Are you becoming increasingly frustrated at your inability to get up-and-down?
We've teamed up with Ping and short game coach to the stars on the PGA Tour James Ridyard to bring you all the short game advice you need to improve your wedge play. Whether it's pitching, generating more spin, striking chips cleanly or effective drills to try on the practice ground, we've got every angle covered in this video.
We've teamed up with Ping and short game coach to the stars on the PGA Tour James Ridyard to bring you all the short game advice you need to improve your wedge play. Whether it's pitching, generating more spin, striking chips cleanly or effective drills to try on the practice ground, we've got every angle covered in this video.
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00:00If you can become deadly accurate with your wedges, you're going to be able to get yourself
00:04out of trouble, make the most of your great drives and see your scores start to come down.
00:08But how do you become a master of the short game? Well, we've enlisted the help of Ping,
00:12as well as leading short game coach, James Ridyard, going to give you some advice on
00:16how to get the right wedges for your game and also show you how to use them correctly.
00:20We've come here to the custom-built short game area at Pavenham Park Golf Club. Let's get started.
00:30Right, so James, one of the shots that every golfer wants to play is that really high spinning shot.
00:45We see it on the PGA Tour Week in Without, that showstopper. But I think a lot of golfers get this
00:52wrong and they see their chip and pitch shots running away from the flag. So what are the things
00:56golfers need to consider when it comes to creating more spin around the reins?
01:00Right, well, it would be easy to jump in and just assume that it's technique.
01:03But that's overlooking probably the most fundamental piece, which is actually your environment.
01:08And by environment, I mean the quality of the club are using. Obviously, clean club,
01:12good grooves, good conditioned face, so no damage to it makes a big difference.
01:17Then the ball, the ball needs to be soft enough to actually spin. Then the third piece is that thing
01:20that you can't control and that's the environment you hit from. Okay, so any kind of longer grass,
01:26any kind of moisture in there, any kind of dirt, it's going to be very, very difficult to spin the
01:29golf ball. And another part of the environment that maybe you don't consider is the landing area.
01:33So whether the green is above or below you is going to make a difference to how quickly the ball stops.
01:37If the green is above you, the ball is going to come in flatter and go forwards more. If it's below you,
01:41it's going to come in steeper and stop faster. Then we have the actual slope here hitting onto. So we have a slight
01:46down slope here, unfortunately, which is going to make my ball kick forwards a little bit faster than
01:50if it were flat or into an upslope. Two things technically. Obviously, first of all, quality
01:54contact is primary, but if you're going to hit it too high on the club face, you're going to have
01:58any issue to the heel, you're going to have some problems generating spin. All right, so quality
02:01contact is massive. Relatively low on the face, kind of lower grooves. I'm not going to pick a groove
02:06number, but low is better than high. The second thing, and this might be a little bit technical,
02:11is your spin loft. If you consider a driver and it being the lowest spin
02:16club in a bag, we have the single spin loft, which is the loft you deliver, so up here,
02:20and your attack angle. With the driver, they're very, very close together. As the loft increases
02:25throughout your set, the spin loft increases and the spin you see increases as well. Obviously,
02:29the top end of that is going to be your most lofted wedge. At setup, we'd really be looking to make
02:34sure that you are maximizing loft. We're not talking flop shot open, but probably some degree open,
02:38even with a 60 here. I'm going to open it probably 5, 10 degrees to get it up to maybe 70 odd,
02:44because the reality of things is when I come into the golf ball, I am still going to deliver some
02:49degree of shaft lean. Okay, we want that shaft leaning forwards for our quality of contact.
02:52Yeah. So opening the face to some degree means we still deliver high loft. I'm also going to cut
02:57across it just a little bit, because like I said, any kind of draw is going to reduce spin. You think
03:02about the long swing, same kind of example. If I'm going to hook something in, it's going to run.
03:07Generally, if you slice it, the ball stops pretty quick. Okay, so relatively narrow,
03:10ball would be probably up just under my left chest. Knowing that I want to be pretty shallow,
03:15I'm going to make sure my swing stays relatively wide, and I keep the loft on the golf clubby.
03:20We're going to that far pin there, a second from the left.
03:26Nice and high, a little bit of grab, and pretty good considering we are pitching onto a slight
03:31down slope. There you go. Some really good pointers there. If you want to generate more spin,
03:35read the situation, incorporate that technique into your game to get a little bit more check around
03:40the greens. Right, James, let's get straight into it. I think it's fair to say that amateur golfers
03:47around the greens really struggle with their strike. We see a lot of players thinning it over the green,
03:52chunking it in front of them. So how can we help golfers increase the margin for error on their wedge
03:57shots and strike their wedges cleanly more consistently? I think the first hurdle to get over
04:02mentally is that it doesn't have to be perfect, or shouldn't need to be, if you can build in some
04:06degree of margin for error with these shots. And I'm going to look at it from two perspectives.
