Flop shot with no cut spin?

[mdl]

So I don't hit a real flop shot very often.  If I need to hit the ball high and soft I tend to use a slightly personalized version of the high, high pitch shot from

But I use a technique when I do need to hit a flop, and from green side bunkers when a quite long sand shot isn't required, that works quite well for me and lets me get little or not cut spin, but I'm wondering if anyone else does it this way.

Imagine you take a standard address and open the club face while keeping the shaft exactly the same.  Now the face is pointing right and the heel of the club is still on the ground but the toe is up in the air a bit.  I also tend to lower the handle a bit at this point, and I open the stance a bit too but no nowhere near as much as for a more standard flop shot.  Then there's a diagonal line along the club face from the leading edge to the top line starting pretty close to the heel on the leading edge and ending near the middle of the club on the top line.  That line has higher loft than the club at standard address and the line orthogonal to the club face touching that diagonal points over the target line.  Of course you can set up this relationship with a standard flop shot setup (and the line not diagonal across the club face), but I arrived at this because if the diagonal starts nearer the heel on the leading edge, I've found I can can set up in a way to deliver a strike with the face like that at impact and a square club path instead of a cut path.  And you can get less club/bounce underneath the club at the point you plan on hitting the ball as well.

This is tough from a super tight lie, but then, so is a standard flop.  This has helped me a ton out of the sand, letting me hit high soft sand shots that don't tend to either squirt out right or spin hard right on landing.  And I've found I can hit a flop like shot with this technique with less grass underneath the ball than I can with a more standard flop shot.  The drawback is that it lowers your acceptable impact area.  If you hit it center face or out on the toe you're almost guaranteed to skull it.  But for some reason I haven't found it that hard to avoid that with this setup, whereas I tend to skull classic flop shots way too regularly.

Anyone else ever do anything like this?

[mvmac]

To make sure I don't get any "cut spin" I don't open my stance up very much, if at all. Here's kind of my checklist for a flop.

- Spine feeling like it's vertical, don't want to be "leaning" back

- Ball slightly forward, so maybe just inside my left shoulder.

- Lower my butt

- Lower the handle

- Lean the handle back at address. At least have it neutral.

- If you use a stronger grip, weaken it.

[saevel25]

To make sure I don't get any "cut spin" I don't open my stance up very much, if at all. Here's kind of my checklist for a flop.

- Spine feeling like it's vertical, don't want to be "leaning" back

- Ball slightly forward, so maybe just inside my left shoulder.

- Lower my butt

- Lower the handle

- Lean the handle back at address. At least have it neutral.

- If you use a stronger grip, weaken it.

I'd like to add that at least for my swing, I really got to flip that clubhead under the ball. I almost want to feel like I flipped the clubhead way too early. If I get too much body rotation and not enough flip then I will hit it high but catch way too much of the ball and it will end up flying 30 yards.

[Abu3baid]

I just figured that this shot is just always naturally played with cut spin.. I'm probably just not ready to think about a different spin on it yet.. So I just play it thy way.. I will note what mvmac said though and try it out later just in case I want to try it some day! Great info!

[mdl]

To make sure I don't get any "cut spin" I don't open my stance up very much, if at all. Here's kind of my checklist for a flop.

- Spine feeling like it's vertical, don't want to be "leaning" back

- Ball slightly forward, so maybe just inside my left shoulder.

- Lower my butt

- Lower the handle

- Lean the handle back at address. At least have it neutral.

- If you use a stronger grip, weaken it.

So this is pretty close to what I took from your video I linked above, along with the starting with an open face and the flippy feel @saevel25 said he needs.  That's the high shot I use almost exclusively around the green, and I've gotten pretty good at it, getting good high flight pretty consistently, though with less consistent distance control than my stock pitch since I don't practice it as much.

What I said above is much more often the feel I use from the sand, and I use it elsewhere when I need a pretty extreme flop.

My question is with the lower the handle thing and assuming you want an extremely high shot, higher than you can get just from ensuring the dynamic loft is equal or close to the club loft, rather than being lower like it is for a more normal full or pitch shot.  I came to my approach from the simple physics of the fact that if you lower the handle you must have (i) the toe up, or (ii) the club face facing right of the stance.

With (ii), if you maintain the low handle at impact, either you have to open the stance way up and accept a ton of cut spin, or you have to try an almost impossible stroke sort of pushing the club face well forward and in to out to have the hands WAY behind the ball at impact, relative to the target line, to get no cut spin.  I came to my sort of V shot, with the heel down and the toe up, as the only way I could imagine hitting a shot with 65-70˚ of dynamic loft with my 60˚ wedge without doing that, and without major cut spin.

What's actually happening at impact with the above recommendation?  Is the handle back to normal at impact?  Is this all set up to ensure dynamic loft is very close to club loft at impact?  Can you hit a real sky ball this way?

[mvmac]

What's actually happening at impact with the above recommendation?  Is the handle back to normal at impact?  Is this all set up to ensure dynamic loft is very close to club loft at impact?  Can you hit a real sky ball this way?

Yep the handle can be back at impact. Can def hit it high.

[Hammer 4]

Just got back from the range. While I was there, I was thinking about this thread, i.e. flop shots with a cut spin. I tried everything I could think of, and I'll be danged if I couldn't get any of my flop shots to cut, or land and have the ball go right, heck I have a hard time getting any of my 54, or 60 degree wedges to draw, or cut...

[mvmac]

Yep the handle can be back at impact. Can def hit it high.