Goal 1: Solid Contact Overview

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Welcome back golfers.

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Let's dig into some of the details of your stock wedge shots, just building

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your basic

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stroke and getting solid contact.

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So if we broke down solid contact in a couple of key goals, we're going to try

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to get that

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center stacked.

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We're going to try to maintain the radius, which is going to come from ideas

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around keeping

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the triangle of the arms, and then for the smooth force or distance control, we

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're going

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to try to get everything to pivot altogether versus having a lot of big

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sequencing changes.

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So with the stacked center, we're really going to focus on the lead foot only

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drill, which

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is kind of one of these mastery drills, which I would say it's one of those old

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classic

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drills that I don't think people totally understood why it worked.

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But when you do lead foot only with or without a little bit of a kickstand,

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when you do lead

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foot only, it encourages you to keep your upper body on top of your lower body.

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In order to keep your upper body on top of your lower body, then you're going

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to have

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to instinctively blend some extension with the rotation.

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If you don't extend, if you stay flexed forward, then as you rotate, your upper

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body will tend

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to move.

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I use the kind of illustration.

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If my upper spine is rounded like this, then if I rotate from this part, then

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this would

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move.

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So I either have to kind of do something funny there, or my upper body would

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move and I would

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tend to stall it out, or as I'm rotating, create some tilt, but that messes up

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my low

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point issue as well.

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Instead, what I'm going to try to do is as I'm rotating, I'm going to extend

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that upper

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part of the spine, that kind of rib cage area.

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Now, I don't want to be doing it in the lower body, because then I'm creating

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too much access

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tilt.

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So, when you do this lead foot only drill, it's going to tend to work on

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keeping you centered,

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otherwise you lose your balance, and in order to do that, in order to stay

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centered, you're

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going to blend rotation and extension.

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That has a huge impact on both turf interaction, helps expose bounce, and B, it

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helps, has a

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big impact on kind of that coasting and anti-flip movement, it's a big, shall

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owing movement.

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So that's going to be one of our core drills that we come back to.

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The second component here is keeping the arms relatively straight.

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Now, I say relatively straight, because once you go past about waist height in

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the back

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swing, then you are going to get some arm bend as the arms come up to set.

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But what we're trying to avoid is too much of either a collapse in the elbow

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kind of

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like this, or potentially a collapse in the shoulder.

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Instead what we want to have is we want to have the shoulder blade making a

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little bit

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more of this movement, rather than the elbow or the shoulder.

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And that shoulder blade making this movement will help create a feeling of

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connection between

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the upper body and lower body, or sorry, between the upper body and the arm.

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It will also encourage the arm to stay more in front instead of getting way

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behind.

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A lot of the amateurs struggle with their wedge play because they kind of quiet

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the

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body and the arms get behind, and then they have more of a flip and create boss

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problems

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as well as contact problems.

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So keeping the arms straight is going to require a little bit of arm rotation

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in order to shallow

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it out.

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Some golfer is going to pull this behind a shallow it out, but it actually

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still keeps

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the shaft in more of a vertical or steep position.

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So getting a little bit of this arm rotation while staying centered helps

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create the better

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path or plane for the distance wedge shot.

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And then lastly, the pivot drill.

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If we combine that lead foot only with getting a little bit more of this

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feeling of a bleak

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turn and using this area here as my engine, then that tends to encourage the

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coast.

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When you get too much activity from your lower body that tends to create a

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little bit more

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tilt or extension, and that can also tend to cause the upper body to back up

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and increase

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and encourage more of a throw.

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So a common pattern is a little bit more legs and arms versus more arms being

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kind of stiff

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and having a little bit more of this core and/or wrist as your main power

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sources.

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So we'll focus a lot on the stability of the shoulders but using the abs and

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the core in

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order to bring the club through, which will allow us to get some shaft lean

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without having

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any flip or a really big kind of lag-white movement, there is a still sum.

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There is a little bit of the arm movement working across your body as it's

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rotating

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and extending, but it's not quite as severe or it's not quite as dominant as

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you might

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feel it with the driver.

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And so the two classic drills of the lead foot only, some type of arm

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connection, whether

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towel, smartball, bucket, or some type of feet together drill that kind of

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works with

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the lead foot only, we're going to visit a few of the classic drills in this

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section

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to work on the overall shape and we'll cover more of kind of the individual

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details you

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might be struggling with when we look at the troubleshooting.

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So this is going to get our basic contact and then in the next section we're

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going to focus

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mostly on how we can influence trajectory control by looking at shaft lean and

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a couple other

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factors.

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So work on this to get that solid contact and then to refine it and really set

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you up

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for the lead distance control, check out the next section.