04:12First off, a little bit of a technique hint as to how the margin for error can grow. And secondly,
04:17obviously your wedge selection, wedge choice, the sole, and how to actually utilize that more
04:21effectively. So if you jump into the technical side of things, I have no real issue with somebody
04:26making contact with the ground behind the golf ball. Which would surprise a lot of people, right?
04:31Yeah, yeah, exactly. It takes people aback first in lessons. I think because most people have a
04:36negative experience of striking the ground behind the ball. But if you deliver the club effectively,
04:40you can build in some margin back there and still hit an effective shot. And that might not be the
04:45most sexy low spin you've ever hit in your life, but it will be on the green, it'll be under control.
04:49And I think the key aspect to that is to actually control the depth of the swing or the depth of low
04:54point. People think about low point and concept on the ground as a forward backward thing. I try and
04:59reframe it as more of an up and down. Now, if my club is heading to a spot that's this far under
05:03the turf, it doesn't matter what kind of bounce, what kind of style I have in my club, it's not
05:07going to save you. Because if I'm heading to a very low spot and hit back here, I'm in trouble.
05:11So essentially what we need to do is raise the low point of the swing up. Okay, and you can do that
05:16in a few technical ways. I think maybe the most simple that I'll show you today would be to actually
05:20have this end of the club start to rise more through impact. But the opposite of that obviously would be
05:25driving this end of the club down. Right. A lot of people get kind of stuck in that rut of driving
05:29the club forwards and downwards to try and get their strike. And their margin actually gets smaller
05:33and smaller the more they do it. Okay, so raising the butt of the club up through impact is going
05:37to help the low point come up. And the concept point on the ground can be a little bit further
05:41back than maybe players expect. Wow. And if you want to actually be able to utilize the soul of the club,
05:46we need that low point up. I'll just jump in and demonstrate. Yeah, let's see one in action for sure.
05:51Okay, so my rehearsal, I'm actually not really focused on the ball at all. What I'm focused on
05:55is my ground contact interaction. So I'm going to look at starting a ground contact, maybe one golf
06:00ball back. And from that point, I'm going to raise the butt of the club up as I move through. And that's
06:05going to prevent me sticking the club in the ground. Okay. So you can hear the sound there. It was
06:14obviously ground, then ball, but the flight was still good. It's rolled down to four feet. I think I'm
06:18going to take that most of the time. So let's move on to like the technique around the soul
06:21of the club and how we can make it a bit more friendly in terms of how it interacts with the
06:26ground and how we can change our setup potentially to implement that in our games. Yep. So we're kind
06:32of getting into the maybe the shaft lean topic a little bit and people are assuming that because
06:36from this face on camera, let's say they have a significant amount of forward lean means that
06:41they're not engaging bounce anymore. Now that only holds true if the club face is square to target or even
06:47slightly closer to target. If you're the kind of player that does deliver that, then forward lean
06:51is probably going to hurt you a little bit, especially if that forward lean number is more
06:55than the bounce angle on the club. But if you happen to be an open face player at all,
07:00so if I put a lot of forward lean on and rotate the face open, the bounce number increases incredibly
07:05quickly. So you can actually deliver a club leaning towards target with an open face and still engage
07:10a ton of bounce. So delivered a good amount of lean but you can see I've left nothing, no mark on the
07:20ground, it's not dug in at all. So there you go, pretty good result there. Hopefully that's given you
07:23some food for thought in terms of your technique around the green with the wedges to make the sole
07:27on your club work for you. Right James, so I think every golfer knows they need some wedges in
07:35their bag. But with all the different options when it comes to wedges, loves, bounce, grind,
07:39all that sort of thing, it can be difficult for golfers to know exactly what's going to work for
07:43them. And a good starting point I would suggest is using this new Ping Webfit wedge app, which is
07:50going to give us some recommendations based on some questions that we answer. So let's go through that
07:54process and you can talk through some of the questions they're asking and why that's important in
07:57terms of choosing the right wedges for you. So it should take less than two minutes, we'll give it a try.
08:03First question it's asking me, what is my average score? I'm going to go 74 on a good day, don't
08:08laugh at that one please. And now it's asking us what is my pitching wedge carry distance? So why
08:13would the app be asking us that? Yep, so it's looking at providing gapping information for you,
08:18so to fill the gap from whatever distance your pitching wedge carries down to partial wedge shots,
08:23as a longer hitter, potentially that gap is bigger and you might need more wedges. Perfect,
08:28so 132 yards for me. What is my highest lofted wedge? So that's a 58 degree
08:33wedge for me, why would it be asking us that? Just to get an idea of what kind of shots you
08:38almost like to play around the green, whether you'd like to play high shots, low shots.
