Wedges

[ianh.90]

Now that the practice facilities are starting to slowly but surely open up at my local course I am looking to put some serious time working on my short game/approach play. Ideally I am looking at everything from 100 yards in where I can take a wedge all the way into short pitching/chipping greenside as well as pitching out of the rough. This is most definitely the weakest area of my game, as well as putting which I have started to work on as well.

My question is what has worked well for others when practicing these areas? And if there are any training plans/programmes anyone has followed that have been successful?

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Good question. I have had a very flaky short game for many years and tried a number of methods, some conventional and others a bit more less so like the linear method. It is a part of my game I've invested a lot of time in and finally seeing some returns in terms of pitching, chipping and bunker play. My practice ground uses reduced distance balls and so it's hard to work on distance control but I'll work hard on playing shots to set targets from as many different lies and also different slopes. I'm mainly looking at the quality of the strike and the flight and will use different clubs to each target. We are allowed to use our own balls on the putting green and allowed to chip to that so a lot easier to work on that element with the balls I play and learn how the ball reacts out of different lies and with different clubs

 

[Mandofred]

Every time I go onto the bigger part of our field, I put out cones at 40, 60, 80 + 100 yards. I KNOW that if I hit a particular wedge decently it goes a certain distance. Unfortunately.....at times decency escapes me.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Every time I go onto the bigger part of our field, I put out cones at 40, 60, 80 + 100 yards. I KNOW that if I hit a particular wedge decently it goes a certain distance. Unfortunately.....at times decency escapes me.

I can put out cones but with distance reduced balls its academic as it would bear no resemblance to hitting proper balls on the course. It's a shame as we use to be able to use our own balls before H&S got involved. Does make it much harder to work on distance control these days and so can only work on strike and different lies. Most local ranges use distance reduced balls so it's so hard for me to work on distance and touch.

 

[CountLippe]

First thing you need to do is develop a certain level of skill and consistency.
Just keep dropping loads of balls down at different distances, different lies.
Experiment with how you swing at the ball, eg feel like your hitting down, hitting shallow, try feeling like you're hitting up and see how that works, or not.
High shots, low shots, open face, closed face, lean the shaft different ways.... Etc etc
Just experiment, have some fun and develop a load of skill.

Good plan, I'd add taking your time to that as well. Treating each shot as you would on the course lets your brain process exactly what happened.