Why You Need This:

In this video, “How to Control Wedge Distance | Clock System Wedges”…

You’re going to get a fantastic system for dialing in your wedge shots and making tons more birdies!

Most of the time, players struggle when faced with a shot where you’re too close to take a full swing…

…and too far for a simple chip or pitch shot.

Not anymore!

This video will walk you through the system I use to know exactly how hard to swing…

…to get the ball within a really close range of your desired distance darn near every time.

While all of your buddies will be throwing away chances to score from 40, 60, 70 yards…

You’ll be lining up birdie putt after birdie putt from those same yardages 🙂

The best part is, you can have a lot of fun practicing this method.

So, go ahead and watch this video now to discover my system, have some fun working on it, and have an absolute blast watching your scores drop!

What's Covered: How certain clubs mixed with the correct arm level and tempo will allow you to precisely control your partial wedge shot distances.

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 7:52

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, and welcome back to Top Speed Golf. In today’s video we’re going to talk about your distance wedges. So once we get out about 30 or 40 yards away from the hole, all the way back to your full wedges, we can use different length backswings to control the distance of our wedge shot.

So for example, if we imagine that I’m a clock and 6:00 is directly down, and my wedge would be at 6:00, or my arms would be at 6:00, I can go back to a 7:30 swing, and I can have the same finish and hit it a certain distance.

Or I can go back to 9:00 or 10:30 and swing through the same distance or the same finish point, and that’s going to control the distance that my wedge shots are going to fly in the air.

So I want to walk you through exactly how you’re going to do this. We’re going to use a very similar setup to what we were doing with the pitch shot.

Because this isn’t a full swing, as we’re closer to the green I’m going to be a little bit more vertical, my stance a little bit closer together.

So my spine is going to be a little bit more vertical. I’m going to favor my left side a little bit. This would be a great one for the 7:30 swing.

Now I find this one to be the most difficult. If we’re only going back to 7:30, I don’t have a lot of room as I’m going back to get a rhythm, or to get a flow.

That one I think is the most difficult, so usually I would go with a lob wedge, or a higher-lofted club and use what’s called a 9:00 swing, meaning my arm would be pointing at 9:00 directly to the side rather than doing a 7:30 with say a 9 iron or a pitching wedge.

To that point, we can use any club in our bag, really, within reason. We use a 60, a 56, a gap wedge, a pitching wedge, even a 9 iron for some shots. But I usually try to pick out one club that’s my favorite, and hone in on these exact distances with this.

We’ve got ourselves a little bit narrower stance for our shorter shots. As we start to get a little bit farther away, so let’s say my 9:00 56° wedge, and just to throw out a random number there, let’s say it goes 65 or 70 yards, something like that.

Well now I can start to get a little bit wider with my stance, and I’m going to have a little bit more weight shift with the 9:00 swing, so I’m going to have a little more tilt away from the ball, just a very slight amount. It’s going to be more like a regular swing as I’m coming back and through.

That’s going to be the basic idea of what we’re doing. Very, very similar to the pitch shot, we’re just going to get a little wider with our stance, and a little more tilt with our body.

We can also set the wrists a slight bit more as we go on to those farther swings. So basically in your 9:00 swing, your left arm when it’s parallel to the ground, is going to make an L with the club shaft, and then it’s going to come on through and release.

The way you’re going to practice this, and what I would recommend doing, is grab a whole big thing of balls, mark out some of the ones that are similar and go ahead and practice just with one club. Go ahead and start out with your 7:30 swing.

I’m going to try to keep the same tempo on every single shot. So I’m going to go back, I may choke up a little bit for my 7:30, just remember you’re going to do the same thing every time, so if you choke up, you’re going to choke up every single time.

I’m going to go back to 7:30, I’m going to make a full finish, all the way to where my hands are over my left shoulder, if we’re looking at it from this way, this would be a 7:30 swing. Just like that.

I’m going to finish in the exact same spot every time, and I’m going to keep that same rhythm every time.

Dave Pelz was the original creator of the clock swing, he’s the guy that popularized the clock swing. I think he had a really good idea of how to keep that good rhythm.

So when I’m making a swing, I’m thinking swoosh, woosh, as I’m going back and through. Almost two beats back, one beat coming on through.

