A teaching pro once told me that when he was getting ready to play in a tournament, he did nothing but putt and hit wedges. Lots of wedges. He explained why, but I didn’t really get the point until about two years ago.<\/p>\n
Take this self-test. Go the range and get ten golf balls. Take out your sand wedge and hit a pitch with a half swing. It will go about 70 yards or so. Now hit nine more, with identical results. Identical. Carbon copies.<\/p>\n
If you hit the first few O.K., but then they start going every which way or you start having contact problems, something about your swing is missing or needs tightening up.<\/p>\n
Get a lesson if you need to (and you probably do) to learn how to hit a 70-yard pitch in a way that you can pass this test.<\/p>\n
One of the major flaws the test will uncover is that your hands are behind the ball at impact. Pick a bad shot type, fat, thin, slice, and this flaw is a likely cause of it.<\/p>\n
There might be other things wrong, but by getting this flaw corrected, other swing flaws get patched up, too.<\/p>\n
There’s a story that when Tom Watson first went to see Byron Nelson, the first thing Nelson wanted to see is Watson hitting a few pitches. If there were problems with that shot, then there was no point in moving on to any of the longer clubs.<\/p>\n
I have a mat in my back yard off which I can hit plastic golf balls. I spend almost all of my time there hitting them with my 70-yard pitch swing.<\/p>\n
It’s the same with you. Once you have the pitch swing down cold, you not only have a deadly scoring shot in your bag, but you’ll have mastered the key to your full golf swing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A teaching pro once told me that when he was getting ready to play in a tournament, he did nothing but putt and hit wedges. Lots of wedges. He explained why, but I didn’t really get the point until about two years ago. Take this self-test. Go the range and get ten golf balls. Take … Continue reading Build your golf swing around your wedges<\/span>