Master Your Wedges! Tips to Choose the Right Lofted Wedge for Every Greenside Shot

⛳ Learning to use different wedges can significantly improve your golf game.

🏌️‍♂️ A pitching wedge is ideal for lower, rolling shots, especially in windy conditions.

🌬️ Using a club with less loft can help keep the ball lower to the ground and roll more.

📏 The sand wedge is perfect for shots where you need to get the ball higher in the air and stop quickly.

🎯 For shots over bunkers, use a club with a lot of loft to get the ball up in the air.

🕳️ In bunker shots, aim to hit the sand behind the ball to get it out smoothly.

🎨 Creativity around the greens can enhance your short game by using different wedges for various shots.

‍

00:00:01 - [Music] hey guys we're out at the golf course today doing some wedge work Josh is going to give me some tips on which wedges to use we um and yeah yeah should be good we've got a bunch of different options here so we'll go all the way from like a pitching wedge basically all the way through a lob wedge we'll just talk through some different scenarios of when you'd use the clubs and the best part is I don't have to hit a shot she's going to all this going be awesome yeah

00:00:26 - good after it all right so here we are we're in front of the green this is kind of your basic sort of pitch and run shot so there's a lot of room for you to roll this ball up there okay um so you've got a couple of different options I've obviously got a bunch over here as well this would be a great time if you were trying to hit a shot that was like lower to the ground especially today like with the wind you could use a pitching wedge so typically that's going to be a club

00:00:47 - that's going to have anywhere from call it 43 to 46 or 47 degrees of Loft depending on your set um and then the technique really all we're doing is basically the same thing you're doing for just a normal chip or a pitch okay um we're just going to use a club with less Loft so it'll come out a little lower it'll probably roll a little bit more um so we've got a back pin location this would be a great time to use that shot so um go ahead and take your normal setup grab your pitching wedge we'll

00:01:10 - basically play the ball kind of towards the middle of our stance okay basically go back to maybe a little lower than your waist and then kind of the same length on the follow through oh going to make it there that's fine so you can still see I mean even the beauty of this shot is you don't have to necessarily hit it perfect but because it's got a a little bit more roll out to it it'll still get kind of heading up towards the flag you just hit a little behind that one so um all you

00:01:35 - can really change here is maybe just instead that that ball was a teeny tiny bit towards the front of your stance I just move it a little closer towards your Trail fot okay does that look good right there yep that's fine there you go you can see kind of landed right about the blue flag y if we would have been online that would have rolled out about the same distance as a red flag so that'd be a really good place to use your pitching wedes shot just like this cool all right so we've

00:02:00 - moved to a different spot on this green um this is back behind the green we've got a pin that's kind of tucked in the corner so there's not a lot of room to really work with here um this would be a great case for you to use your most lofted wedge so I believe for you that's your Sand Wedge um if you had a wedge that even had more Loft like a 56 or a 58 or even a 60 this be a totally reasonable place to do that from so uh the reason we're trying to do that we

00:02:23 - want to get the ball a little higher in the air we want to basically use the height to our advantage to help stop the ball faster uh because we don't have a the green to work with so I'll trade you this is your Sand Wedge versus your pitching wedge so like I said a little more Loft the setup stays fairly similar you're basically still going to try to play that ball out of the middle of your stance so when you follow through the only other thing you could do is with

00:02:43 - your follow through try to finish with your hands really close to your left pocket basically re hinge the club just like that okay so what that'll help you do is it'll help you keep the face more open okay versus if you're hitting a lower shot you'd want to follow through with your arms more out in front of you close the face and help you hit a little lower so which you'll see a lot of the best uh pictures of the golf ball do is they'll finish their swing with their

00:03:02 - hands really close to their pocket the Sha standing really vertical so what you're trying to do this is basically get it inside of call it you know 15 ft perfect get in the hole there you go okay so we're in basically the exact same spot where we were for your sand wed shot um but what I want to show you is something else that you could do from here so let's say instead of having the flag tucked back into the corner the flag's more like in the center part of

00:03:29 - the green even down on the very far end so this green slopes a ton from back to front so what you could do here with your different wedges in your bag is you could potentially use a club with a little less Loft so I may not go all the way to a pitching wedge but you could hit like a gap wedge here so what I want to do is I want to just show you the differences so I want to hit one to the White Flag but we'll do the first one with the sand wedge okay so similar to

