Wedge Flighting with Scottie Scheffler, Nelly Korda & Collin Morikawa

It’s a shot we all want to have in the bag. Here’s how Scottie Scheffler, Nelly Korda and Collin Morikawa adjust their technique to flight their MG4 Wedge low and stick it close.

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The term flighted wedges is something we hear on the professional tours all the time. Today I’ve got three of the best players around me. They don’t need an intro, but I’m going to give it to you. Nelly Corder, Colin Morakawa, and Scotty Sheffller are going to demonstrate a masterass in flighted [Music] wedges. Scotty, first up, we’re going to go to that back stick slightly into the breeze. It’s 106. That’s what we’re going to start. Do you think the greens are spinning or not? It’s way farther than it was. It’s 106. 106 from where I was stood right now. Probably playing 110ish. So, Colin didn’t get in his head. Colin, tell me the term flighted wedges. When you hear that, what do you guys think of when that term comes up? Kind of a flat ball flight. So, obviously we see a lot of, you know, when you watch balls on TV, you see the ball flight from behind. And, you know, normally when you watch it, it’s an arc. And when I think flighted, I think lower launch angle, doesn’t get up, and it stays underneath the wind. The reason why you hit flighted wedges, not only into the wind, but all the time, is because the spin is more consistent. You catch a better uh launch angle, better contact, and for us, that’s like distance control. Okay. I see you toying around with two different clubs here. Well, it really depends on how firm the greens are. Like, when I’m hitting wet shots, I’m mostly thinking about what I want the ball to do on the green. And most of that just has to do with spin. I think some people have a misconception that we’re always trying to spin the ball, but I feel like whenever I’m hitting wedges, I’m actually trying to take spin off of it, especially with these fuller ones. So, that pin, if the green kind of slopes back towards us, and if the green slope the other way, I could hit 56 because that’s about my 115 club. And with this breeze, it’s probably going to fly right on the pin, but if I hit it full, it’s going to spin. So, I’m taking a 50 now. Okay. So, answer me this then. If it’s 106 to that flag, how do you how did you come up with 115 as the shot? How are you calculating that much wind? feel just just seem like there’s that much wind up there. No, but like it’s so if that’s my 56, since I’m hitting my 56 fuller, it’s going to be a little higher. It’s going to spin a little bit more. But if I’m hitting this club, I don’t need to play as much wind because Okay. It’s spinning less and it’s flying lower. So when you come into this, will you think about a yardage that you want to hit it? It was funny. We just had this conversation. Um when I practice, I’m always doing distances and so I have my feel of what I think a 110 shot is, which I’ll use about for this shot. But once I get in there, I just make sure I’m comfortable with that. And after that, I’m just looking at the pin and trying to hit it that. Okay. Now you guys got me overthinking this one. Always a dangerous. Exactly. One time, right, for tall players, for anyone. Yeah. Like it. Call it go. Oh my goodness, baby. Come back. That was a nice kick. That’ll be perfect to the white flag. Great shot. Go again, mate. Go again. You want to go again? Go again. That was embarrassing. So, the carry was 96. Just a little more. Just a little moment. So, I clearly did not do my job there. Carry was how far? 96. No way. It’s 106 and he’s carried 90. Carry 96 and it’s gone back. I should have cleaned the face. That’ll be good. Come off. What kind of slope is this? So, you allude there to what kind of a slope is this? At what point from this yardage are you Yeah. aiming left of the flag or are you always taking dead aim? I mean, you also have to take in account if the ball’s below your feet or not. So, your ball is definitely below your feet there. And with the amount of slope and carry in a sense, like if you’re going left and the wind’s maybe a little bit more off your left, too, you have to know what the carry is on the bunker because that comes into play. So, you need a lot of numbers for this shot really. You don’t need no quite as much numbers, but you need to know where you want to hit it, right? So, if if the we have a wedge. So, with a lot of wedges, you know, you want to play aggressive. You want to be closer to the pin because you’re closer to the hole. But if you try and get too aggressive, you go left where Scotty just hit