It's the Son of a Butcher podcast. I'm your host Claude Harmon solo episode of the pod this week. Just got back from two weeks on tour and one of the things went I'm on tour working with players is I'm always trying to think about what I see and what I see on a regular basis that can help all of you listening. And I've talked about a lot of things on the pod, but when we think about what's going to help you get better, what's going to help you improve your game, I think short game is huge, right. I mean, every single week on tour there is a pro am, and when you watch the best players in the world and look at their short games and then look at regular everyday golfers and their short games, there's a dramatic difference. On DJ's lift team, he's got Patrick Reed and I walk a lot of practice rounds with Patrick Reed, and the guy's short game is just ridiculous. It is one of the best short games I've ever seen. And the way that he is able to control spin, trajectory, the way he varies his shots, it's amazing and it's no surprise that that is kind of the calling card of his game. But what can you, as a regular golfer do to improve your short game? So I'm gonna break this down and you know a few different areas. The first thing I think you want to do is take a look at your wedge setup. What type of wedges are you using? And I'm talking kind of like loft wise, do you have a lob wedge in that sixty fifty eight degree range? Sand wedges are going to kind of run in that kind of fifty six range pitching wedge gap weights. A lot of the guys that are playing and girls that are playing professional golf, they do have four wedges. I'm not saying that works for everybody, but I do see a lot of times big gaps in people's wedge games right and kind of gaps in the distances on they have a shot and they don't really kind of have a club for that. So the first thing that you want to do is take your wedges to the driving range and if you've got a rangefinder, you can go ahead and scope out some yardages. If you've got access to a launch monitor, that's great as well. Rapsodo, who you've heard me talk a lot about on the pod I think for the money under one thousand dollars, they've got a launch monitor that's portable. You can use it inside, you can use it outside. The MLM two pro is going to give you carry distances, and I think it's very important when you're trying to assess your short game to have a very specific, defined group of numbers that you know is how far you carry your wedges. I think a lot of people listening right now, if they're honest with themselves, they don't really have a very good gauge, a very good understanding as to how far they're carrying their wedges. What swing they're making is to produce that number. So one of the things that I think you want to guard against and stay away from is making full wedge swings. You know, a full lob wedge, a full sand wedge, a full gap wedge. I think that's very, very dangerous because I think it brings in a lot of characteristics in order to pull these shots off that you need. First of all, you need really good launch conditions. You need very very good impact positions, and I think a lot of regular golfers, mid handicapped golfers struggle with good impact. You know, in their full swing, and they struggle with that in the short game as well. I think ball position is very important. Is the ball in the middle of your stance, is the ball back in your stands? Is the ball forward in your stants? I see a lot of players have that golf ball way forward in their stands with their wedges. They don't really know why they're trying to hit something high, but they don't really have anything in their technique that they're doing, and they don't really know what they're trying to do. So start off by neutral ball position right, neutral in your stance, so kind of where the buttons on your shirt would be, kind of where the zipper on your shorts or trousers would be, where your belt buckle would be. That would be kind of neutral to middle right. And if you've got a camera on your I mean every iPhone, every smartphone has a camera, go ahead and take a look at your setup with your wedges. Look at where you're setting up. Are you setting up with the golf ball back in your stands? Are you setting it middle? Are you setting it up way way forward the club face? Start off and just get some baseline ball position. So neutral ball position right, get a lob wedge out, get your lob wedge. Whether you know sixty fifty eight, In my opinion, you shouldn't be playing anything over sixty degrees of loft. Anything over that is very very specialized, very very specific. Yeah, it's going to help you hit the golf b high because you've got so much loft. But I have yet to see a non elite competitive professional golfer utilize anything more than sixty degrees of loft. Well, I just don't see it. So fifty eight sixty is kind of in that range where you want your lob wedge and club face should be square. The club face doesn't necessarily need to be open. You can get to that right. But I want you to think about your short game like being a cook or a chef, and what you need to do is just come up with a menu of shots that are pretty basic, not a ton of ingredients, but are very very reliable that you can produce on a regular basis. So I'm sure I've talked about this before, but I was watching all the guys over the last two weeks that was lucky enough to be in practice rounds with looking at their short games, and I think it's very important that for whatever yardage is that you're trying to hit, that you have some end points, an end point to where the backswing is going to go and an end point to where the follow through is going to go. Because I see a lot of people struggle with their short game because they're making a backswing length that is way too far for the length of shot that they're trying to hit. So if that backswing length is too far, Let's say you've got a twenty five to thirty yard shot, right, it's going to be more of a pitch than a chip, but you're trying to carry it thirty yards in the air. I see a lot of players struggle because they're making a backswing that is easily going to carry the golf ball fifty seventy five. Sometimes even they make a full length backswing for a very small shot, and then they have to decelerate as they're coming into him because otherwise you're going to carry the golf ball too far with that backswing. So it's a very basic, kind of standard way of thinking about this. But again it's a little bit like I said, it's like being a chef. If you don't know how to cook. It's hard to make one Michelin Star, two, Michelin Star, three Michelin Star. You know, fancy cuisine. So think about your wedge game, like, Okay, I'm a chef and I just need a couple of really good dishes with not a lot of ingredients. Doesn't have to be fancy. I talk about this a lot with my students. I've talked about it in the pod making an omelet. Making a cheeseburger. Right, a cheeseburger has meat, cheese, bread. What you put on it after that is adding some nuance, some flair whatever. But at the core to have a cheeseburger, you need meat for the burger part, you need cheese for the cheese part of the cheeseburger, and you need bread. Right, that's not a lot of ingredients. So go get your lob wedge and say, all right, this is my cheeseburger, this is my omelet, an omelet, eggs, not a lot of ingredients. You can throw a bunch of stuff in it, but really eggs, milk, salt, pepper, some butter, not crazy fancy