In Person Wedge Lesson – Setup, Face Angle, Early Extension, Swing Length

I had an in person lesson today on a grass driving range.  I wanted to work on my wedges, specifically improving control from 30-80 yards.  I had a 52 degree wedge and 56 degree sand wedge for the lesson.  We started with hitting 50 yard shots with the 56.  I hit a few good shots, mixed in with a variety of amounts of thin and fat shots.  I also tended to hit left of the the target.

The first thing he suggested was changing my set up.  Specifically, I tend to see too far into my heels.  I feel like my weight is centered over my ankles, but he suggested I have more weight forward.  I got the same suggestion from my online lessons this past month with a mid-iron.  Clearly I haven’t done enough to correct it.  Having an in person lesson where he moved me into his recommended position was very helpful.  I wound up standing closer, leaning forward more, and having my hands lower than what I’m used to doing.  He also had me lift my chin up a little bit and angle my pelvis down a little more.  I felt like I had my weight more over the balls of my feet, which made balancing while hitting very different.  I think I need to find a way to balance better while still keeping my balance point further forward.  I felt like I was much more over the ball.

The online instructor suggested setting up to a ball with my back to a wall, with my heels 2 inches from the wall and having my butt just touch the wall.  I had been practicing that, and interestingly, the in person instructor’s first comment was that I’m still too far towards my heels and need to get my weight forward.

He said that fixing the set-up should address about 80% of my issues with hitting wedges.  Then he started to work on additional issues.  He identified that I am rolling the face open too much on my backswing.  This was something that had been identified as a swing flaw when I first started taking lessons over six months ago.  Obviously I still have not addressed it adequately.  It seems to be one of those swing flaws that if I am not focusing on it, I resort to old bad habits.

He also noted that I tend to use my legs too much for wedge shots.  I have struggled with early extension and he suggested that for partial wedge shots, I should try to keep my right heel on the ground and instead rotate on the follow-through.  Doing this change did seem to improve my contact quite a bit.  Keeping the heel down helps with early extension, and it seemed to lead to crisper contact.

With the changes up to this point, I was making cleaner contact and also not pulling my shots as much.

The last issue he identified was that he felt that my swing was too short.  I commented that I had been trying to use the clock method of increasing my backswing length to control distance.  I have noticed that I tend to hit my sand wedge around 50 yards when I take my backswing to shaft parallel.  He suggested that I take a longer backswing and control distance through the amount of speed I put into my swing.  He suggested a fuller swing, just at a slower speed.  When I added this change, I definitely was getting the best contact.  It will take practice to adjust my distance control though.

So, in summary, the problems identified were:

Set-up: weight more towards the balls of my feet, standing closer to the ball, holding hands lower down, closer to my body

Avoid opening the face too much during the backswing: typically I’ve heard the face angle should be parallel to the spine angle at shaft parallel during the backswing

Early extension / moving right leg towards the ball: solution was to keep the heel on the ground through the swing, which is fine for partial shots

Swing was too short / quick tempo: taking a longer slower swing helped contact, but will require more practice to get adequate distance control.