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Are you becoming increasingly frustrated at your inability to get up-and-down?
We've teamed up with Ping and short game coach to the stars on the PGA Tour James Ridyard to bring you all the short game advice you need to improve your wedge play. Whether it's pitching, generating more spin, striking chips cleanly or effective drills to try on the practice ground, we've got every angle covered in this video.
Transcript
00:00If you can become deadly accurate with your wedges,
00:03you're gonna be able to get yourself out of trouble,
00:05make the most of your great drives
00:06and see your scores start to come down.
00:08But how do you become a master of the short game?
00:11Well, we've enlisted the help of Ping
00:12as well as the leading short game coach, James Rydyard,
00:15gonna give you some advice
00:16on how to get the right wedges for your game
00:18and also show you how to use them correctly.
00:21We've come here to the custom-built short game area
00:23at Pavenham Park Golf Club.
00:25Let's get started.
00:26So James, one of the shots that every golfer wants to play
00:44is that really high spinning shot.
00:45We see it on the PGA Tour weekend with that showstopper.
00:49But I think a lot of golfers get this wrong
00:52and they see their chip and pitch shots
00:54running away from the flag.
00:55So what are the things golfers need to consider
00:57when it comes to creating more spin around the brains?
01:00Right, well, it'd be easy to jump in
01:01and just assume that it's technique, right?
01:04But that's overlooking probably the most fundamental piece,
01:06which is actually your environment.
01:08And by environment, I mean,
01:09the quality of the club you're using.
01:11Obviously, clean club, good grooves, good conditioned face,
01:15so no damage to it makes a big difference.
01:17Then the ball.
01:18The ball needs to be soft enough to actually spin.
01:20Then the third piece is that thing that you can't control
01:22and that's the environment you hit from.
01:24Okay, so any kind of longer grass,
01:26any kind of moisture in there, any kind of dirt,
01:28it's gonna be very, very difficult to spin the golf ball.
01:30And another part of the environment
01:31that maybe you don't consider is the landing area.
01:34So whether the green is above or below you
01:35is gonna make a difference to how quickly the ball stops.
01:37If the green's above you,
01:38the ball's gonna come in flatter and go forwards more.
01:41If it's below you, it's gonna come in steeper
01:42and stop faster.
01:43Then we have the actual slope you're hitting onto.
01:45So we have a slight downslope here, unfortunately,
01:48which is gonna make my ball kick forwards
01:49a little bit faster than if it were flat
01:51or into an upslope.
01:53Two things technically.
01:54Obviously, first of all, quality contact is primary.
01:56But if you're gonna hit it too hard on the club face,
01:58you're gonna have an issue.
01:59To the heel, you're gonna have some problems
02:00generating spin.
02:01All right, so quality contact's massive.
02:03Relatively low on the face, kind of lower grooves.
02:06I'm not gonna pick a groove number,
02:08but low is better than high.
02:09The second thing, and this might be a little bit technical,
02:12is your spin loft.
02:13If you consider a driver
02:15and it being the lowest spin club in the bag,
02:17we have the single spin loft,
02:18which is the loft you deliver, so up here,
02:20and your attack angle.
02:21With a driver, they're very, very close together.
02:24As the loft increases throughout your set,
02:26the spin loft increases
02:27and the spin you see increases as well.
02:29Obviously, the top end of that
02:30is gonna be your most lofted wedge.
02:32At setup, we'd really be looking to make sure
02:34that you are maximizing loft.
02:35We're not talking flop shot open,
02:37but probably some degree open.
02:38Even with a 60 here, I'm gonna open it
02:40probably five, 10 degrees to get it up to maybe 70-odd.
02:44Because the reality of things is,
02:47when I come into the golf ball,
02:48I am still gonna deliver some degree of shaft lean.
02:50Okay, I want that shaft leaning forwards
02:51for our quality of contact.
02:53So opening the face to some degree
02:54means we still deliver high loft.
02:56I'm also gonna cut across it just a little bit,
02:59because like I said, any kind of draw
03:01is gonna reduce spin.
03:02You think about long swing, same kind of example.
03:05If I'm gonna hook something in, it's gonna run.
03:07Generally, if you slice it, the ball stops pretty quick.
03:09Okay, so relatively narrow.
03:11Ball would be probably up just under my left chest.
03:14Knowing that I wanna be pretty shallow,
03:16I'm gonna make sure my swing stays relatively wide
03:18and I keep the loft on the golf club.
