If you are like most golfers, you struggle with short wedge shots. For most people, anything but a full swing with a wedge is just a guessing game. This is because most golfers don’t have a system for deciding which shot to hit from these “in between” yardages.
There are many variations of wedge swings. Most pros have a different length swing for almost every yardage. For those of us who don’t have time to practice short wedge shots for hours at a time, there is one simple swing you can learn that will give you 3 or 4 different short wedge distances, depending on how many wedges you carry. It is called the half wedge.
The half wedge is a swing in which your left arm (if you are right-handed) gets parallel to the ground at the top of the backswing. Your left arm and the shaft of the club will form an “L”. This is a great shot to work on with video to make sure you are engraining the feel for the proper position. Once you can consistently make half wedge swings on the video, you are ready to go to the golf course how far the ball carries with your “half wedge” swing.
Learn how far you carry the ball with each wedge and you will have as many new yardages as you have wedges. The next time you have that dreaded 65 yard shot, you will know that you carry your half sand wedge 55 yards, so the shot is just a little bit more than a half sand wedge. Now you have a system that is much better than standing in the fairway trying to make a good guess.
-Chris Jefferson
Head Golf Professional at Paris G&CC
– Class A memeber of the P.G.A. for 18 years
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