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How to play Tiger's Flop Shot
Tiger Woods has more winning shots than anyone playing tournament golf today. The one club golfers ask about most, by far, is his "flop" shot. You've probably seen it on television. It's a wedge shot where Tiger makes a full swing, and the ball goes up almost vertically and comes down softly, rolling only a short distance.
Many of you are wondering: can YOU hit this sort of shot?
The answer is yes, you can, and in this article I'll show you how the shot is made. Please realize, though, that this is a shot with very little margin for error. If you use it in an actual round, make sure: (1) the lie is appropriate, (2) your nerves are up to the task, and (3) the reward is worth the risk. Whether or not you use it in actual play, though, it's a lot of fun to learn.
First of all, you must have a good lie, with some cushion under the ball, because, in this shot, the clubhead will pass almost entirely under the ball, just nicking it as it does so. The illustrations here make the situation much more clear, in comparison with a normal iron shot. The part of the ball that is to be struck is not the back, but the underside. The part of the club that is contacting the ground at address, and brushing the ground at contact, is not the sole of the club, but the back edge of the flange. The setup and swing are designed to bring about this glancing impact.
THE SETUP
Make these adjustments from your normal address with a wedge:
1. Weaken your grip. The V's formed by your thumbs and forefingers should point, not at your right shoulder, but at your chin,
or even a little left of that.
2. Play the ball well forward.
3. Widen your stance slightly.
4. Stand a bit farther away from the ball.
5. Set your hands very low.
6. The shaft should not be vertical, as seen from the front, but should lean slightly away from the target -- what's called a "weak" shaft - with the butt of the club almost touching your right knee.
7. The clubhead should not rest on its sole, but on the back edge of its flange.
8. The clubface must be wide open.
9. Your knee flex should be greater than normal, and it's critical to maintain the flex throughout the swing. If you straighten up out of your knee flex, you'll blade the ball and hit a high velocity line drive. That's the main danger of the shot.
If all these address adjustments remind you of Seve Ballesteros hitting a special short shot in the 1980's, there's a reason. He was a pioneer of the flop shot, and hit it magnificently, even with less lofted clubs.
THE SWING
The correct swing for this shot is very much from outside to in. If you imagine a line going through the balls of your feet, parallel to the target line, the club should never get behind that line, until the ball is struck. That is, you are swinging the club away well to the outside of the normal backswing plane, then "wiping" from the outside in as you swing through the ball.
During the backswing, the forearms rotate the club a little more than normally, which opens the clubface even more.
In the downswing, along with the outside-in wiping motion of the arms, the movement of the right hand and wrist through contact is that of a heavily sliced forehand in tennis - a stroke no good tennis player uses much, but it's correct for this shot. The hands rotate to make the clubface point toward the sky - to use another image, it's as if, with your right hand, you are holding a spoon and scooping ice cream with a long, shallow action.
DRILLS TO LEARN THE
FLOP SHOT
There are two drills I use to teach pupils this shot. First, tee a ball very high, as high as the standard tee will allow. Then take a wedge and, following the instructions I've outlined above, address the teed ball and try to hit the tee out from under it, so that the ball drops straight to the ground. As three-time British Open champion Henry Cotton used to say, imagine that the ball has little legs, and chop them off - the tee representing the legs. The only way to accomplish this, without disturbing the ball, is to make the clubhead occupy as little vertical space as possible going through impact - which is how the flop shot is made.
The other drill is to take your
7-iron, instead of a wedge, and practice hitting the ball off the ground and seeing how high and softly you can fly the ball, by the method described above. Seve Ballesteros used to practice this way a great deal to sharpen his technique with the flop shot. If you surprise yourself by hitting little 7-iron shots that fly almost like lob-wedge shots, then you're acquiring the correct technique.
Because the stroke is so outside-to-in, the players who have the most trouble learning the flop shot are those who favor a strong grip, who take the club away sharply to the inside, and who hook a great deal. If these are your shot-making patterns, you're probably better off leaving the flop shot alone.
Even for players proficient in the flop shot, it's difficult to judge the distance the ball will go, unless the shot is very short. That's what makes Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson so marvelous at this play. They get the distance beautifully, even with 30- or 40-yard shots, hitting many of them within a yard or two of the hole.
You may not become a virtuoso like Woods or Mickelson, but I think you'll have a lot of fun trying the shot and seeing its possibilities.
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