Enhance your wedge recreation with the identical follow routine as Erica Shepherd!
Getty Photographs
Welcome to Shaving Strokes, a brand new GOLF.com sequence through which we’re sharing enhancements, learnings and takeaways from beginner golfers identical to you — together with among the velocity bumps and challenges they confronted alongside the way in which.
All too typically, beginner gamers don’t have intent after they go to the driving vary. So as an alternative of placing collectively a targeted follow technique, many people simply go beat balls round with out truly engaged on the areas of our recreation that require probably the most consideration.
Many occasions, this implies taking out the driving force and simply making an attempt to bomb it, pondering that that is the way in which in the direction of decrease scores.
Whereas elevated distance off the tee is useful to enhance your scorecard, what makes golf so troublesome is that the whole lot should be in synch to be able to persistently shoot low. So even for those who rope your driver 300 yards, for those who don’t have contact along with your irons, wedges, or putter, you’re seemingly staying in impartial as a participant.
How this teenager gained 60 yards (!) of carry and shaved 13 strokes
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Trent Wearner, Prime 100 Trainer
That’s why having a plan every time you go to the vary is so necessary — and in as we speak’s Shaving Strokes lesson, Erica Shepherd’s trainer, GOLF Prime 100 Trainer Tony Ruggiero, shares the sport plan that the newly-turned professional golfer makes use of to grasp her wedge play.
Not solely was Shepherd a two-time All-American at Duke College, however she’s additionally a two-time USGA champion and represented the U.S. in each the Junior Solheim Cup and Junior Ryder Cup.
After ending her collegiate profession, Shepherd earned Epson Tour standing via Q college, and is now simply kicking off her professional profession. So have a look under to see how one can mirror her follow plan and dominate along with your wedges.
3 ways in which Erica Shepherd dials in her wedge play
“One space that I see Tour gamers spending a lot extra time on than leisure gamers is with wedge play,” says Ruggiero. “Practising your wedge recreation is rather more than simply mindlessly hitting the primary pictures of a spread session.
“As a substitute, it’s a chance to enhance your golf swing by working in your mechanics in a fashion that may enable actual change to occur.”
Since wedge work is a chance to learn to hit the required pictures to attain decrease, Ruggiero and his workforce share secrets and techniques from a lesson with Shepherd.
“By using the following tips, you possibly can be taught to follow extra successfully, in the end transferring your exhausting work to the course,” provides Ruggiero.
1. Use bands to gradual swing speeds
The slowest option to change a movement is in full velocity with a ball and membership. That’s as a result of, at full velocity, your mind is mainly in efficiency mode, that means you’re typically utilizing acquainted habits.
That’s why I like to make use of bands and different issues away from the ball, which assist educate new motion patterns.
By doing this, when you transition to efficiency mode, it provides you an opportunity to suppose and really feel the completely different strikes that you simply’re making an attempt to make.
The perfect gamers perceive the basis reason for their issues, and work slowly and diligently to repair that difficulty. Gamers that by no means appear to enhance spend their time on the vary chasing signs.
So for those who actually wish to enhance, determine the one factor that must be mounted in your swing, and begin with wedges and gradual speeds to make the change.
2. Observe hitting pictures at particular distances
In my expertise, Tour gamers by no means hit a shot the place they don’t know the space to the goal; and neither ought to an beginner.
Tour gamers work on hitting particular golf equipment to particular distances with completely different trajectories.
I educate golfers to take distance off in certainly one of 3 ways.
They will both choke up or down on a membership, shorten their backswing, take velocity off the movement (which I feel is hardest for weekend warriors), or a mix of all three.
By working towards this and experimenting with the other ways to take distance off of golf equipment, it’ll make it easier to achieve a greater understanding and really feel for hitting the pictures that you must rating higher on the course.
3. Learn how to switch your follow to the golf course
Many amateurs I educate typically inform me how effectively they hit it on the vary, however how poorly they switch that to the course. This can be a purpose why Dr. Greg Cartin is such an necessary a part of our workforce.
Within the video above, you possibly can see how Cartin helps to make sure that Erica’s wedge work transfers to the course.
So how will you do the identical? Simulate what occurs on the golf course. That is one thing that Tour gamers do on a regular basis.
With the intention to make your wedges sharper on the course, do your full pre-shot routine, hit completely different golf equipment with every shot, hit to particular distances, and put boundaries on each shot.
For instance, in your first shot, say you will have 122 yards to the flag and you may’t carry the ball greater than 118. On shot two, you will have 85 yards to the flag, and the ball has to hold 70 yards, however can’t go greater than 90 or be proper of the flag.
By pondering of and altering these pictures in follow, you’re simulating actual eventualities, which may then switch to the course.
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