In this video, top 50 coach John Howells demonstrates the wedge distance triangle - a foolproof, three-part system which is going to help golfers get up and down more often from inside 100 yards. It's an underrated and under-practiced skill but if you can improve your short game from inside this distance, your scores should start to tumble.
Video shot on location at Infinitum Golf Resort, host of the DP World Tour Qualifying School.
Video shot on location at Infinitum Golf Resort, host of the DP World Tour Qualifying School.
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00:00So let's get you better dialed in from inside 100 yards. We're going to be
00:04looking at something really cool called the Distance Wedge Triangle. Let's get
00:07into it.
00:19So the Distance Wedge Triangle is made up of three aspects. The first is
00:24centeredness of strike. The second is making sure you've got a nice low dynamic
00:30loft at impact, usually less than 15 degrees. And then the third is altering
00:36your swing length to increase or decrease the amount of club head speed
00:40you've got at impact. All three of those aspects are absolutely critical to be
00:45accurate inside 100 yards. We've often looked at the third one, swing lengths,
00:50that's been well coached and well documented, but the first two have often
00:54been neglected. So we're going to really focus on those.
01:01So number one, centeredness of strike. What we're trying to do here is make sure
01:05that we hit the ball out of the horizontal center, i.e. not out of the toe or the
01:10heel, but also out of the vertical center as well, which means not catching it fat
01:15or thin. In order to do that, we're going to need to do a couple of quick things at
01:20set up. I like to see the ball just forward of center of your stance, left foot turned out,
01:26a little bit of weight favoring your left side and maybe even invoke a little bit of forward
01:31shaft lean at address. We're going to make a nice centered backswing. That means that we're not
01:36swaying our head way off it or moving our weight excessively over to the right, because that's going
01:42to cause us real contact problems with where we hit the ground. We're trying to make sure that we hit
01:47the ground either level with or slightly after the golf ball, just like that. If we can do that,
01:54we're going to get ball first, divot second, that nice compressed contact with the ball.
02:01Once we've learned to hit the ground in the right spot, what I like to do then is do the runway drill,
02:07which is all about trying to make sure that we land the club in the horizontal position correctly.
02:14So what I like to do is set up this little tram line, set up to the middle of it here,
02:19and I've given myself a little runway or a tramway there that I can swing down.
02:25You can see I just hit a little bit too close to me on that one. We'll have another go, set up those
02:31tram lines again, just go a little bit further back. On that one, I landed it a little bit too far
02:40away from me. So this third and final one now, I should be able to land it exactly on the correct
02:48spot. Perfect. Right down the tram lines. That's going to give me a really nice opportunity to hit it
02:56exactly out of the center and also out of the vertical center. Those are going to give you really
03:01consistent ball speeds and it's going to allow that ball to come off with a controlled amount of spin
03:07and launch to get the ball landing nice and close to the flag.
03:16So the second aspect of the triangle is having that nice low dynamic loft. The best players will
03:22probably de-loft their wedge shots around 15 degrees for a distance wedge shot in this region of 70 yards
03:28or so. What we're trying to do is make sure that we've got plenty of shaft lean through impact and
03:33that we're delivering that club. You know, if it was a 58 degree lofted wedge, I would de-loft this to
03:38around 43 at impact. The reason we want that is it's going to give us that nice low launch angle, high spin,
03:45plenty of friction. The ball will grab nice and low on the grooves and it will come in and get that nice
03:51one hop and stop type effect when it lands. So how can we do that? Well, I like to use the alignment stick
03:57drill. So what you're going to do is grip the club with the alignment stick about halfway down the
04:02alignment stick and just try and take your normal grip, try and fashion it up so that you're still
04:07holding the stick next to the grip. And you're going to have the alignment stick just outside your left
04:12hip. And what it does is it invokes a nice amount of forward shaft lean even at address. We're not looking
04:19for that necessarily, but it helps certainly with the drill. But what I'm trying to do is make sure
04:23that when I swing through, I'm not allowing this stick to touch my left rib cage. If I do, I'm going
04:29to get really bruised on my left rib cage. So making little shots back and through as a drill, trying to
04:37just brush the ground with that nice low dynamic loft. So let's give it a go. Let's try and hit a shot
04:43here. I've got GC quad running, get into my normal setup position, good centered backswing, as I've said
04:51before, ball just forward of center, a little bit of weight on my left, and I'm really trying to deal
04:57off the club through impact. Nice low flying distance wedge shot. GC quads there telling me I actually
05:11de-lofted that there to, what's it coming up with, 7044 spin and it was de-lofted to 44 degrees of lofted
05:21impact. So a nice 14 degree de-loft. That's exactly what we're looking for. Low flying, a nice spin on the shot.
05:33So the third aspect is dealing with the different club head speeds that can control the ball speed and
05:39how far the shot carries. So how can we easily monitor that? Well, this is something that's been
05:45spoken about a lot by various different instructors over the years, and it's how to use the clock system
05:50in your wedge game. What we can almost do is imagine where would our left arm swing to in the backswing.
05:57You could swing your arm, you know, from down here at address at six o'clock. We could swing it to sort of
06:028.30, maybe 9.30, 10 o'clock, or indeed all the way up to a full backswing. Those three different sized
06:10backswings will obviously give you three different club head speeds. Now, obviously when we're doing
06:16this, you can call it what you want. You can call it a small swing, a medium swing, a large swing.
06:22You can call it half, three quarter, full. It really doesn't matter. What's important is that it's
06:27individual to you, and you know how far each of these shots goes for you. What I recommend to players
06:33is get the numbers written on the back of your wedge. Try and see if you can actually practice
06:38them at a range, a top tracer range or a trapman range, and put them down on the back of your wedge
06:44so that when you pull the club out of your golf bag, you know exactly what your three swings are.
06:49So I've got a 50 yard shot here. I know my small 8.30 swing goes about 46 yards carry, so let's give it
06:58a try. Again, as I've mentioned, monitoring my setup, ball just forward of center, a little bit of weight
07:07on my left and a nice 8.30 backswing. A little bit left of the pin, but it's gone the right distance.
07:19So give those three aspects of the distance wedge triangle a go. Make sure that you're focusing
07:25on centered strikes, on a nice minus 15 dynamic loft at impact, and get those distance wedges
07:32dialed in with three different backswing lengths, and you'll watch your proximity to the hole get way,
07:37way, way better inside a hundred yards.
07:50So I'll see you next time.
07:52Bye.
07:54Bye.
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