Picking Your Landing Zone For Your Golf Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Picking Your Landing Zone For Your Golf Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

Sometimes people might question, “Well, why do I want to hit a non-full shot?” Sure I can just change clubs, change to the next most lofted club and that will bring the ball down a bit shorter. Yeah that's the case unless you get your shortest wedges and then you don't have another club to go to, so you still need to hit half shots or less than full shots with those clubs.

But there are other occasions. If I’ve got a 7 iron for example and I want to land my 7 iron on the green and get the ball to stop, but it's playing downwind, I know that when I hit the ball up into the air, the wind is going to help the golf ball go a little bit further than I would want it to. So I can actually just take a little bit off my 7 iron. So my grip down on my 7 iron, I might have the ball a little bit further back with my 7 iron and make a little bit of it almost of a three-quarter swing. But as long as I still accelerate into that 7 iron, I will still get a reasonable distance, but it might not quite get as far unless it was the downwind. So I take the distance off of with my swing, the downwind pushes the distance back on and I end up with the right distance of shots. Another reason why I might make more of a sort of a softer swing, a three-quarter type swing is if I want the ball to get onto the green and I want the ball to release, I want the ball to roll to a back hole location. So if the flag is deep and far back on the green, I could take a lofted club and fly the ball all the way into that back hole location. But the risk is though, if I slightly thin that ball, it could go over the back of the green. It might be more suitable to keep the less lofty club in my hands, take a little bit out of my swing so the ball lands at the front portion of the green and then rolls up to the back of the green. So I might take out a 7 iron instead of a 9 iron, take a little bit out of the 7, land it on the front, the safe part of the green and let the ball just feed up to the back of the flag. So different times and places on the golf course when I can use a different club to then make a three-quarter or non-full swing, could be downwind or back hole locations when those non-full swings can actually work well for you. 2016-05-12

Sometimes people might question, “Well, why do I want to hit a non-full shot?” Sure I can just change clubs, change to the next most lofted club and that will bring the ball down a bit shorter. Yeah that's the case unless you get your shortest wedges and then you don't have another club to go to, so you still need to hit half shots or less than full shots with those clubs.

But there are other occasions. If I’ve got a 7 iron for example and I want to land my 7 iron on the green and get the ball to stop, but it's playing downwind, I know that when I hit the ball up into the air, the wind is going to help the golf ball go a little bit further than I would want it to. So I can actually just take a little bit off my 7 iron. So my grip down on my 7 iron, I might have the ball a little bit further back with my 7 iron and make a little bit of it almost of a three-quarter swing. But as long as I still accelerate into that 7 iron, I will still get a reasonable distance, but it might not quite get as far unless it was the downwind. So I take the distance off of with my swing, the downwind pushes the distance back on and I end up with the right distance of shots.

Another reason why I might make more of a sort of a softer swing, a three-quarter type swing is if I want the ball to get onto the green and I want the ball to release, I want the ball to roll to a back hole location. So if the flag is deep and far back on the green, I could take a lofted club and fly the ball all the way into that back hole location. But the risk is though, if I slightly thin that ball, it could go over the back of the green. It might be more suitable to keep the less lofty club in my hands, take a little bit out of my swing so the ball lands at the front portion of the green and then rolls up to the back of the green. So I might take out a 7 iron instead of a 9 iron, take a little bit out of the 7, land it on the front, the safe part of the green and let the ball just feed up to the back of the flag.

So different times and places on the golf course when I can use a different club to then make a three-quarter or non-full swing, could be downwind or back hole locations when those non-full swings can actually work well for you.