Planning Your Successful Three Quarter Wedge Golf Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Planning Your Successful Three Quarter Wedge Golf Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

The three-quarter way swing can look like quite a simple technique, but it doesn’t mean there’s nothing that goes into the pre-shot planning. In fact there’s probably more that goes into the pre-shot planning of a three-quarter wedge swing than there is for the tee shot that set this shot up. The tee shot is on a flat lie, we know which club we’re going to hit. We stand there and look at the fairway and hit it as hard as we can, but when we get down here to this three quarter wedge shot there’s lots of different things to consider.

The first thing I want you to consider is the yardage but there are actually two yardages that I want you to take. I’d like you to take the yardage to the pin. That’s where we want the ball to finish. But I would also like you to consider the yardage that you need to carry the ball on to the green. So sometimes golfers don’t appreciate how close the flag is to the front to the green. So they’re looking out there, they’ve got the yardage, its 100 yards to the pin. They don’t necessarily understand the bunker is at a 100 – sorry is at 95 yards. So they’ve only really got a five yard carry. Now five yard, carry from 100 yard out, that’s quite a difficult thing to judge, sort of 5% margin of error. And you make a good swing, it comes at 5% shot bang straight in the bunker. So what we’d like to do with that shot is maybe allow ourselves a little bit more carry to go – maybe land it at the flag or past the flag and then be a little bit safer. So whenever you’re looking at weighing one of these shots up two yardages, one to the flag, one is the I must carry this distance and then factor that in to you club selection and also how hard you’re going to hit the shot. The next consideration is exactly that is the club selection. We might have four wedges, we might have to decide which wedge we’re going to use. So the yardage comes into this yes, but also we can look at how we want the ball to fly, what we want the ball to do when it comes down on the ground. Probably more consideration on these 100 to 120 yard three quarter wedge shot then maybe when we’re hitting a 7-Iron 150 yards out 7-Iron bish-bash-bosh full swing in a way we go. But inside100 yards we’ve got lots of different options so the club selection is vitally important. The next thing to consider is the line that you’re going to pick. We might suggest well we’re going to lay it with the flag, but what happens if the flag is really tight to the side of the green or on a slope or near a bunker? We might have to consider aiming away from the flag which inherently for a golfer can feel a bit awkward to do, but smart golfers don’t always have to aim straight to the flag. They might consider where the danger is, but also where they want to leave their putt. If we’ve got a sloping green and we hit to the high side of the flag it can leave a very awkward downhill putt. We hit the same distance away from the flag but on the low side that putt generally is going to be easier. So make sure you’re picking your line. And the last thing to put all of these together before you pull the trigger is to picture the shot. So we know our yardages, we know our club selection, we know our line. The last thing in the little sort of pre-shot routine is picture how it’s going to fly, what it’s going to look like, what it’s going to feel like. A little practice swing, picture the shot, and then go ahead and execute the shot. This shot is not just as simple as pulling a; club stand in there and hitting it at full power, there’s a lot more that goes into it in your pre-shot routine. Get you pre-shot routine right, and the shot will come out right as well. 2016-10-13

The three-quarter way swing can look like quite a simple technique, but it doesn’t mean there’s nothing that goes into the pre-shot planning. In fact there’s probably more that goes into the pre-shot planning of a three-quarter wedge swing than there is for the tee shot that set this shot up. The tee shot is on a flat lie, we know which club we’re going to hit. We stand there and look at the fairway and hit it as hard as we can, but when we get down here to this three quarter wedge shot there’s lots of different things to consider.

The first thing I want you to consider is the yardage but there are actually two yardages that I want you to take. I’d like you to take the yardage to the pin. That’s where we want the ball to finish. But I would also like you to consider the yardage that you need to carry the ball on to the green. So sometimes golfers don’t appreciate how close the flag is to the front to the green. So they’re looking out there, they’ve got the yardage, its 100 yards to the pin. They don’t necessarily understand the bunker is at a 100 – sorry is at 95 yards. So they’ve only really got a five yard carry. Now five yard, carry from 100 yard out, that’s quite a difficult thing to judge, sort of 5% margin of error. And you make a good swing, it comes at 5% shot bang straight in the bunker. So what we’d like to do with that shot is maybe allow ourselves a little bit more carry to go – maybe land it at the flag or past the flag and then be a little bit safer.

So whenever you’re looking at weighing one of these shots up two yardages, one to the flag, one is the I must carry this distance and then factor that in to you club selection and also how hard you’re going to hit the shot. The next consideration is exactly that is the club selection. We might have four wedges, we might have to decide which wedge we’re going to use. So the yardage comes into this yes, but also we can look at how we want the ball to fly, what we want the ball to do when it comes down on the ground. Probably more consideration on these 100 to 120 yard three quarter wedge shot then maybe when we’re hitting a 7-Iron 150 yards out 7-Iron bish-bash-bosh full swing in a way we go. But inside100 yards we’ve got lots of different options so the club selection is vitally important.

The next thing to consider is the line that you’re going to pick. We might suggest well we’re going to lay it with the flag, but what happens if the flag is really tight to the side of the green or on a slope or near a bunker? We might have to consider aiming away from the flag which inherently for a golfer can feel a bit awkward to do, but smart golfers don’t always have to aim straight to the flag. They might consider where the danger is, but also where they want to leave their putt. If we’ve got a sloping green and we hit to the high side of the flag it can leave a very awkward downhill putt. We hit the same distance away from the flag but on the low side that putt generally is going to be easier.

So make sure you’re picking your line. And the last thing to put all of these together before you pull the trigger is to picture the shot. So we know our yardages, we know our club selection, we know our line. The last thing in the little sort of pre-shot routine is picture how it’s going to fly, what it’s going to look like, what it’s going to feel like. A little practice swing, picture the shot, and then go ahead and execute the shot. This shot is not just as simple as pulling a; club stand in there and hitting it at full power, there’s a lot more that goes into it in your pre-shot routine. Get you pre-shot routine right, and the shot will come out right as well.