00:00So let's get you better dialed in from inside 100 yards. We're going to be
00:04looking at something really cool called the Distance Wedge Triangle. Let's get
00:07into it.
00:19So the Distance Wedge Triangle is made up of three aspects. The first is
00:24centeredness of strike. The second is making sure you've got a nice low dynamic
00:30loft at impact, usually less than 15 degrees. And then the third is altering
00:36your swing length to increase or decrease the amount of club head speed
00:40you've got at impact. All three of those aspects are absolutely critical to be
00:45accurate inside 100 yards. We've often looked at the third one, swing lengths,
00:50that's been well coached and well documented, but the first two have often
00:54been neglected. So we're going to really focus on those.
01:01So number one, centeredness of strike. What we're trying to do here is make sure
01:05that we hit the ball out of the horizontal center, i.e. not out of the toe or the
01:10heel, but also out of the vertical center as well, which means not catching it fat
01:15or thin. In order to do that, we're going to need to do a couple of quick things
01:20at setup. I like to see the ball just forward of center of your stance, left foot turned out,
01:26a little bit of weight favoring your left side and maybe even invoke a little bit of forward
01:31shaft lean at address. We're going to make a nice centered backswing. That means that we're not
01:36swaying our head way off it or moving our weight excessively over to the right, because that's going
01:42to cause us real contact problems with where we hit the ground. We're trying to make sure that we hit
01:47the ground either level with or slightly after the golf ball, just like that. If we can do that,
01:54we're going to get ball first, divot second, that nice compressed contact with the ball.
02:01Once we've learned to hit the ground in the right spot, what I like to do then is do the runway drill,
02:07which is all about trying to make sure that we land the club in the horizontal position correctly.
02:14So what I like to do is set up this little tram line, set up to the middle of it here,
02:19and I've given myself a little runway or a tramway there that I can swing down.
02:25You can see I just hit a little bit too close to me on that one. We'll have another go. Set up those
02:31tram lines again. Just go a little bit further back. On that one, I landed it a little bit too far
02:40away from from me. So this third and final one now, I should be able to land it exactly on the correct
02:48spot. Perfect. Right down the tram lines. That's going to give me a really nice opportunity to hit it
02:56exactly out of the center and also out of the vertical center. Those are going to give you really
03:01consistent ball speeds and it's going to allow that ball to come off with a controlled amount of spin
03:07and launch to get the ball landing nice and close to the flag.
03:16So the second aspect of the triangle is having that nice low dynamic loft. The best players will
03:22probably de-loft their wedge shots around 15 degrees for a distance wedge shot in this region of 70 yards
03:28or so. What we're trying to do is make sure that we've got plenty of shaft lean through impact and
03:33that we're delivering that club. You know, if it was a 58 degree lofted wedge, I would de-loft this to
03:38around 43 at impact. The reason we want that is it's going to give us that nice low launch angle, high spin,
03:45plenty of friction. The ball will grab nice and low on the grooves and it will come in and get that nice
03:51one hop and stop type effect when it lands. So how can we do that? Well, I like to use the alignment stick
03:57drill. So what you're going to do is grip the club with the alignment stick about halfway down the
04:02alignment stick and just try and take your normal grip, try and fashion it up so that you're still
04:07holding the stick next to the grip. And you're going to have the alignment stick just outside your left
04:12hip. And what it does is it invokes a nice amount of forward shaft lean even at address. We're not looking
04:19for that necessarily, but it helps certainly with the drill. But what I'm trying to do is make sure
04:23that when I swing through, I'm not allowing this stick to touch my left rib cage. If I do, I'm going
04:29to get really bruised on my left rib cage. So making little shots back and through as a drill, trying to
04:37just brush the ground with that nice low dynamic loft. So let's give it a go. Let's try and hit a shot
04:43here. I've got GC quad running, get into my normal setup position, good centered backswing, as I've said
04:51before, ball just forward of center, a little bit of weight on my left, and I'm really trying to deal
04:57off the club through impact. Nice low flying distance wedge shot. GC quads there telling me I actually
05:11de-lofted that there to, what's it coming up with, 7044 spin and it was de-lofted to 44 degrees of lofted
05:21impact. So a nice 14 degree de-loft. That's exactly what we're looking for. Low flying, a nice spin on the shot.
05:33So the third aspect is dealing with the different club head speeds that can control the ball speed and
05:39how far the shot carries. So how can we easily monitor that? Well, this is something that's been
05:45spoken about a lot by various different instructors over the years, and it's how to use the clock system
05:50in your wedge game. What we can almost do is imagine where would our left arm swing to in the backswing.
05:57You could swing your arm, you know, from down here at address at six o'clock. We could swing it to sort of
06:028.30, maybe 9.30, 10 o'clock, or indeed all the way up to a full backswing. Those three different sized
06:10backswings will obviously give you three different club head speeds. Now, obviously when we're doing
06:16this, you can call it what you want. You can call it a small swing, a medium swing, a large swing.
06:22You can call it half, three quarter, full. It really doesn't matter. What's important is that it's
06:27individual to you, and you know how far each of these shots goes for you. What I recommend to players
06:33is get the numbers written on the back of your wedge. Try and see if you can actually practice
06:38them at a range, a top tracer range or a trapman range, and put them down on the back of your wedge
06:44so that when you pull the club out of your golf bag, you know exactly what your three swings are.
06:49So I've got a 50 yard shot here. I know my small 8.30 swing goes about 46 yards carry, so let's give it
06:58a try. Again, as I've mentioned, monitoring my setup, ball just forward of center, a little bit of weight
07:07on my left and a nice 8.30 backswing. A little bit left of the pin, but it's gone the right distance.
07:19So give those three aspects of the distance wedge triangle a go. Make sure that you're focusing
07:25on centered strikes, on a nice minus 15 dynamic loft at impact, and get those distance wedges
07:32dialed in with three different backswing lengths, and you'll watch your proximity to the hole get way,
07:37way, way better inside a hundred yards.
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