Join short-game coach James Ridyard and PING Pro, Laurie Canter, as they dive into the key elements of scoring around the green. From short-sided chips and tricky lies in the rough, to controlling wedge distances and tackling bunkers, James shares tour-proven drills and practical tips for amateurs.
[Music] I’ve worked with James for coming up to five years and I’d say the the sort of biggest ways he’s helped me is to understand my technique, my tendencies, how to manage and short game. I think it looks simple, but it’s actually highly technical and there’s a lot of things you kind of have to know and understand about how you deliver the club, ground conditions, all that kind of stuff. So, as a tour player before working with James, I didn’t really have that level of um understanding and expertise around how my technique would kind of play into that. But I think kind of the best thing about short game is when you get the technicals right and you begin to build the understanding, you can really improve your short game quickly, which I’ve been able to do. And um so I guess guess thank you for that. Um you pay for it. Um but yes, so I’d say the that’s kind of the the main thing I’ I’d really stress is is understanding your tendencies, what you’re likely to do. And as you can build and layer on skill within that, your confidence can grow and it can become a really enjoyable part of the game to to play and practice. So I guess essentially what we’re talking about is your your foundation was probably a little bit shaky when we initially got together. I think that was a fair statement which then meant there was lack of confidence maybe in using different tools in your toolbox or it was essentially a very limited toolbox because the concern really was actually striking it well more often. So we kind of got that foundation in place and then we’re able to kind of develop some kind of toolbox, different flights, different spin rates, more ball control which then once we move into these different situations that we’re going to show allowed you more options and variation and ability to get the ball to stop close when you needed it to. Exactly. So, one of the um areas of of the kind of short game that I really struggled with and and one we face a lot on tour is really tight lies. It can often be you find a lot of that around the aprons of the green. You’re having to elevate the ball a lot, spin the ball a lot. And because of the way my technique was a few years back, that was something I I really struggled to do consistently. going back to the my first win at the European Open in in 2024. One of the things I I’d kind of learned from James was kind of how to play that shot better just and I was doing it through simple stuff setup, understanding of my technique. And in the in the final round, I actually played a chip from the green. I had to kind of take it over the edge of a bunker. I did it in an awkward spot and I was able to do that via my kind of understanding of the club, of the grind, and and how to work my body. Um play played a nice shot to to a couple of feet and and saved my par. Yeah, it’s fair to say you probably never would have seen that shot in the past as being being available to you. No, I’d have been patting at 15 foot left and trying to take more chances, but but it was the shot that needed to be played. And um I think yeah, obviously if you’re going to try and push on and win big events, you’re going to need to uh to take shots like that on at the right point. Yeah. The ability to do that down the stretch when when it really matters. It’s not like it’s on Thursday. Yeah. There’s a long way to go is actually on the Sunday when the tournament was right there to the taking. So the key takeaway for me from what Lori just explained to us is that your foundation of your fundamentals, if they’re good, it will enhance your ability to maybe play that shot when you need to in the medal. When you you’ve got the tournament on the line, knowing that you have the confidence and the experience built from solidly struck shots and having that toolbox uh becomes an essential part of the game. Should we go and share a few around the green? Absolutely. [Music] Right, let’s take a minute to look at what we’re working on with Lori at the moment. Um, essentially with very good players, the number one job is not to make them worse. So, the process for me is to try and take out things that make the game more difficult or make performing more difficult rather than have some kind of model or method in mind. With Lori, I’d say there’s probably a couple of main faults we work on. But before we get into them, I’d like him to hit a couple for you. Okay, so the second one right next to the first, but slightly poppy, little bit poppy. Yeah, just a little bit floaty, wasn’t it? And that kind of leads into the the issues that we face really nicely. The first one for me would be how Lori moves from face on view. So on the back swing, he tends to move forwards and downwards a little bit too aggressively and then from there responds to it, reacts and moves up and away. That combined with the trail arm that folds too much