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Short Game Golf Advice From PGA Tour James Ridyard | Golf Monthly
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Apr 1, 2025
Are you becoming increasingly frustrated at your inability to get up-and-down? We've teamed up with Ping and short game coach to the stars on the PGA Tour James Ridyard to bring you all the short game advice you need to improve your wedge play. Whether it's pitching, generating more spin, striking chips cleanly or effective drills to try on the practice ground, we've got every angle covered in this video.
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If you can become deadly accurate with your wedges, you're going to be able to get yourself
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out of trouble, make the most of your great drives and see your scores start to come down
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But how do you become a master of the short game? Well, we've enlisted the help of Ping
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as well as leading short game coach James Ridyard, going to give you some advice on how to get the
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right wedges for your game and also show you how to use them correctly. We've come here to the
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custom-built short game area at Pavenham Park Golf Club. Let's get started
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Right, so James, one of the shots that every golfer wants to play is that really high spinning shot
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We see it on the PGA Tour Weekend with that, that's that showstopper. But I think a lot of golfers
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get this wrong and they see their chip and pitch shots running away from the flag so what are the
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things golfers need to consider when it comes to creating more spin around the reins right well it
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would be easy to jump in and just assume that it's technique right but that's overlooking probably
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the most fundamental piece which is actually your environment and by environment i mean the quality
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the club are using obviously clean club good grooves good conditioned face so no damage to it
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makes a big difference and then the ball the ball needs to be soft enough to actually spin
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Then the third piece is that thing that you can't control and that's the environment you hit from
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Okay so any kind of longer grass, any kind of moisture in there, any kind of dirt
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it's going to be very very difficult to spin the golf ball. And another part of the environment that maybe you don't consider is the landing area
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So whether the green is above or below you is going to make a difference to how quickly the ball stops. If the green's above you the ball's going to come in flatter and go forwards more
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If it's below you it's going to come in steeper and stop faster. Then we have the actual slope here hitting onto. So we have a slight downslope here unfortunately
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which is going to make my ball kick forwards a little bit faster than if it were flat or into
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an upslope. Two things technically. Obviously first of all quality contact is primary but if you're
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going to hit it too hard on the club face you're going to have any issue to the heel you're going to have some problems generating spin. All right so quality contact is massive. Relatively low on
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the face kind of lower grooves. I'm not going to pick a groove number but low is better than high
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The second thing and this might be a little bit technical is your spin loft. If you consider a
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driver and it being the lowest spin club in the bag we have the single spin loft which is the loft
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you deliver so up here and your attack angle with the driver there very very close together
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as the loft increases throughout your set the spin loft increases and the spin you see increases
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as well obviously the top end of that is going to be your most lofted wedge at setup we'd really
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be looking to make sure that you are maximizing loft we're not talking flop shot open but probably
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some degree open even with a 60 here i'm going to open it probably 5 10 degrees to get it up to
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maybe 70 odd because the reality of things is when I come into the golf ball I am still going to
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deliver some degree of shaffling okay we want that shaft leaning forwards for our quality of contact
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yeah so opening the face to some degree means we still deliver high loft I'm also going to cut
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across it just a little bit because like I said any kind of draw is going to reduce spin you think
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about long swing same same kind of example if I'm going to hook something in it's going to run
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generally if you slice it the ball stops pretty quick okay so relatively narrow ball would be
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probably up just under my left chest. Knowing that I want to be pretty shallow, I'm going
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to make sure my swing stays relatively wide and I keep loft on the golf clubby. We're
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going to that far pin there, a second from the left. Nice and high, a little bit of grab
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and pretty good considering we are pitching onto a slight down slope. There you go, some
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really good pointers there. If you want to generate more spin, read the situation, incorporate
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that technique into your game to get a little bit more check around the greens. Right James, let's get straight into it. I think it's fair to say that amateur golfers
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around the greens really struggle with their strike. We see a lot of players thinning it over
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the green, chunking it in front of them. So how can we help golfers increase the margin for error
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on their wedge shots and strike their wedges cleanly more consistently? I think the first
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hurdle to get over mentally is that it doesn't have to be perfect, or shouldn't need to be
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if you can build in some degree of margin for error with these shots
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And I'm gonna look at it from two perspectives. First off, a little bit of a technique hint