when you and how you make that dish. Another story. So sixty degree fifty eight degree lob wedge. Go get your lob wedge, middle of your stance faced square, weight's going to be on the left side. The stance is going to be maybe slightly open, and the handle at a dress is maybe going to be a little bit leaned forward. That's a pretty standard way of chipping and hitting a lot of pitch shots inside of fifty yards. The ball is going to be neutral, the stets is going to be a little bit open, the handle is going to be a little bit forward. We're going to have our weight on our front foot. I'm sure a lot of people listening have heard that before. But why are you doing that? Why are we getting you into that position to chip? The main reason is we're not making a big golf swing around the greens. We're only carrying the golf ball five ten, maybe even less yards to three yards, so you're not going to need a big swing. So the setup a little bit open, ball kind of neutral, maybe just slightly back in your stance, handle a little bit forward, and wait a little bit forward. All of that is to basically preset your impact position. That's what we're trying to do, right, We're trying to preset good impact because we're not making a weight shift. We're not making a big turn off the golf ball. We're not making a big turn through the golf ball. And then I've talked about this before, but it is such a simple way to try and gain some repetition in some consistency. Use the clock method. You're standing within the dial of a clock. If you're a right handed golfer standing within the dial of a clock, your head is at twelve o'clock and where your hands are are at six o'clock on the dial of a clock. And if you think about it, so you've got six o'clock, so your hands are at six o'clock. And on the backstroke, on the backswing, your hands can go to the seven o'clock position, the eight o'clock position, the nine o'clock position, the ten o'clock position, the eleven o'clock position on the backswing, and on the follow through, your hands on the follow through, if they're starting at six, they can follow through to five, they could follow through to four, they can follow through to three, to two to one. So think about your hand position. Don't think about the club head. Don't think about where the club at is. Think about where your hands are. Think about where the grip is right, and I do think one of the ways to become more consistent, more repetitive, and kind of get the contact to be a little bit more consistent more often is to use that clock theory. Hands are at six o'clock. My weight's going to be a little bit on the forward side. The reason I'm going to keep my weight on the forward side on my lead leg. If I'm a right hand golfer, that's going to be my left foot. If I'm a left handed golfer, that's going to be my right foot. But if you're a right handed golfer, your weight's going to be a little bit on the left side. You're trying to preset impact. One of the things that I see. I posted a video on my social that I did for Cobra Golf a couple weeks ago. I put a shaft down kind of parallel to where my right foot would be, and what I'm trying to do is make sure that I'm not going backwards to try and get the golf ball in the air and hitting the shaft. So it's going to help me have that little bit of downward angle of attack to try and get the golf ball in the air, the angle of attack, how much we're hitting up and how much we're hitting down on the golf ball dramatically influences how the ball launches, but it dramatically influences the quality of the contact and the quality of the strike. So if you are hitting your chips thin, if you are hitting your chips heavy pitches thin pitches heavy, make sure that when you're coming through impact that your weight isn't going to the back foot. So you've got your left foot if you're a right handed golfer and your right foot is a right handed golfer, okay, And when you set up, go ahead and think in terms of okay. In a normal setup, I'm going to have fifty to fifty experiment with feeling okay, sixty forty on the left, maybe seventy thirty on the left. Really get my weight over there and see what that does, and then experiment. And I think the easiest baseline to get is you're setting up with your lob wedge balls in the middle, weights a little bit forward, you're a little bit open, handles a little bit forward, and then think in terms of okay, and that clock theory. When I take my arms back, when I take that grip back, I'm going to try and take it to that kind of nine o'clock position on the backstroke if you're right handed, and then follow through to three o'clock on the follow through. And that's going to give you a very specific end point to the backswing and a very specific end point to the follow through. The reason why I think that's really important is within that kind of zone, you know where your backswing zone ends and you know where your follow through zone ends. And film this film ten practice swings without a golf ball and say, okay, so go put the camera on a tripod, set it up on a backstand, put it on your bag, lean it up against something, but have it face on so facing your chest right so it's directly across when you're setting up directly across from your torso, and make ten practice swings and think, okay, I'm going to try and go nine on the backstroke three on the follow through. Now, when you're making these practice swings, you're going to set up as if you were going to be hitting a regular shot, so slightly open ball position would be neutral handles, just a little bit of chaffleen weights on that front foot we're trying to feel like the arms go back to the hands, that handle and that grip go back to that nine o'clock So that's probably going to be somewhere around waist high, and then it's going to go through to the corresponding follow through. So you can start off by just doing slow motion swings to where you're just setting up and then making a backstroke and going to nine o'clock. Do ten of those and just do the backstroke. Okay, just set up and just make your backstroke and stop. You can do this a couple times with your eyes closed. So take that set up, wait slightly on the left handle, just a little bit forward. The ball would be pretty neutral. Go and close your eyes and go back to where you feel like your hands, your left hand in your right hand would be about that nine o'clock position. Do that five times, and then go ahead and take a look at what that looks like on camera and say, okay, yeah, I was able to do that. No, that was going too long. That was going too short, because you're trying to have a sameness to the backswings, and then same thing set up and then just follow through to that three o'clock position and do just the follow through. See if you can follow through. Have a look on camera, see what that looks like. Okay, so you've done that. You kind of got the feeling of where nine to three is. You can do it with eight to four, you can do it with seven to five, you can do it with kind of that, you know, ten to two, whatever it is. Do it without a ball and just see if you can make ten practice swings that are nine o'clock on the backstroke, three o'clock on the follow through. The other thing that's very important here is when you're making your practice strokes, make sure the golf club it starts on the ground, and when you make your practice stroke, make sure it hits the ground. If you're hitting golf balls off a mat, it's a really good way