TIP OF THE WEEK

FLOP shots really look cool, are particularly satisfying and will save your score when you can execute them properly.

They are, however, a pretty risky sort of shot. And if you don’t execute, the result is normally terrible.

Let’s discuss a couple of the tricks and some strategy around hitting flop shots well.

Firstly, the lie needs to be decent. Rough is OK, sandy lies are OK. Tight lies, hardpan lies, really hard, tight fairway lies and downhill lies are all lies where you should be thinking twice about playing this shot.

To play the shot, you need to open the face at address.

You want the face to look similar to how you would play a bunker shot.

Imagine the back of the club laying down on the grass with the clubface pointing to the sky.

This opening of the face adds loft and will trend the ball to right if you are right handed, so align your body and swing path to the left.

It’s important to get the sense of swinging left of the target.

Because you are adding extra loft, you will also need to make quite big swings for pretty small shots, which can be a bit scary, so make sure you swing smoothly and follow through as far as you can.

The ball position cannot be too far forward.

You need to have an appropriate sand wedge or lob wedge with not too much bounce. Most good players will have a low bounce lob wedge 6 to 8 degrees. This is the club they will use. They will also have a sand wedge with more bounce 10 to 14 degrees.

Flop shots can be nearly impossible to execute if you have too much bounce.

To get this shot under control you will need to do some practice and as always be patient with your progress.