Many golfers think the sand wedge (56 degrees) is just for sand shots. It’s not. While the sand wedge is a great bunker club, it’s also a great scoring club, if you know what you’re doing. In fact, you can save a ton of strokes by mastering this club, regardless of your golf handicap. To master the sand wedge, you must learn how to hit both full shots to the green and touch shots to tight pins. Once you’ve done that, the sand wedge becomes a powerful scoring weapon.
Judging from our golf instruction sessions, few golfers know how to hit the sand wedge well. Some struggle with it all their lives. Others learn to hit the club but only after awhile. It just takes some time and effort. But the work pays off with more pars and lower scores. To help, we’ve provided three golf tips below that will help you hit a sand wedge well consistently.
Sand Wedge Tip #1: Point Your Finger Down The Shaft
Your basic instinct when hitting a sand wedge is to use just your arms to hit with. It’s something we see a lot in our golf lessons. After all, you’re not hitting the ball far. But if you fail to turn your body with the shot and shift your weight, you’ll hit the ball thin or fat. A good remedy is to point your right index finger down the shaft. When you hit, focus on lining up your finger, right knee, and belt buckle pointing at the target when you finish. Your finger acts as a visual cue, encouraging you to get your body into the swing and to finish the shot.
Sand Wedge Tip #2: Swing To Your Finish
Many players with high golf handicaps hit the sand wedge poorly because they don’t trust the loft on their clubs. They tend to scoop the ball instead. That spells trouble. To eliminate scooping, focus on your finish. If you want to hit a 100-percent shot, focus on finishing with your hands held high. If you want to hit an 80-percent shot, focus on finishing with your hands slightly lower.
Sand Wedge Tip #3: Changing Shot Height
Many golfers try to change shot height by changing their swings. That’s hard to do well consistently. Try adjusting your set-up instead. To hit wedge shots low, strengthen your grip (turn your hands away from the target), move the ball back in your stance, and close your shoulders. To hit wedge shots high, weaken your grip (turn your hands toward your target), move the ball up in your stance, and open your shoulders.
For both types of shots, keep your hands in the same position relative to your body—inside your left thigh. And always aim the clubface at the target. The clubface will follow your shoulder line and produce the loft you need. After awhile, changing shot height will become second nature.
Below is a drill we use in our golf instruction sessions to teach students to hit sand wedges. If the pros had time to practice only one sand wedge drill, this would be it:
Sand Wedge Tip #4: Two-Tee Drill
To hit a sand wedge 40 to 50 yards, you must come into the ball on a shallow angle. But because the club is short, our tendency is to come into the ball steeply. Use the drill below to eliminate this tendency:
Break a tee in half and stick the pointed end in the ground an inch behind a ball. Take another tee and stick it in the ground an inch in front of the first tee. Angle both tees toward the target. Hit some practice shots. Your goal is to clip both tees from the grass. If you’re too steep, you’ll catch only the tee after the ball. If you try to scoop the ball, you’ll catch only the first tee. Hit them both and you’re coming in at the perfect angle.
Your sand wedge isn’t just a bunker club. It’s also good scoring club, if you know how to hit it. But learning to hit the sand wedge takes a little time. The golf tips we’ve provided above will help. The work you put into mastering the sand wedge will pay off. Mastering this club is a great way to chop strokes off your golf handicap.