How To Cut Five Golf Stroke From Your Game By The Weekend

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How To Cut Five Golf Stroke From Your Game By The Weekend

If you're serious about lowering your golf handicap and doing so quickly, master the three scoring clubs the driver, the wedge, and the putter. 

These clubs significantly impact your golf game and provide the most incredible opportunity for cutting strokes from your scores. Mastering these clubs will improve your game by five strokes per round. 

Specifically, though, let's focus on the wedges. Knowing which wedge to hit in different situations is the best way to drop shots because if you have selected the right club, it is much easier to pull the intended shot off. 

While learning to hit a wedge is not difficult, hitting one with confidence is handy, especially 40 yards from the green. Golfers face this situation two or three times a round, maybe more. 

Hitting a good shot from 40 yards out often leaves you with just a short putt, as I emphasize in my golf lessons, so you want to hit the shot well.

The most critical decision with the 40-yard pitch shot is which wedge to use the pitching, the sand, or the lob. These clubs are easy to hit to the green, but landing on the green is one thing and getting the ball to do what you want after it lands is another. Let's look at three typical 40-yard situations and the type of wedge shots each requires.

Lob Wedge


In the first situation, the pins up front, and there is little green to work with. Here, it would help if you had a high-flying shot with a little run, an image you can quickly learn to hit with some practice. 

The lob wedge is the club of choice for getting the ball in the air, so it is recommended in this situation. 

(If you're on the fairway with a tight lie, however, you might want to try one of the other wedges.) 

The lob wedge has from 58 to 60 degrees of loft, so there is no need to open the clubface. Just square the face to the target and swing. 

Since the ball will fly high and come to rest softly, you must be careful where you land the ball. 

Sand Wedge 


In the second situation, the hole is in the middle of the green, so you have some green to work with. 

The sand wedge is the club of choice in this situation, whether you are on the fairway or in the rough. The sand wedge enables you to customize your shot more efficiently than the lob or the pitching wedges. 

You can learn to alter the roll and the trajectory with little golf instruction. I like the sand wedge as my go-to club.

If you want a shot with less carry and more roll, square the clubface to the target. If you want a shot with slightly more roll than loft, close the clubface slightly. 

If you're going to hit the ball higher, open the clubface more, in which case the shot will resemble a shot from a lob or a pitching wedge. Also, keep in mind that the shot tends to go right with an open clubface.

Pitching Wedge


In the third situation, the pin is back, and there is plenty of room for the ball to roll. The pitching wedge is the club of choice if you are on the fairway or in some light rough. 

(If you're in heavy rough, try one of the other wedges.) 

Remember that the ball will run lower and hotter, even if you open the clubface a little, so don't swing as hard as you might with another iron. It's a mistake I see a lot of when giving golf lessons

The ball will also roll more than the other wedges, so get a good reading on the green, just as if you were going to putt the ball. More often than not, you will get closer to the pin with this type of shot than with a high-lofted shot.

The mechanics of a wedge shot are easy to learn. The key is choosing the right club at the right time and making slight adjustments in your shot. 

That's something that only experience can teach. At the same time, it is essential to practice these three shots as much as possible, so you can master the technique of each shot, develop control of it, and build self-confidence in your ability to execute them. That, in turn, will make shots easier to make.

The wedge is as essential as the driver or the putter when minimizing scores. Wedge shots from 40-yards out may not have the drama of sinking a 30-foot birdie putt or powering a 300-yard drive down the fairway, but throughout a round, they'll save you as many as five strokes or more from your scores. And that result is bound to lower your golf handicap.

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