WEBVTT

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This drill is the three danger moves of wedge play now whether we're talking

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finesse wedges or distance wedges

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If you struggle with your wedge play, I can almost guarantee that you have one

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or all three of these movements

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And these three movements tend to work really well for the driver

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But they tend to cause a lot of contact problems with the wedges and if you

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have contact problems with the wedges

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It's next to impossible to build any kind of feel

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So the three movements that are going to really kill your wedge play are number

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one

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The upper body getting closer to the ball during the downswing

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Number two the upper body moving away from the target or away from the golf

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ball during the backswing or during the downswing

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Sorry, and then the third one is

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Dragging the handle forward or creating a lot of lag and shaft lean

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Usually those three go hand-in-hand because I would get closer to the golf ball

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Go back to help shallow it out and then drag forward so that I don't hit behind

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the golf ball

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in fact many of us were encouraged by

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Well-meaning instructors when we were taught more that block and hold style

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chip shot where you would basically

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play it kind of like that and you can see that you can hit okay shots that way

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But you're going to tend to hit them higher up on the face. They're going to

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launch higher with lower spin

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That's great for the driver. That's great for your three wood not so good for

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wedges and it takes away all bounce

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So you get very little margin of error, especially on those thinner grass or

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tight lies

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If you find that you're struggling with your wedge play and you look and you

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see that you have all three of them

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Here's the normal progression that I would use with most of my students

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And I will say it's it's changed a little bit over the years. In fact early in

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my career

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I was really unaware of the up movement during the downswing

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But after looking at 3ds of some really good wedge players the Stan Atley's

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Brian Gay

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Luke Donald

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many of the best wedge players that I've seen definitely at about halfway down

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in their downswing their upper body starts

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Elevating or standing up where what I noticed was a lot of the golfers who kind

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of had the the yips

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Their upper body would continue to go down by continuing to go down

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They had no chance but to sacrifice their release or drag the handle

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They had no opportunity to really use bounce in an effective way

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so I now tend to start by teaching the up movement in the

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cast pattern because the cast pattern with the arm of

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Unhinging without letting the face really rotate should be triggered a bit by

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Working vertically with the upper body. So you've got

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That pattern like this and what you'll see is if you hang back and you do that

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pattern you'll still use some bounce

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So your misses won't be terrible, but they'll just be high you may hit them

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thin

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You may hit them a little fat, but you will still

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Use some bounce so it'll almost come off more like a flop shot and you'll you

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'll start to ask well

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How do I flight it down? That's where the second piece of

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adding that third or taking away the third dangerous move of going backward and

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adding the third move of

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Going forward really helps tie it together

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so you've got your upper body shifting a little bit forward especially during

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the backswing and then the big two movements that clean up

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most wedge play is working on that cast sequence with the arms and

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working on the upper body

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standing up during

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Especially the second half of the downswing, but the majority of the downswing

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to help with that cast pattern if you struggle with wedge play

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We've got lots of videos to help with

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Specifically the arms specifically the body staying forward a little bit with

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the upper body moving away

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Because that one's relatively simple once you have it you've identified it

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But if you're struggling take a look on video and see which one of those three

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or if all of the three

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See which ones you're struggling with by working on that it will hopefully

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improve your turf contact by getting you to use the bounce

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Help you work on solidness a concept and that way you can start to develop feel

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and turn your weakness of wedge play into a strength