03:21I'm gonna go into that far pin there,
03:22second from the left.
03:26Nice and high, little bit of grab.
03:29I'm pretty good, considering we are pitching
03:31onto a slight down slope.
03:32There you go, some really good pointers there.
03:34If you wanna generate more spin,
03:35read the situation, incorporate that technique
03:37into your game to get a little bit more check
03:40around the greens.
03:44Right, let's get straight into it.
03:45I think it's fair to say that amateur golfers
03:47around the greens really struggle with their strike.
03:51We see a lot of players fending it over the green,
03:52chunking it in front of them.
03:53So how can we help golfers increase the margin for error
03:57on their wedge shots and strike their wedges
03:59cleanly, more consistently?
04:01I think the first hurdle to get over mentally
04:02is that it doesn't have to be perfect,
04:05or shouldn't need to be, if you can build
04:06in some degree of margin for error with these shots.
04:10And I'm gonna look at it just from two perspectives.
04:12First off, a little bit of a technique hint
04:14as to how the margin for error can grow.
04:16And secondly, obviously your wedge selection,
04:18wedge choice, the sole, and how to actually
04:20utilize that more effectively.
04:22So if you jump into the technical side of things,
04:24I have no real issue with somebody making contact
04:27with the ground behind the golf ball.
04:28Right, which would surprise a lot of people, right?
04:32Yeah, yeah, exactly.
04:32It takes people aback at first in lessons.
04:35I think because most people have a negative experience
04:38of striking the ground behind the ball.
04:39But if you deliver the club effectively,
04:40you can build in some margin back there
04:43and still hit an effective shot.
04:44Now it might not be the most sexy low spin
04:46you've ever hit in your life,
04:47but it will be on the green, it'll be under control.
04:49And I think the key aspect to that
04:52is to actually control the depth of the swing,
04:54or the depth of low point.
04:55People think about low point and concept on the ground
04:57as a forward-backward thing.
04:58I try and reframe it as more of an up and down.
05:00Now if my club is heading to a spot
05:02that's this far under the turf,
05:04it doesn't matter what kind of bounce,
05:06what kind of style I have in my club,
05:07it's not gonna save you.
05:09Because if I'm heading to a very low spot
05:10and I hit back here, I'm in trouble.
05:12So essentially what we need to do
05:13is raise the low point of the swing up.
05:15Okay.
05:16And you can do that in a few technical ways.
05:18I think maybe the most simple that I'll show you today
05:20would be to actually have this end of the club
05:21start to rise more through impact.
05:24But the opposite of that, obviously,
05:25would be driving this end of the club down.
05:27Right.
05:28A lot of people get kind of stuck in that rut
05:29of driving the club forwards and downwards
05:31to try and get their strike.
05:32And their margin actually gets smaller and smaller
05:34the more they do it.
05:35Okay, so raising the butt of the club up through impact
05:37is gonna help the low point come up.
05:39And the concept on the ground
05:40can be a little bit further back
05:41than maybe players expect.
05:43Wow, really?
05:44And if you want to actually be able to utilize
05:46the sole of the club, we need that low point up.
05:48So I'll just jump in and demonstrate.
05:49Yeah, let's see one in action for sure.
05:51Okay, so my rehearsal,
05:53I'm actually not really focused on the ball at all.
05:55What I'm focused on is my ground contact interaction.
05:57So I'm gonna look at starting a ground contact,
05:59maybe one golf ball back.
06:01And from that point,
06:02I'm gonna raise the butt of the club up as I move through.
06:05And that's gonna prevent me sticking the club in the ground.
06:06Okay.
06:12So you can hear the sound there.
06:13It was obviously ground, then ball,
06:15but the flight was still good.
06:16It's rolled down to four feet.
06:18I think I'm gonna take that most of the time.
06:19So let's move on to like the technique
06:21around the sole of the club
06:22and how we can make it a bit more friendly
06:24in terms of how it interacts with the ground
06:26and how we can change our setup potentially
06:28to implement that in our games.
06:30Yep.
06:31So we're kind of getting into the,
06:33maybe the shaft lean topic a little bit.
06:35And people are assuming that
06:36because from this face on camera,
06:38let's say they have a significant amount of forward lean,
06:41means that they're not engaging bounce anymore.
06:43Now that only holds true
06:44if the club face is square to target
06:46or even slightly close to target.
06:48If you're the kind of player that does deliver that,
06:50then forward lean is probably gonna hurt you a little bit,
06:53especially if that forward lean number
06:54is more than the bounce angle on the club.