it and he hits it the distance of his first one, you’re in the bunker and you’re possibly making bogey on say a short par4 or par five. And um look, ideally if we’re playing this to this pin, we’d want to be just underneath the hole and you’d fly it directly behind the pin. Um that’s a shot Scotty would never hit. I mean, it’s working out. It’s pretty open. Go ahead, Nelly. Dive in. Okay. Okay. Right over the pot bunk. Yeah, right around the edge of the pot bunker. So, when you played that shot there, you tried to draw that in there, right? That was what the intention was. I know you’re messing around, but the last one. Yeah, I was just messing around. What’s the actual again? It was 10 106. 106. 112. Exactly. Nelly, just for the feel. I’m going to hit a pitching wedge. I’m going to hit a flighted shot in there. I rarely ever hit my shots full. So, I’ll typically always club up and try to hit a little feeler in there. And the wind is a little bit now it’s off. It’s dead into but the ball is below my feet. So I’m going to probably aim it at those three trees in the back that you can kind of see distin distinctly behind the pin just left of the pin. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Would you how and is the three trees tight enough or if it was game situation would you be going at like one of the trees? No, the three trees is tight enough for me cuz I’ll just dial into that. I won’t even look at the pin and I’ll try to hit just a straight maybe baby draw into that. And I know that the slope is left to right. So I’ll try to take the slope. Okay. You’re drawing it or fading it. I draw. I don’t fade. If I fade, that means I’ve hit a bad shot. Yeah, I’m a draw. Yeah, good enough. Took a mental note of that. Hitting a lot of bad shots. [Music] That’s great. That’s drawing too much shot. See, I’m I’m taking the slope. Where are these balls ending up? Can you guys see? I can’t. 30 ft. Fish. 30 feet. Carry 111, height 86. It’ll come back off the slope. You’re good. Go on, Cole. Talk to us about your attempts here. give us an actual technique as to how you’re flighting it. How are you bringing down height? So, that was 86 feet in height. So, normally with flight comes, you drop spin. It’s a lot easier to drop spin when you have more club. I mean, Nelly said she doesn’t hit a full shot. Scotty’s taking more club. Um, so anytime you’re trying to flight it, you take more club just to swing a little bit smoother. takes spin down and that immediately kind of like lowers everything helps it flight it through the wind. Um, you can go a little ball behind. I I like to focus kind of through impact of just not being as aggressive but also just swinging really smooth throughout the entire shot. You know, if you try and spin as a spin a 60 as hard as you can, you need speed. Speed equals spin. Um, so it’s more club swing a little bit smoother. What do you mean when you say a little ball behind ball? Like kind of ball position. If you want to really lower like Scotty’s one that he hit like the little rope hook, you’re not doing that from the front of your stance. You’re doing that from behind, hands forward and staying in front of the ball. So that club you got there, what is it? Stock, no wind, full shot. No wind. 128. It’s a 50°ree. Um, so it’s like, you know, this is kind of a choke down. Same as Scotty and Ellie. Like you just kind of have the feel of where you’re hitting it. Okay. But you want it to obviously land. There’s no clock face numbers for any of you. It’s all feel. Yeah. But if you have the ball below your stance, are you putting it a little bit more front of your stance? I kind of keep it the same. I just get a little bit closer to the ball. Okay. Not necessarily for wedges, but if you’re if I have an iron, I’d get a little closer just because you’re you’re going to be leaning this way. If you stand farther, you’re going to Adios. That’s good. Nice. I think one of the misconceptions that amateurs have is they see us hitting a certain shot like this one where it’s coming in really low and they think we’re hitting the full shot, but really I think especially with wedges, you’ll rarely see a pro hitting a all out full shot unless the pins in the front and the greens are firm. Outside of that, I’m very rarely, and I’m sure these guys are the same, like you’re very rarely hitting it completely full. Yeah. Let’s move down here and a little bit further forward and play to some of these fronts. [Music] 67 front pin. Talk us through this one, Nelly. I probably would not flight this one. Okay. You would not flight this one. Why? No. Because I would just play the wind. Okay. Because it’s