Open Face Set Up

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In this video, we're going to explore opening the club face for your finesse

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wedge shot.

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So a number of the finesse wedge shots are easier to hit if you open the club

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face.

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Opening the club face can expose a little bit more bounce and it can allow you

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to swing

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a little bit flatter or maybe even more aggressively on some of these shots.

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So as a skill, we want to get comfortable with open club face.

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I find that a lot of golfers struggle with it, so we'll talk through the two

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main things

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that I see golfers do poorly, and I got the GoPro so we can get the first

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person view

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of this.

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So rule number one is when you go to open the club face, you're going to open

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the club

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face and then take your normal grip.

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So what a lot of poor golfers do with this shot is they take their hands and

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they put

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it on the club and then they try to open the grip or open the club.

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And you'll see that in order to do that, I end up dropping that right shoulder,

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tilting

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a little bit behind the ball.

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And what will happen is as I apply speed, it's going to want to come back to my

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neutral

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position anyway.

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That's less of a danger here than in the full swing, because we're not going to

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be reaching

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anywhere near maximum speed, but it still happens, so it's easy to bring the

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club face

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back close.

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So step number one, rule number one is I like to use a standard where I've held

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the club

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up and I'm going to control how much I've opened the club and then take my grip

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.

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You could also do that down here, just like so, and use that as a little bit of

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a standardization

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technique.

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The second one is actually the more common issue that I see, which is when you

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go to

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adjust your stance for the open club face, I find a lot of golfers intuitively

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open their

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stance, but they do so without keeping the ball position the same.

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So I'll show you what I mean by that.

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So I am going to talk through what I think is kind of a more simple way to

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adjust for

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the high shot, and then I'll talk about the more advanced way to adjust for the

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high shot.

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So the simple way, I'm going to open the club face.

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The problem I see a lot of golfers do is then when they go to open the club

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face, they just

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turn their body, but they stayed in the same orientation kind of like this.

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So what happened is now, here's the middle of my stance, I just move the ball

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position

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like two feet back in my stance.

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So when I go to hit, you can see, yeah, I hit an okay shot, but the purpose of

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opening

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the club face was to try to get a little bit more loft and that came out really

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low and

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cutting because the ball position was so far back.

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So what I advocate is trying to keep your stance more or less or your ball

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position the same.

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So I use this hula hoop to demonstrate how we're going to walk around the hula

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hoop to

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keep the ball position the same.

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So if I take the lie angle tool and I open the club face, you can see the club

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face starts

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pointing over there.

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Now I could either adjust for it by walking around the circle, keeping the ball

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position

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the same, and now the club face is aimed at the target.

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Or the other option is the more advanced option is I can lower the handle.

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So even though this club face is open, you can see as I lower the handle, that

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tends

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to make the face point in the direction of the target, that stops it from

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pointing too

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far to the right.

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So the simple way to play with the open club face is to open your stance.

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The more advanced way to play with the open club face is to actually close your

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stance

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and lower the handle.

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So we'll demonstrate kind of these adjustments, hopefully sometimes the hula

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hoop gets in

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the way of these demos, but we'll see how we do here.

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Okay, so quick demonstration, got the ball kind of in the middle of the hula

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hoop, and

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if I just baseline it, just do kind of a standard shot, we'll see again, oft

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entimes we end up

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hitting the hula hoop.

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And once I do that once or twice, I start pulling away from it.

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So we'll see how many we can get in here.

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So now as I open the club face, I put it a little bit more there, you can see

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the ball

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position is still the same, and if I feel like I swing around my ball position,

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you'll

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see that it has a little bit more of a higher trajectory, a little more spin,

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and compared

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to where I had my body position, it goes a little bit to the right.

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Now this more advanced one I know will hit the hula hoop, so we'll see how well

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we can

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mentally prepare for that.

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So the more advanced version, I'm going to open the club face, ball position is

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going

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to go even forward.

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Now you can see here's where I am, chestwise, I'm going to bring this foot back

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, and the

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reason I'm going to bring this foot back is so that I can bring the club on a

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flatter

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angle.

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If this is in the way, you'll see that the club wants to swing a little bit

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more up,

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and when I have the club down like this, I want to swing really flat, hey, only

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nip it.

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So I want to swing really flat, and by getting that foot back, it creates a

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little bit more

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space.

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That can be really useful on awkward bunker shots, as well as awkward downhill

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side-hill

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lives.

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So this video just talks through the simple ways and the complex ways for how

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do you open

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the club face, what does it look like, practice it that'll help you with your

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bounce, as well

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as your ability to control trajectory and spin.