and then drives leads to some contact issues, trajectory issues and perhaps being a little bit underneath and lacking spin on occasion maybe and ball speed being a little bit too high. So, we got a nice drill we’re going to set up now which remedies all of that in one go. [Music] Okay, so sticker in place finally. And this is going to give Lori some guidance as to the attack angle I’m looking for and also the path. So to avoid getting too far underneath and too shallow. The technical points or his keys are really from face on here to almost feel like he shift off the golf ball slightly. Now feeling like and doing are two different things. So he feels like he shifts off. He actually stays very centered. Then on a down swing that allows him to move towards the target. So previously he go forwards too early and back. Now he stays centered and shifts forwards. The other key was to get control of this trail arm to make sure it doesn’t overload and drive, which you kind of have to do when you’re tipping away from target. You see how that would work? So, you want to try and eliminate both of those things. So, if you can step in and we’ll focus on a shift away from target, long right arm as usual. And the stick on the right hand side here is to give him that that attack and path. So, slightly out to win and maybe a little bit steeper than he feels he needs to be. Okay, pretty good. So, you can see that ball flight. It was a very slight pull, but this is a drill, remember. So, it’s slightly ex exaggerated. He will go a little bit more out to in maybe we’re looking for zero path or slight out in is good. I’ve probably got this set four or 5° out. So, there will be a little bit of a pull or a little bit more cut spin than maybe you’d play with, but we need to go that way in order to not fall into the folds. Very good. See here, the the strike just sharpens up a little bit, reduces the risk of the pop-up, the floaty one that kind of tumbles forwards on it on landing. It actually grabs by the hole. Obviously here that was a fairly standard chip shot. I’m now just going to demonstrate how I would change trajectory in flight. As I said earlier, I’m someone who likes to do that via my ball position. So, if I was playing a low one, um I’d apply all the same principles to things that I’m working on with James in terms of trying to clean up my pivot in the back swing. Um stop my arm from getting deep and and overloaded. But I would place the ball if if this was stock kind of middle feet, I’d be moving back more towards my right foot. and have one come out nice and low and run out there. Now for a higher one would be the basically the exact opposite. So if I was uh back towards my right foot for the for the low one, I’d be up just inside my left toe and same exactly the same principles. Good. So essentially you’re making minimum change. You’re basically changing ball position to change attack angle to pull the flight down or put the flight up. No real change in release, no change in face angle. Yet, you’ve shown a pretty good demonstration or or range of trajectories there. Two feet off the ground versus 12 ft. [Music] So, not a universal rule, but one that I like to live by as much as I can, is I will aim to land my ball a yard on the green or the nearest flat point. So, what that means is by landing my balls, you know, on the green as quickly as I can, I’ve got control of it more quickly on the ground. Um, and the only time that rule wouldn’t apply for me is if there was a huge slope and I’m looking to take that out and just find the nearest flat spot. So, we can apply it quite nicely here. Um, we got a simple chip to that third flag. I’m looking to just land it about a yard on the green and it will just camber in a little bit left to right for me. And it’s a good example of uh of one of the rules that I like to to play my short game by. The one of the key points of that rule that you haven’t mentioned yet, if you land at yard on, we really got to look at which flight we need to get the ball to roll out to target cuz if you eat a stock shot yard all the time, it’s not always going to reach. So sometimes with more roll out requirement, you might have to bring the flight down a bit. Yeah. Change club, take the spin off it to get it to roll. Obly yard onto a shorter flag, you’re going to have to go a little bit higher. So the real skill in that method is to make sure your trajectory and spin rate match that yard on landing spot. Okay, we’ve changed location. We’ve now got a shot with a slightly different requirement. We’re going to go to the pin on the right just up the hill. So the first one on the right before the back corner. We’re on a slight up slope. So the ball wants to launch a little bit higher. Now our flat area is definitely way short of the ridge. All right. So we need this ball to come in a little bit lower maybe and also spin a little bit less. So Lori’s gone with a change of club. Yeah. For for this shot, just trying to apply my rule of landing at a yard on or or the nearest flat point. I’ve gone down loft. I’m using my 54 degree which will enable me to keep my setup and kind kind of everything