Being a fellow lefty myself I absolutely love to Phil Mickelson hit is lob wedge. It is a thing of beauty! That is one aspect of his game where I do think he is better than tiger. Next time he's playing on TV take a look at what he does when he has those really short distances to the green of about 50-75 yards. He can stick it like no other. Well how does he do it? Let me show you the technique he uses with his lob wedge.



First of all you need the proper club to hit this shot correctly. So when I am talking about these techniques, I'm assuming your using a 58 or 60 degree lob wedge. If not all bets are off, and I make no promises. Just kidding, but you might need to make a few minor adjustments to make it work for you.

First, start with the ball in the middle of your stance and flare out your right foot (even though I am a lefty I'm mostly talking to you right handers out there).

Don't take a huge back swing, you have a short distance to go, so there is no need for a big back swing. You do however want to stay aggressive and take a nice full hip turn. You must commit to a full swing. You can't just finesse the ball onto the green.

Now normal lob wedge distance for this loft of a club is about 75 yards. We don't want quite that distance, remember we're trying to hit it 50-60 yards. So here's what you do...open the club face just a little bit and rotate your stance just a hair. Rotate your hands slightly left to produce a weaker grip that will keep you from over rotating the club face through impact.

Now take a normal iron swing, just like you would with say a 5 iron. Don't try to lift the ball off the ground, let the loft of the club get the ball airborne.

Even though you are hitting a short distance, the slight adjustments in your setup and a smaller back swing, along with the loft of the club, will have you hitting the proper distance. Practice this a few times and you should be hitting short puts from now on. Practice this a few times and you should be hitting short puts from now on. With these slight adjustments you will be hitting short birdie puts instead of needed to chip in or put from an unmakable distance