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Short Game Shape Up - JB Goes To Work

Why not? Swinging on the proper plane is pretty important for all things wedge-related.
 
Just curious how much you think changing wedges throughout the season affects all of this. I know that you keep a set as 'in-the-bag', but I also know that I have items in my bag I may not get to use for a month if I'm reviewing something else.

I honestly didn't think there would be a ton of difference in greenside performance when I switched my wedges, but I feel like I'm still figuring things out with them at times.
 
I think this will prove to be an excellent tool for people to follow. JB will see ups and downs through out this process and we will see how he deals with them. This will serve to make him and others much better in their short games. The great thing about this is that through out the process he will see where is needs to adjust in order to attain his goal each time out. He won't just be hitting ball after ball.
I am looking forward to following your process JB
 
Hoped you would start a thread like this after our conversation last week. From the outside looking in you're not far from where you want to be; but I know you're a very driven person. This will be fun and educational to follow along, thanks for letting us join in on the journey, best wishes!
 
Tadashi70 said:
I think this will prove to be an excellent tool for people to follow. JB will see ups and downs through out this process and we will see how he deals with them. This will serve to make him and others much better in their short games. The great thing about this is that through out the process he will see where is needs to adjust in order to attain his goal each time out. He won't just be hitting ball after ball.
I am looking forward to following your process JB
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I agree with this post.. well said. The short game has been my big roadblock in the game of golf and just recently with practice and a club change I have managed to make significant strides to improve that part of my game. To Hawk's point about switching wedges and noticing changes I will simply state that I kept trying different wedges to try to improve my game and it was not helping me. Of course I was staying with one manufacturer and just looking at their clubs cause I thought they were "the best" and I should use those. Once I looked at a different brand something clicked in my mind and I am doing so much better than I was before the switch so yes I think matching the player to the right equipment is beneficial as well.
 
Hawk said:
Just curious how much you think changing wedges throughout the season affects all of this. I know that you keep a set as 'in-the-bag', but I also know that I have items in my bag I may not get to use for a month if I'm reviewing something else.

I honestly didn't think there would be a ton of difference in greenside performance when I switched my wedges, but I feel like I'm still figuring things out with them at times.
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I have been using that as a crutch, but the truth is its not the reason. Lack of work has been the reason.
 
JB said:
I have been using that as a crutch, but the truth is its not the reason. Lack of work has been the reason.
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Dangit. You just broke my crutch!
 
JB: My short game is horrendous. from 150yds in I am lost. I know that power is my game and feel is very lacking. Do you have any one exercise to get me on the path to solid wedge and scoring club play? I know you are doing exercises that help you specifically, but is there one off hand that I might be able to do around my yard that can help with proper wedge play and feel? Any help would greatly be appreciated!
 
Thegeneral451 said:
JB: My short game is horrendous. from 150yds in I am lost. I know that power is my game and feel is very lacking. Do you have any one exercise to get me on the path to solid wedge and scoring club play? I know you are doing exercises that help you specifically, but is there one off hand that I might be able to do around my yard that can help with proper wedge play and feel? Any help would greatly be appreciated!
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I am not the best guy to ask, but if you are struggling with iron and wedge play, I believe greatly in taking a lesson. There are also some great tips on the home page for chipping and bunker play that amollerud, our former THP Pro put together. Im a big believer in getting it right from a coach and then practicing. Without practice, it will never work well and without getting it right, you might be practicing wrongly.
 
thank you sir. I will look into the tips sections and I will see about grabbing a few lessons in the off season.
 
JB said:
I have been using that as a crutch, but the truth is its not the reason. Lack of work has been the reason.
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I love the brutal honesty in this statement. Takes some self examination to come to that.
 
JB said:
I am not the best guy to ask, but if you are struggling with iron and wedge play, I believe greatly in taking a lesson. There are also some great tips on the home page for chipping and bunker play that amollerud, our former THP Pro put together. Im a big believer in getting it right from a coach and then practicing. Without practice, it will never work well and without getting it right, you might be practicing wrongly.
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Yes, that comes back to that ole adage: PERFECT practice makes PERFECT
 
Take it from me a lesson will save you enormous amounts of pain not to mention a lot of time and effort in trying to figure out what to do with your wedge swing. It is very, very hard to figure out what is wrong with your wedge play vs your long game, especially when your long game is good. I had been struggling with this for a few months myself, for some mysterious reason I started hitting the worst collection of wedge shots and I didn't think I was doing anything different from when I was hitting them well. I had days where I was more confident of hitting the green from 200 yards out than I am from 80 out. I did figure out something that might help you, my advice is look to your setup and posture. Contact problems with wedges and short clubs can sometimes be traced back to posture and setup, including ball position. Also look at hand action going back from the ball on the take away, the swing is a lot shorter so everything is condensed. And get a lesson, a pro can straighten it out faster than you can do it on your own. I managed to figure out what I was doing with these short clubs but it was not easy and I spent a lot of range time figuring it out on my own.
 
