ULTIMATE SHORT GAME GUIDE… WITH TOUR COACH JAMES RIDYARD!

Are you becoming increasingly frustrated at your inability to get up-and-down? Well panic no longer as we’ve teamed up with Ping and short game coach to the stars on the PGA Tour James Ridyard to bring you all the short game advice you need to improve your wedge play. Whether it’s pitching, generating more spin, striking chips cleanly or effective drills to try on the practice ground, we’ve got every angle covered in this video.

► Skip to the section that most interests you:

0:00 – 0:40 Introduction
0:40 Creating more spin
3:41 Stop thins and duffs
7:30 How to choose wedges
12:20 Pitching mistakes to avoid
15:56 Best short game drill

► Golf Monthly created this content as part of a paid partnership with Ping. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of Golf Monthly.

► This video was shot on location at Pavenham Park Golf Club. Visit its website for more info: https://www.pavenhampark.com/

Were any of these tips useful? Let us know in the comments below! 💬

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📹 Create More Spin With Dan Grieve 👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS_JWkq6hlY

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if you can become deadly accurate with your wedges you’re going to be able to get yourself out of trouble make the most of your great drives and see your scores start to come down but how do you become a master of the short game well we’ve Enlisted the help of ping as well as leading short game coach James ridard going to give you some advice on how to get the right wedges for your game and also show you how to use them correctly we’ve come here to the custombuilt short game area at paven and Park Golf Club let’s get started [Music] right so James one of the shots that every golfer wants to play is that really high spinning shot we see it on the PJ tour weekend without that’s that that showstopper y but the I think a lot of golfers get this wrong and they see their chip and pit shots running away from the flag so what are the things golfers need to consider when it comes to creating more spin around the brains right well it would be easy to jump in and just assume that it’s technique right but that’s overlooking probably the most fundamental piece which is actually your environment yeah and by environment I mean the quality of the club we’re using obviously clean Club good grooves good condition face so no damage to it makes a big difference um then the ball the ball needs to be soft enough to actually spin then the third piece is that thing that you can’t control and that’s the environment you hit from okay so any kind of longer grass any kind of moisture in there any kind of dirt it’s going to be very very difficult to spin the golf ball and another part of the environment that maybe you don’t consider is the landing area so whether the green is above or below he going to make a difference so how quickly the ball stops if the Green’s above you the ball’s going to come in flatter and go forwards more if it’s below you it’s going to come in steeper and stop faster then we have the actual slope here hitting onto so we have a slight down slope here unfortunately which is going to make my ball kick forwards a little bit faster than if it were flap or into an up slope two things technically obviously first of all quality contact is primary like if you’re going to hit it too high on the club face you have any issue to the heel you have some problems generating spin or the quality contact is massive um relatively low on the face kind of the lower grooves I’m not going to pick a Groove number but low is better than high the second thing and this might be a little bit technical is your spin Loft if you consider a driver and it being a lowest spin club in a bag we have this inle spin Loft which is the Loft you deliver so up here and your attack angle with the driver they’re very very close together as the Loft increases throughout your set the spin Loft increases and the spin you see increases as well obviously top end of that is going to be your most lofted wedge at setup we’d really be looking to make sure you are maximizing Loft we’re not talking flop shot open but probably some degree open even with a 60 here I’m going to open it probably 5 10 deg to get it up to maybe 70 odd because the reality of things is when I come into the golf ball I am still going to deliver some degree of shling okay I want that shaing forward for our quality of contact yeah so opening the face to some degree means we still deliver High Loft I’m also going to cut ACR across it just a little bit CU like I said any kind of draw is going to reduce spin you think about the long swing same same kind of example if I’m going to hook something in it’s going to run generally if you slice it the ball stops pretty quick okay so relatively narrow ball would be probably up just under my left chest knowing that I want to be pretty shallow I’m going to make sure my swing stays relatively wide and I keep Loft on the golf club we’re going to that that far pin there second from the left nice and high little bit of grab and pretty good considering we are pitching onto a SL slight down slope there you go so some really good pointers there if you want to generate more spin read the situation incorporate that technique into your game to get a little bit more check around the [Music] grds right James let’s get straight into it I think it’s fair to say that amateur golfers