Natalie Adams – PGA Teaching Pro

Being able to play from soft lie conditions where the ground is very soggy is going to be important, especially for at least half of the season, the winter or whenever there has just been a downpour. If the ground is water logging and making the turf very soft and soggy, the ball is going to nestle down and it will slightly plug. So it’s important to know how to play from that position, to get the most effective shot. So what we are going to do here is think about very similar technique and very similar setup to playing from the fairway bunker. With this shot, because the ball is slightly sitting down in the turf, in the soggy conditions, we want to make sure that we hit the ball very cleanly, we should make a clean strike towards that ball.

If the club head hits the ground, before it hits the ball, all the club head speed is going to be transferred into the ground and not into the ball, so the ball will only just be pushed forward a few yards, and you won’t hit an effective shot. So it’s encouraging to strike cleanly, it’s really important to set up correctly, so the way we want to do this, because you maybe feeling that your feet were a little bit lower in the ground, because it’s soft conditions, you maybe sinking. And also because part of the lower part of the ball could be in the ground, we are going to hold down the club, so hold a good inch to two inches down the club, that effectively is going to make the length between your shoulders and the club head a little bit shorter than normal. And because that length of shot is going to encourage you to strike towards the top of the ball, so hold down towards the bottom of the club.

We are also at set up and we are going to play the ball in the middle of the feet and we are going to lean slightly on the left side. The reason for leaning is, it’s going to encourage you to pick the club head up, so make a steeper swing play and a steeper takeaway. So if we look at what that means, with the alignment problem here, if this alignment problem is shown as the line we want to hit the ball down, as we setup, if we lean forwards onto our left side, it’s going to encourage us to tight the club along that line and then hinge the wrists of the club head, comes out quite vertically from the line, rather than allowing the club head to make a more rounded action around your body. So work on taking the club along the target line and then hinging the wrist, so the club head comes up quite steeply.

That’s now going to give you a really good angle to attack down from and if you are attacking down from the steeper angle, it’s going to encourage you to strike the top of the ball, rather than the turf first. So again working on setting up the ball in the center of the feet, we want to make sure we have got the weight on the left side and also to encourage that steeper pickup, keep the hands full, but look for really straight line from the left shoulder down the left arm to the left hand and then strike down the club and into the club head. If you work on that set up and then making that steeper swing, a swing that feels more like a V shape, really hitting down onto the ball, rather than sweeping in, you will take the ball cleanly and you will hit a really effective shot at those soggy conditions.