Love this thread. As all season I practiced my short game more then anything. I love hitting my wedges and have so much confidence in them. Look forward to your progress jb

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk
 
Just wanted to share...this will bring you up to speed in the thread. The RED post is what JB posted originally and today...

pjcedog said:
Take it from me a lesson will save you enormous amounts of pain not to mention a lot of time and effort in trying to figure out what to do with your wedge swing. It is very, very hard to figure out what is wrong with your wedge play vs your long game, especially when your long game is good. I had been struggling with this for a few months myself, for some mysterious reason I started hitting the worst collection of wedge shots and I didn't think I was doing anything different from when I was hitting them well. I had days where I was more confident of hitting the green from 200 yards out than I am from 80 out. I did figure out something that might help you, my advice is look to your setup and posture. Contact problems with wedges and short clubs can sometimes be traced back to posture and setup, including ball position. Also look at hand action going back from the ball on the take away, the swing is a lot shorter so everything is condensed. And get a lesson, a pro can straighten it out faster than you can do it on your own. I managed to figure out what I was doing with these short clubs but it was not easy and I spent a lot of range time figuring it out on my own.
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Working on other parts of my life, it seemed natural that this would fall in line and it has. This thread will be my journey to go back to where I was as a player from 2 years ago as it relates to my short game and golf shots 100 yards and in.

I just got back from my maiden voyage I am calling JB Gets His Wow Back. I am going back to the basics of what made me a better player and that was my wedge game. Over the last 18 months and more specifically last year, with everything going on with THP, our lives and the inaugural Morgan Cup, I let my game slip to a point that I was not happy about. I was still getting out there and doing a decent job and competing, but the one thing that slipped was my short game. Gone were the days of feeling so confident that I could get up and down from anywhere. Gone were the days of being able to pull anything inside of 100 yards to where I wanted it to go. And more specifically, gone were the days of taking my game to the next level of picking apart golf courses.

It has little to do with competition or anything of the sort and more to do with timing not having that lust to continue to work at it. It used to be a must for me, as a guy that lacks a little distance off the tee, to compete on longer courses. Then it got tiresome and I assumed I was to a point that it would always be there. Fast forward to a rising handicap (I was a .9 three years ago) and the lost ability to do what I did before and it was time for a change. It was time to get back to my roots of what made me enjoy this game so much. It was time to go back to slaying courses through course management and better wedge play. And it was time to go back to enjoying the game I love, based on how I love playing it.

Today consisted of 30 minutes of range time with a flag stick 60 yards away (laser reading). I had 30 golf balls and the goal for me is to have 15 of them with in 10 feet. A real ten feet measured out for myself with tees in the ground to outline the area of which I had to be in. I chose a flat green for today as it is more about finding out where I am currently. The kicker here is that I have to do it 3 ways and use only ball position to maneuver the flight.

10 balls will be hit high
10 balls will be hit low
10 balls will be hit normal

I reached my goal today as 17 balls were with in 10 feet. 6 more were with in about 15 feet and 4 more were just outside of that. I did catch 3 balls thin and they are probably still going. Those 3 are just unacceptable. I found that with normal ball position I had the best success followed by hitting it high. That shows me that the lower trajectory is something I also have to continue to work on. I did today's work with Bridgestone B330-RX golf balls and the new Cleveland 588 wedge in 58 degrees.

This is only the first drill and tomorrow I have another test for myself coming up. I will continue to update this thread as if it were a journal and see how I progress with the goal in mind to be back at my starting point by the end of the year. From there I can decide where I want to take this and how far it will go. There will be successes and failures throughout this journey, but one thing I know for sure, I will come out the other side better than I am now and enjoying the game like I used to.
Quoting myself here so that I don't retype the ideas from today. This was the setup I worked with this morning and sadly I did not reach my goals that I set heading in. I got only 12 of 30 inside of 30 feet and it was a mixture from the 3 different spots. Ironically enough I got 4 balls from each spot inside of 6 feet. The other 18 golf balls were scattered somewhere between 7 and 15 feet or so which while is not terrible, is not where I want to be. I had a sneaky suspicion that this part of my game was something that had fallen off, so in that respect, I am quite glad that it was confirmed. For these tests I used Bridgestone B300-RX golf balls and a Cleveland 588 50* wedge.

A couple of things stood out for me in this testing and that is I feared my struggle would be thinning shots and/or back contact as that I thought was something I was doing on the course. In this test, my only issues were distance control and setup (aim). The stroke was fairly good and the contact was crisp. Practice should take care of the two issues in my opinion.

This week is all about doing some tests to see where I stand before I really begin my work on making improvements. Later today I will be heading out again to work on another area and will report back what I am finding with my "testing". Thanks for following along.
 