a front pin and I’m trying to land it soft. Okay. So, I would play probably uh You said 67. Yeah. 67. So I would say it’s probably playing mid7 mid to high 70s. Okay. And I would just hit it. So that’s a good segue to the question that you you just made a comment before we moved to this yardage and you said I hit full shots to front pins for spin. Is that what you said? You said something about full shot only comes out. Yeah. The time I would only use really a full wedge would be to a pin where you need some spin. So if the pins in the front of the green and the greens are firm, I’d be more inclined to hit a very full shot. But like when you have a back pin like especially if it’s the third pin on that green there’s not I mean it’d have to be a nine iron for me to hit a full shot to that pin. If I hit a full shot with a pitching wedge of that pin it’s coming back. Okay. Well we’ll talk about that in a sec. Okay. 67 front pin. There it is. Get in. One take. Nice. Perfect. Failed. Get in. Get in. Go. Come on. Go. Go. Good stop. That was great. Typically, if I play it like that, I’ll play for a little bit of spin or a little bit of rip back. Yeah. Because if it’s on the front of the front of the green, you don’t want the big jump forward and the stop, you kind of want it to come back. I feel like that’s a safer route for me, especially on firmer greens. And by hitting the full one, you don’t get the big jump, right? Because the apex is higher. So you Well, by hit No, actually by hitting the full one, I know that I’m going to get a little bit more spin back. If I If I hit like, let’s say a 54 in there, I just know it’s going to jump forward and stop. Got it. And I don’t really have enough room for that as a in a front pin. Yeah. And Scotty, again, that’s why I was going to ask what yardage now on this front. You were talking about full shots. This surely isn’t a full shot for you. No, it’s not. But like if I wanted to add spin, I’d probably do it since we have wind in our face. If I wanted to have more spin, I’d just use the wind and I’d hit it higher. Yeah. And so like there’s a couple different ways you could hit it. I could hit like a low 70s shot and it would be about 5 yards wind and I could hit one, you know, almost to 80 and just have it spin. Okay. Um probably should have normal one for now. Nice. It’s good. SP a little bit. Do you think the standard now with this flag are your are your expectancy levels tighter on 67 than how much closer do you want to be at 67 versus 111 or 107 or whatever we started at? I think inside 100 yards. That’s kind of like your scoring range. Like you want to get inside 10 ft. Okay. How much practice time do you put into this part of your game? Good amount. A lot. Yeah. In compared to approach, play and driving. I mean, def definitely more. I mean, you’re gonna have a lot more wedge shots. You know, someone told me one time it’s like, you know, majors are a lot tougher, right? So, if you miss it offline and you got to lay up, it’s nice to have the confidence that if you have a wedge in your hand, you can still believe that you’re going to make par. So, knowing when your wedges are really good, it kind of takes a little bit less stress off other parts of your game in a good way. Right. So, it’s an important part for the rest of it. Absolutely. Do it short. I thought I was going to spin back. You can see how great these players are from these short yardages. You heard it from them themselves. This takes pressure off the rest of their games. We want it to take pressure off yours, too. That is a master class from three of the best. They’re going to be here a while. Hopefully there’s stuff you can take to improve your scoring. How do you work your ledges? Like what do you think about when you’re like hitting like that fade and spin off from left to right? I feel like I feel everything like right in Yeah, just hand like I’ll feel it’s not it’s not like where you put the ball for I think I do that n like most guys do that naturally like if I’m going to hit a draw like if I put the ball up there it’s not going to feel like a draw. Yeah. But if I put it back here now all of a sudden it feels like I’m going to hit a draw. So I think that’s stuff we do naturally. And then like when I’m thinking about what I’m trying to do with the ball, I feel it like right in here with my hands like Okay. If I’m going to hit a low draw, I kind of feel like I’m going down into it and high fade kind of club goes up. Pick up a little. Yeah. Okay. How much will you play around like this? I see you guys doing tour events, right, with draw shots, fade shots. Is that the same on the