Finesse Wedge Introduction

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Hey golfers, welcome to the Finesse wedge program where we're going to talk

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about building your

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stock shot for around the greens, we call this the Finesse wedge. It really

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covers kind of two

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different main shots, you have chipping and pitching, but they have some rough

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definition

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problems, so we're going to just call these Finesse wedge shots. When it comes

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to building

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your Finesse wedge, we're going to use the hierarchy of first goal, goal number

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one, is

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establishing solid contact on one length swing, usually around parallel to

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parallel or somewhere

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around kind of thigh height here to thigh height there, kind of a little half

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shot. The second

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goal is we're going to play around with changing the stroke length, so we'll

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get into having

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some type of distance control, similar to what you would do with the putting or

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similar to what

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you would do with your normal wedge shots. So with the stock wedge shot, I like

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to establish a

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distance control of either a knee height, a hip height, a belly button height,

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if I'm using kind of

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handle or sorry, hand location or club head location compared to my body, sorry

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, so it would be

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knee height would be kind of right around there, hip height would be around

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parallel, and then

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belly button height would be around club at 45 degrees. And that's the other

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option is you can

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use the club angles and either degrees, so 45, 90, 45, or clock. So if this is

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nine o'clock, then

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that would be about 730, and that would be about 1030 or so. So we want to be

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able to make solid

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contact with varied stroke length. And then lastly, we want to understand how

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to change either

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setup or handle location or club face angle to influence trajectory and spin.

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Around the

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greens, it's important to have some versatility and some different shots. I've

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heard both Tiger

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and Jordan speed talking about having, you know, up to 10, 11 different chip

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shots around the

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green, depending on, on if they want it to hook when it lands, if they want it

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to check when it

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lands. So you want to have versatility to be able to handle lots of different

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shot scenarios.

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The basic shape is we want to have more of the kind of a circular shape, which

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comes from having a

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constant radius between the handle of the club and your upper body. Now you can

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, you can do this

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shot with or without a lot of wrist that will influence some of the shape. But

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in order to get

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solid contact, we're mostly looking at the space between the upper body and the

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club.

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We also want to have a smooth force. The general analogy for a wedge shot is

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more of like an

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underhand toss compared to a full swing being more like an overhand throw. With

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the full swing

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and with the overhand throw, you're going to have more of a weight shift. You

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're going to have more

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sequencing and then you're going to have a little snap at the end. With an

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underhand toss,

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I'm already as far back as I'm going to go. I'm not going to have any real

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massive weight shift.

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I'm just going to have a smooth weight shift and everything is going to work

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together.

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So everything is going to work in a kind of a similar rate rather than having

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some really big

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sequencing and snap at the end. And then lastly, in order to control the face

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and the loft, we have

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to get pretty good at being able to hit the ball more with a body pivot and a

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little less of a

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wrist flick. If you're hitting it too much with a scoopy action, that can be

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helpful for a couple

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shots. But as a general rule, that's going to cause too much loft control

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change to be able to

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control distance. So we're going to work on blending and balancing your body

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and your arms

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working together. In order to do this, we're going to have a few kind of

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checkpoints to go

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through. We'll cover setup, we'll cover kind of the basic, basic swing, and we

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'll cover some basic

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kind of visual goals as far as how the swing is going to feel. In general, for

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the basic shape,

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we want to have our feet about a club head width apart with our upper body

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stacked a little bit

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over that front foot or over the front leg. That's what we mean by stacked

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centers, and that'll help

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us get level shoulders. The kind of the real tricky, a lot of the students who

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I work with who

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struggle with their wedge shots tend to get more into kind of this type of

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position at their setup

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rather than this type of position. We'll then work on getting into a really

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nice finish position,

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especially on these wedge shots, having a good goal as far as where you're

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trying to get to

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really helps with this understanding, the feeling of everything coming through

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together. So we'll

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focus a bunch on the finish position. With club goals, we want to make sure

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that the club is going

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to slide along the ground. We've got a great video where you can help you

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visualize this bounce

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interaction, and part of what makes the club slide along the ground is using

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your body. If you

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use just your hands to bring the club through, then the club will tend to come

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up off the ground

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too quickly. It gives you a very small margin of air. And then I use the mantra

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of cast and coast,

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similar to like an underhand toss or shooting a free throw or throwing a dart.

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You don't want

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to have maximum acceleration right at the point of release. In all of those

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touch activities,

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you're going to have more of the acceleration early in the action. And then

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there's going to be a

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little bit more of this floating or kind of coasting action as you're letting

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go. And so

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the cast part is kind of starting the downswing with everything moving together

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or it'll, for a

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lot of golfers, it feels more like the arms have a little bit of the initiation

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. We know from 3D that

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the lower body does change direction first, but compared to the full swing, the

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acceleration rates

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and especially the stability or the decelerating rates are much more stacked up

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or much more

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kind of blended in constant. So the cast is the feeling of getting the clubhead

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moving early in

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the swing and the coast is the feeling of everything coming through together.

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So that kind of ties

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together the smooth energy stacked centers and then constant radius. Those are

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our big keys for

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getting consistency in our basic finesse wedge shot. And then performance goals

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again, I'll keep

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reiterating these for finesse wedge. We want to have solid contact, be able to

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do solid contact

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with at least two, but usually I go for three different stroke lengths and then

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to be able to

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control the trajectory by changing ball position or clubface angle. So in the

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next video, we will

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cover goal number one solid contact.