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as to how the margin for error can grow. And secondly, obviously your wedge selection
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wedge choice, the sole, and how to actually utilize that more effectively. So jumping to the technical side of things
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I have no real issue with somebody making contact with the ground behind the golf ball Right Which would surprise a lot of people right Yeah yeah exactly It takes people aback first in lessons
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I think because most people have a negative experience of striking a ground behind the ball
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But if you deliver the club effectively, you can build in some margin back there and still hit an effective shot
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Now, it might not be the most sexy low spin you've ever hit in your life, but it will be on the green. It will be under control
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And I think the key aspect to that is to actually control the depth of the swing
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or the depth of low point. People think about low point and can't stop it on the ground as a forward backward thing
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I try and reframe it as more of an up and down. Now, if my club is heading to a spot
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that's this far under the turf, it doesn't matter what kind of bounce
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what kind of style I have in my club, it's not gonna save you. Because if I'm heading to a very low spot
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and hit back here, I'm in trouble. So essentially what we need to do is raise the low point of the swing up
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Okay, and you can do that in a few technical ways. I think maybe the most simple that I'll show you today
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would be to actually have this end of the club start to rise more through impact
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But the opposite of that obviously would be driving this end of the club down. A lot of people get kind of stuck in that rut
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of driving the club forwards and downwards to try and get their strike. And their margin actually gets smaller and smaller
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the more they do it. Okay, so raising the butt of the club up through impact is gonna help the low point come up
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And the contact point on the ground can be a little bit further back than maybe players expect
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Wow, really. And if you want to actually be able to utilize the sole of the club, we need that low point up
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I'll just jump in and demonstrate. Yeah, let's see one in action for sure. Okay, so my rehearsal, I'm actually not really focused
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on the ball at all, what I'm focused on is my ground contact interaction. So I'm gonna look at starting a ground contact
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maybe one golf ball back, and from that point, I'm gonna raise the butt of the club up as I move through
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and that's gonna prevent me sticking the club in the ground. Okay. So you could hear the sound there
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it was obviously ground, then ball, but the flight was still good. It's rolled down to four feet
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I think I'm gonna take that most of the time. So let's move on to the technique around the sole of the club and how we can make it a bit more friendly in terms of how it interacts with the ground and how we can change our setup potentially to implement that in our games
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Yep. So we're kind of getting into the maybe the shaft lean topic a little bit and people are assuming that because from this face on camera let's say they have a significant amount of forward lean means that they're not engaging bounce anymore
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Now that only holds true if the club face is square to target or even slightly closer to target
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If you're the kind of player that does deliver that, then forward lean is probably going to hurt you a little bit
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Especially if that forward lean number is more than the bounce angle on the club
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But if you happen to be an open face player at all, so if I put a lot of forward lean on and rotate the face open
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the bounce number increases incredibly quickly. So you can actually deliver a club leaning towards target with an open face and still engage a ton of bounce
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So delivered a good amount of lean but you can see I've left nothing no mark on the ground it's
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not dug in at all. So there you go pretty good result there hopefully that's given you some food for thought in terms of your technique around the green with the wedges to make the
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sole on your club work for you. Right James I think every golfer knows they need some wedges
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in their bag but with all the different options when it comes to wedges lofts bounce grind all
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sort of thing it can be difficult for golfers to know exactly what's going to work for them and
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and a good starting point i would suggest is using this new ping webfit wedge app which is going to
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give us some recommendations based on some questions that we answer so let's go through that process and you can talk through some of the questions they're asking and why that's important
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in terms of choosing the right wedges for you so uh it should take less than two minutes we'll give
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it we'll give it a try first question is asking me what is my average score gonna go 74 on a good
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day. Don't laugh at that one please. And now it's asking us what is my pitching wedge carry distance
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So why would the app be asking us that? Yep so it's looking at providing gapping information for
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you so to fill the gap from whatever distance your pitching wedge carries down to partial wedge
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shots. So as a longer hitter potentially that gap is bigger and you might need more wedges
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Perfect so 132 yards for me. What is my highest lofted wedge? So that's a 58 degree
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wedge for me why would it be asking us that? Just get an idea of what kind of shots you
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almost like to play around the green or whether you'd like to play high shots or low shots. Okay cool and now it's asking what are my typical turf conditions? I think this is a really important