08:41Okay cool, and now it's asking what are my typical turf conditions? I think this is a really important
08:46question. Talk us through some of the considerations around that. Yeah, so obviously in the UK we're just
08:52looking really at maybe length of grass and whether it's hard or soft ground, but if you start to go
08:57abroad, you go to the US and you start to deal with Bermuda, we have different strains of grass.
09:00So you're going to get an idea of the turf you play off because that will then lead towards the
09:06bounce and grinds that will be most suitable for you. Okay, so I'm going to go with medium for that.
09:10And it's now asking me what my typical sand conditions are. So I tend to play my bunker shots
09:14with my highest lofted wedge 58. Why would the, whether it's soft, medium or firm sand, why would
09:20that have an impact on how I would choose my wedge? Yeah, so in short, that's going to influence how
09:24the club interacts with the sand. If the sand is firm, the club is going to kick out more easily
09:28versus something that is deeper, heavier, the club is going to go through much more slowly.
09:32So if I was playing in quite firm sand, quite tight sand, how would I adjust my wedge setup?
09:39Typically you would go towards a lower bounce wedge. Okay, to get the leading edge under the sand.
09:44Yeah, because if you have a lot of bounce, it's really trying to help the club out of the sand,
09:48which is probably the opposite of what you need when there's barely any sand in there.
09:51Okay, cool. So let's go with, we'll go with medium for that, because that's kind of typically what
09:55my bunkers are like. Now we're talking about typical divot length. And again, a really important
10:00factor. Why is it asking us that? It's going to give some indication of attack angle and the
10:08shaffling or lofty deliver. So in short, the kind of longer, the deeper the divot, the steeper a player
10:13would expect to play them to be. Yeah, I think golfers don't really play a lot of heat to their divots.
10:19And I think it's a really good thing to notice when you hit some chip and pitch shots around the green,
10:23see whether your divots are shallow or deep, because that has an indication of your technique.
10:26So I'm going to go for medium for me on that one. It's now building my grind profile, but it's first
10:32asking me what my preferred pitch shot technique is, whether it's with a square face or an open face.
10:37Why is it asking us that? Yeah, but again, we're looking at the implications with bounce that you need,
10:43grind that you need. So if you play your pitch shots with an open face? More open face,
10:48typically, you could potentially play a lower bounce wedge. Okay, so I tend to play my pitch
10:52shots with a square face. So we'll go with square face. Now it's asking us what my typical ball
10:57position is on a pitch shot. So middle back or middle forward? Why is it asking us that?
11:03Yeah, but again, that will give us some kind of insight into attack angle, typically,
11:07all things being equal, which is going to help, again, ascertain bounce required.
11:12Yeah, so if your ball is back, you're probably going to be a little bit steeper.
11:16Yes, and you're probably going to need a little bit more help.
11:18A little bit more bounce. Yeah. Okay.
11:20So I tend to be a middle forward type of golfer. So let's put that in.
11:24So the app is now asking what my highest priority is with my most lofted wedge. Definitely for me,
11:30it's bunker play. That's kind of pretty much the only situation I use my highest lofted wedge on.
11:36It's now going to finalize my grind profile. It comes the moment of truth.
11:42Okay, so obviously we know with the PingEye S159 wedge in particular, there's six different
11:47grinds available. So there's a lot of options out there. The app selector tool gives you two options
11:51to then go and try. It's recommending an e-sole for me in the 58, which is obviously the more bunker
11:58specific sole, and an S-grind as well. So there you go, I've gone through that process. It's taken
12:02hardly any time at all. It's completely free and it's thrown up some really interesting
12:06kind of selections in terms of guiding me into some wedge designs that are going to work for me.
12:10And if you're struggling to choose your wedges, if you want some initial guidance,
12:14definitely check out the PingWebfit wedge app. It's going to give you some really useful information.
12:22Right, so let's move on to pitching. Something I think is a bit of an underrated skill
12:26in golf. There's nothing worse than getting within 50 yards on a par five and walking up with six.
12:31So let's try and help the viewers pitching technique. What are the sort of mistakes that
12:36people make when it comes to pitching and how are we going to go about fixing those?
12:39Yeah, so I think maybe a good way to frame it is if you were going to throw a ball from A to B,
12:45you probably wouldn't launch it as high as you could to get it to cover the distance. You'd
12:48actually launch it fairly flat. I think the most obvious thing to look at is when players are trying
12:52to launch the ball high, because they misunderstand maybe how to play these shots, typically they're
12:59trying to add loft through impact. So they start to lose shaft lean too quickly and present too much
13:04loft to the golf ball. So the most simplistic way to bring your ball fly down is obviously to deliver
13:09more shaft lean at impact. Now the most basic way to do it is play the ball further back than normal,
13:13if you're a player that launches it too high. If you play it central, you need to perhaps pivot a
13:19little bit better, learn to hold a little bit more angle in this wrist to actually have the club
13:23leaning forwards and deliver less loft. Okay, so let's see one here. We're at the Pavenham Park
13:27Golf Club, your excellent short game area. You're just going to pitch one to this first flag,
13:31which I think is, well the first green, which is 40 yards away. So let's see one here where you're
13:36going to bring the flight down on this one. Hopefully you're not going to shank it into my legs.