very similar. I can play a pretty stock chip shot and let the loft take care of itself to to kind of hit the shot up that hill set. Oh, it’s a bit fiery, wasn’t it? I only say that because I want Lori to play a different option. Right, the ball speed was a little bit quick. You probably miss your landing spot by a few feet, right, if you’re completely honest. Six feet by at the most. Almost went in. Now, what else could we do here? You could play a lower shot with the 60. Now, that will produce more spin so you can land it a little bit further up. It will grip on the slope more easily. So, let’s switch the club out and we’ll get you 60. And I want you to play a lower trajectory shot with that club. So, the spin rate is going to be maintained, but it’s going to launch a little bit lower. It will grab more on the hill, so you can be more aggressive. Perfect. So, it landed just a little bit further up, but as it hit the hill, it maintained spin, which meant it slowed down when it got over the top because that that pin is only just over the crest. So, we want the ball breaking ideally. [Music] Okay. Okay, so we find ourselves in most regular golfers nightmare situation. We’re going to go to the flag on the center of the green from a fairly tight lie over a bunker. In my mind, people tend to do too much with this shot, but I think it’s worth having a little walk up to see what we’re dealing with. So the carry to cover the bunker is probably 10 steps, isn’t it? Yep. But then if we look at your yard on rule, we’re actually on to quite a severe down slope here. Now that can work two ways for us. If we’re a little bit short on power, it will feed the ball down to the hole. But ideally, if you want control over it, you’re going to have to land further on on the flat spot. On the flat spot. Exactly. And you can probably give yourself a buffer of a few feet behind the hole. Yep. So, the key here for me is to pick a trajectory that will cover the flat spot and give you enough stopping power to not run down the hill behind the hole. Yep. As James said, the the key here will be a kind of medium height shot for me. I’ll put it forward a little bit in my stance to create a little bit of height, but actually, if I hit that flat spot, I think I’ll have enough control on the ball and should hopefully be able to stop it near the hole. Very nice. Just hang on. 5 foot. [Music] Okay, Lori. Here we are in the rough. Um, we’re going to play two different targets. So, we’re going to play a kind of short-sided shot and we’re going to play a longer one to the pin at the back. I just want you to take into consideration here that the rough is actually helping us with what we need the ball to do. I mean, from here, we need it to fly high and soft. It’s very hard to hit it low and spiny from the rough because you lose all the friction. The ball pops up. So, it helps out a little bit. So, the back flag, we want it rolling out and obviously it helps in that respect, too, because it’s not going to spin. So, Lori, talk me through what you would do for this. It’s kind of a moderate lie. It’s not all the way down, but it’s not on top. It’s quite a nice lifer rough. I would maintain a lot of the principles we’ve talked about with with the chipping. I’d have the face very slightly open just to help me get the ball up. I’ve I’ve only got probably four yards where that pin’s cut, so I want the ball to pop up high. But then, yeah, it would be I’d be just just be trying to land it on on the front of that green and just just have it topple forward to the flag. We’ll say that every time. Um, should we move on to the one that rolls out? So, essentially, we’re going to try and get the same kind of lie. We know the ball’s not going to spin, but you need to bring the flight down a little bit. Yeah. So that lies just just nestled down. So again, that’s to me going to come out what I would call snowballing like almost forward. So um I’m going to play that with a pretty square face. Look to land it at a flat point just right of that first flag and have it just release down to the bottom flag. It just hung on. Okay, pretty good. So I think the key there is really recognizing what the ball wants to do from the rough. Obviously trying to generate spin from the off is a no no. It’s never going to happen because you just don’t get any grip on the club face. Um, so you can play that to your advantage and change your trajectory knowing it is going to topple forwards. Or if you need it to stop quicker, more up, need it roll out, you can play it in quite flat and rolling. [Music] All right, here are Lori in the sand on the beach and he’s going to run you through how he plays his basic bunker shot. I’m going to talk through maybe how that differs to the more traditional method and why we choose to play it this way instead of that. So, I’m someone who likes to set up fairly square to the target, even if I’m adding loft. For me, in my opinion, it makes a lot of the characteristics of what I do within my short game simpler and easier to manage. So for for a shot like this, I’d be looking for my feet and the club face would be open but all kind of at the