Club Selection Is Crucial For 50 Yard Golf Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles
Club Selection Is Crucial For 50 Yard Golf Shots (Video) - by Pete Styles

One of the difficulties can arise in a golfer’s mind when they are assessing a 40 to 50 yards chip shot, is the club selection. It comes to point where you look in your bag and you could think pretty much every club in my back could go 40 to 50 yards, clearly the longer club to drive it through was that going to go further than that but you could check down and then make them go that distance. But all your wedges will also go 40 to 50 yards, so it could almost be more difficult to decide on a 40 to 50 yard distance than a 140 to 150 yard. 140 to 150, might be one club reaches that but on the shorter shots, all of your irons can go that distance. Actually a lot of your, so your lob wedge, sand wedge, gap wedge, pitch wedge 9, 8, 7 could be appropriate for this distance as well. A lot of it can depend on what you actually want the ball to do, yes you want it to go that far, but how high do you want it to go. It isn't always the case that we should be playing this with the most lofted club and throwing the ball up in the air with the lob wedge, there is lots of other options that we might take to play the right shot this distance.

And what we need to assess here is we need to assess what’s in front to us, what questions is the golf course and the weather conditions asking of us. So we look at things like how big the green is, where the hazards are within the green, where the hole is located in the green, what the wind is doing, what the weather conditions are doing, how fast the green is going to be, what the lie is like. So if we are playing a hole where it’s a small green with a pond at the front and the flag right at the front. We have got no wind and we have got a good lie that might look like a lob wedge, throw the ball up as high as you can, land the ball in the middle of the green, try and get it to stop or even put a bit of backspin on. But if you have got a different situation where you have got no hazard at the front, but you do have a hazard at the back, you have got a very strong headwind then you don’t have a great lie, it’s probably not going to be a lob wedge, you might feel a lob wedge go straight up in the air, the wind hits it and blows it back at you. You might feel it must be better there playing something like a pitching wedge, bring the ball, fly it down, fly it a bit lower and roll it out a bit more. All of these considerations need to be taken before you actually pull the club out to the back. And a lot of these considerations need to happen in your pre shot routine. So you stand back behind the ball and assess the quality of the lie, the wind direction and strength, the shape of the green, the hole location, the hazards, then you select the club, then you work out how hard you need to hit it, you get your swing length right, when you are happy, you have got your swing length right, you have got everything dialed in, then you finally set up the ball and commit, but you don’t setup to the ball before you perfectly happy that you got the right club and you have selected the right shot for this 40 to 50 yard pitch. 2016-09-30

One of the difficulties can arise in a golfer’s mind when they are assessing a 40 to 50 yards chip shot, is the club selection. It comes to point where you look in your bag and you could think pretty much every club in my back could go 40 to 50 yards, clearly the longer club to drive it through was that going to go further than that but you could check down and then make them go that distance. But all your wedges will also go 40 to 50 yards, so it could almost be more difficult to decide on a 40 to 50 yard distance than a 140 to 150 yard. 140 to 150, might be one club reaches that but on the shorter shots, all of your irons can go that distance. Actually a lot of your, so your lob wedge, sand wedge, gap wedge, pitch wedge 9, 8, 7 could be appropriate for this distance as well. A lot of it can depend on what you actually want the ball to do, yes you want it to go that far, but how high do you want it to go. It isn't always the case that we should be playing this with the most lofted club and throwing the ball up in the air with the lob wedge, there is lots of other options that we might take to play the right shot this distance.

And what we need to assess here is we need to assess what’s in front to us, what questions is the golf course and the weather conditions asking of us. So we look at things like how big the green is, where the hazards are within the green, where the hole is located in the green, what the wind is doing, what the weather conditions are doing, how fast the green is going to be, what the lie is like. So if we are playing a hole where it’s a small green with a pond at the front and the flag right at the front. We have got no wind and we have got a good lie that might look like a lob wedge, throw the ball up as high as you can, land the ball in the middle of the green, try and get it to stop or even put a bit of backspin on. But if you have got a different situation where you have got no hazard at the front, but you do have a hazard at the back, you have got a very strong headwind then you don’t have a great lie, it’s probably not going to be a lob wedge, you might feel a lob wedge go straight up in the air, the wind hits it and blows it back at you. You might feel it must be better there playing something like a pitching wedge, bring the ball, fly it down, fly it a bit lower and roll it out a bit more.

All of these considerations need to be taken before you actually pull the club out to the back. And a lot of these considerations need to happen in your pre shot routine. So you stand back behind the ball and assess the quality of the lie, the wind direction and strength, the shape of the green, the hole location, the hazards, then you select the club, then you work out how hard you need to hit it, you get your swing length right, when you are happy, you have got your swing length right, you have got everything dialed in, then you finally set up the ball and commit, but you don’t setup to the ball before you perfectly happy that you got the right club and you have selected the right shot for this 40 to 50 yard pitch.