create the shank. So, make sure if you are releasing the wedge down the target line, its down straight and not out to the right hand side, quite so much. You don’t necessarily want to feel that you are flicking with your hands, but likewise you don’t want to release or sorry you don’t want to hold off your release so much it goes, out sideways.

One last little shot that we can consider the heel strike on would be the putter. It sounds easy that you know the putter only swings back this far and back through, again it sounds easy, we should strike it out in the middle. But the consequences of not hitting in the middle is quite severe, it won’t necessarily change the direction of the putter a lot much but it will definitely change the distance because there is no sweet spot towards the heel and the ball will come out, shorter than it should though if you hit that from the center. So, a very simple exercise there so just buying two tpegs in the ground here, to create effectively a little gate and we could take our time playing five balls out of the middle of the gate and just making sure we strike it nicely from the center of the club. And ideally you would go and find yourself a nice bit of room on the putting green to do this exercise, but try and get that gate, so it’s really, really tight and then the club can swing through the middle and obviously I am going to have to hit the middle of the ball, of after the middle of the club to achieve that.

If I set up here and then I push the club away, and I knock over one of the tpegs, clearly that’s pushing the club out, hitting the ball from the heel, like was if I made my swing and pulled in, knocked over the inside well that’s indicative of the fact I would probably be hitting that ball from the toe of the club. So, the little gate exercise is a great little putting drill and the pitching exercise make sure you have got enough space, make sure your hands and arms are following through the target, not pushing outside the line too much and hopefully those two little alterations will mean you are striking the ball more from the middle of the club and less heels, with your wedges and with your putter.