Stewart Cink explains how to control the trajectory of short game shots around the green and why it’s beneficial to use a short iron instead of a wedge in many situations.
Stuart, we were talking about trajectory around the greens and the importance of it. Obviously, you’ve had success overseas playing link style golf. Let’s talk about low trajectory first. And interestingly enough, you have a lofted club for your low trajectory example and then we’ll switch over to a more traditional 7 iron, sixiron, low uh low lofted club. So, show us low trajectory with a 56° sandwich and what you try to do to keep the ball down. really trajectory on the short game comes from whatever loft you’re showing the ball at impact. And all you need to do is just adjust the uh the ball position. So, you know, you put it back in the stance and you set up just like you did on your block practice and you have a nice little uh rhythmic, you know, something like that and you’re going to hit it low. It’s it’s no problem, but you just have to be aware of what the club face is doing at impact. Then you set that all up before you even take the club back. Now, for amateurs at home, playing a a lofted wedge like that back in their stance obviously is going to increase spin, whereas, you know, a flatter face club is going to be tumbling over. There’s going to be some spin involved. So, what would you tell the amters at home? Well, the only way you would add spin is if you really like chop down on the back of it. We’re not trying to do that. We’re not changing our mechanics and we’re just letting the ball position dictate the angle of attack on the ball and therefore the trajectory. So that’s nice and low. It’s, you know, you can judge how far that ball’s going to go fairly easily even off of this. You know that? Yeah, that’s a sticky line. Significant stuff. All right, let’s do this. Let’s switch to a seven iron. A key thing between these two clubs. Now, one’s a seven iron and one is a sand wedge. You can see there’s a lot of difference in loft. The sweet spots are roughly the same size in these clubs, but when you turn it back like this, your sweet spot just shrunk down a lot lower, right? It’s smaller. It’s a lot easier to catch it thin or high on the face, and therefore, you lose energy. With this seven iron, you got way less loft than a sand wedge. We all know that you’re presenting the sweet spot to the ball more like upright and therefore it’s taller and you got a bigger space to hit. You’re going to make more solid contact with this club. So around the greens on shots when you don’t need a lot of loft. Yeah. You know, there’s no reason to get the ball airborne unnecessarily and take a risk on contact when you’ve got grain and you’ve got the sweet spot shrinking down. And this can be treated like a putt. And that’s the way I do it. I I actually feel like I’m making my putting motion, putting grip. I do everything the same way I would do with my putting except I got a little bit of loft. All right. So, question. This was just a 30-foot shot here with a seven iron. If you’re going all the way across the green, where are you going to have a bigger motion? Yeah. More violent strike, do you still use your putting motion or do you go back to a regular chipping grip, interlocker, overlap, whatever you use? Up to uh I I feel comfortable with this up to probably about a 50 ft or so. Okay. Longer than that, it starts to get really hard to control. um you know because then you’re just more accustomed to hitting a shot that is uh dependent on you know loft and a little bit of spin and check and it’s just the shot we’re more accustomed to. Show us one down to the uh far flag there. Yeah, I would still um I would still probably go with a putting motion from here and just u expect the ball to come out nice and low and Oh, that was cool there. Yeah, that’s the idea. You know, it’s it’s a fairly predictable choice. Well, I think that’s look for for the amateurs at home that are trying to learn something from a major champion. I think that’s a great spot to to show because not only can you describe the loft and how it increases the loft, the sweet spot on the club, but delofting makes a lot easier to control the distance and we all need to be more efficient around the Grains.
