There’s a time and a place for hitting this shot, and if you are faced with a shot from inside 50 yards and the flag is towards the back of a green then this might just be the place to use this shot. You’ll no doubt have seen the best players at the club execute this shot. It’s pretty impressive to see, but there are several factors which need to be in place before trying to hit the shot.

You need to have a wedge, clean, with fresh grooves and ideally a milled face and a soft cover golf ball. You also need to play the shot from closely mown, dry grass down grain. This will reduce any moisture or matter being trapped between the club and ball. How often do we encounter all those conditions?

For this shot the address position will be different from the high flying shot. The ball position should be more towards the middle of the stance (picture 1) with the handle leaning slightly forward of the ball. This reduces loft and potentially reducing the launch height of the ball.

At impact we are looking to return the shaft forward of the club-head (picture 2), but with a shallow blow (not the steep one we saw Tiger hit a few weeks ago).

The best players hit a slight draw shape from right to left, which usually sees the club move shallower through impact. There shouldn’t be a big divot here either due to the shallow moving club-head, but with soft ground you may well see some turf removed.

Clean contact is favourable here, so practice hitting some shots with minimal ground contact on the practice range and in non-competitive situations before taking it to the medal round. Clean and dry your club-face before each shot so you can see how the ball leaves the club and reacts on landing.

Next week we’ll look at a simpler shot which all levels of player can execute without too much trouble.