Distance Wedge and Bunker Strategies to Boost Your Golfing Ability
If you want to improve your golf game then you are going to have to work at it. But we understand that you do not have a lot of time to practice. Who would like to spend several hours on the range or practice green anyhow when they might be on the course actually playing? Therefore our drills are supposed to give you the most bang for your buck. To get you better in as little time as practical. Let’s look at techniques to boost your short game so you get up and down more often.
Distance Wedges
The short game is when you get inside the distance of a full pitching wedge. Usually, to get the appreciation for how to hit a single pitch or sand wedge at different distances from inside 100 yards would need plenty of practice over significant amounts of time. Instead what I would recommend is to keep 4 wedges in your bag: a 60 degree lob wedge, gap wedges of 56 & 52 degrees, and a normal wedge.
You need to practice 4 different swings: the quarter swing, half swing, 3/4 swing and your full swing. You’ll have 16 different settings for hitting the golf ball at different yardages, starting from around 25 yards to 130 yards dependent on how far you hit it.
You are going to need a friend when measuring your different swings so as to get correct yardages on the distances you hit each swing with the varied clubs that you use. Tour pros generally have somebody stand round the yardage that they expect the ball to fly, who would then stand in the location after the ball hits the ground. The pro can then “laser” the person to get a precise yardage. If you can get a measure of 25, 50, 75, 100, and 125 yards, then you may have your other half watch where the ball lands and give you an estimation of the distance. You can manifestly guess the distances yourself, but you need to be in a position to obviously see how far each shot is carrying, bad information here will be much worse for your game than no info.
Bunker Play
Playing out of the sand is hard for newbies, but a modest amount of practice can go a good distance. One of the primary issues we have is that we typically don’t have greenside bunkers to practice out of in the practice courses we usually go to. If this is the case at the course you practice at, attempt to go out of a hole with a sand trap by the green and hit some practice shots. This is best done in the off hours when just a couple of players are out on the course, so you can get some shots in without interrupting play.
You need to practice 2 different shots. The first one is the shot around 10 yards. These are comparatively simple shots to play since even if you hit the ball fat then it is possible to get it relatively close. The second shot is between 15-20 yards. You do not necessarily need a pin to use as a target; you may either use a bunch of tees down or use a handkerchief as a makeshift target.
Practicing these two kinds of short game shots will permit you to greatly improve your scores. Each type of shot is faced multiple times during the process of a round; whether or not it’s on short par four’s and par five’s or when you miss the green on an approach shot.
Enhance your game with our short game drills provided at Easy Pars. We have everything from full swing to putting tips to help you lower your scores.