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question. Talk us through some of the considerations around that. Yeah so obviously in the UK we're
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just looking really at maybe length of grass and whether it hard or soft ground but we start to go abroad you go to the US and you start to deal with Bermuda we have different strains of grass And so you get an idea of the turf you play off because that will then lead towards the bounce and
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grinds that will be most suitable for you. Okay so I'm gonna go with medium for that and that's
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now asking me what my typical sand conditions are. So I tend to play my bunker shots with my
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highest lofted wedge 58. Why would the, whether it's soft, medium or firm sand, why would that
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have an impact on how I would choose my wedge. Yeah so that's in short that's going to influence
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how the club interacts with the sand. All right if the sand is firm the club is going to kick out more easily versus something that is deeper heavier the club is going to go through much
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more slowly. So if I was playing in quite firm sand yeah quite tight sand what how would I adjust
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my wedge setup? Typically you would go towards a lower bounce wedge. Okay to get the leading edge
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under the sand. Yeah because the club ascent if you have a lot of bounce it's really trying to help
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up out of the sound which is probably the opposite of what you need when there's barely any sound
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in there. Yeah okay cool so let's go with we'll go with medium for that because that's kind of typically what my bunkers are like. Now we're talking about typical divot length and again
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a really important factor why is it asking us that? It's going to give some indication of attack angle
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and the shaft lean or lofty deliver so in short the kind of longer the deeper the divot the
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steeper a player would expect to play them to be. Yeah I think golfers don't really play a lot
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got the heat to their divots and I think it's a really good thing to notice when you hit some
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chipping pitch shots around the green see whether your divots are shallow or deep because that has
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an indication of your technique so I'm going to go for medium for me on that one it's now building
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my grind profile but it's first asking me what my preferred pitch shot technique is whether it's
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with a square face or an open face why is it asking us that yeah but again we're looking at
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the implications with bounce that you need grind that you need so if you if you play your pitch
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shots with an open face? More open face, typically you could potentially play a
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lower bounce wedge. Okay, so I tend to play my pitch shots with a square
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face, so we'll go with square face. Now it's asking us what my typical ball
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position is on a pitch shot, so middle back or middle forward, why is it asking us that
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Again, that will give us some kind of insight into attack angle, typically, all
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things being equal, which is going to help ascertain bounce required. So if your ball is back
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you're probably gonna be a little bit steeper. Yes, and you're probably gonna need a little bit more help
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A little bit more bounce. Yeah, okay. So I tend to be a middle forward type of golfer
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So let's put that in. So the app is now asking what my highest priority is
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with my most lofted wedge. Definitely for me, it's bunker play. That's kind of pretty much the only situation
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I use my highest lofted wedge on. Now I'm gonna finalize my grind profile
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Comes the moment of truth. Okay, so obviously we know with the PingEye S159 wedge in particular, there's six different
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grinds available, so there's a lot of options out there. The app Select-A-Tool gives you two options to then go and try
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It's recommending an e-sole for me in the 58, which is obviously the more bunker-specific
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sole, and an S-grind as well. So there you go, I've gone through that process, it's taken hardly any time at all, it's completely
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free and it's thrown up some really interesting selections in terms of guiding me into some
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wedge designs that are going to work for me. If you're struggling to choose your wedges, if you want some initial guidance, definitely check out the Ping WebFit wedge app
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It's going to give you some really useful information. Right, so let's move on to pitching
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Something I think is a bit of an underrated skill in golf is nothing worse than getting within 50 yards on a par 5 and walking off with 6
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So let's try and help the viewers pitching technique. What are the sort of mistakes that people make when it comes to pitching and how are we going to go about fixing those
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Yeah, so I think maybe a good way to frame it is if you were going to throw a ball from A to B
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you probably wouldn't launch it as high as you could to get it to cover the distance. You'd actually launch it fairly flat
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I think the most obvious thing to look at is when players are trying to launch the ball high, because they misunderstand maybe how to play these shots
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typically they're trying to add loft through impact. So they start to lose shaft lean too quickly and present too much loft to the golf ball
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So the most simplistic way to bring your ball flight down is obviously to deliver more shaft leaner impact
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Now the most basic way to do it is play the ball further back than normal if you're a player that launches it too high
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If you play it central you need to perhaps pivot a little bit better