06:57But if you happen to be an open face player at all,
07:00so if I put a lot of forward lean on
07:02and rotate the face open,
07:04the bounce number increases incredibly quickly.
07:06So you can actually deliver a club leaning towards target
07:08with an open face and still engage a ton of bounce.
07:13So I've delivered a good amount of lean,
07:18but you can see I've left nothing, no mark on the ground.
07:20It's not dug in at all.
07:21So there you go, pretty good result there.
07:22Hopefully that's given you some food for thought
07:24in terms of your technique around the green with the wedges
07:26to make the sole on your club work for you.
07:32Well, James, I think every golfer knows
07:33they need some wedges in their bag,
07:35but with all the different options
07:37when it comes to wedges, loft, bounce, grind,
07:39all that sort of thing,
07:40it can be difficult for golfers
07:41to know exactly what's gonna work for them.
07:44And a good starting point I would suggest
07:46is using this new PING WebFit Wedge app,
07:50which is gonna give us some recommendations
07:52based on some questions that we answer.
07:53So let's go through that process
07:54and you can talk through some of the questions
07:56they're asking and why that's important
07:57in terms of choosing the right wedges for you.
07:59So it should take less than two minutes.
08:02We'll give it a try.
08:03First question is asking me, what is my average score?
08:06Gonna go 74 on a good day.
08:08Don't laugh on that one, please.
08:10And now it's asking us,
08:11what is my pitching wedge carry distance?
08:13So why would the app be asking us that?
08:15Yep, so it's looking at providing
08:17gapping information for you.
08:18So to fill the gap from whatever distance
08:21your pitching wedge carries down to partial wedge shots
08:23as a longer hitter, potentially that gap is bigger
08:26and you might need more wedges.
08:27Perfect, so 132 yards for me.
08:30What is my highest lofted wedge?
08:31So that's a 58 degree wedge for me.
08:34Why would it be asking us that?
08:36Just getting an idea of what kind of shots
08:38you almost like to play around the green.
08:40Whether you'd like to play high shots, low shots.
08:42Okay, cool.
08:42And now it's asking me, what are my typical turf conditions?
08:45I think this is a really important question.
08:47Talk us through some of the considerations around that.
08:50Yeah, so obviously in the UK,
08:52we're just looking really at maybe length of grass
08:55and whether it's hard or soft ground.
08:56But if you start to go abroad, you go to the US
08:58and you start to deal with Bermuda,
08:59we have different strains of grass.
09:01And so it's looking at an idea of the turf you play off
09:03because that will then lead towards the bounce and grinds
09:07that will be most suitable for you.
09:08So I'm going to go with medium for that.
09:10And it's now asking me what my typical sand conditions are.
09:13So I tend to play my bunker shots
09:15with my highest lofted wedge, 58.
09:16Why would the, whether it's soft, medium or firm sand,
09:19why would that have an impact
09:20on how I would choose my wedge?
09:22Yeah, so in short, that's going to influence
09:24how the club interacts with the sand.
09:26If the sand is firm, the club is going to kick out
09:28more easily versus something that is deeper, heavier,
09:31the club is going to go through it much more slowly.
09:32So if I was playing in quite firm sand, quite tight sand,
09:37how would I adjust my wedge setup?
09:39Typically, you would go towards a lower bounce wedge.
09:41Okay, to get the leading edge under the sand.
09:44Yeah, because the club is, if you have a lot of bounce,
09:47it's really trying to help the club out of the sand,
09:49which is probably the opposite of what you need
09:50when there's barely any sand in there.
09:51Yeah, okay, cool.
09:52So let's go with, we'll go with medium for that
09:54because that's kind of typically what my bunkers are like.
09:56Now we're talking about typical divot length.
09:59And again, a really important factor.
10:01Why is it asking us that?
10:03It's going to give some indication of attack angle
10:07and the shaft length or loft you deliver.
10:10So in short, the kind of longer, the deeper the divot,
10:13the steeper a player would expect to play them to be.
10:15Yeah, I think golfers don't really play a lot
10:18of heed to their divots.
10:19And I think it's a really good thing to notice
10:21when you hit some chip and pitch shots around the green,
10:23see whether your divots are shallow or deep
10:24because that has an indication of your technique.
10:27So I'm going to go for medium for me on that one.
10:29It's now building my grind profile,
10:31but it's first asking me what my preferred
10:34pitch shot technique is, whether it's with a square face
10:36or an open face.
