Improve Your Wedge Play with a Three-Quarter Follow Through

This drill teaches you how to hit a distance wedge with a controlled, three-quarter follow-through instead of a full, freewheeling finish. That matters because wedge play is not just about making solid contact. It is about managing trajectory, spin, and carry distance so the ball reacts predictably on the green. When tour players get inside scoring range—especially into firm or fast greens—you will often see a shorter, more held-off finish. That motion helps them flight the ball appropriately, manage spin, and tighten proximity to the hole.

How the Drill Works

The goal of this drill is simple: make a wedge swing that finishes shorter than your stock full swing, with the arms extending through the strike but without the club whipping all the way into a full release. You are training a motion that feels more controlled and more connected through impact.

With a standard full swing—especially with longer clubs—you usually create more lag, more loading in transition, and more speed at the bottom. That kind of motion naturally wants to sling the club into a full finish. It is difficult to create all that speed and then suddenly stop at a compact follow-through.

Wedges are different. On these scoring shots, you can use a pattern that has a little less of that heavy late loading and a little more of an earlier movement of the arms and upper body. In other words, the club begins to work through sooner, and the strike feels more like the club is coasting through impact rather than violently snapping through it.

That is why the three-quarter finish works so well for distance wedges. It tends to:

• Help you control spin rate
• Produce a more manageable trajectory
• Reduce the tendency to over-spin the ball on fast greens
• Improve distance control from scoring range

There is also an important wrist component. If you aggressively rehinge the club through and after impact, the clubhead tends to keep traveling upward and around, which can pull you into a longer finish than you want. For this drill, you want the club to unhinge through the strike and then stay relatively quiet, so the follow-through remains compact and controlled.

Step-by-Step

1. Choose a wedge distance where you normally make something less than a full swing. This drill works especially well on scoring shots inside your full wedge yardages, where precision matters more than maximum speed.

2. Set up with a neutral ball position. You do not need to push the ball dramatically back or forward. Let it sit in a normal wedge position, with your setup balanced and athletic.

3. Preset a slight forward lean with your upper body. A good checkpoint is feeling your nose just a touch more on top of the ball, with a subtle lean toward the target. This is not a dramatic stack; it is simply less of a “driver-style” load away from the target.

4. Make your backswing with a compact pivot. Turn normally, but keep the motion appropriate for a distance wedge. You are not trying to build massive speed or a huge backswing.

5. Start down with the arms and upper body working earlier. This is one of the key pieces. Instead of holding lag for a long time and then firing hard at the bottom, let the arms begin to straighten and let the chest move through in a slightly more blended way.

6. Let the club pass through without a violent throw. Through impact, the motion should feel smooth and continuous. The club is releasing, but it is not snapping past you with maximum speed.

7. Finish at about three-quarters. Your arms should stay relatively long through the ball, and the club should finish shorter than your stock full swing. You do not need to freeze in an exact position, but your finish should clearly be more abbreviated and more controlled.

8. Monitor your wrist action. Avoid an active rehinge that sends the club racing upward. A quieter, more extended release makes the three-quarter finish much easier to produce.

9. Hit a series of shots and watch ball flight. You should start to see a more controlled trajectory and a more predictable landing pattern, especially if you tend to over-spin your wedges.

What You Should Feel

The best wedge drills are often built around feel, because these shots are more about precision than power. If you are doing this correctly, several sensations should stand out.

A Slightly More Forward-Centered Setup

You should feel a little more pressure and body orientation toward the target than you would with a driver or a full iron swing. Your upper body should feel quietly on top of the shot, not hanging back behind it.

The Club Working Through Earlier

Instead of feeling like you are storing angle forever and then unloading everything at once, you should sense that the club and arms are moving through in a more gradual, earlier pattern. This is one reason the motion feels easier to control.

Arms Staying Long Through Impact

A very useful checkpoint is the feeling that your arms extend through the strike rather than collapsing or flipping. That extension helps create the held-off, three-quarter look without forcing it artificially.

A “Coasting” Strike

This is one of the most helpful feels in the drill. Through impact, the club should not feel like it is exploding through the ball. It should feel like it is moving with enough speed to compress the shot, but in a way that is smooth and measured.

Less Whip, More Control

If the clubhead feels like it is racing past your hands with a lot of late wrist action, you are probably drifting back toward a full-swing release. In this drill, the release should feel quieter and more stable.

A Compact Finish Without Forcing a Stop

You do not need to abruptly slam on the brakes and pose at exactly chest-high. In fact, that can make the motion too artificial. The better feel is that the swing naturally finishes shorter because the motion was built for control from the start.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Trying to manufacture the finish only
  If you simply make your normal full-speed swing and then try to stop the club at three-quarters, the motion will feel awkward and inconsistent. The shorter finish has to come from the overall pattern, not just from posing at the end.
• Holding too much lag
  A full-swing style transition with lots of late loading creates too much speed at the bottom. That makes it difficult to control trajectory and nearly impossible to finish compactly.
• Overusing the wrists through impact
  An aggressive rehinge tends to send the club into a long, high finish. For this drill, the wrists should be quieter through the strike.
• Hanging back on the trail side
  If your upper body stays too far behind the ball, you will struggle to get the controlled, covering strike that this wedge shot requires.
• Making the swing too short and too timid
  A three-quarter follow-through does not mean decelerating or stabbing at the ball. You still need a committed motion through impact.
• Forcing the club excessively left or “holding off” with tension
  The finish should look controlled, but it should not be a rigid manipulation. Too much tension can hurt contact and distance control.
• Using a driver-style motion for wedge shots
  If you load hard away from the target and then fire aggressively from the top, you are bringing a long-club pattern into a scoring-club shot. Wedges usually need a more centered, measured delivery.

How This Fits Your Swing

This drill is valuable because it teaches you that wedge play is not just a scaled-down full swing. As the club gets shorter and the target gets closer, the demands of the shot change. You are no longer chasing maximum speed. You are trying to produce a repeatable strike and a predictable ball reaction.

That is why the three-quarter follow-through fits so well into a complete scoring system. It gives you a motion that is easier to manage under pressure and easier to match to specific yardages. Instead of swinging all-out and hoping the spin and launch cooperate, you are building a pattern designed for precision.

This also connects to the broader idea of using different release patterns for different clubs. With the driver or longer irons, you often benefit from more dynamic loading, more lag, and a fuller release. With wedges, especially distance wedges, too much of that can work against you. The ball may launch too high, spin too much, or come off with less predictable carry.

By learning this three-quarter follow-through, you are training a wedge motion that is:

• More centered in setup and delivery
• More blended in the way the arms and body move through
• More stable in the wrists after impact
• More reliable for controlling carry, spin, and rollout

In practical terms, this means you can start choosing wedge shots based on how you want the ball to react. If you are hitting into a quick green and want a controlled one-hop-and-stop, this pattern gives you a better chance of producing it. If you tend to hit wedges that climb too much or spin unpredictably, this drill can help quiet that down.

Most importantly, it gives you a clear distinction between a stock full swing and a scoring swing. That distinction is what strong wedge players understand. They do not treat every shot the same. They adapt the motion to the task. The three-quarter follow-through is one of the simplest and most effective ways to do exactly that.