Mastering the Finesse Game from 120 Yards & In with James Sieckmann

to cover any yardage with appropriate spin in trajectory. The second would be the bounce options and the soul grind. The shape of the wedge you want to have a sand wedge with a lot of bounce on it. Bounce is the difference between the bottom back of the club and the soul to the leading edge, and degrees good sand wedge might have between ten and fourteen or fifteen

degrees of bounce on it. If you have a more lofted club, like a fifty eight to fifty nine or sixty, you want that one to be low and bounced, so probably between four and seven, depending once again on your standard technique. With the techniques that I try to get people to use, you don't need much bounce because the swing's very shallow and you use it as you swing.

If that's the case, and you have a high bounced sand wedge and a low bounce lob wedge, then you're really prepared for any turf condition because when the sand or grass is soft, the ball comes out slow and more bounce is better than less, so you can always use your sandwich. If, on the other hand, you're playing kind of tight, firm turf, you need more loft and less bounce, so you always have a choice. If you had that set.

be the best players. But you got to think about where you make your birdies percentage wise, and typically you're not making them on a two hundred and fifteen yard part three. You're not making on a four hundred and eighty five yard part four. You know you do that one in a while, but it's a bit of an outlier. The reality is you make your birdies on the par fives that you can't reach. You make them on the

par fives that you can reach. You make them on the short part fours where you can happen to get the ball up there seventy yards from the green, And so that type of shot called a distance wedge is critical for making birdies, and making birdies is critical to being a good player. And of course if you make birdies. Another way to make birdies is to feel like you

can shoot at pins. And if you have no confidence in your finesse, game around the greens, and you find yourself playing in the middle of the green and you know, having good shots that end up thirty feet or so. So it really is feeds on itself in so many different ways as far as just keeping momentum, being able to attack, take any advantage of the easy holes. And if you're not tidy with your wedge game from one hundred and twenty yards at end, you really do not have a chance to compete.

or many tour events. So I went overseas and I played in Asian South America and did that for about five years, traveling around the world playing great experience, but it became very clear to me that everything that I was working hard on to improve was actually making me much worse. And I had a great touch around the green when I was a kid, but I had no thoughts either. I just kind of did it. And then as I started to get formal coaching, you know, I

got much much worse. I quit, got married, and took a job working for Dave Hills, who's kind of a famous short game coach. After two or three years there, having an opportunity to kind of learn from him and dabbling a little bit more specifically in short game coaching, and an opportunity to start my own business. And one thing was very clear at that point, even after working teaching short game schools for three years, I had no clue what good technique was. I didn't know what worked

and why. I just knew that the things that I was teaching in those schools and the things that I was taught when I was going through college and as a pro were not working. And they were not only not working for me, but they weren't helping for the

people I was seeing. So I decided I need to go on a little bit of a journey or quest to try and figure this out, since I was just getting ready to open my own academy and my oldest brother, Tom's a PGA tour player before I was on tour for eleven years and was close friends with Seve among a lot of great players, and asked me to come

caddy for him at the Players Championship. So I had a a kind of a unique opportunity to be around the best wedge player in the on the planet, as well as many others like Raymond Floyd and Corey Pavin, and I had a huge need to try and figure out what the heck, you know, what worked and why, because at this point I only knew what didn't work, And uh, you know, I went and took video and I studied it just like a football coach would study a film of a of a of a game, and

you know, kind of wiped the slate clean and just started my own my own theory. Since I didn't know what to teach, I thought the most logical thing would would be to study what they'd do and atually just teach what they do. And I found it to be amazingly opposite and completely different than anything I'd ever heard.

get to them as I can. I already have one question that came in earlier today from Twitter when I announced that I was going to do this interview with you. But tell me about you know, when you went through the footage, James, what was it that you found? How were you able to get to the place where you're saying, you know, this is very different than anything we're teaching.