around the greens really struggle with their strike we see a lot of players thinning it over the green chunking it in front of them so how can we help golfers increase the margin for error on their wedge shots and strike their wedges clean more consistently I think the first hdle to get over mentally is that it doesn’t have to be perfect or shouldn’t need to be if you can build in some degree of margin for error uh with these shots and I’m going to look at this from two perspectives first off a little bit of a technique hint as to how the margin ER can grow and secondly obviously your wedge selection wedge Choice the sole and how to actually utilize that more effectively yeah so if you jump into the technical side of things um I have no real issue with somebody making contact with the ground behind the golf ball right problem is which be which surpris a lot of people right yeah yeah exactly it takes people back at first in lessons um I think because most people have a negative experience of striking the ground behind the ball but if you deliver the club effectively you can build in some margin back there and still hit an effective shot now it might not be the most sexy low spin you’ve ever hit in your life but it will be on the green it’ll be under control yeah uh and I think the key aspect to that is to actually control the depth of the swing or the depth of low Point people think about low point and can’t St point on the ground as a forward backward thing I try and reframe it as more of an up and down now if my club is heading to a spot that’s this far under the turf um it doesn’t matter what kind of Bounce what kind of so I have my club it’s not going to save you if I’m heading to a very low spot and hit back here I’m in trouble so essentially what we need to do is raise the low point of the swing up okay and you can do that in a few technical ways I think maybe the most simple that I’ll show you today would be to actually have this end of the club start to rise more through impact like the opposite of that obvious would be driving this end of the club down right A lot of people get kind of stuck in that rut of driving the club forwards and downwards to try and get their strike and their margin actually gets smaller and smaller the more they do it okay so raising the B of the club up through impact is going to help the low Point come up and the con point on the ground can be a little bit further back than maybe players expect wow really um and if you want to actually be able to utilize the sold of the club we need that low point up so I’ll just jump in and demonstrate yeah let’s let’s see one in action for sure okay so my rehearsal I’m actually not really focused on the ball at all what I’m focused on is my ground contact interaction so I’m going to look at starting a ground contact Maybe one golf ball back and from that point I’m going to raise the butt of the club up as I move through and that’s going to prevent me sticking the club in the ground okay so you could hear the sound there it was obviously ground then Ball but the flight was still good it’s rolled down to 4et I think I’m going to take that most of the time so let’s move on to like the technique around the sole of the club and how we can make it a bit more friendly in terms of how it interacts with the ground and how we can change our setup potentially to to implement that in our games yep um so we’re kind of getting into the maybe the chaffing topic a little bit and people assuming that because from this face on camera let’s say they have a significant amount of forward lean means that they’re not engaging bounce anymore now that only holds true if the club face is square to Target or even slightly close to Target if you’re the kind of player that does deliver that then forward lean is probably going to hurt you a little bit especially if that forward Le number is more than the bounce angle on the club but if you happen to be an openface player at all so if I put a lot of forward lean on and rotate the face open the bounce number increases incredibly quickly so you can actually deliver a club leaning towards Target with an open face and still engage a ton of Bounce and again so delivered a good amount of lean but you can see I’ve left nothing no mark on the ground it’s not duing at all so there go pretty good result there hopefully that’s givv you some fooder thought in terms of your Technique around the green with the wedges to make the sole on your Club work for you right James so I think every golfer knows they need some wedges in their bag but with all the different options when it comes to wedges Lofts bounce grind all that sort of thing it can be difficult for goers to know exactly what’s going to work for them and and a good starting point I would suggest is using this new ping webfit Wedge app which is going to give us some recommendations based on some questions that we answer so let’s go through that process and you can talk through some of the questions they’re asking and why that’s important in terms of choosing the right wedges for you so uh it should take less than 2 minutes we’ll give it we’ll give it a try first question it’s ask to me what is my average score going to go 74 on a good day don’t laugh at that one please and now it’s asking us what is my pitching wedge carry distance so why would the app be asking us that yep so it’s looking at providing gapping information for you so to fill the Gap from whatever distance your p w carries down to partial wedge shot