Was able to get back out for an afternoon session today and work on a couple of things for an hour or so. Again it was about finding out where I am and where I need to be and what my main focus will be moving forward. This afternoon was all about the 100 yard shot for me. Setting up on a hole with a midsize green that was flat and surrounded by bunkers it was a good place for me to test this shot. I used 36 balls for todays test (Bridgestone B330-RX) and a Mizuno JPX wedge. The goal here is to have all the balls hit the green and do so with just my normal shot from that distance.

I missed my goal this afternoon. 32 of 36 hit the green with all 4 misses being balls that I thinned and went long. What I did learn was rather intriguing though as that I was actually getting closer to the hole than I originally thought I was. I purposely picked a midsized green with a flag dead in the middle and went to work from there.

22 of the 32 balls were with in 15 feet.
The remaining 10 balls were with in 20 feet.
Of the 22 that were closer, 9 of those were with in 10 feet.
I was scattered left and right of the pin, so it was not a one side miss
Contact was really good on all but 4 shots.

Today showed me that from this distance I am still hitting the ball fairly well. More work needs to be done of course and over the rest of the week and weekend, I will be testing 85 yards and 70 yards as well. From there I will get to my drills that will hopefully get me back to where I want to be by the end of the year.
 
Those aren't bad numbers already JB, I can't wait to see what happens when you devote time and practice toward improving on that.
 
JB said:
I was scattered left and right of the pin, so it was not a one side miss
.
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Are you aiming at the flag? or are you aiming to a spot right or left of the flag?
 
JB said:
Was able to get back out for an afternoon session today and work on a couple of things for an hour or so. Again it was about finding out where I am and where I need to be and what my main focus will be moving forward. This afternoon was all about the 100 yard shot for me. Setting up on a hole with a midsize green that was flat and surrounded by bunkers it was a good place for me to test this shot. I used 36 balls for todays test (Bridgestone B330-RX) and a Mizuno JPX wedge. The goal here is to have all the balls hit the green and do so with just my normal shot from that distance.

I missed my goal this afternoon. 32 of 36 hit the green with all 4 misses being balls that I thinned and went long. What I did learn was rather intriguing though as that I was actually getting closer to the hole than I originally thought I was. I purposely picked a midsized green with a flag dead in the middle and went to work from there.

22 of the 32 balls were with in 15 feet.
The remaining 10 balls were with in 20 feet.
Of the 22 that were closer, 9 of those were with in 10 feet.
I was scattered left and right of the pin, so it was not a one side miss
Contact was really good on all but 4 shots.

Today showed me that from this distance I am still hitting the ball fairly well. More work needs to be done of course and over the rest of the week and weekend, I will be testing 85 yards and 70 yards as well. From there I will get to my drills that will hopefully get me back to where I want to be by the end of the year.
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I promise I didn't skim this thread before posting, but have you thought about using this time to try different balls other than the RX while doing this? The RX is a good ball, but could there be a ball that's a little better for you from 100 and in that might be worth trying?
 
Tadashi70 said:
Are you aiming at the flag? or are you aiming to a spot right or left of the flag?
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Due to the way it was set up, I was aiming at the flag. Dead in the middle and a little breeze. When the breeze picked up a little (blowing right to left), I was aiming slightly right of it. What I took away from it was that distance control was quite good and I was never off by too much.
 
mward2002 said:
I promise I didn't skim this thread before posting, but have you thought about using this time to try different balls other than the RX while doing this? The RX is a good ball, but could there be a ball that's a little better for you from 100 and in that might be worth trying?
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I have done full ball fittings close to a dozen times. The RX is the best golf ball for me right now.
 
It sounds like this may take a short time to get you back on track. Wish I could say that, lol.
 
Before my round today, I got to the course early and went to work on testing out where I am with the greenside bunker shots. I had 36 Bridgestone B330-RX golf balls and my Cleveland 588 wedge and my goal was to hit them all as I normally would to a pin that was in the middle of the green from the greenside bunker and a flat lie. The goal was to have all of them inside of 15 feet. Even in my "downturn" of short game, I have always been a pretty good sand player and in some ways its about geography. In my neck of the woods, its just a way of life, there are bunkers everywhere and most greens are surrounded. I truly expected to get 30 at a minimum inside the range and I was very surprised that only 17 of 36 balls landed with in 15 feet. 9 more landed between 15 and 20 feet and the other 10 were off the back of the green or extremely far away.

I found that I was trying a little to hard to assist the ball out and scoop it out rather than my way I have always done it and it led to bad things. This is definitely an area that I will continue to focus on as I continue on this journey. More coming soon.
 
JB has always had a good short game but this work he is doing is already paying dividends on three occasions from 65 to 70 yards away. He put it within an average of 12 feet, pretty impressive if you ask me. He can only get better if he keeps working on his short game and then the rest of us are going to have to work on our games.
 
That is surprising JB, I've seen you hit some real beauties from green side bunkers when I've played with you. I'm sure you're looking at this stat eager to just get in there and get it fixed now. I would bet this would be a quicker fix than the rest of it for you. Good luck.
 
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