Most players struggle from tight lies around the green. When there’s a little grass under their ball, it’s a completely different story. The difference lies (no pun intended) in the angle of approach.
Todd Sones is a Golf Digest Top 50 and Golf Magazine Top 100 Instructor who serves on the Golf Academy of America’s National Advisory Board and who’s a Golf Channel Academy Lead Coach. He says he starts every one of his Scoring Zone schools with the same fundamental: that the club needs to be descending through impact.
Todd compares the motion to a plane landing. “It’s descending,” says Todd. “You want to make sure that the bottom of your golf swing is just like a plane on the way down. When the ball is in rough or in the bunker, the club needs to descend on a steeper angle. The plane needs to crash.”
The angle changes slightly when your ball is in the fairway. From a tighter lie, the clubhead needs to be descending on a shallower angle. Think of a plane coming in for a landing. If your clubhead is on its way up or ascending, that’s when you skull shots.
When you have a tight lie in the fairway, you can take some of the risk out of it by standing to the handle (that means your hands need to come to the middle of your body, the middle of your shoulders), playing the ball back in your stance, and controlling the club with your upper body. Your arms and shoulders should do more of the work than your wrists. Take the club back and return it through with more of an arms and shoulders motion as opposed to a hands and wrists motion.
In this video, Todd shows you how to have more success from tight lies around the green. Watch it while you still can. It’ll only be up for about a week: