Tip Tuesday: Mastering the Escape Shot

Whenever you tee it up in Myrtle Beach, chance are you’re going to have to punch out of trouble once or twice. Scott Tanguay from the Coastal Golf Academy has exactly what you need to help you get the ball back in play.

Scott Tanguay:
Hey, guys. Scott Tanguay here at the Coastal Golf Academy at Whispering Pines Golf Course, right across the street from Myrtle Beach International Airport. We’re here out on the course on the third hole, par five. We, for the first time ever, pushed our drive a little bit to the right. We’re in the trees. But we’re trying to learn how to get out of trouble.

To be good at golf, it’s not always about hitting perfect tee shots, hitting perfect irons and putts. You’ve got to be able to scramble. You’ve got to be able to have some creativity and get out of trouble. That’s just as important as anything. That’s probably the thing I see most out of good players, that it’s not always blowing you away with hitting every fairway and green but how good they are with their artistry, if you will, and getting out of trouble.

So here we are, we’ve got a tree in front of me. A couple trees, actually, that are covering the fairway. Now, we could just chip out sideways, right? That’d probably be the safe play, but we can easily get this at least to the 150-yard marker over that bunker. So what we’re going to do is show you both a slice around the tree, and then a hook around the tree.

What you’re going to want to do is definitely take a low-lofted club, right? Four iron, three, five iron maybe at most, because we want to keep it low. And what the flatter face is going to do is going to help it curve more. If you’re trying to slice or hook on purpose like a pitching wedge, it’s usually not going to do it as much as you want.

What do I have here? I’ve got a five iron. Now let’s do the slicing one first. For me, I like to actually aim the club still where I want the ball to end up. I’m still aiming the club maybe just a little bit left of this tree in front of me. What we’re going to do, though, is open our stance way up. Instead of purposely coming over the top this way, it’s almost built in if I just aim way left.

So we’re aiming way left, but the club is still pointing pretty straight. And that should give us a little bit of a slice. Definitely give it a couple of practice swings. Try and get the feel for it. And you can see I’ve got the face more open because I’m open to the target line. So we’re here, I’ll probably put it back in the stance a little bit to keep it low and just go out to in. Here we are. So we’ve got open stance, club’s pointing at the target, and then we just hold it off a little bit to let it come back.

And then, this will be a tricky one. So now I’m back down on the fairway, probably 150 yards out, good to go. We’re back in play. This is the tricky one here. We’re going to try and hook it through the trees here, and get it back in play. So that would be just the opposite. We’re going to keep the face somewhat at the target here. And I’m going to aim way right and try and spin the ball that way.

So we’re here, pretty square, but you can see as I turn in, the club looks a lot more shut. Maybe from that view, it’d be square, but for me, it’s starting to look like the face is rolling in this way. That’s going to help me turn it over right to left. So we’re here, we get our target. We’ve got a skinny target here. We’re going right there in that window. We’re going to try and hook it back into play. So I got the face pointed where I want to end up. I’m going to push it this way with my aim. And then we just let it rip. All right? There you go. There’s your tip!