target rather than I I think maybe what James’s going to talk about. Traditionally, people have been more open with the club face and open with their stance. Get myself in. Splash one out. Okay, perfect. Um I think a really important point here is that Lori did have the face open but didn’t need to aim left. And that’s because as the face opened, he started to lower the grip or lower the shaft down. And that actually tilts the face back towards the target. If he’d have opened the face and stayed up, then he would have had to aim left to offset it. Now, you think about traditional ways of playing this shot. We are taught, as Lori said, to really open the face, to really aim to the left. I’ll just jump in there a second. To really aim way left, sometimes even try and open the face more on the back swing, start to cup the wrist, all that kind of stuff to keep loft on the club, then hit it very, very hard and essentially make a deep divot. The issue with that and I think we see more and more players play it square especially at the amateur level. The issue with it is you need a lot of speed. Now Lori’s a world class golfer. Now what’s your driver speed? Sort of 118. So 118 he’s powerfully strong. He could like feasibly play that from very heavy sand. Your amateur with their driver club speed of 85 90. You put a lot of loft on it. You have them very steep, very across. They can’t get the energy on the golf ball to get it to the target. So Lori, could you step in and play one more traditional for me? demonstrate how it can work, but it wouldn’t be the recommended way anymore. So, really open, really open face. So, he’s played an unbelievable shot as predicted, right? But that’s because he is one of the top 0.001% of golfers and he has massive speed. You can probably even hear on the mic how that made a different sound in the sand. It went high, it launched with spin. It was great. But if the sand was a little bit heavier, you’d have to hit it even harder. And you can see how deep relative to the two divots there that I played. The the second one was a lot deeper, a lot longer and more across. Um and yeah, despite that being a great result from a playing standpoint, I wouldn’t want to uh be launching into that under any sort of pressure. Yeah. It’s like the amount of force required is is really really high. And and you actually have to be quite precise where you hit the sand. If you’re a little bit further back and you’re very steep, that ball’s not going to get that far. All right. So, traditionally very very good for world-class golfers or can be from the right kind of sand. Hit it high and soft. I think it’s maybe a little bit more predictable to play it square, control your depth in the sand a little bit better and get better outcomes that way. But for the amateurs out there who don’t have massive club head speed, square, shallower divots are much more usable. Right, Lori? We’ve shifted around a little bit here, a little bit further down in the bunker and we’ve moved flag. So, we’re now shortsided. The flag is more above us, so we need more trajectory. Now, as you saw in the previous video, we could go more traditional and cut across it, hit it hard, spash it out with height, but we’re not going to do that. We’re going to go more new methodology and do what you would normally do. Yeah. So, exactly. I would continue with a a square stance. I’d be square to that. I’d add a little bit of loft. And then from a kind of swing principle idea is I I like to feel like the club head gets out of the sand a little faster. So, I’ll my sort of feeling is I’m going to move the club head up through release. Um, keep the loft on and hopefully get it going high and soft. That beautiful. So, landed pin high, rolled 2 ft by, got the trajectory without having to cut across it or add huge amounts of speed. [Music] Okay, moving on from our discussion about maybe going a bit more unconventional, more modern with bunker shots. Ping have designed this bunk R wedge. Um, it fits in really well with the philosophy of not opening the stance, not opening the club face, hitting it at lower swing speeds. They’ve put 64 degrees of loft on this and you can play it perfectly square and still get trajectory. One of the main issues opening the face for your amateur golfer is the profile gets very, very slim. you start to lose face width and suddenly that heel starts to come into play. Leading gauge gets into play a little bit too quick and it becomes a little bit difficult at high club head speeds. Also, it really doesn’t fit. Now, with this, I’m going to go completely unconventional. I’m going to do everything I’m probably not supposed to do from a bunker in order to demonstrate just how easy it is to get it out with it. So, I’m going to go really narrow. I’m going to stand very, very close, very tall. I’m essentially going to play it like a 30 yard pitch. Obviously trying to make contact with the sand somewhere before the ball. And you’re going to see how easily it skips through with this sole and how I can get launch without any complexity. Obviously, I’m hitting the shot because I’m far more amateur than Lori. Now, I’m not