I’ve got to keep that rhythm, that tempo, very, very consistent. If I vary my tempos, I can hit it all kinds of different distances.

For example, I could have a real quick tempo 7:30 swing, and probably hit this 90 yards, maybe not really that far, maybe 50 or 60 yards. I could have a very slow tempo 7:30 swing, and hit half that distance.

So I’ve got to get my distance the same, I’ve got to get my rhythm the same, that’s the real key to it.

The second piece on there is that as I finish over my shoulder, I’ve got to have the exact same finish position with every single shot.

I usually recommend to finish over your shoulder, club parallel to the ground, in a nice relaxed position there. That’s going to be my finishing point for each of the three swings.

So go ahead and get out a big bucket of balls, grab one wedge, your favorite wedge. I like to use a 56, and I’m going to hit about 10 7:30 swings in a row, getting that rhythm, getting that timing.

Then I’m going to go to the 9:00 swing, so usually for me, what I use to judge my 9:00 is as I’m going back, I’m going to wait.

I can see my hand in my peripheral vision here, and I’m going to feel like I stop a little short of 9:00, then when I watch it on camera I’m going to see that I’m actually right at 9:00. Then I’m going to swing on through to that good full finish.

Same tempo as with the shorter swings. I’m going to hit about 10 balls doing that. Then I’m going to go to the 10:30, meaning my left arm I about 10:30, the club stops about right here, and I’m going to swing all the way on through there. I’m going to get that tempo, and that rhythm, and that same finish position there.

Then I’m going to go out and measure where’s the middle distance between all these balls that I hit. So where did my 7:30 balls, where did they land? I’m going to measure it to the exact, use a rangefinder or a laser measurer to exactly where you’re hitting from and find that distance you’re at.

You may find, I’m not going to give you any distances, because it’s going to be a little different for everybody, but you’re going to find that exact precise distance.

You’re going to find that exact distance for your 9:00 swings, you’re going to find that exact distance for your 10:00 swings, and you’re going to go ahead and take a piece tape or just write those down somewhere. You could even write them on the shaft of your club, I’ve seen people do that, that’s recommended before, and that works really well.

Then you’re going to practice those over, and over, and over again. Go ahead and grab your 60° wedge and do the same thing. Grab your 52 and do the same thing there, and then you’re going to know exactly how far you hit those clubs.

The cool thing about this is, now all of a sudden, I’m 68 yards away from the hole. Well, that’s kind of an awkward distance for most players, most players don’t want to be 68 yards away because they can’t really make a full swing, and a little too far away to chip it up.

Now I know if my 56 9:00 swing goes right at 65 yards, well I’m going to be pretty dag-gone close to flying that ball exactly where I want to.

So practice that, get those distances down, work on that over and over again, and remember, the absolute key to making this work is rhythm, number one. I’ve got to have that same rhythm and the same distance in the backswing every time.

Got to have that rhythm, that swoosh, woosh, and I’ve got to have the same finish position every time.

If I’m varying my rhythm, and I’m varying my finish position, it’s not really going to do me a lot of good, I’m not going to be really consistent doing this.

I used to actually practice this a lot in high school, this was one of my favorite things to do. I had a strip mowed down the back of my yard, where I took the lawn mower. My parents probably hated this, because I mowed it down to like half-inch turf in the back of the yard, because we lived on a farm.

I would set buckets or towels along this and I would try to set them at those distances that knew, and maybe I knew my 56° went right at 65 yards, I’d set a bucket 65 yards away, and I would go ahead and do my 9:00 swing, and I would try to fly it right into the bucket.

I’d get to where I could tell for sure if I was going to be a couple yards short or a couple yards long, just because it gets so ingrained when you get the rhythm and the finish the same every time.

So it’s a lot of fun, it’s a great way to make a lot of birdies, you’re going to have a lot of these pitch shots into short par 4s and par 5s, or you’re going to be wedging it up making birdies, that’s really going to help you guys’ score.

Go through these drills, focus on getting all this right, getting your timing right. Check it on camera to make sure the length of the backswing looks like what you actually think it feels like, and then just work, and work, and work, and you guys are really going to score well.

Good luck to you guys, I’ll see you all soon.