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The Easiest Recovery Shot

The easiest recovery shot is the pull draw. It launches low and runs a long way. Launching it low is important to avoid catastrophic recovery shots that hit a tree and drop straight down. The pull draw also requires less lateral body motion than a push shot, which helps minimize the risk of poor contact.  Practice the pull draw with varying amounts of a curve to add in your ability to save strokes when you don't drive it perfectly. 

Playlists: Practice Strategies, Understand Your Swing Plane/Path, Specialty Shots

Tags: Speciality Shot, Practice Strategies, Concept, Intermediate, Beginner

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This concept video is the easiest recovery shot.

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So I frequently see golfers when we're doing playing lessons and you drive it in trouble

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and they are at a complete loss. They typically take like a three-wood or hybrid

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kind of take a really big aggressive body swing hoping that they'll keep it low because of

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that low loft. And you know I've got an open shot here but I want you to be able to see the

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trajectories from this down the line video so that you can see why that's not really a

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good strategy. Typically when you have that really big body stroke you're going to tend to be

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more flippy and you're going to be shallow and that's going to tend to get a lot of grass between

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the ball. When we're hitting out of rough we want to be a little steeper and typically when we're

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hitting recovery shots we want to hit it low because usually you've got you know if you look at

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these trees behind me you've got a good 10 feet of clearance and you're trying to stay under that

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until you get back out and play. So the easiest recovery shot is the pull draw or the pull hook.

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It takes very little effort. It's mostly an arm swing. Some simple setup things but it takes very

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little effort and you get a lot of distance out of it. So it's a great shot for you know punching

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it whether it's 150-180 etc because you're going to keep it really low and it doesn't take a whole

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lot of skill in order to pull it off. So in order to hit the low pull draw you're going to set up

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with your body well closed okay that's going to help ensure that the path is going to be in

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out and you're going to tend to you're going to need to close the club face pretty significantly.

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Now um close just like so and you're also going to air on not using too little loft so I've

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got a seven iron here six iron's a great five iron's probably about as low as you would want to go

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but the high bridge will tend to launch high and the the highest priority for these shots is keeping

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it under trouble. So I've got my stance closed and then I've got club face closed and it's pretty

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much going to be an arm swing with a little body to support and I'm really making sure like I'm just

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closing closing this face down and feeling like I'm almost trapping the ball and what you'll see is

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even on these longer kind of recovery shots shoulders pretty level ball middle to slightly back in my

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stance I'm just going to swing normal and really close it down there and you'll see that

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it's going to launch pretty low it's going to have some good run on with it so it's going to be one of

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the easiest shots that I can hit in order to hit these recovery shots it works well off pine needles

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it works well out of thicker rough um if it's really really thick you can't hit it with two

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clothes of club face or it'll just snap it left but it works well out of poor lies so again it's

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really easy it's a little bit more vertical arm motion I'm pulling I'm basically pulling my arms

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down and closing the face and feeling like I'm just going to smother hook this thing and I just aim

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far enough right with my body so that that pull hook starts pretty close to where I want it to

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and I can allow for a little bit of draw and I don't have to be too precise with it it's going to

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run a bunch and get me down usually out of trouble pretty successfully so if you're struggling or you're

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not quite sure how to hit recovery shots and you're driven in the trees I recommend putting in a

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little bit of practice to build the pull hook into a shot that you can use it's one of the easiest

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shots for hitting as a recovery shot so I'll hit one more that slightly more advanced I'm going to

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use my full body to kind of get maximum speed out of it but I'm still going to give it that same

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cover a little bit steeper release by not having quite as much owner deviation as normal

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and rotating the forums while keeping some of that radial deviation so stance is closed I'm going to

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get some good body speed into it and then a steeper closing release so again that'll launch

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fairly low and then have a good amount of hook to it that's one of the easier shots to hit

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for hitting it out of the rough out of the trees out of pine needles as you recover each shot

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