00:03:50 - kind of the technique we used before this ball come out a little higher stop a little faster and then we'll hit one with the gap wedge just to show you guys kind of the difference in the roll that you would get okay and where you might want to potentially use this on off course cool so let's hit The Sand Wedge shot first so same thing we'll just have the ball pretty much in the middle yep there you go so you can see doesn't quite roll all the way to the hole like

00:04:11 - stops a little short so now let's switch to your gap wedge so your gap wedge is typically going to be something with a loft of call it between 48 and 52 or 54° depending on how your set's made up so this one's going to have a little less Loft so if you make that same type of Swing this ball should roll out a little bit more there you go see he comes out a little lower y rolls a little bit longer roll okay so two examples of obviously a sand wedge and a gap wedge

00:04:41 - totally dealer's choice on like what you want to do here okay this is really like this is where you can have some creativity around the greens kind of pick and choose what you want to do um what I generally recommend to students is get really good with one Club first before you start adding in the variety of like other wedges and different types of shots okay doesn't mean that it's wrong to do that if that's what you feel like you want to do so um I just gener

00:05:03 - generally recommend like use one wedge so that you can minimize the decision- making yeah simplify the process and then once you've gotten to the point where you can hit that shot really well then you can start to add in the variety of using a gap wedge or something else okay so now we're behind this bunker we've got to hit it over something and land it on the green so this is one that a lot of students I think get extremely timid about they're scared to hit this

00:05:26 - shot because they don't want to end up in the bunker so I can see that I'm sure that's probably very common you may have experienced how I feel yeah so so for this shot really we're trying to use again a club with a lot of Loft so for you that's going to be your Sand Wedge for for those of you watching this could be a 58 a 60° you want to use something that's going to be able to get the ball up in the air okay that would be step number one step number two with this

00:05:46 - shot especially because you have a little bit more Loft on the club don't be afraid to create the speed you need to hit this ball as far as we need to go so as far as like setup and stance similar to what we've been doing the ball should stay fairly close to the center um I wouldn't necessarily add a ton of Loft because you already have quite a bit of Loft on your Sand Wedge you could open the face a teeny tiny bit for those of you watching the more you open the face the more you use the

00:06:09 - bounce of the club which is the bottom part which slides the more you close the face the more you're going to lead use the Leading Edge of the club that's the part that digs yeah so that's really what we're trying to avoid doing is digging this club into the ground

00:06:25 - okay not quite enough power not quite enough power but we got the Lo that we needed we got the ball over the bunker like the objective here is really get the ball on the green don't even think about the golf ball try to hit the ground okay see that was the best one oh my gosh that was so good all right here we are green side bunker shot um so we got a ton of different options here we've got some green to work with um for this shot in particular you're going to want

00:06:48 - to open the club face so it wouldn't be wrong to use a club that maybe has a little bit of less Loft okay so like you got your Sand Wedge that's probably right around 54 55° I've got a 58 really kind of dealer choice on what you want to use here the biggest thing with this shot is just the setup and the technique so let's talk through that a little bit okay so uh you're definitely not trying to hit the golf ball here you're actually trying to hit the sand behind

00:07:09 - the ball so I'm just going to draw a line you know kind of where you want to hit the ground that would be essentially where I would want the middle of my stance to be okay all you're trying to do is hit the line the line okay like if you can do that that's that's the trademark of like really good bunker players they hit the ground in the same spot so whereever that line is that's the center of my stance that would be where the bottom of my swing would be and then obviously if that's

00:07:33 - the bottom of my swing then I'd hit the sand first and the golf ball would just fly out with the sand okay that's why You' put it in the middle um the other piece to add in is just opening the face so you want to make sure that instead of playing the club with its normal kind of stated Loft you just have that face be a little more open it's probably going to point the scoring lines more out to the right in order to accommodate for that you can just shift your aim slightly back to the

00:07:55 - okay perfect awesome see how that came out yes expert bunker player oh yeah all right so a couple of different examples of just how to use potentially some different lofted wedges in your bag for some different shots um so lots of variability around the greens this is where you can be creative so really nice job thank you to Lexi for demonstrating all the shots really well um anything else you want to add yeah and if you guys want to work on your game head to

00:08:25 - your closest Golf Tech and get a lesson today

‍