Pete Styles – PGA Teaching Pro
You noticed I started by hitting two golf shots I got a sand wedge for both of these shots and just trying to chip the ball twenty yards out here. You can see that's quite a high level twenty yard pitch and I've moved off the front of the practice ground to a lot of down slope, and you can see both balls are gonna largely similar distance just a couple of yards in between them. but two very very different shots there now I tried to do the same thing as I could on both shots and hit high sand wedge shots but the difference there was the down slope I don't know whether it shows up on camera but this is the flat part of the practice tee and then here we're on a downslope I fall off the front to the tee here as I go down the slope now the problem is you'll get a lot of those type of shots on the golf course just inherently the shots you are hitting with a sand wedge will often come from slow P. or contoured areas the side of the green the side of a bunker and around the green will have lots of these downhill shots and we're trying to hit a high shot off a downhill slope off and that's where with the problem lies because to all intents and purposes the slope that you have will take the loft off the shot so if you're on a ten degree down slope you'll lose ten degrees of height from the shot you're trying to hit making obviously the height you're trying to hit is the lofted club that you see maybe fifty five degrees our sand wedge last ten degrees of the hill it's only forty five degree club.
Therefore we need to account for that with the type of shot we're going to try and hit now we can consider the best way of playing this shot because we really don't want to get caught out by trying to scoop the ball in the air often on a downslope we see golfers leaning back and trying to lift the ball in the air and that's really not the intention but we'd rather do is angle our shoulders with the hill take a spine angle to point down the hill as well then use a nice lofted club and just try and slide the club on the back of the ball to allow the ball to lift up again. Like I said when ever you are on the downslope will come off the loft of the shot to the best way to approach this is actually to manage the shot or manage your expectations with the shot better rather than trying to land the ball on a high flight landing next to hold and spin it it won't happen from that down slope even with the best technique in the world. It's a tough shot so you're better off doing is thinking more about where do I want the ball to land to allow it to roll further Do I want to take on the aggressive shot straight to the flag or should I be better off actually aiming at away from the flag to manage my expectations and get the ball close to playing chip shots and short game shots off downhill slopes on easy angle you shoulders with the slope angle your spine perpendicular to the slope use plenty of loft and then allow for your expectations to be different allow for the reaction of the shot to be different and hopefully that will help you improve your short game shots from the down slopes.