This might happen to you once a round: you’re about five to ten yards off the green, the hole is near the edge (not much green to work with), and you have to get the ball over something (a bunker, a mound, heavy grass or weeds, etc.). In other words, you can’t run the ball onto the green. You have to fly it on and make it stop right now.

Without a solution, all you can do is hit on and watch the ball run way past the hole and face the Mother of Two-Putts coming back.

Well, here’s the solution. You have to have this shot in your bag, and not many people do.

1. Take out a wedge with at least 56 degrees of loft. Open the face (by twirling the handle in your hands, not by rotating your hands). The less distance over ground you have to cover, the more you open the face. You’ll have to practice to find out just how much.

2. Open your stance until the clubface is square to your target again. Put the ball in the center of your stance. No shaft lean—keep it vertical.

3. Swing along your stance line, brushing the sole of the club along the ground as you hit the ball. Do not try to hit down on the ball. Do not try to lift the ball in the air by hitting up with your right hand. The open clubface will get the ball in the air for you very nicely. Keep the clubface facing the sky on the follow-through.

In the first photo, I’m set up for a standard, straight-ahead pitch. The ball is in the center of my stance, and the clubface is square to the target line (yellow stake). Notice the piece of straw just above my left toe.

In the second photo, I have opened the clubface and rotated my stance (see the straw) so (a) the ball is still in the center of my stance and (b) the clubface is still square to the target line. I will swing along my stance line (orange stake).

(Click photos to enlarge)

Since the clubface is open, you’ll have to hit the ball harder than you think you should to get the ball to go the distance you want it to. Practice will get you used to how hard that is.

The ball will get in the air with lots of spin, land, and roll out only a very little distance. Depending on the circumstances, the ball might run past the hole, but you should have a makeable putt coming back.

This shot requires practice. Lots of it. Once you have learned it, though, you have a major and common problem around the green solved.

Then when you use this shot to get up and down on the course and one of the other members of your foursome asks, “How did you do that,” you say, “Oh, it’s just something I picked up.”