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learn to hold a little bit more angle in this wrist to actually have the club leaning forwards and deliver less loft Okay so let see one here We at the Pavenham Park Golf Club your excellent short game area you just going to pitch onto this first flag which I think is well the first green which is 40 yards away So let see one here where you
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going to bring the flight down on this one and hopefully you're not going to shank it into my legs
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I'm standing quite close. The temptation level is very high right now Joel. Brilliant. We can see that actually came out a lot lower than I was expecting it to and
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it still stopped on that green, that tiny green. Yeah, so we're looking at, if you do have access
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to a launch monitor of any kind, we're looking for 28 to 31 degrees as the window, which is much
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flatter than most people actually realise. Really interesting. Okay, so we've brought the flight
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down, now we need to control our distances and you were talking about golfers relying
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most heavily on field but I think most golfers probably need some sort of system
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you better give them options when it comes to pitching and hitting those different distance yeah yeah it's some kind of basic clock face so essentially
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I would look at your your core shot of things to base things off as left arm
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parallels to the ground so it'd be nine o'clock on the clock face so the process
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to go through is really to figure out how far that goes and then we can take something off so you could end up with something that's more like 7.30 and then
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perhaps up to 10, 10.30, so that'll be three wedge distances straight away. And then obviously if you've got three different wedges, that's nine different distances, along
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with your full shots. The final thing we were talking about was when you're trying to get maximum distance
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out of it, the ball goes too high, the ball flight can be hit by the wind and different
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things, so we're trying to hit lower-lufted wedges a bit more under control
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When you are swinging more full out, there's more potential for a miss-hit, because your technique is usually going to suffer a little bit, then the ball will start to launch high
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So you start to put more effort into the shot, it launches higher and you still don't really get
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much more distance out of it. And like I said at the beginning, if you want to get the ball from A to B most easily
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the last thing you want to do is throw it right up in the air. Okay, so you'd recommend coming down and loft
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coming down and a more controlled swing. So maybe we could see you on there to this. Yes, I'll switch to my 55
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Here we go. Beautiful. Seamless. So we go see the 80 yard green. Yeah
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So I'm probably not going to be a long way past the nine o'clock swing here
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shouldn't have to force it. Nice, under control there. Low ball flight, one bounce
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Right on, you'll get that green. Happy with that one? I'll take it, yeah. There you go
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So three really useful tips there if you are struggling with your pitch shots that should help you attack those flags
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Well, James, we've already given our viewers some great short game advice, but if there was one drill that you could give golfers
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to go and try for themselves going to have the biggest impact on their short game performance, what would it be and why
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Yeah, so it's going to be, it's actually a finished position drill or checkpoint, but we're going to
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turn that checkpoint into a drill. So I like to teach players to get into a finished position
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that essentially means they've ticked three boxes. Those would be to make sure they've used
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their body correctly. They've done a good job of their arms and their release has been synced up
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with those other two things. So I'll talk you through it if you're in a great position to see it
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Okay, so no backswing, I'm just going to turn through to target and I want you to observe how
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I've turned my chest fully and my arms are still kind of soft and beside me, the club is aligned
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to my centre and obviously I've got this coat hanger, you will notice, pointing at the centre
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of my body. Alright, so it becomes a drill when you start to involve a training aid or tool. Now
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obviously everyone has coat hangers. I assume you could use something else, you could use a stick
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in the end of your club, you could hold a stick beside it but this is light and easy for convenience. Yeah. So as long as you tick those three boxes, rotation, arm position and shaft positioned
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you won't have cheated your release, over-release, you won't have dragged it
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you won't have sent your arms across your body too fast and you have to pivot effectively
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Okay, so decent contact, good flight and I can look down, immediate feedback, arm position is good
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Yeah. Chest is pivoted and my release must have been in time. Yeah, I can see that shaft pointing right at the middle of your body, it's not too far one way or the other
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So you've done everything you need to do. So there you go, there's a really easy practice drill for you to try
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Get a coat hanger, put it in your grip, hit some chip shots, achieve those three checkpoints in your finished position
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and hopefully your scores will start to tumble. So there you have it. Hopefully you enjoyed this video
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and it's given you a few pointers that you can go and try out on the golf course to help you get up and down a little bit more often
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and save some shots around the green. But that's all for me and James
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from the Short Game Area at Pavellant Park Golf Club. We'll see you next time
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