Tip Tuesday: Finesse Wedge Training in the Bunker
In the fifth and final installment of their finesse wedge training series, Classic Swing Golf School‘s Ted Frick and LPGA Tour player Haylee Harford take their practice methods to the sand. See how many of the same principles they’ve demonstrated in previous series videos still apply here!
Ted Frick:
All right. So we are now in the bunker, as you can see. Thanks to Seve Ballesteros and the research with James Sieckmann, we are going to take this finesse wedge swing into the bunker. So I’m going to go over the setup. She’s going to go over the throw. So it’s still going to be the same sequence. Finesse wedge sequence is the golf club moving first and the body carrying it to the finish. Remember in the power move, the hips are starting to down swing, not in a finesse wedge motion. All right, let’s go over the setup. It’s going to be a wider base in the bunker. Both toes are going to be flared out. And what that does is when the toes are flared out, that’s going to take the hips and almost completely stabilize them. That’s what we want in the bunker: complete lower body stability. She’ll go ahead and move her pressure, probably 70 to 80 percent into the lead quadricep, but a very, very quiet, lower body … She’s going to add flex as well.
Now, what we’re going to start out with is this drill. This is the drill that we use in the bunker first. We’re drawing a line and we’re going to go right back to just like hitting a little bump and run where we do shake, toss, and turn. Haylee with the right arm only is going to have a wide arc going back, and then she’s going to make that throwing motion with a wide arc coming down and having the chest and shoulders carry her left into the finish. So let me back out for just a moment as she does this a couple times on this line. This is our drill.
She’s just throwing with the right arm. Let’s do that again. Wide arc back, quiet lower body, throwing it down one more time. And then we’re going to do this right arm only here on the golf ball. All right. So let’s set up to the ball. Please, for the drill purposes when you’re practicing this, use your club head and draw a line in the sand where you’re trying to hit, which is approximately about an inch and a half behind the ball. And then we’re going to finish up. She’s going to put both hands on the club. So our right arm only drill first in the bunker.
All right. Now, with two hands on the golf club here again, the finesse wedge swing still using the line. Let’s get real low with the knees, lower the handle, get weight forward, big throw in motion. Beautiful. So I hope you liked the finesse wedge series!