to practices. Make sure that you can hear that golf club hitting the ground. In your short game before you hit a shot. You should be able to make a practice stroke, you know, whatever you're trying to do from a mimic standpoint, and the golf club should start on the ground and it should return on the ground. You need to hear that sound. Do that ten times. See if you can get some sameness to the length of the backswing and the length of the follow through at that kind of waist tie, that kind of nine o'clock. You don't need a ton of wrist set here. We don't need to do a lot with our wrist action here. We don't need a lot of setting of the wrist because if you set the risks, you're loading the golf club. And that's another thing where I think so many golfers struggle around the short game is they take their set up, they get a lot of a set in the wrists, so they're loading that shaft and so they've got a lot of angle coming into impact, and that's going to make the golf ball go a specific distance. So you don't need a lot of wrist hinge, you don't need a lot of wrist set. You're basically just trying to that kind of Steve Stricker esque Jason Day. Just no riskset, no risk to angles, and just see if you can go nine to three and just see where that golf ball goes. Take ten balls and hit one, video it and then get your rain finder out, see how far it went, and then look at it on film and say, okay, that went nine to three. And that ball went X amount of distance. It's going to vary for everybody. It's going to vary on how much speed you're putting in. But baseline numbers I think are very important with all of your wedges right to make sure that you can get that good number so that when you're on the golf course you can take some of the guesswork out of it, because I think so many golfers they don't really know when they get into short game what they're trying to do. They don't really know what shot they're trying to hit. They're trying to hit a shot that they've seen somewhere on television. Face wide open, big flops. You should never be hitting a flop shot unless there is absolutely positively no other way you can get the golf ball close to the hole, and unless you're playing a competitive round of golf, just dump it anywhere on the green and just try and get out with hole in a twenty foot of for par and get out of there. But don't try the hero shot. Try on the range and just say, okay, how far does my nine to three go? Film it enough times to where you're saying to yourself and you can visually confirm, yeah, that's how far the golf ball or how fur my backswing is going. Yet it's going about that waist hype nine o'clock with not a lot of riskset I'm following through to three o'clock, and I know that that swing produces this yardage this number, and say, okay, let me just see if I can bang these out. If I can just repetitively hit the golf ball the distance I hit it for my nine to three. Like I said, everybody's going to be different, it's going to vary. It's not going to be the same for everybody. But I just think if you can have an understanding, I mean, and then you know, get a target, take your towel, walk it out to twenty five yards, walk it out to you know. I think good baselines would be to get three towels, do twenty five, fifty and seventy five right start there and say, okay, what length of swing, what club would I need to use to hit the golf ball these distances? I think those are kind of good round numbers for me. Twenty five fifty seventy five. I think if you can get really good at your baseline, twenty five, being able to have a technique and a swing and a swing length to carry the golf ball twenty five yards in the air, to have one to carry it fifty yards in the air, seventy five in the air. If you want to make that smaller, you can do five. You can do ten, you can do fifteen. You can do it in five yard increments. But I think if you can just use some round numbers, you know, ten to twenty, and say, okay, I'm gonna you know, the short end is going to be ten yards, the long end is going to be twenty. I don't want to hit any short of ten yards. I don't want to carry any past twenty yards. Right, you can go out on the driving range and put you know, clubs down, alignment sticks down, give yourself a visual and say, okay, I've got my lob wedge. Now I've got an alignment stick at twenty on the ground, and then I've got an alignment stick at ten, and it's creating this kind of ten yard window, and I'm just going to try and carry my ball somewhere in between that window. And if you can get good at just again, it's like cooking, it's just a basic, basic technique to be able to carry that golf ball in a confined space somewhere between ten to twenty yards. And I think you can think in terms of how far you're trying to carry the golf ball, not how far the flag is. Yeah, obviously you want to get a good idea of how far the flag is. So if you've got a shot, you've laid up on a par five and you know you're say you're twenty five yards from the green or from the flag, then walk from where your ball is, walk to where the green starts and get a number. Get that number. Okay, let's say that's fifteen yards, right so, or fifteen steps and then you've got another ten steps to the flag. So then the number that you're trying to hit is. You want to know where you want to carry the golf ball, right, don't think in terms of where you want the golf ball to end up. Think in terms of, okay, where do I need to carry this golf ball? And get that part first. So I think if you can get that basic part first of okay, how far do I need to carry the golf ball, then the math in your head can become somewhat easy. Okay, I've got a twenty five yard shot, but I really only need to carry this golf ball ten yards in the air, and then I've got rollout room. Is it uphill? Is it downhill? Is it into the grain? Is it down grain? Is it going to break left to right? Is it going to break right to left? All that comes afterwards, But then just saying okay, I don't necessarily need to worry about the twenty five yard number. I just need to say, okay, what club in my bag, my lob wedge, my sand wedge, my pitching wedge, my gap wedge. What yardage is going to be produced with this length of backswing and this length of follow through. So it's not about worrying about hitting it twenty five yards. Maybe I only need to carry it ten steps. So then that task in your head becomes much easier to manage. Right, I'm not carrying the golf ball twenty five yards. I only need to carry it ten yards fifteen yards, and then I'm focusing very much on where I want the golf ball to land. So again, get twenty five yards out, go on the green and lay a alignment stick right where the green starts and then walk off five steps and then put another alignment stick there or put a club there, So ken you've got kind of this barrier to where you have to carry it over the first alignment stick or golf club, but you don't want to carry it past the second one, so you're trying to carry it somewhere in between these two alignment sticks. So that can be five steps. I think that's a pretty good baseline to where if you can kind of hit your target, that's your target area. Right. You could even take four golf clubs and make a box, right, So lay them down on the ground and make a box with the golf clubs you have, and then you're just trying to carry the ball in that box. I think that's a great way to kind of heighten your focus, heighten your visualization. So now you're not even