The easiest way to vary shot trajectory from a normal lie is to change the loft of the club you use. If you need a higher, softer shot, use a wedge with more loft. It is a lot easier than creating a different swing or changing your mechanics.
Still, you'll face situations when you want to change the character of a shot, which is done by making slight changes in technique. To lower wedge-shot trajec-tories-when hitting directly into a crosswind-either move the ball back two to three inches in your stance or lower your follow-through and finish with your hands low, shoulder-high at most. Either change will slightly reduce the wind effects on your shots, which can be significant on distance wedges.
If you want a more pronounced effect, make both changes, which creates a
"knock-down" wedge shot (Fig. 6.11.1). The trajectory is even lower, while
main-Figure 6.11.1: The knock-down wedge swing
taining a fair ability to stop shots on the green with lots of backspin. (Note: You must not use your hands in the knock-down shot. Be sure to swing through im-pact keeping your synchronized body turn, but let your hands keep going out to-ward the target on the follow-through rather than folding up and finishing high, as in a normal distance-wedge shot, Fig. 6.11.2.)
To lower your shots even more, position the ball about four inches back in your stance and again use a low-hands follow-through. This will minimize any wind effect on your shot.
As you practice different-length finishes, you'll see that even though the ball stays on the clubface only a very short time, your follow-through has a real effect on ball flight. The higher your hands finish, the higher the trajectory; the lower the fol-low-through, the lower the shot flies. If you watch Paul Azinger on the PGA Tour, you'll see his follow-through is usually low, his hands barely rising above his chest, which is why he strikes low, boring shots (as I'm demonstrating in Fig. 6.11.3).
Figure 6.11.2: The 9:00 o'clock distance-wedge swing
Figure 6.11.3: A slightly knocked-down 9:10 distance-wedge swing
Paul's low shots are very repeatable, very reliable, and he is a great player. However, it takes a lot of practice and skill to execute this shot without "hitting" at the ball at impact. As skilled as "Zinger" is, when the greens get hard and fast, it becomes more
difficult for him to hit to some tight pin positions and keep the ball on the greens.
Most golfers who try to play a short follow-through get very "handsy" and "muscley"
in the impact zone, resulting in poor control, especially under pressure. So go with the low finish only when a low shot is absolutely necessary and a lower lofted club won't get the job done.
6.12 The Cut Lob
While it's okay to occasionally play the ball back in your stance to produce lower shots, it is not okay to play the ball forward in your stance as a means of getting a higher trajectory. Playing the ball forward leads to one of three results, and two of them are bad: From a forward ball position, golfers either hit shots solidly (but with distance results that aren't great), hit a thin skull (terrible result), or hit it fat (terrible result).
Playing the ball significantly forward of your stance center moves it ahead of the bottom of your natural swing arc. If nothing else in the swing changes, the shot has to be hit fat; more likely, the golfer uses his hands or a body slide to alter the swing (producing some solid shots and some thin skulls).
As you learned before, the bottom of a good finesse-swing arc and the divot are
Figure 6.12.1: Forward ball position promotes forward knee slide
Figure 6.12.2: Forward ball position promotes handsy wrist action and fat fear where they are. That's physics. The only way you alter that is by giving up your true
finesse swing. And if you don't change your swing, you will hit behind the ball.
Then what happens is that after a few fat shots "fat fear" sets in, and the subcon-scious creates a new swing motion that includes a forward knee slide during the downswing (Fig. 6.12.1), a "handsy-through-impact" action (Fig. 6.12.2), or both.
130 Distance Wedges
Both compensations are attempts to hit the ball before the ground. Both create bad contact, bad shot trajectories, and bad distance control, especially under pressure when the hands don't work as well as they did on the practice tee.
To hit a higher shot, the first choice should always be to take a more lofted club and make your standard dead-hands finesse swing. The second choice is to open the clubface, aim your swing line to the left of the target, and keep your ball exactly in the center of your stance, relative to your new swing line (Fig. 6.12.3). Keep-ing the ball in the middle of your stance ensures crisp contact, and you can hit the ball as high as you want simply by opening the clubface enough and aiming far enough left. Remember, higher shots usually fly shorter distances, so be sure to make a longer backswing (and, as always, a full finish) to get these shots all the way to your target.
Figure 6.12.3: Ball position should be centered between ankles for the cut-lob shot
6.13 Calibrate Your Cut-Lob Technique .
For any cut shot, you must open the face of your wedge, which can be done many different ways. I suggest simplifying your options by adopting one standard open-faced position, the "45-degree-open" look, as shown in the sequence of photo-graphs in Figure 6.13.1. Start with a normal finesse grip and square club-address position shown on the left (aligned parallel left), then loosen your grip without moving the left-hand position and rotate the shaft to open the clubface until the face lines are at a 45-degree angle to the aim club (center figure). Retighten your left-hand grip, still without moving the left hand, reestablish your original
finesse-Figure 6.13.1: The proper way: Rotate your clubface open while maintaining your finesse grip
grip position relative to your body, and flare your left toe toward the target (shown on right). This is the normal address position, with a normal finesse grip relative to your "aim club;" except the face of the wedge has been rotated open to the 45-degree-open position.
Now that you know how to establish a consistent open-faced wedge setup, take a towel and a laundry basket to your practice range, where you can calibrate how that clubface performs. Walk 30 steps from the pile of balls you'll be hitting and set down your basket as your target. Walk seven steps to the right and lay down the towel, which becomes your calibration towel. Return to the pile of balls. Pick a nice area of grass from which to hit and set up your aim club parallel left of the target basket (for help setting an aim club, see section 4.4).
With a normal square clubface, hit five shots with your normal distance-wedge swing to your target basket. Next, without changing anything else, rotate your clubface open to the 45-degree-open position, keep your grip square to the target, and hit five more shots. If you truly swing just the way you did before, with your swing still going down your aim-club line through impact toward the basket,
these five shots should go off to the right and fall short of the calibration towel (due to the open clubface).
Continue using the same setup (aiming parallel left of the basket, the clubface 45 degrees open) and hit five more shots. Again, the balls should fly off to the right and short of the basket. The amount they fly to the right and short is your cut-lob calibration angle and distance.
Walk out and measure your calibration distance by first moving the towel to the middle of your 10-ball scatter pattern (Fig. 6.13.2). Measure visually how far short and to the right the towel is compared to your target basket. Pick up the towel and move it the same angle to the left and the same distance past your bas-ket as your open-faced shots finished right and short. Now the calibration towel is your new swing line and swing-distance-calibration target, to help you set up to hit shots dead to the real flagstick on the course (Fig. 6.13.3).
Practice hitting cut-lob shots to the target basket by setting up and swinging to your new calibration towel, using your 45-degree-open-faced wedge. The more you practice this way, with an aim club aligned left and an identifiable calibration towel on the range, the better you will learn to set up and swing properly to the left, so you can hit cut-lob shots accurately to a flagstick on the course.
Figure 6.13.2: Measure your cut-lob calibration angle and distance right and short of your target
Figure 6.13.3: set up and aim long and left to hit perfect cut-lob shots to the target basket