going to lie to you. That was chunky. But it still got out. What is it? 10 ft. Yeah. Let’s go one more. So, nice and close. Pretty straight swing. A little bit more speed, maybe. There you go. Really myself just a bit more swing speed. Contact wasn’t much better to be honest with you, but you can see the divots are very very similar. Bit more ball speed, same trajectory. Actually, very very easy. Would you ever consider it? Well, I mean, looking at that, that looked incredibly simple that I I think what I see a lot in proams is is amateurs kind of get in and around a bunker and and are sort of hit with a lot of fear about the principles or what they’ve got to remember to do. It’s like a game within a game. I think what you showed there was, you know, to to to use an old pun, the club and the technology in that club has genuinely just basically done the work for you. You’ve looked like you chipped it out the bunker. Like you say, you’ve got a 10-footer and a tap in for par. So, I think uh most amateurs should definitely consider that and I I’ll I’ll be having a go as soon as we’re off camera. It’s perfect. I mean, essentially, I haven’t really changed technique from a a basic chip, 25 30 yard chip. Um the club has like Lori said done all the work for me and my job got infinitely easier. Right. So having identified the brilliance of the bunkar that leads us really well into the chippar which is now a couple years old but still incredibly good technology for the amateur player. So this is designed for players that struggle basically with their their strikes from the turf from the fairway. The selling points on this are it is short. It has a loft of an AI. Obviously why not use an aine? Well it’s a longer club and the lie angle is also much lower. So it forc you to stand further away from the golf ball. The chip bar is much more vertical. So I have to stand very very close to this. What that allows me to do is make a much straighter swing. So it’s not arcing in. The loss’s not changing. Becomes very very simplistic and very puttlike. It does come out hot. It is heavy. Now because of the weight, it means you have to hit it very hard. So you can make a short putting stroke and hopefully feed it down towards that pin which is 25 yards away. Now Lori, when you play your proams, how do you feel about players tripping? It’s an area where I I think you can see the cogs turning in the brain. they’re thinking about what they’ve been taught or what they think they should do. What I liked about what you said there is that it’s going to simulate putting which I think is a very simple motion and yeah, it’s gonna I guess remove a lot of thought. Um I’m interested to see how this comes out and and how you’re going to play that to that flag with it. Yeah, so am I. Essentially, what I’m going to do is set up like a putter. I’m going to take my putting grip, do my best to put a putting stroke on it. Hopefully, we’re going to get a bit of elevation and some good roll out. So, I’ll play it just slightly maybe slightly further back than the putter, but apart from that, everything else going to remain very much much the same. Beautiful. Not bad, is it? Should have one more. Make sure it wasn’t luck. It’s got a chance. Okay, it’s going in the back. [Music] So, we’re going to talk how I control my wedge distances. I’ve got four different swings with each wedge, and I’ve got four different wedges, which gives me 16 shots effectively in my armory. The the way I I choose to do it is it’s it’s a a kind of matrix element of it. Um, but it’ll be what I feel is a half, 2/3, 3/4, and a full shot. And that that feel in swing length and change in effectively speed I’m putting into the ball gives me all the different yardages. There are lots of different ways to to kind of skin the cap in terms of um dialing in your distances with wedges. This is just something that I’ve done for a long, long time. feel very comfortable with. But yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s a it’s it’s something that is definitely worth playing around with and and seeing seeing if it could work for you, but I don’t think it’s uh necessarily a fit for everyone. Yeah, I’d agree. I think if you’re looking for core distances, I think it has it its value. Um obviously, if you find yourself in between those numbers, you still have to rely on some degree of feel, but it gives you a good foundation to spring from. Absolutely. Y um so I can I can go ahead and show you a few of those um a few of my different swings and and how they’ll vary to to influence speed. First one would be would be a half. So for there, if I’m imagining a clock face, my left arm will get to what would be effectively 9:00 on a clock. Um I then have a 2/3 which goes up a little further, 3/4 and then a full. So very simple, but I practice them a lot. I can uh I use a distance measuring device to help me do it. And I think it’s a good way to get dialed in pretty pretty quickly. Good. Great. Okay. Members bounce. So that probably pitched to what? 72. Y. So closing 75. So we’ve got that with a half 60. What’s the 85? 