thinking about the pin. Now you're not even thinking about the rest of it. You're just trying to get the basic part first, carry the golf ball in a specific area that you know is a specific distance. And I think if you can start to do that consistently, if you can get a consistent quality of contact, a consistent quality of strike between the club and the ball and video what that looks like so that you can then because I think feel is recreating what you see, right, But I get asked this all the time, how do we create How do I think you create feel by going out and matching the visual to what your technique is. So that's where I think your smartphone having a camera so you can look at it can say, Okay, I just hit that one really really well. I had a good quality of divot that went the distance I was trying to get it to go somewhere in between ten to fifteen yards. I'm trying to land the golf ball. Got a barrier on the ground at ten and I've got a barrier at fifteen. If I can consistently carry the golf ball in between those two alignment sticks and then I can get an idea of what that looks like on camera, I think it's a really good way to start to gain some consistency of motion, some consistency of contact, and just some overall club control consistency. Because when you're looking at your golf bag, always remember this. Every single golf club in your golf bag will stay in your golf bag until you or someone else takes the golf club out of the golf bag, picks it up, grips it, and starts to move it. So the golf club cannot move itself. So it's your job as the player to move the golf club, and it's your job as the player to control the golf club. And I think one of the best ways to start to gain consistency in your full swing is to gain consistency in your short game so that you know where you're putting the golf club in position on the backswing, you know where you're putting the golf club in position on the follow through, and I think if you can do that consistently, it makes the full swing much much easier. Every wedge you have for the nine to three shot is going to produce a different distance, a different trajectory. Obviously, the trajectory from nine to three with the golf ball in the center of your stance with your lob wedge is going to be vastly different than what the trajectory is going to be with your pitching wedge from the same set up, from the same length of backswing and from the same follow through, and the trajectory is going to be very different. The lob wedge is going to come out higher, the pitching wedge is going to come out lower. So then you can take some of the guess work out. Okay, I've got a shot length of twenty five yards. I only need to carry the golf ball just over ten yards. So if I hit my lab wedge, that's going to come out higher, softer, and not roll out. But if I hit my pitching wedge, that length of the backswing and that length of follow through might be shorter than with a lob wedge, might be eight to five or eight four, seven to five. But I just think half hour, right, a half hour of you going out and saying, Okay, i've got to hit this ten yards in the air. I've got to hit this fifteen yards in the air. I've got to hit this twenty yards in the air. I've got to hit this twenty five thirty. You can do in five yard increments. You can do ten yard increments. You can do ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy eighty, ninety one hundred. If you had a really good gauge on how far you carried it, and you had a really good gauge on controlling the length of back swing and the length of follow through that you need to do to produce these baseline numbers takes the guest work on the golf course out. It really really does neutral ball position, length of the back swing. Nine to three, eight four, seven to five. Try that with all your wedges. See how that trajectory changes, See how that distance, how that carry distance changes. Go to a chipping green and see what the rollout is like. So nine to three with your lob wedge, the rollout when the ball lands and rolls out, is going to be very different than your pitching wedge. And if you know that, then you maybe don't have to make as big of a swing. You can take less club and say, Okay, I don't have to make as big of a swing. The ball's going to get on the ground. It's going to come in a little bit lower, but it's going to come in a little bit faster, it's going to come in a little bit hotter. So now let's say I've got to carry the golf ball thirty forty yards in the air, but I'm still only ten yards from the front edge of the green, So then I've got all that area to work with so then maybe I take something that's got less loft carry it that ten yards, but when it bounces, it rolls, and it rolls more like a putt as opposed to trying to control a lob wedge and carry it all the way to the flag. Every single pro am that I've ever been in, I'll see someone carry the golf ball. They're in the rough, they're trying to fly it. They carry it right to pin high and then they say bite, spin, And I'm thinking, what did you do to put any sort of bite or spin on this? You carried the golf ball the distance of the flag. Now it's going to roll off the other side of the green because you carried it too far. The pin may have been twenty five yards away from you, But the last thing you want to do is carry it twenty five yards because if you don't know how to spin it, if you don't have a ton of speed, if you don't have a good method to do that, you're not going to be able to control what happens to the ball after it gets on the ground, after it starts to roll. But just baselines, club face square and then I'm sure I've talked about this in the past. Put the golf ball back in your stance, you know, kind of more off of your back foot, and then see what nine to three with you lob wedge does. That's going to bring the trajectory down. Play the golf ball a little bit more forward in your stance, which is going to give you a little bit higher traction. Again, all of this being done with the club face square Again, we're making omelets here, we're making cheeseburgers. This is not fine dining with tons of ingredients and tons of different processes. It's just just really really basic, basic stuff. And I think it's a fantastic way to gain club control. I think it's a fantastic way to gain consistency in the quality of the strike. But I also think it's just a very very basic way for you as a player to just gain some knowledge, gain some control over what you're doing. And I think if you can get that on a consistent basis, then you're going to have the ability to control your shots on a regular basis. I know that sounds really really simp I know it sounds kind of short game one to one, but if you can just master the basics of where your ball position is consistent all the time, the setup is consistent all the time, The length of the backswing and the length of the follow through is consistent all the time. I think that's a very simple and a very easy way to start to gain some very good baseline numbers for how far you need to carry the golf ball on a consistent basis, and I think you're going to see your short game improve. I think it's going to take a lot of the guesswork out of what you're doing on the golf course, and I think your handicaps going to go down because your short game is going to improve. I want to thank everyone for listening, rate, review, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. It's the Son of a Bunch Podcast

