Instruction
How to add more backspin to your wedge shots
More Backspin from OnTour Golf on Vimeo.
When you’re near the green with a wedge in hand, it’s OK to raise your expectations and be a bit more aggressive in trying to get the ball close to the flag. In this video, I describe the plight of the average amateurs wedge game, the shot that they can most easily adopt for success and the way to practice to achieve the low-spinning shot Tour players often use around the green.
GolfWRXers, if you want more free lessons from me, just go to my site OnTOUR Golf. There’s over 100 free lessons available on there. You can get all the lessons by signing up here.
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!
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Instruction
The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic
My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.
As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.
The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.
Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:
Mis-aligned hands
By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.
The position of the grip in the upper/left hand
I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.
To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.
Too much lower (right) hand on the club
It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.
Gripping too tightly
Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.
So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?
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Dan H
Jan 12, 2017 at 9:14 pm
Cool video with a study comparing a new wedge to a one year old wedge using Trackman numbers: https://youtu.be/PeOboLZcUuY
shows the importance of the equipment as well
Steve S
Aug 31, 2016 at 2:42 pm
Thanks Mr Obvious. Usually I like Hamilton’s videos. This one could have been 3 minutes shorter. This “tip”has been in every golf magazine at least twice a year for the last 5 years.
Dunn2500
Aug 22, 2016 at 4:51 pm
I have always generated alot of spin with irons and wedges…….aside from technique and this is gonna sound stupid but I see it all the time…..use a good ball and for godsake keep your grooves clean, I see guys with mud, dirt and grass caked into their grooves and they wonder why ball won’t spin……make sure your irons and wedges are clean…..
K sheriff
Aug 19, 2016 at 12:41 am
More loft doesn’t always mean more spin. Gap wedge all day
Fok
Aug 18, 2016 at 4:25 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w1FtoRM6cY
Dave
Aug 17, 2016 at 9:47 pm
Yes works great if you have the proper coarse conditions ,nice cut fairways not slopped from overwatering and good greens also , we don’t all play on pro type coarses. But very good article .
Matto
Aug 18, 2016 at 12:54 am
Coarse conditions? Like….rough sandpaper type conditions?
cwt
Aug 18, 2016 at 12:27 pm
Speaking of course conditions and sand[…], I often have these same thoughts when looking at videos about bunker play. I tend to play at smaller municipal courses, and they rarely have well maintained bunkers. How about a video for how to play various public muni courses?
Dave
Aug 18, 2016 at 5:23 pm
We have a “local rule” about the sand at our muni courses. Theres several of them you are lucky to even have sand in the bunkers at all, and some that have pea sized to nearly walnut sized gravel in them. My group just makes the decision for the day at the first bunkers if its that bad and full of gravel you just get a free drop from the bunker 2 club lengths any direction you want. Sometimes this allows you to even drop on the green but its the same rule for everyone. We used to do no closer to the hole ect but then it started getting to where you had to drop in 8 inch tall crabgrass and it was a worse lie than the sand so we just made it anywhere around the bunker. To be fair this is really only at the couple of really bad courses.
Equipo
Aug 17, 2016 at 8:28 pm
I think that you mean ‘low, spinning shot’ instead of ‘low-spinning shot.’ It threw me off so thought I’d help.
Jack
Aug 18, 2016 at 11:45 am
that low, spinning shot is a tough shot to execute consistently. I guess I could become a better ball striker.
k nizzle
Aug 17, 2016 at 4:56 pm
Scott, I very much enjoy your teaching style. I get the information I need and the answers to my questions, delivered in a no-muss, no-fuss manner, all of which I can take to the range right away.
Steven
Aug 17, 2016 at 2:05 pm
Great information. Coming from the inside will definitely help. What is a good recommendation to eliminate the shaft being back (I assume a casting problem)? Do you think inside plane helps getting the hands ahead of the ball?
Blake
Aug 17, 2016 at 10:49 am
Scott is hands down the best instructor on this site.
Timbleking
Aug 17, 2016 at 4:41 pm
After Mr Smizzle of course…
jmejones
Aug 20, 2016 at 11:35 am
He didn’t tell us anything. All he said was what’s done wrong and this is what you do…I’d say at least on video, he wouldn’t help 99% of the golfers out there.