10:37Why is it asking us that?
10:38Yeah, but again, we're looking at the implications
10:41with bounce that you need, grind that you need.
10:44So if you play your pitch shots with an open face?
10:48More open face, typically you could potentially
10:50play a lower bounce wedge.
10:51Okay, so I tend to play my pitch shots with a square face.
10:54So we'll go with square face.
10:56Now it's asking us what my typical ball position is
10:58on a pitch shot.
11:00So middle back or middle forward?
11:02Why is it asking us that?
11:03Yeah, but again, that'll give us some kind of insight
11:06into attack angle, typically, all things being equal,
11:09which is going to help, again, ascertain bounce required.
11:13Yeah, so if your ball is back,
11:14you're probably going to be a little bit steeper.
11:16Yes, and you're probably going to need
11:17a little bit more help.
11:18Need a little bit more bounce.
11:19Yeah, okay.
11:20So I tend to be a middle forward type of golfer.
11:23So let's put that in.
11:25So the app is now asking what my highest priority is
11:27with my most lofted wedge.
11:29Definitely for me, it's bunker play.
11:31That's kind of pretty much the only situation
11:33I use my highest lofted wedge on.
11:36It's now going to finalize my grind profile.
11:40Come to the moment of truth.
11:42Okay, so obviously we know with the Pingai S159 wedge
11:46in particular, there's six different grinds available.
11:48So there's a lot of options out there.
11:49The app selector tool gives you two options
11:52to then go and try.
11:53It's recommending an E sole for me in the 58,
11:56which is obviously the more bunker specific sole.
11:59And an S grind as well.
12:01So there you go.
12:01I've gone through that process.
12:02It's taken hardly any time at all.
12:03It's completely free and it's thrown up
12:05some really interesting kind of selections
12:07in terms of guiding me into some wedge designs
12:09that are going to work for me.
12:10And if you're struggling to choose your wedges,
12:13if you want some initial guidance,
12:14definitely check out the Ping web fit wedge app.
12:17It's going to give you some really useful information.
12:20What's up, so let's move on to pitching.
12:24Something I think is a bit of an underrated skill in golf.
12:27There's nothing worse than getting within 50 yards
12:29on a par five and walking off with six.
12:31So let's try and help the viewers pitching technique.
12:34What are the sort of mistakes that people make
12:36when it comes to pitching
12:37and how are we going to go about fixing those?
12:39Yeah, so I think maybe a good way to frame it
12:42is if you were going to throw a ball from A to B,
12:45you probably wouldn't launch it as high as you could
12:47to get it to cover the distance.
12:48You'd actually launch it fairly flat.
12:50I think the most obvious thing to look at
12:51is when players are trying to launch the ball high
12:54because they misunderstand maybe how to play these shots,
12:58typically they're trying to add loft through impact.
13:01So they start to lose shaft lean too quickly
13:03and present too much loft to the golf ball.
13:05So the most simplistic way to bring your ball flight down
13:07is obviously to deliver more shaft lean impact.
13:10Now, the most basic way to do it
13:12is play the ball further back than normal
13:13if you're a player that launches it too high.
13:16If you play it central,
13:18you need to perhaps pivot a little bit better,
13:20learn to hold a little bit more angle in this wrist
13:22to actually have the club leaning forwards
13:24and deliver less loft.
13:25Okay.
13:26So let's see one here.
13:27We're at Pavement Park Golf Club,
13:28your excellent short game area.
13:30You're just going to pitch one to this first flag,
13:31which I think is, well, the first green,
13:33which is 40 yards away.
13:34So let's see one here
13:36where you're going to bring the flight down on this one.
13:38Hopefully you're not going to shank it into my legs.
13:42I'm standing quite close to you.
13:43The temptation level is very high right now, Joel.
13:50Brilliant.
13:52You can see that actually came out a lot lower
13:54than I was expecting it to,
13:55and it still stopped on that green, that tiny green.
13:57Yeah.
13:58So we're looking at,
13:59if you do have access to a launch monitor of any kind,
14:01we're looking for 28 to 31 degrees as the window,
14:04which is much flatter than most people actually realise.
14:07Really interesting.
14:07Okay, so we've brought the flight down.
14:09Now we need to control our distances,
14:11and you were talking about golfers relying
14:13most heavily on feel,
14:14but I think most golfers probably need some sort of system
14:17to give them options when it comes to pitching
14:19and hitting those different distances.
14:21Some kind of basic clock face.