It's the Son of a Butcher podcast. I'm your host Claude Harmon solo episode of the pod this week. Just got back from two weeks on tour and one of the things went I'm on tour working with players is I'm always trying to think about what I see and what I see on a regular basis that can help all of you listening. And I've talked about a lot of things on the pod, but when we think about what's going to help you get better, what's going to help you improve your game, I think short game is huge, right. I mean, every single week on tour there is a pro am, and when you watch the best players in the world and look at their short games and then look at regular everyday golfers and their short games, there's a dramatic difference. On DJ's lift team, he's got Patrick Reed and I walk a lot of practice rounds with Patrick Reed, and the guy's short game is just ridiculous. It is one of the best short games I've ever seen. And the way that he is able to control spin, trajectory, the way he varies his shots, it's amazing and it's no surprise that that is kind of the calling card of his game. But what can you, as a regular golfer do to improve your short game? So I'm gonna break this down and you know a few different areas. The first thing I think you want to do is take a look at your wedge setup. What type of wedges are you using? And I'm talking kind of like loft wise, do you have a lob wedge in that sixty fifty eight degree range? Sand wedges are going to kind of run in that kind of fifty six range pitching wedge gap weights. A lot of the guys that are playing and girls that are playing professional golf, they do have four wedges. I'm not saying that works for everybody, but I do see a lot of times big gaps in people's wedge games right and kind of gaps in the distances on they have a shot and they don't really kind of have a club for that. So the first thing that you want to do is take your wedges to the driving range and if you've got a rangefinder, you can go ahead and scope out some yardages. If you've got access to a launch monitor, that's great as well. Rapsodo, who you've heard me talk a lot about on the pod I think for the money under one thousand dollars, they've got a launch monitor that's portable. You can use it inside, you can use it outside. The MLM two pro is going to give you carry distances, and I think it's very important when you're trying to assess your short game to have a very specific, defined group of numbers that you know is how far you carry your wedges. I think a lot of people listening right now, if they're honest with themselves, they don't really have a very good gauge, a very good understanding as to how far they're carrying their wedges. What swing they're making is to produce that number. So one of the things that I think you want to guard against and stay away from is making full wedge swings. You know, a full lob wedge, a full sand wedge, a full gap wedge. I think that's very, very dangerous because I think it brings in a lot of characteristics in order to pull these shots off that you need. First of all, you need really good launch conditions. You need very very good impact positions, and I think a lot of regular golfers, mid handicapped golfers struggle with good impact. You know, in their full swing, and they struggle with that in the short game as well. I think ball position is very important. Is the ball in the middle of your stance, is the ball back in your stands? Is the ball forward in your stants? I see a lot of players have that golf ball way forward in their stands with their wedges. They don't really know why they're trying to hit something high, but they don't really have anything in their technique that they're doing, and they don't really know what they're trying to do. So start off by neutral ball position right, neutral in your stance, so kind of where the buttons on your shirt would be, kind of where the zipper on your shorts or trousers would be, where your belt buckle would be. That would be kind of neutral to middle right. And if you've got a camera on your I mean every iPhone, every smartphone has a camera, go ahead and take a look at your setup with your wedges. Look at where you're setting up. Are you setting up with the golf ball back in your stands? Are you setting it middle? Are you setting it up way way forward the club face? Start off and just get some baseline ball position. So neutral ball position right, get a lob wedge out, get your lob wedge. Whether you know sixty fifty eight, In my opinion, you shouldn't be playing anything over sixty degrees of loft. Anything over that is very very specialized, very very specific. Yeah, it's going to help you hit the golf b high because you've got so much loft. But I have yet to see a non elite competitive professional golfer utilize anything more than sixty degrees of loft. Well, I just don't see it. So fifty eight sixty is kind of in that range where you want your lob wedge and club face should be square. The club face doesn't necessarily need to be open. You can get to that right. But I want you to think about your short game like being a cook or a chef, and what you need to do is just come up with a menu of shots that are pretty basic, not a ton of ingredients, but are very very reliable that you can produce on a regular basis. So I'm sure I've talked about this before, but I was watching all the guys over the last two weeks that was lucky enough to be in practice rounds with looking at their short games, and I think it's very important that for whatever yardage is that you're trying to hit, that you have some end points, an end point to where the backswing is going to go and an end point to where the follow through is going to go. Because I see a lot of people struggle with their short game because they're making a backswing length that is way too far for the length of shot that they're trying to hit. So if that backswing length is too far, Let's say you've got a twenty five to thirty yard shot, right, it's going to be more of a pitch than a chip, but you're trying to carry it thirty yards in the air. I see a lot of players struggle because they're making a backswing that is easily going to carry the golf ball fifty seventy five. Sometimes even they make a full length backswing for a very small shot, and then they have to decelerate as they're coming into him because otherwise you're going to carry the golf ball too far with that backswing. So it's a very basic, kind of standard way of thinking about this. But again it's a little bit like I said, it's like being a chef. If you don't know how to cook. It's hard to make one Michelin Star, two, Michelin Star, three Michelin Star. You know, fancy cuisine. So think about your wedge game, like, Okay, I'm a chef and I just need a couple of really good dishes with not a lot of ingredients. Doesn't have to be fancy. I talk about this a lot with my students. I've talked about it in the pod making an omelet. Making a cheeseburger. Right, a cheeseburger has meat, cheese, bread. What you put on it after that is adding some nuance, some flair whatever. But at the core to have a cheeseburger, you need meat for the burger part, you need cheese for the cheese part of the cheeseburger, and you need bread. Right, that's not a lot of ingredients. So go get your lob wedge and say, all right, this is my cheeseburger, this is my omelet, an omelet, eggs, not a lot of ingredients. You can throw a bunch of stuff in it, but really eggs, milk, salt, pepper, some butter, not crazy fancy