Stop Hitting Your Golf Wedge Shots Behind The Ball (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles
Stop Hitting Your Golf Wedge Shots Behind The Ball (Video) - Lesson by PGA Pro Pete Styles

One of the most satisfying shots in golf is that sort of 80 to a 100 yard wedge shot. Quite often the green might be surrounded by hazards or by danger but if you’ve got confidence in your distance control from that 80 to 100 yards, you know that you can hit the ball nice and sweetly, ball flies up in the air and will clear all of the hazards. And then if you got a bunker at the front and a bunker at the back, your ball just flies exact to the right distance and drops down perfectly straight between those two hazards nice and close to the flag and it gives you a real good sense of satisfaction.

But if that’s the most satisfying shot in golf, probably one of the most frustrating is setting up to play exactly that same shot and then hitting the ball fat because the second the club hits the ground before it hits the ball which is generally classed as a fat shot, you will instantly know that ball is not going to do what I pictured it to do. It’s not going to fly over the first bunker and land before the second bunker next to the flag. It’s probably not even going to reach the first bunker. I’m going to hit the ground before I get to the ball. The ball therefore leaves with a big lump of mud stuck to the back of it which is stuck to the club face, ball gets nowhere near its full height or its full distance and it falls well short of the green or the intended target. And that fat shot is a very, very critical shot. These wedge shots, they shouldn’t really be all that difficult because they’re not necessarily massive swings that maybe with some of the shorter and more lofted clubs in the bag and they’re not that difficult to get accurate because they don’t curve and spin off line like your drivers might do. Generally the wedge shot will fly to the largest extent pretty straight. So distance control becomes one of the biggest issues and distance control is in the largest part caused by strike. So a nice clean contact on the back of your wedges is one of the biggest areas of your game that you can work on if you want to improve your wedge shots from 80 to 100 yards out. Let’s make sure we get a good contact for better results.
2016-09-30

One of the most satisfying shots in golf is that sort of 80 to a 100 yard wedge shot. Quite often the green might be surrounded by hazards or by danger but if you’ve got confidence in your distance control from that 80 to 100 yards, you know that you can hit the ball nice and sweetly, ball flies up in the air and will clear all of the hazards. And then if you got a bunker at the front and a bunker at the back, your ball just flies exact to the right distance and drops down perfectly straight between those two hazards nice and close to the flag and it gives you a real good sense of satisfaction.

But if that’s the most satisfying shot in golf, probably one of the most frustrating is setting up to play exactly that same shot and then hitting the ball fat because the second the club hits the ground before it hits the ball which is generally classed as a fat shot, you will instantly know that ball is not going to do what I pictured it to do. It’s not going to fly over the first bunker and land before the second bunker next to the flag. It’s probably not even going to reach the first bunker. I’m going to hit the ground before I get to the ball. The ball therefore leaves with a big lump of mud stuck to the back of it which is stuck to the club face, ball gets nowhere near its full height or its full distance and it falls well short of the green or the intended target.

And that fat shot is a very, very critical shot. These wedge shots, they shouldn’t really be all that difficult because they’re not necessarily massive swings that maybe with some of the shorter and more lofted clubs in the bag and they’re not that difficult to get accurate because they don’t curve and spin off line like your drivers might do. Generally the wedge shot will fly to the largest extent pretty straight. So distance control becomes one of the biggest issues and distance control is in the largest part caused by strike. So a nice clean contact on the back of your wedges is one of the biggest areas of your game that you can work on if you want to improve your wedge shots from 80 to 100 yards out. Let’s make sure we get a good contact for better results.