14:22So essentially, I would look at your core shot
14:26or things to base things off
14:28as left arm parallel to the ground.
14:29So it'd be nine o'clock on the clock face.
14:31So the process to go through is really to figure out
14:33how far that goes, and then we can take something off
14:35so you could end up with something that's more like 730,
14:39and then perhaps up to 10, 1030.
14:41So that'd be three wedge distances straight away.
14:43And then obviously if you've got three different wedges,
14:45that's nine different distances.
14:46Exactly.
14:47Along with your full shots.
14:48Yep.
14:49And then the final thing we were talking about was
14:51when you're trying to get maximum distance out of it,
14:53the ball goes too high.
14:55The ball flight can be hit by the wind and different things.
14:57So we're trying to hit lower lofted wedges
15:00a bit more under control.
15:01When you are swinging more full out,
15:03there's more potential for a miss hit.
15:04Okay.
15:05Because your technique's usually gonna suffer a little bit.
15:06Then the ball will start to launch high.
15:08So you start to put more effort into the shot.
15:10It launches higher and you still don't really get
15:12much more distance out of it.
15:13And like I said at the beginning,
15:14if you want to get the ball from A to B most easily,
15:16the last thing you want to do
15:17is throw it right up in the air.
15:19Okay.
15:20So you'd recommend coming down in loft.
15:21Coming down in loft.
15:22More controlled swing.
15:23So maybe we can see one there to this.
15:23Yes, I'll switch to my 55.
15:26Here we go.
15:28Beautiful.
15:29Seamless.
15:30So we go to the 80 yard green.
15:32Yeah.
15:33So I'm probably not gonna be a long way
15:35past the nine o'clock swing here.
15:37Shouldn't have to force it.
15:42Nice down to control there.
15:44Low ball flight, one bounce.
15:46Right on the middle of that green.
15:47Happy with that one?
15:49I'll take it.
15:50There you go.
15:51So three really useful tips there
15:52if you are struggling with your pitch shots
15:53that should help you attack those flags.
15:59Right James, we've already given our viewers
16:00some great short game advice,
16:02but if there was one drill that you could give golfers
16:05to go and try for themselves
16:06that's gonna have the biggest impact
16:08on their short game performance,
16:10what would it be and why?
16:11Yeah, so it's gonna be,
16:12it's actually a finished position drill.
16:15Or checkpoint.
16:16But we're gonna turn that checkpoint into a drill.
16:19So I like to teach players to get into a finished position
16:21that essentially means they've ticked three boxes.
16:24Those would be to make sure
16:25they've used their body correctly,
16:27they've done a good job with their arms
16:28and their release has been synced up
16:30with those other two things.
16:32So I'll talk you through it
16:33if you're in a great position to see it.
16:35So no backswing, I'm just gonna turn through to target
16:37and I want you to observe how I've turned my chest fully.
16:40My arms are still kind of soft and beside me.
16:43The club is aligned with my center.
16:45And obviously I've got this coat hanger
16:46that you will notice pointing at the center of my body.
16:49All right, so it becomes a drill
16:50when you start to involve a training aid or tool.
16:52Now obviously everyone has coat hangers.
16:54I assume you could do something else.
16:55You could use a stick in the end of your club,
16:56you could hold a stick beside it,
16:57but this is light and easy for convenience.
17:00So as long as you tick those three boxes,
17:02rotation, arm position and shaft positioned,
17:05you won't have cheated your release or over-release,
17:08you won't have dragged it,
17:09you won't have sent your arms across your body too fast
17:11and you have to pivot effectively.
17:17Okay, so decent contact, good flight,
17:19and I can look down, immediate feedback,
17:21arm position's good, chest is pivoted,
17:24and my release must have been in time.
17:25Yeah, I can see that shaft pointing
17:27right at the middle of your body,
17:27it's not too far one way or the other, so.
17:29Exactly, it's all nicely connected.
17:30You've done everything you need to do.
17:32So there you go, there's a really easy
17:33practice drill for you to try.
17:35Get a coat hanger, put it in your grip,
17:36hit some chip shots, achieve those three checkpoints
17:39in your finish position,
17:40and hopefully your scores will start to tumble.
17:42So there you have it.
17:43Hopefully you enjoyed this video
17:44and it's given you a few pointers
17:46that you can go and try out on the golf course
17:47to help you get up and down a little bit more often
17:50and save some shots around the green.
17:51But that's all from me and James
17:53from the short game area at Pavement Park Golf Club.
17:56We'll see you next time.