when you and how you make that dish. Another story. So sixty degree fifty eight degree lob wedge. Go get your lob wedge, middle of your stance faced square, weight's going to be on the left side. The stance is going to be maybe slightly open, and the handle at a dress is maybe going to be a little bit leaned forward. That's a pretty standard way of chipping and hitting a lot of pitch shots inside of fifty yards. The ball is going to be neutral, the stets is going to be a little bit open, the handle is going to be a little bit forward. We're going to have our weight on our front foot. I'm sure a lot of people listening have heard that before. But why are you doing that? Why are we getting you into that position to chip? The main reason is we're not making a big golf swing around the greens. We're only carrying the golf ball five ten, maybe even less yards to three yards, so you're not going to need a big swing. So the setup a little bit open, ball kind of neutral, maybe just slightly back in your stance, handle a little bit forward, and wait a little bit forward. All of that is to basically preset your impact position. That's what we're trying to do, right, We're trying to preset good impact because we're not making a weight shift. We're not making a big turn off the golf ball. We're not making a big turn through the golf ball. And then I've talked about this before, but it is such a simple way to try and gain some repetition in some consistency. Use the clock method. You're standing within the dial of a clock. If you're a right handed golfer standing within the dial of a clock, your head is at twelve o'clock and where your hands are are at six o'clock on the dial of a clock. And if you think about it, so you've got six o'clock, so your hands are at six o'clock. And on the backstroke, on the backswing, your hands can go to the seven o'clock position, the eight o'clock position, the nine o'clock position, the ten o'clock position, the eleven o'clock position on the backswing, and on the follow through, your hands on the follow through, if they're starting at six, they can follow through to five, they could follow through to four, they can follow through to three, to two to one. So think about your hand position. Don't think about the club head. Don't think about where the club at is. Think about where your hands are. Think about where the grip is right, and I do think one of the ways to become more consistent, more repetitive, and kind of get the contact to be a little bit more consistent more often is to use that clock theory. Hands are at six o'clock. My weight's going to be a little bit on the forward side. The reason I'm going to keep my weight on the forward side on my lead leg. If I'm a right hand golfer, that's going to be my left foot. If I'm a left handed golfer, that's going to be my right foot. But if you're a right handed golfer, your weight's going to be a little bit on the left side. You're trying to preset impact. One of the things that I see. I posted a video on my social that I did for Cobra Golf a couple weeks ago. I put a shaft down kind of parallel to where my right foot would be, and what I'm trying to do is make sure that I'm not going backwards to try and get the golf ball in the air and hitting the shaft. So it's going to help me have that little bit of downward angle of attack to try and get the golf ball in the air, the angle of attack, how much we're hitting up and how much we're hitting down on the golf ball dramatically influences how the ball launches, but it dramatically influences the quality of the contact and the quality of the strike. So if you are hitting your chips thin, if you are hitting your chips heavy pitches thin pitches heavy, make sure that when you're coming through impact that your weight isn't going to the back foot. So you've got your left foot if you're a right handed golfer and your right foot is a right handed golfer, okay, And when you set up, go ahead and think in terms of okay. In a normal setup, I'm going to have fifty to fifty experiment with feeling okay, sixty forty on the left, maybe seventy thirty on the left. Really get my weight over there and see what that does, and then experiment. And I think the easiest baseline to get is you're setting up with your lob wedge balls in the middle, weights a little bit forward, you're a little bit open, handles a little bit forward, and then think in terms of okay, and that clock theory. When I take my arms back, when I take that grip back, I'm going to try and take it to that kind of nine o'clock position on the backstroke if you're right handed, and then follow through to three o'clock on the follow through. And that's going to give you a very specific end point to the backswing and a very specific end point to the follow through. The reason why I think that's really important is within that kind of zone, you know where your backswing zone ends and you know where your follow through zone ends. And film this film ten practice swings without a golf ball and say, okay, so go put the camera on a tripod, set it up on a backstand, put it on your bag, lean it up against something, but have it face on so facing your chest right so it's directly across when you're setting up directly across from your torso, and make ten practice swings and think, okay, I'm going to try and go nine on the backstroke three on the follow through. Now, when you're making these practice swings, you're going to set up as if you were going to be hitting a regular shot, so slightly open ball position would be neutral handles, just a little bit of chaffleen weights on that front foot we're trying to feel like the arms go back to the hands, that handle and that grip go back to that nine o'clock So that's probably going to be somewhere around waist high, and then it's going to go through to the corresponding follow through. So you can start off by just doing slow motion swings to where you're just setting up and then making a backstroke and going to nine o'clock. Do ten of those and just do the backstroke. Okay, just set up and just make your backstroke and stop. You can do this a couple times with your eyes closed. So take that set up, wait slightly on the left handle, just a little bit forward. The ball would be pretty neutral. Go and close your eyes and go back to where you feel like your hands, your left hand in your right hand would be about that nine o'clock position. Do that five times, and then go ahead and take a look at what that looks like on camera and say, okay, yeah, I was able to do that. No, that was going too long. That was going too short, because you're trying to have a sameness to the backswings, and then same thing set up and then just follow through to that three o'clock position and do just the follow through. See if you can follow through. Have a look on camera, see what that looks like. Okay, so you've done that. You kind of got the feeling of where nine to three is. You can do it with eight to four, you can do it with seven to five, you can do it with kind of that, you know, ten to two, whatever it is. Do it without a ball and just see if you can make ten practice swings that are nine o'clock on the backstroke, three o'clock on the follow through. The other thing that's very important here is when you're making your practice strokes, make sure the golf club it starts on the ground, and when you make your practice stroke, make sure it hits the ground. If you're hitting golf balls off a mat, it's a really good way