LPJ? Like the guys hit a lot of funky shots. Yeah. Well, they also play on probably kind of firmer, faster greens than we do. I think the ability to work the ball is probably an underrated skill at our level. Yeah. Even with I think guys that have the ability to to work the ball both directions and and hit shots kind of like Colin does have a much bigger advantage over guys that hit a lot of stock shots just because you’re able to use the green to be more consistent like PJ hold. But the thing is when you get under pressure sometimes you have two misses. So that’s where I get into like I don’t want to hit a fade because I know that no matter what I’m going to work it right to left and I know it’s consistent. Yeah. And I just know that under pressure like that’s what I’m doing. But I think I think even so I do the same thing. But I think even the best players you don’t have to even work it both ways. It’s just knowing like if we told you to hit a two yard f or two yard draw, five yard draw or whatever, aim at this tree, aim at that. Yeah, I think a lot of players have one shot and they just kind of go off that where a lot of us like us three, I’ll speak for all of us, we manipulate our distances based on how much we’re going to curve it and the flight and the distance all by curve. Like we see a lot of the visualization of the curve. I I think we’re not I don’t think we’re thinking much about like what like I I’ve never stood up on a tea and be like or stood up on a green and like we’re looking at this one. It’s like I’m going to start on that golf ball and curve it to the pin. I think most of us are kind of just looking and if you’re feeling like what you’re trying to do. So like you’re matching up like what you’re looking at with what you feel in your hands and that’s when you hit there’s a lot of there’s a lot of feel. Yeah. It’s like you take everything else out. It’s just can I can I pull it off? If I had to categorize you’re more faders than drawers whereas Nelly’s more drawer than a fade. Yeah. But I know that if I’m hitting a fade like I will hit a fade. like to some pins I’ll hit it especially if the wind’s off the left the wind will help me hit the fade as well but I just know that it’s going to go shorter than what my draw does so I adapt to it. I feel like everything is always with golf is about adapting and that’s kind of what we do out there. It’s like you can’t be technical. You just have to adapt to your situations. I think I would get feel so locked in if I had to hit one shot every time. I love it though. You work it a lot though. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like like my shot that I would hit under pressure is like whatever the shot is that I see. It’s good. You have control of all the shots. Yeah. But like you know height though that’s where I work a lot is with height. You’re more fade, aren’t you? Under I’m defin Yeah. If I’m if I’m under the gun like I’m hitting a cut cuz I know where it’s I would know where I’m not missing it. Yeah. Exactly. It’s not going left. I think a lot of people have to take something from that if they’re listening to this as a casual golfer. When I talk not to you two, I leave and I’m like, there is one shot because you freaking do do a lot, but there’s always one shot. Yeah, exactly. There’s a lot. There’s for the guy that plays once a week, that’s massive. Well, you’re playing your percentages, right? Nelly and I play the one shot because we know where we’re going to miss it. Scotty plays the correct Look, if in a perfect world, you’d be able to hit every shot. Yeah. And where depending where the pin is, that’s playing your probabilities up, right? Like percentages. We’re not running through percentages, but like we know what the proper side is to miss and the proper side. So, when you have a left pin and you hit a draw, normally you’re going to be taking, you know, one side out and that’s going to be where where you want it. So, yeah, it’s all it’s all about percentage play. Like that’s what sometimes my caddy and I were out on the golf course and we’re like, okay, you know, I’m not feeling great. Maybe I’m not hitting it great that day. And I’m like, okay, what’s the percentage play here to today? And we’ll talk about that. Yeah. So, every day you wake up, your body feels a little different. Your hands feel a little different on the club, and it really just depends on Yeah. how you’re feeling. You can visualize it. Yeah. Sometimes you can’t it is that happens all the time. I stand up there, I’m like, I know what the shot is, but I’m gonna hit it to that part of the green. Very hard to hit that effect. Thanks guys.