85 I’d be up to a 2/3 swing, which for me, if this is my half, then my 2/3 is is up to here. It’s not going to be like an exact thing. It’s what feels 2/3 to me. Um, I have filmed it. I have tried to kind of dial it in like that, but I find to have that feel element means it’s a bit more repeatable. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially, it’s it’s a swing length that you’re feeling that corresponds to a distance. It doesn’t matter if it is actually 23 or 9:00 or whatever. Exactly. Okay. Little puff of wind there hurt you, but obviously just short, but not bad. So, your system essentially it starts at 75 yards. So a half swing with a 6075 and then you can build up with your different lofts to go up to 130 plus I would say in theory. What happens inside of that? That would be where I’m relying on touch and feel and and effectively practicing um you know in terms of if I was hitting the first the first target green here which is at 45 yards. Yep. That would be very much to to me I’d be thinking about trajectory. I’d want that in on how it’s going to respond when it hits the green. Um, and from that I’ I’d feel and build the swing I need. So you go down to that kind of flight touch and feel that is is really earned through practice. Exactly. Versus once you get 75 and out, you can rely a little bit more on a system to hit those numbers. Yeah. I found I found it much easier to rely on a system at that length and then kind of dial it back in for the short stuff. Yeah. And obviously your your amateur, your more average golfer, they’re not high speed player like you. So their half 60 is not going to carry 75. So they could use a very similar system and probably cover maybe from this 40 45 yards up to 80 or 90 using the same theory, the same number of wedges, same number of shots, but cover a different window of shot distances. Yeah, exactly. I think it’s just a question of coming out with with some balls um and and kind of just feeling what’s a half for me from that. I think you can build build a nice range of shots. Yeah. Okay. Should we put the pressure on and have one at the 45? Let’s try. So now defaulting into feel and touch mode. Yeah. What sort of flight would you would you be looking for here, James? This is your facility. That’s That’s true. Well, you don’t need to stop it on this screen. These are really landing targets, so it doesn’t have to stop on there. So, I don’t think has to be floaty. Just a pretty stock flight should do. So, 45 yard carry just that first green 50. Probably would have zip back though, right? Landed on the back of it. Land on the back and zip back. Pretty good demo though. That kind of gray area is very, very difficult. 40 to 75 is the kind of shot that you don’t really want to be left with. Yeah. But at your level, how often do you actually hit that shot? Not often. You might get it up and around a long par five um or if you you’re out of position off the tea, but exactly generally we’re not we’re not dealing with a lot of shots in that kind of range. Yeah. So, it’s a shot that you don’t have to hit very often, whereas your 10 handicapper is going to have that shot much more frequently. Fortunately, they’re lower speed players, so they’ll be able to use more of the matrix system to actually cover these numbers and rely maybe less on touch and feel. Yeah, that would be the idea. [Music] So, one of the um really underrated elements of short game in my opinion and something that James has helped me with a lot is being able to read the lies. I would kind of equate it to reading the green in putting. Until you know the lie, understand how the ball might respond from it, you can’t really formulate your best plan to play play the most appropriate shot. We’ve got three completely different lies here right next to the green. James here will talk you through how the how the lies vary and what we might expect to do from each lie. Thanks. Yeah, I will. Um, so for me, there are two sides to this equation. Essentially, we need to kind of know what the ball wants to do and we have a reference point of a stock shot from a fairway. How will this behave differently to your stock shot? Will it fly higher, lower? Will it go faster, slower? Will it spin more or spin less? Once we understand what the ball wants to do, we can start to look at the other side of the equation, which is really the green. And what do we actually need the ball to do? Now, ideally, those two things will match up and correlate, right? So, we have a a back pin there with plenty of green to work with. This ball being as bare bare as it is will usually want to fly a little bit lower. It’ll want to spin a bit more, but the ball speed will be up. And fortunately, we have plenty of space for that. Obviously, if it was short-sided, went to one of these front holes, you’d have a much more challenging task because what the ball wants to do versus what you need it to do are drastically different. Now, it happens this fits really nicely. So, why don’t you come in and take a look at the line, see just how bare and tight it is. Now, there’s always going to be an increase in friction because there’s very little, if any, grass behind the ball. So, it’s going to get