to practices. Make sure that you can hear that golf club hitting the ground. In your short game before you hit a shot. You should be able to make a practice stroke, you know, whatever you're trying to do from a mimic standpoint, and the golf club should start on the ground and it should return on the ground. You need to hear that sound. Do that ten times. See if you can get some sameness to the length of the backswing and the length of the follow through at that kind of waist tie, that kind of nine o'clock. You don't need a ton of wrist set here. We don't need to do a lot with our wrist action here. We don't need a lot of setting of the wrist because if you set the risks, you're loading the golf club. And that's another thing where I think so many golfers struggle around the short game is they take their set up, they get a lot of a set in the wrists, so they're loading that shaft and so they've got a lot of angle coming into impact, and that's going to make the golf ball go a specific distance. So you don't need a lot of wrist hinge, you don't need a lot of wrist set. You're basically just trying to that kind of Steve Stricker esque Jason Day. Just no riskset, no risk to angles, and just see if you can go nine to three and just see where that golf ball goes. Take ten balls and hit one, video it and then get your rain finder out, see how far it went, and then look at it on film and say, okay, that went nine to three. And that ball went X amount of distance. It's going to vary for everybody. It's going to vary on how much speed you're putting in. But baseline numbers I think are very important with all of your wedges right to make sure that you can get that good number so that when you're on the golf course you can take some of the guesswork out of it, because I think so many golfers they don't really know when they get into short game what they're trying to do. They don't really know what shot they're trying to hit. They're trying to hit a shot that they've seen somewhere on television. Face wide open, big flops. You should never be hitting a flop shot unless there is absolutely positively no other way you can get the golf ball close to the hole, and unless you're playing a competitive round of golf, just dump it anywhere on the green and just try and get out with hole in a twenty foot of for par and get out of there. But don't try the hero shot. Try on the range and just say, okay, how far does my nine to three go? Film it enough times to where you're saying to yourself and you can visually confirm, yeah, that's how far the golf ball or how fur my backswing is going. Yet it's going about that waist hype nine o'clock with not a lot of riskset I'm following through to three o'clock, and I know that that swing produces this yardage this number, and say, okay, let me just see if I can bang these out. If I can just repetitively hit the golf ball the distance I hit it for my nine to three. Like I said, everybody's going to be different, it's going to vary. It's not going to be the same for everybody. But I just think if you can have an understanding, I mean, and then you know, get a target, take your towel, walk it out to twenty five yards, walk it out to you know. I think good baselines would be to get three towels, do twenty five, fifty and seventy five right start there and say, okay, what length of swing, what club would I need to use to hit the golf ball these distances? I think those are kind of good round numbers for me. Twenty five fifty seventy five. I think if you can get really good at your baseline, twenty five, being able to have a technique and a swing and a swing length to carry the golf ball twenty five yards in the air, to have one to carry it fifty yards in the air, seventy five in the air. If you want to make that smaller, you can do five. You can do ten, you can do fifteen. You can do it in five yard increments. But I think if you can just use some round numbers, you know, ten to twenty, and say, okay, I'm gonna you know, the short end is going to be ten yards, the long end is going to be twenty. I don't want to hit any short of ten yards. I don't want to carry any past twenty yards. Right, you can go out on the driving range and put you know, clubs down, alignment sticks down, give yourself a visual and say, okay, I've got my lob wedge. Now I've got an alignment stick at twenty on the ground, and then I've got an alignment stick at ten, and it's creating this kind of ten yard window, and I'm just going to try and carry my ball somewhere in between that window. And if you can get good at just again, it's like cooking, it's just a basic, basic technique to be able to carry that golf ball in a confined space somewhere between ten to twenty yards. And I think you can think in terms of how far you're trying to carry the golf ball, not how far the flag is. Yeah, obviously you want to get a good idea of how far the flag is. So if you've got a shot, you've laid up on a par five and you know you're say you're twenty five yards from the green or from the flag, then walk from where your ball is, walk to where the green starts and get a number. Get that number. Okay, let's say that's fifteen yards, right so, or fifteen steps and then you've got another ten steps to the flag. So then the number that you're trying to hit is. You want to know where you want to carry the golf ball, right, don't think in terms of where you want the golf ball to end up. Think in terms of, okay, where do I need to carry this golf ball? And get that part first. So I think if you can get that basic part first of okay, how far do I need to carry the golf ball, then the math in your head can become somewhat easy. Okay, I've got a twenty five yard shot, but I really only need to carry this golf ball ten yards in the air, and then I've got rollout room. Is it uphill? Is it downhill? Is it into the grain? Is it down grain? Is it going to break left to right? Is it going to break right to left? All that comes afterwards, But then just saying okay, I don't necessarily need to worry about the twenty five yard number. I just need to say, okay, what club in my bag, my lob wedge, my sand wedge, my pitching wedge, my gap wedge. What yardage is going to be produced with this length of backswing and this length of follow through. So it's not about worrying about hitting it twenty five yards. Maybe I only need to carry it ten steps. So then that task in your head becomes much easier to manage. Right, I'm not carrying the golf ball twenty five yards. I only need to carry it ten yards fifteen yards, and then I'm focusing very much on where I want the golf ball to land. So again, get twenty five yards out, go on the green and lay a alignment stick right where the green starts and then walk off five steps and then put another alignment stick there or put a club there, So ken you've got kind of this barrier to where you have to carry it over the first alignment stick or golf club, but you don't want to carry it past the second one, so you're trying to carry it somewhere in between these two alignment sticks. So that can be five steps. I think that's a pretty good baseline to where if you can kind of hit your target, that's your target area. Right. You could even take four golf clubs and make a box, right, So lay them down on the ground and make a box with the golf clubs you have, and then you're just trying to carry the ball in that box. I think that's a great way to kind of heighten your focus, heighten your visualization. So now you're not