Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn how to hit a flop shot.

Hitting these shots is super fun if you hit them right...

And super scary for your buddies if you skull it head-high across the green!

Flop shots are only needed when you're short sided on the green...

...meaning that you don't have much green to work with.

Here are a few tips for hitting great flop shots...

• Make sure you have a decent lie before you even attempt a flop shot
• Open up your stance
• Open up your club face about 45 degrees
• Keep your weight on your front foot to ensure that you accelerate through the ball
• Bend your knees a bit more than you normally would
• Flip your shot; don't compress the ball

And lastly, take an aggressive swing.

Watch now to hit high and soft flop shots!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 2:54

Video Transcription:

Hi guys, welcome back. The flop shot, it’s one of the most fun things you can do. It’s only for those situations where you get short sighted on the green, it means you don’t have very much green to let the ball roll out.

Now before I ever hit one of these shots, I want to make sure that I have a good lie. This is nice, setting up I get my club underneath the ball. If this ball was setting down in the grass, kind of like that, right against the turf, I can’t really get down and underneath the ball.

I wouldn’t want to go for that type of a shot for a flop shot. So I’ve got to have to have pretty decent lie. Doesn’t have to be perfect, but you know it’s got to be sitting up with a little bit of grass underneath it.

I’m going to start with my stance. I want to go ahead and I want to open my feet a little bit. Opening this front foot, if this was dead square, that’s going to be in the front of my stance. My stance is going to be slightly open, and the reason for this is that’s going to let that club slide right underneath the ball.

I’m also going to open my face completely. So if I’m looking at my leading edge, I put it up in front of my body, I’m going to have that about 45° open, if I’m looking like this. As I set that to the ground, there’s really not much loft on this face at all.

I’m going to go ahead and regrip the club. What I don’t want to do, and I used to do this when I first started trying to hit flop shots, take my normal grip and then I’d try to open it with my body by doing this and leaning back.

Well now that’s going to get me grounding out behind this ball, and I’m liable to hit the ground, have the club bounce up into the back of the ball and then that thing just shoots off across the green, which is obviously not a lot of fun.

You’ll be needing to hit two or three of these things if you keep doing that. So we’ve got the face open, front foot slightly out, ball’s a little bit farther forward.

Now here’s one that I see a lot of people get wrong on the flop shot, myself included in the beginning. I want to make sure that I keep my weight on my front foot. If I had my weight on my back foot, what’s going to happen again is I’m going to ground out behind this ball.

I want to go ahead and have my weight on my front foot, that way I can ensure that I’m smacking the turf underneath this golf ball. I really want to be nice and aggressive, and swing through it, and I’m going to ensure that I’m not just going to decelerate, slide through it, or not get clean contact.

So my weight’s kind of left, I’m going to get a little bit of extra knee bend. If this was my normal stance setup, notice the angle of the shaft. I’m going to go ahead and drop down a little bit.

What that does, is that helps me to add a little bit more loft to the club, get that ball to launch a little bit higher. So now I’ve got my stance, my setup, my face is wide open, knees are nice and bent.

I’m going to go ahead and take a nice, aggressive swing and this is the one time, this is like a flipper’s dream here. If I flip this club that’s OK, I’m adding loft to the club, letting that loft come back toward me, toward my body, and that’s only going to get more and more loft.

What I don’t want to do is compress that golf ball like we want to do on a normal shot, because that thing’s going to take off too low and compressed.

So now that I’ve got all my pieces, I’m going to work through these check points, be nice and aggressive, nice high flop shots, you guys will be able to hit those shots that amaze your friends.