Trouble with wedge

I am having trouble hitting my PW around my 120 yards and sometime hit it only around 95 yards. I am leaving the face open and not rolling my left hand enough and swinging through correctly. Is there any quick drills or fixes to this dilema?

Try swing your wedge with your feet together. This will force you to turn around your body and shift your weight making a compact swing.

Try dropping your right shoulder slightly and tucking your right elbow against your body when you take the club back to parallel, this will also help you keep a compact swing and help allow you to make solid contact with the ball.

Try loosening your grip and allow the hands work naturally. The grip pressure should be as if you are holding a tube of tooth paste with the cap open.

good luck

Thanks. I will give it a try. I know I grip too tight at times and don't release the club. I haven't tried the feet closer together stance but that sounds like solid advice. Thanks again.

Ed

Focus on solid crisp contact with your irons. You can put masking tape on your pitching wedge and see where you are making contact.

Ball position toward the back foot will help with making solid contact.

good luck

One error that I see with wedges is a failure to bend over and/or bend the knees enough. This results in the player setting up too close to the ball and swinging too upright. That makes it difficult to rotate the clubface properly through impact.

Another excellent point.

I can only get 100 yards out of my PW if I do everything correct. I did turn 50 recently and maybe I am just getting old. I used to get 120 yards easily out of my PW not too long ago. I just don't play enough I guess. I also lost about 15 pounds. Maybe when I was heavier I had more power. I duuno.

I feel that this drill is only really applicable to developing a good rhythm on pitch shots. Although one of the best ways to develop good full swing rhythm is getting your short game rhythm together, i dont think it's a good idea in this situation.

In order to insure that you are hitting your wedges to their full potential, i think it is vital to take a full shoulder turn in your backswing. If you are reasonably flexible, you should be getting your shoulder to turn and end up under your chin. Then all you have to do is drop your hands in from the inside and swing. I highly highly suggest that if you arent certain if you are making a proper shoulder turn, you should enlist the help from somebody who does. It's a pretty easy thing to recognize if you know what you are looking for. Once you get that down, your swing will become much easier to execute consistently. All you have to do is bring your backswing to a full turn...that really eliminates a lot of swing problems and inconsistency.

m11,

I think you nailed my major problem. My lower back gets stiff and I develope a bad takeaway. I am planning on working on my backswing with a slower tempo. I think I am casting and using too much arms and undercutting the ball...thus too high and short right.
Thanks for the insight.

I would have to agree with m11. I was having a problem with using too much arms and it was from my elbow though. I was bringing it outside and the only way to compensate is to come across the ball. I am working on it now and trying to get my swing back to normal.

As i'm certain you know clemsontiger, you never want to come across the ball or over the top on a standard conditions shot. This opens the door to every problem in the book. Just a tip....and i'm gonna assume you are right handed.... take your setup and grip a pen in your left hand as if it were a golf club. Dont have your right hand on the club. Take the "club" back like normal, but be sure to twist your hips so that your left shoulder ends up under your chin. Also, if you were to draw a line straight down from your left hand when you are at a full turn...it should fall straight down to your right hip....sometimes further back...depends on your flexibility. Also, do not dip your left shoulder to allow for the turn. It should remain up where it was at address. Thats what a full turn should feel like for you. You dont need your right arm to make a full turn. After you have that feeling...take a club with both hands..take your grip like normal...and recreate the same positions. Shoulder under the chin, and hands directly above your hips (again, do not dip your left shoulder down to the ground..the left shoulder...your torso and your left hip should be reasonably straight. I used to dip my shoulder a lot...creating almost like a backwards C with my shoulders, torso and hips. Also, its imperative to understand that you need to get that right elbow out of the way. Your right arm isnt what makes your swing..it guides your left arm coming down...and stabilizes the club. Thats why you used a pen instead of a club...a club wouldve been too difficult to properly handle with 1 arm on a full swing. So yea, at setup...think to relax your right elbow/arm as much as you can. Thats the only thing i think about in my swing. Relax the elbow. That sets me up to make a good turn and bring the club back properly. Allow your elbow to fold in, and at the top of your swing, your right arm should more or less look like you are posing to flex your bicep. Like put your arm up to flex your bicep and thats basically the position it should be at at the top of your swing if you folded your elbow in properly. Once you are there...all you have to do is think "hands first" on the downswing. I feel like all this talk about exploding your hips or swinging with your hips first is a little misleading. That is essentially an advanced power move that all of us will be able to master once we get rid of all our over the top moves and general swing flaws. The last thing you need to be doing is trying to hit your 9iron 160 yards when you cant get it to go 140 yards every time. Once you get the clubface making great contact every time...then you can go for power. Until then, go with hands first. Your hands drop down from the inside to initiate your downswing. Once that happens, you will be fine. Your natural momentum will take you to good contact and full finish (this is assume you have a great setup. there is no reason to not strive for having a perfect setup). I think i noticed that you, clemsontiger, are something like a 10 handicap so you obviously already know what you are doing. However, just checking for those little swing points and "hands first" swing thoughts can help out with your occasional elbow lockup and over the top move.

That could be it right there. You may just not hit your clubs quite as far, and maybe now you are overswinging and trying to compensate for the loss in distance? As mentioned just focus on making crisp contact DOWN and THROUGH the ball with the hands leading and the clubhead trailing.

Three things i would like to mention from this post. First of all, congratulations on the 15 pounds. That is fantastic. Secondly, the weight loss will actually add power to your swing, not take away from it. It took me awhile to understand that power in golf is not raw strength. Power in golf comes from torque and energy efficiency. I've played all the other standard sports before i took up golf. I always thought that the best way to get a golf ball going long is to do what i did in the baseball days, and thats hit at the ball as hard as i can. Swing for the fences basically. If i didnt hit the ball right on the sweet spot of the bat...no big deal....i was swinging so damn hard that ok contact anywhere would've given me a shot at getting the ball over the fence. Not the case in golf. You miss by an inch and you are looking at putting a chili up Lee Jansen's ass. (sorry, just watched Tin Cup). So yea, i was mentioning full shoulder turns in the other posts. Try the same drill that i mentioned to clemsontiger, however try to make that turn as far as you can comfortably. Even if you dont get around as far as I mentioned, just getting the club moving in the proper direction is sufficient. There are plenty of golfers your age with very varying flexibility that can catch the ball 260 yards with their driver. I dont know how limited with your flexibility is..or if it is even limited at all. You may be more flexible now than you were at 20. I have no idea. But try that shoulder turn drill with the pen. You'll find out there. You wont be able to drive the ball 300 our hit a PW 150 yards without a full turn, its just physics, it wont happen. But the goals that you have mentioned are probably attainable, and really it is a surprisingly quick fix...to make sure you are turning properly. After three years of shooting in the 100's... i went from the 100's to the 80' after 1 golf lesson just by learning the shoulder turn properly works.