13:42I'm standing quite close to you. The temptation level is very high right now, Joel.
13:45Brilliant. You can see that actually came out a lot lower than I was expecting it to,
13:55and it still stopped on that green, that tiny green. Yeah, so we're looking at, if you do have
14:00access to a launch monitor of any kind, we're looking for 28 to 31 degrees as the window,
14:04which is much flatter than most people actually realise. Really interesting. Okay, so we've brought
14:08the flight down, now we need to control our distances. And you were talking about golfers relying
14:13most heavily on field, but I think most golfers probably need some sort of system to give them
14:18options when it comes to pitching and hitting those different distances. Yeah, some kind of basic
14:22clock face. So essentially I would look at your core shot or things to base things off as left arm
14:28parallel to the ground. So it'd be nine o'clock on the clock face. So the process to go through is really
14:32to figure out how far that goes, and then we can take something off. So you could end up with something
14:36that's more like 7.30. Okay. And then perhaps up to 10, 10.30. So that'd be three wedge distances
14:42straight away. And then obviously if you've got three different wedges, that's nine different
14:46distances. Exactly. Along with your full shots. Yep. The final thing we were talking about was
14:51when you're trying to get maximum distance out of it, the ball goes too high, the ball flight can be
14:56hit by the wind and different things. So we're trying to hit lower lifted wedges a bit more under
15:00control. When you are swinging more full out, there's more potential for a miss hit. Okay. Because your
15:05technique is usually going to suffer a little bit, then the ball will start to launch high. So you
15:08start to put more effort into the shot, it launches higher, and you still don't really get much more
15:12distance out of it. And like I said at the beginning, if you want to get the ball from A to B most easily,
15:16the last thing you want to do is throw it right up in the air. Okay, so you'd recommend coming down
15:20and loft, coming down a little controlled swing. So maybe we could see you on there to this. Yes,
15:24I'll switch to my 55. Here we go. Beautiful. Seamless. So we go to the 80 yard green. Yeah. So I'm
15:33probably not going to be a long way past the nine o'clock swing here. I shouldn't have to force it.
15:42Nice under control there. Low ball flight, one bounce.
15:46Right, I'll do that green. Happy with that one? I'll take it. There you go. So three really useful
15:51tips there if you are struggling with your pitch shots that should help you attack those flags.
15:55Right James, we've already given our viewers some great short game advice, but if there was one drill
16:03that you could give golfers to go and try for themselves that's going to have the biggest impact
16:08on their short game performance, what would it be and why? Yeah, so it's going to be, it's actually a
16:13finished position drill or checkpoint, but we're going to turn that checkpoint into a drill.
16:19So I like to teach players to get into a finished position that essentially means they've ticked
16:23three boxes. Those would be to make sure they've used their body correctly. They've done a good
16:27job of their arms and their release has been synced up with those other two things. So I'll talk you
16:32through it if you're in a great position to see it. Okay. So no backswing, I'm just going to turn
16:36through to target and I want you to observe how I've turned my chest fully and my arms are still kind of
16:41soft and beside me, the club is aligned in my centre and obviously I've got this coat hanger you will
16:46notice pointing at the centre of my body. All right, so it becomes a drill when you start to involve a
16:51training aid or tool. Now obviously everyone has coat hangers. I assume you could use something else,
16:55you could use a stick in the end of your club, you could hold a stick beside it, but this is
16:58light and easy for convenience. Yeah. So as long as you tick those three boxes, rotation, arm position
17:04and shaft positioned, you won't have cheated your release or over-release, you won't have dragged it,
17:09you won't have sent your arms across your body too fast and you have to pivot effectively.
17:13Okay, so decent contact, good flight and I can look down, immediate feedback, arm position is good.
17:21Yeah. Chest is pivoted and my release must have been in time. Yeah, I can see that shaft pointing
17:26right at the middle of your body, it's not too far one way or the other, so. Exactly, it's all nicely connected.
17:30You've done everything you need to do. So there you go, there's a really easy practice drill for you to try,
17:35get a coat hanger, put it in your grip, hit some chip shots, achieve those three checkpoints in your finished
17:39position and hopefully your scores will start to tumble. So there you have it, hopefully you enjoyed
17:43this video and it's given you a few pointers that you can go and try out on the golf course to help
17:47you get up and down a little bit more often and save some shots around the green. But that's all
17:52from me and James from the Short Game Area at Pavement Park Golf Club. We'll see you next time.