How to Flight Your Wedges: Lower Shots & Lower Scores

In this example, Jason’s student Davis launches his normal 58-degree wedge at 33 degrees. His goal when flighting his wedge lower is to get that launch angle under 30 degrees, and they make three pre-shot adjustments to get to that goal. 

1. Choke down on the club about a quarter-inch
2. Move the ball position back about half a ball
3. Shift a little extra weight onto the front side (left side for right-handed player)

Those adjustments brought Davis’ launch angle down nearly six degrees to about 27-degrees, while his distance stayed consistent.

These changes move the center, bring the club in with a little less loft, and may even result in a little more spin. Baile goes into detail on how each of these three adjustments results in a lower-trajectory shot.

First, shifting some weight forward moves the center of the swing forward, and as a result, the club comes into impact with less dynamic loft (the amount of loft presented at impact) without digging into the ground too much. He also insists that whenever you move the ball back in your stance, you need to choke down on the grip to match that adjustment in order to maintain clean contact.

Once you practice this shot, you’ll probably be wondering how much progress you’re actually making. There are a couple ways – one scientific, one not so much – for you to find out.

The easiest way to measure your progress and effectiveness is to use a launch monitor. Most launch monitors measure launch angle, and you don’t need access to an expensive Trackman, there are affordable (and free trial versions) of launch monitor apps you can download on your iPhone. There are also plenty of affordable standalone launch monitor units that can give you valuable feedback.

The benefit of using a launch monitor is that it might also be able to give you other important information, like spin rate, carry distance and total distance. As Baile mentioned, these adjustments may also result in a higher-spinning shot, and being armed with that information can help your game. That way you’ll have more than just your launch angle dialed in.

Alternatively, you can pick out different “windows” in your head when hitting shots on the driving range to gauge the difference in launch angle between your stock shot and your flighted shot. Use different reference points to determine how much lower your flighted wedge shot launches.

Now that you know how to flight your wedges – and you realize it’s not actually that hard – you need to know when to actually use this shot.

Hitting lower wedge shots, and lower shots in general, is a great way to combat windy conditions. You’ve heard the advice to keep the ball below the wind and that’s exactly what you can do when you flight your wedges.

Many players also find that flighting their wedges down results in better control over their wedges. Once you have these adjustments down and add this new trajectory to your arsenal, test the two ball flights against each other and see which is more consistent, and easier to control.

Many recreational players are afraid of adding new shots to their repertoire before mastering all the stock shots, but there are two flaws with that logic. First, they may never master stock shots, golf is hard and the pursuit of perfection is a losing battle. Second, as is the case with this shot, the flighted wedge only requires pre-shot adjustments, with no changes to the actual swing. You don’t need to learn new skills to learn new shots.