maximum purchase on the club face. It’s very hard to get the club to go under the ball at all. So, the ball speed will go up due to lower contact. Sorry. If you want to step in, um, I think instinctively you would probably do a bit more with this than maybe I would suggest. I mean, if it were me, I would play a stock shot and basically adjust my touch based upon the fact it’s going to come in a little bit flatter with a bit of heat, but it should spin. So, maybe a slightly different landing spot to normal, but apart from that, I wouldn’t change anything. Okay. So, pretty stock chip. And just adjust the fact it’s going to come off a little hotter. Little hotter. It should grab though. Oh, it did. Wow. It grabbed an awful lot. Loads of spin. Okay. So, you probably could have been more aggressive than you think. Yeah. Now, what would instinct have told you though? Just from how hard and bare the turf was, even when I was addressing the ball, my club was kind of slipping around the lie. So, I think instinctively for me, I I I would try and soften that off. Um, just because I’d be worried about probably the club bouncing into the ball there, you know, and too much energy effectively going going through the ball. Yeah. So Lori would have instinctively subconsciously been aware that there’s high ball speed and tried to take it off versus my preference would be just to change my landing area, my touch. Okay. But there’s no right and wrong way, but you can see we both recognize how the ball behaves differently. Should we move on to the second one? I would call this a fluffy lie. There’s a little bit more grass behind it. What would you describe it as? Name for everything. It’s it’s kind of a little copy that to me. It’s uh I’m not It’s not a bad lie, but I I know I’m not going to generate much spin from that. I think it’s gonna kind of go out the lie, kind of topple forward. I call it snow. I call it snowballing. Um, so I I think there I’d be definitely adjusting for for more on that when it hits the green. Yep. And trajectory wise, what do you expect it to do normal or any change in how it will launch? I would expect that to pop a little higher. It should pop up higher because the thing that’s actually taking spin away from you also makes the ball slip up the club at the same time. So you lose friction. Okay. So it will pop up, but it will tumble forward, snowball forwards, and release out. Okay. So I guess what you lose in in spin, you may be gaining a bit of trajectory to help you out. So you see quite a significant difference in the way that launched. Like it peaked much much higher and when it hit the ground it went forwards maybe 200% of the roll of the first ball. Yeah. So dramatically different even though those balls are what 5 ft apart. Yep. Not even. Yeah. We go to ball number three which is now down in the rough. Little bit smelly. What does this ball want to do? Yeah. that that that is a bit smelly. It’s it’s settled down in in the bottom of this kind of dry rough here. This would I guess this would be a shot. Um we’d see a lot especially in summer. Um kind of a burnt out area with the rough but but sitting down. So probably a similar slightly more extreme version of the second in terms of you know I’m I’m not really going to be able to contact anywhere near the ball there. I’m going to expect it again to pop move forward. Yeah. If anything maybe a slightly greater loss of friction, maybe a little bit more pop. You might get a little bit more resistance even though it’s dry. you’re going to have to go through a little bit more than you did here. Yeah. So, the ball speed will drop a little bit as well. So, I probably need a slightly bigger swing um and a bit more energy to to get the ball to kind of pop up and head forward. Should have came out just a fraction lower than predicted. Yeah, I would say most likely because we’ve got two different colors of grass here. When it’s really green, we know it contains a lot more moisture. When it’s brown like this, the moisture content is reduced right the way down. It’ll want to spin a bit more. Okay. I’ve never I’ve never actually thought about in terms of the depths of green to to affect moisture. That’s that’s interesting. I’ll be I’ll be looking out for the color of grass. There you go. Lesson learned. Okay. So, I think the main lesson here for the amateur player and maybe some tour players as well is to pay much more attention at this end of things. I think it’s very easy to get dragged into what’s happening over there. If we start looking at how maybe short-sided you are, what kind of slopes are around the hole and we start to almost think about the shot before we look here. You can use this to your advantage. Okay, if you read the lie well and it suits the shot you need, you have to do less work to get the trajectory, maybe spin rate you require. But then recognizing when maybe the lie doesn’t want the ball to do what you need it to do, you start to maybe choose different targets, be more conservative. Then you reduce the big errors from your game and your scores will come down. Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music]