even thinking about the pin. Now you're not even thinking about the rest of it. You're just trying to get the basic part first, carry the golf ball in a specific area that you know is a specific distance. And I think if you can start to do that consistently, if you can get a consistent quality of contact, a consistent quality of strike between the club and the ball and video what that looks like so that you can then because I think feel is recreating what you see, right, But I get asked this all the time, how do we create How do I think you create feel by going out and matching the visual to what your technique is. So that's where I think your smartphone having a camera so you can look at it can say, Okay, I just hit that one really really well. I had a good quality of divot that went the distance I was trying to get it to go somewhere in between ten to fifteen yards. I'm trying to land the golf ball. Got a barrier on the ground at ten and I've got a barrier at fifteen. If I can consistently carry the golf ball in between those two alignment sticks and then I can get an idea of what that looks like on camera, I think it's a really good way to start to gain some consistency of motion, some consistency of contact, and just some overall club control consistency. Because when you're looking at your golf bag, always remember this. Every single golf club in your golf bag will stay in your golf bag until you or someone else takes the golf club out of the golf bag, picks it up, grips it, and starts to move it. So the golf club cannot move itself. So it's your job as the player to move the golf club, and it's your job as the player to control the golf club. And I think one of the best ways to start to gain consistency in your full swing is to gain consistency in your short game so that you know where you're putting the golf club in position on the backswing, you know where you're putting the golf club in position on the follow through, and I think if you can do that consistently, it makes the full swing much much easier. Every wedge you have for the nine to three shot is going to produce a different distance, a different trajectory. Obviously, the trajectory from nine to three with the golf ball in the center of your stance with your lob wedge is going to be vastly different than what the trajectory is going to be with your pitching wedge from the same set up, from the same length of backswing and from the same follow through, and the trajectory is going to be very different. The lob wedge is going to come out higher, the pitching wedge is going to come out lower. So then you can take some of the guess work out. Okay, I've got a shot length of twenty five yards. I only need to carry the golf ball just over ten yards. So if I hit my lab wedge, that's going to come out higher, softer, and not roll out. But if I hit my pitching wedge, that length of the backswing and that length of follow through might be shorter than with a lob wedge, might be eight to five or eight four, seven to five. But I just think half hour, right, a half hour of you going out and saying, Okay, i've got to hit this ten yards in the air. I've got to hit this fifteen yards in the air. I've got to hit this twenty yards in the air. I've got to hit this twenty five thirty. You can do in five yard increments. You can do ten yard increments. You can do ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy eighty, ninety one hundred. If you had a really good gauge on how far you carried it, and you had a really good gauge on controlling the length of back swing and the length of follow through that you need to do to produce these baseline numbers takes the guest work on the golf course out. It really really does neutral ball position, length of the back swing. Nine to three, eight four, seven to five. Try that with all your wedges. See how that trajectory changes, See how that distance, how that carry distance changes. Go to a chipping green and see what the rollout is like. So nine to three with your lob wedge, the rollout when the ball lands and rolls out, is going to be very different than your pitching wedge. And if you know that, then you maybe don't have to make as big of a swing. You can take less club and say, Okay, I don't have to make as big of a swing. The ball's going to get on the ground. It's going to come in a little bit lower, but it's going to come in a little bit faster, it's going to come in a little bit hotter. So now let's say I've got to carry the golf ball thirty forty yards in the air, but I'm still only ten yards from the front edge of the green, So then I've got all that area to work with so then maybe I take something that's got less loft carry it that ten yards, but when it bounces, it rolls, and it rolls more like a putt as opposed to trying to control a lob wedge and carry it all the way to the flag. Every single pro am that I've ever been in, I'll see someone carry the golf ball. They're in the rough, they're trying to fly it. They carry it right to pin high and then they say bite, spin, And I'm thinking, what did you do to put any sort of bite or spin on this? You carried the golf ball the distance of the flag. Now it's going to roll off the other side of the green because you carried it too far. The pin may have been twenty five yards away from you, But the last thing you want to do is carry it twenty five yards because if you don't know how to spin it, if you don't have a ton of speed, if you don't have a good method to do that, you're not going to be able to control what happens to the ball after it gets on the ground, after it starts to roll. But just baselines, club face square and then I'm sure I've talked about this in the past. Put the golf ball back in your stance, you know, kind of more off of your back foot, and then see what nine to three with you lob wedge does. That's going to bring the trajectory down. Play the golf ball a little bit more forward in your stance, which is going to give you a little bit higher traction. Again, all of this being done with the club face square Again, we're making omelets here, we're making cheeseburgers. This is not fine dining with tons of ingredients and tons of different processes. It's just just really really basic, basic stuff. And I think it's a fantastic way to gain club control. I think it's a fantastic way to gain consistency in the quality of the strike. But I also think it's just a very very basic way for you as a player to just gain some knowledge, gain some control over what you're doing. And I think if you can get that on a consistent basis, then you're going to have the ability to control your shots on a regular basis. I know that sounds really really simp I know it sounds kind of short game one to one, but if you can just master the basics of where your ball position is consistent all the time, the setup is consistent all the time, The length of the backswing and the length of the follow through is consistent all the time. I think that's a very simple and a very easy way to start to gain some very good baseline numbers for how far you need to carry the golf ball on a consistent basis, and I think you're going to see your short game improve. I think it's going to take a lot of the guesswork out of what you're doing on the golf course, and I think your handicaps going to go down because your short game is going to improve. I want to thank everyone for listening, rate, review, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. It's the Son of a Bunch Podcast