so as a longer hitter potentially that Gap is bigger and you might need more wedges perfect so 132 yards for me what is my highest lofted wedge so that’s a 58° wedge for me why would it be asking us that um just getting an idea of what kind of shots you almost like to play around the green whether you’d like to play high shots low shots okay cool and now it’s asking what are my typical Turf conditions I think this is a really important question um Talk us through some of the considerations around that yeah so so OB in the UK we’re just looking really at maybe length of grass and whether it’s hard or soft ground but we start to go abroad you go to the US and you start to deal with Bermuda we have different strains of grass and so to get an idea of the turf you playoff because that will then lead towards the bounce and grinds that we most suitable for you okay so I’m going to go with medium for that and it’s now asking me what my typical sand conditions are so I tend to play my bunker shots with my highest lofted wedge 58 why would the whether it’s soft medium or firm sand why would that have an impact on how I would choose my wedge yeah so that’s just in short that’s going to influence how the club interacts with the sand right if the sand is firm the club is going to kick out more easily versus something that is deeper heavier the club is going to go through it much more slowly so if I was playing in quite firm sand yeah quite tight sand what how would I adjust my wedge setup typically you would go towards a lower bounce wedge okay to get the the Leading Edge under the sand yeah cuz the club isent if you have a lot of Bounce it’s really trying to help the club out of the sound which is probably the opposite of what you need when there’s barely any sound in there okay cool so let’s go with we’ll go with medium for that cuz that’s kind of typically what my bunkers are like now we’re talking about typical divot length and again a really important factor why is it asking us that um it’s going to give some indication of attack angle and the the chaffle or Loft you deliver so in short the the kind of longer the deeper the divot the steeper a player we’d expect to play them to be yeah I think golfers don’t really uh play a lot of heed to their divots and I think it’s a really good thing to notice when you hit some chip and pit shots around the green see whether your divs are shallow or deep because that has an indication of your Technique so I’m going to go for medium for me on that one uh it’s now building my grind profile but it’s first asking me what my preferred pit shot technique is whether it’s with a square face or an open face why is it asking us that yeah but again we’re looking at the the implications with bounce that you need um grind that you need so if you if you play your pitch shots with an open face more open face typically you could potentially play a lower bounce wedge okay so I tend to play my pitch shots with a with a square face so we’ll go with square face now it’s asking us what my typical ball position is on uh a pitch shot so middle back or middle forward why is it asking us that yep again it that will give us some kind of insight into attack angle typically all things being equal um which is going to help again assertain bounce required yeah so if your ball is back you’re probably going to be a little bit steeper into and you’re probably going to need a little bit more help a little bit more bounce yeah okay so I I tend to be a middle forward type of golfer so let’s put that in to the app it’s now asking what my highest priority is with my most lofted wedge definitely for me it’s Bunker play that’s kind of pretty much the only situation I use my my highest lofted wedge on it’s now going to finalize my grind profile Comes The Moment of Truth okay so obviously we know with the pingi s159 wedge in particular six different grinds available so there’s a lot of options out there the app select a tool gives you two options to then go and try it’s recommending an an EO for me in the 58 which is obviously the the more bunker specific so yep and an S grind as well so there you go I’ve gone through that process it’s taken hardly any time at all it’s completely free and it’s thrown up some really interesting kind of Selections in terms of guiding me into some wedge designs that are going to work for me and if you’re struggling to choose your wedges if you want some initial guidance definitely check out the Ping webfit Wedge app it’s going to give you some really useful information well so let’s move on to pitching something I think is a bit of an underrated skill in golf there’s nothing worse than getting within 50 yards On a par five and walking off with six so let’s try and help the viewers pitching technique what are the sort of mistakes that people make when it comes to pitching and how are we going to go about fixing those yeah so I think maybe a good way to frame it is if you were going to throw a ball from A to B you probably wouldn’t launch it as high as you could to get it to C cover the distance you’d actually launch it fairly flat I think the most obvious thing to look at is when players are trying to launch the ball high because they misunderstand maybe how to play these shots typically they’re trying to add Loft through impact so they start to lose shaftan too quickly and present too much loft to the golf ball um so the most simplistic way to bring your ball fly down is obviously to deliver more shaing impact now the most