Why You Need This: In this video, you'll learn how to hit your wedges close.

My students often request to see me hit my wedges to get a better understanding of what I'm talking about.

So for this video, you'll see me hit wedge shots (around 45 yards from the pin) while I describe fundamentals, tips, and what I'm feeling with the shots.

Here's a quick rundown of what you'll learn in the video...

Stance

The stance is narrower than a full swing, but farther apart than with a chip shot.

For my wedge shots, I keep my feet around 8 inches apart.

If you want a little more spin on your wedges, try this...

Open your stance, open the club face a bit and make contact slightly more towards the toe.

Body rotation

Keep the body moving through the shot - hands, arms, and torso all moving together.

Avoid hitting your wedges with a stiff body and relying on an "armsy" swing. You might hit a good one every once in a while, but you just won't be consistent.

Feel like you're keeping everything together with a smooth swing and you'll be able to hit your wedges well consistently.

Grip

Use a lighter than normal grip on your wedges.

Feel most of the pressure in the bottom few fingers of your left wrist.

Watch this video now to get a look at how I hit my wedges and learn fundamentals and tips for how to hit your wedges close!

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 3:30

Video Transcription:

Hey guys, great to have you here today. In this video I’m going to do something a little bit different. A lot of times I get requests for people that want to see me hit some shots.

So I’m just going to go ahead and hit some pitch shots, and I’m going to talk about, I’ve got about a 40-45 yarder.

I’m just going to talk through some things to work on as you’re hitting pitch shots to get some good spin, get those balls coming out nice and consistent, and to really stick them pretty close.

I’ll just hit about 10 or 15 here. The first thing that I work on, and I think is most important is just get your setup correct.

I like to have my stance a little bit closer together than I would with a full swing, and maybe a little bit farther apart than with a normal chip shot stance.

I’m probably about 8 inches, 10 inches between my feet, somewhere around in there. My stance is going to be slightly open. That should be a good one.

One of the things that I really work on is keeping the body moving through -- almost made that one -- moving through the shot.

So I want to feel like I’m nice and loose, and I don’t want to feel like I hit a lot with my hands. I want to feel like my hands, arm, club, hips, everything’s moving through together. I want to keep that momentum moving through the shot.

For those of you that have an orange whip, try swinging your orange whip without letting the shaft bend, just like you would in these little short pitch shots.

If I can keep everything moving through together, I’m going to be nice and consistent, ball’s going to come out really nice. There’s another good one there. And I’m going to get some clean contact.

If I start to slow down my hips and use hands, and arms, and wrists, and that kind of stuff to get these shots to come out, you’re going to get inconsistent.

You’re going to mis-hit some, you’re going to get some god ones, but you won’t be able to hit 10 or 15 in a row really nicely.

Next thing I’ll do is open my stance a little bit. Then to counteract that, I’ll open my face a little bit. Now that helps me to use a little bit more of the flange.

You don’t have to do this, this is what I like to do to get a little bit of extra spin on the ball, because it’s going to add some loft. Then I go ahead and get some forward shaft lean, get that leaning forward to get that to come out nice and low.

You’ll notice most of these are coming out low. You can set up square and just hit a nice, normal shot. That’s kind of the stock shot. This would be a little bit more of a high-spin shot.

That’s coming out low, we can see how that’s going to check up off that hill. That one checked up nicely, right by the pin.

I like to work on that. If you’re going to miss, tend to miss toward the toe. If you go toward the heel, that’s not going to get quite as much spin. So if you want that ball to grab a little bit extra, try to go slightly more toward the toe. That will get some extra spin.

There we go, another clean one. See how that ball is just taking one hop and then checking up kind of nice by the pin.

Then the last thing here, is I like to feel like my hands are pretty light on the club. I don’t really want to feel like I’m death gripping the club. I’m going to feel like my grip is nice and light. I’m going to feel most of the pressure in the bottom couple fingers in my left wrist.

Again, I’m going to keep that moving right on through. If I stop my body and I have to push the club through, I’m going to feel like my hands tighten up and I almost get a little bit of a jab or a poke in there.

I want to feel like it’s nice and smooth all the way on through. Almost feel like I’m opening my body so I can toss this ball right toward the pin.

So bottom three fingers, again, keep everything moving. You’re going to be able to hit some great shots. Hopefully that helps you guys out. Good luck, I’ll see you all soon.