basic way to do it was play the ball further back than normal if you’re a player that launches it too high um if you play it central you need to perhaps pivot a little bit better learn to hold a little bit more angle in this wrist to actually have the club leaning forward and deliver less Loft okay so let’s see one here we’re at paven and Park Golf Club your your excellent short Game Area you just going to pitch one to this first flag which I think is well the first green which is 40 yards away so let’s see see one here where you’re going to bring the flight down on this one and hopefully you’re not going to shank it into my legs I’m standing quite close to the Temptation level is very high right now Jo brilliant you see that she came that came out a lot lower than I was expecting it to and it still stopped on that on that green that tiny green yeah so we’re looking at if you do have access to a launch monitor of any kind we’re looking probably 28 to 31° as the window which is much flatter than most people actually realize really interesting Okay so we’ve brought the flight down now we need to control our distances and you were talking about golfers relying most heavily on field but I think most golfers probably need some sort of system to give them options when it comes to pitching and hitting those different distances yeah yeah some kind of basic clock face so essentially I would look at your your core shot or things to base things off as left arm parallels to the so it be 9:00 on the clock face um so the process to go through is really figure out how far that goes then we can take something off so you could end up with something that’s more like 7:30 okay and then perhaps up to 10 10:30 so that’ be three wedge distances straight away and then obviously if You’ got three different wedges that’s nine different distances along with your full shots uh the the final thing we were talking about was when trying to get maximum distance out of it the ball goes too high can the ball flight can be hit by the wind and different things so we’re trying to hit lower lifted wedges a bit more under control when you are swinging more full out there’s more potential for a Miss hit okay cuz your Technique is usually going to suffer a little bit then the ball will start to launch high so you start to put more effort into the shot it launches higher and you still don’t really get much more distance out of it and like I said at the beginning if you want to get the ball from a to be most easily the last thing you want to do is throw it right up in the air okay so you’d recommend coming down and Loft controlled swing so maybe we can see one there to this yes I’ll switch to my 55 here we go beautiful seamless so we go to the 80 yard green yeah so I’m probably not going to be a long way past the 9:00 swing here shouldn’t have to force it nice under control there low ball flight one bounce right that green happy with that one I’ll take it yeah there you go so three really useful tips there if you are struggling with your pitch shots that should help you attack those flags right James we’ve already given our viewers some great short game advice but if there was one drill that you could give golfers to go and try for themselves is going to have the biggest impact on their short game performance what would it be and why yeah so it’s going to be it’s actually a finish position drill or checkpoint but we’re going to turn that checkpoint into a drill um so I like to teach players to get into a finish position that essentially means they’ve ticked three boxes those would be to make sure they’ve used their body correctly they’ve done a good job with their arms and they’re released has been synced up with those other two things so I’ll talk you through it if you’re in a great position to see it okay so no back swing I’m just going to turn through to Target and I want you to observe how I’ve turned my chest fully and my arms are still kind of soft and beside me the club is aligned with my center and obviously I’ve got this coat hanger you will notice pointing at the center of my body right so it becomes a drill when you start to involve a training a or tool now obviously everyone has coat hangers yeah I assume you could use something else you could use a stick in the end of your Club you could hold a stick beside it but this is light and easy for convenience yeah so as long as you tick those three boxes rotation arm position and shaft positioned you won’t have cheated your release over relase you would have dragged it you won have sent your arms across your body too fast and you have to Pivot effectively okay so decent contact good flight and I can look down immediate feedback arm position is good yeah chest is pivoted and my release must have been in time yeah I can see that shaft right pointing right at the middle of the body it’s not too far one way of the other so exactly it’s all nicely connected you’ve done everything you need to do so there you go there’s a really uh easy practice drill for you to try get a coat hanger put it in your grip hit some chip shots achieve those three checkpoints in your finish position and hopefully your scores will start to Tumble so there you have it hopefully you enjoyed this video and it’s giv you a few pointers that you can go and try out on the golf course to help you get up and down a little bit more often and save some shots around the green but that’s all for me and James from the short game area at pav Park Golf Club we’ll see you next time