with the intent. And you know, I wasn't thinking this far ahead, but after a while I kind of I say, well, this makes sense to me. Now, why wouldn't it be different? But you know the first thing I noticed was that these great players Sebe Bellisteros, Raymond Floyd, what not, Corey Payment had a little reverse pivot in their backswing, which you know that they might start with their weight fairly even,

which is another difference. I was taught to left and you put your hands ahead that they had to weight even, and they reversed weight shifted to add pressure in their left or lead leg a little bit, and the backswing, their head literally moved two or three inches towards the target, and then as they delivered the club, their head would

stay forward. And if you think of a full swing or even a seventy yard shot, as you turn back behind the ball and swing your arms and turn your shoulders, you actually load pressure into your trail leg and your head typically moves three or four inches behind the ball as you deliver a lot of times to add especially with a driver, to hit up on it or at least hit a level. As you shift your weight your body,

your upper body tilts back. So the entire motor pattern was different, not only with balance, but with the sequence of events, with the setup, with how they released the club, or the role of the of not the role the rotation of the arm movement. Everything about it was completely opposite. So I just started to just write down the common allies that Sevy had. He was my main guy that I studied because I had the most footage of him

and he had the reputation of being the best. But Graymond Floyd and Corey Pave and my brother who was an amazing wedge player, and you know, I have Wayne Grady and Jody my lot of great players that I had this footage of, And I just thought, well, you know what, I don't know what the heck I'm doing, so I guess I'll just write down what they're doing, and that's what I'll teach.

Now on my own, I really started to see some major growth, you know, some excited phone calls and emails of people telling me how much better they were doing. And you know, at some point you need that confirmation as a coach that things are working.

at all.

away with perfect movement. But Fred, but you won't be a better player because as a coach, I'm interested only in performance, and so you can improve technically to improve, but you can also make your training time more effective so that you develop skill, which is really what performance is, and that those skills have nothing to do with technique. They could be picking the right club, picking the right landing spot, adapting for upslopes and down slopes. What do

I do? You know when the balls into the grain?

There's no mention of skill development, there's no mention of how to improvementally. And yeah, it's long and tiring, and you do this for three days, you get sent home and it's no wonder people weren't getting better because they're doing going about the process of improving all wrong. There has to be not just this technique that I discovered.

I mean, that's great and it works, but more importantly, there has to be an approach to improving and an logical, simple way that you could spend a few minutes each day to get better, to not only improve your technique but your skill and the confidence of what great golf demands and that's really what coaches do that teachers do not. You know, they think about the whole picture as opposed to just some little technical tip.

And I do go into great detail on this next one about that very topic because that's I think a very common problem, that might be the most common problem. But if you're getting in your own way, there's two things happening. Once again, thoughts are internal. You're thinking about how to move the club. You're thinking about a position of your head or your arm, or the motor of your stroke, or what you want the club to do.

And I would move your thoughts and train to try and think of external and kind of a subconscious reaction to what you picture. And the way I do that with my students is I separate training time by intent. So if the intent of training is to work on and improve your technique, then we eliminate the whole we put into open space and we think of only technique. Those are those internal thoughts, and we do it in a manner where there's some feedback whether we know we're

doing it right or not. So might just create a simple workstation for your putting or for your wedge play or your bunker player or whatever, and it just might be some swings without the ball or certainly without a pin where we evaluate the technique. Then you just have to flush that completely and you have to think about skill. And so you do that through random practice instead of one ball after the other. In the same you scatterballs everywhere. You have all your clubs, and you go through an

organized process to get yourself ready. And in the book, I talk about this process starting with assessment of the lie, the wind, the grain, all the factors that would influence it, choosing a club, choosing a trajectory, choosing a landing spot,

visualizing the ball go in. So now all of a sudden, as I visualize, the thoughts are external, Right, have my thought walking in clear and committed, taking a rehearsal swing, thinking of nothing more, that kind of energy to your picture, and then then reacting like you tied your shoe this morning, Fred, which is you don't know how you did that, you just.

what you do after a bad shot. What's the what do you what's the first five seconds you after a bad shot? How do you react? How do you respond? Well, the typical person, let's say you miss a short pot,

you miss a two footers. If they get angry, they get frustrated, they get despondent, they go, oh, I can't pot, I'm horrible at this, you know, all the negative self talk, right, So, uh, that's certainly not making the next one easier, right that that your your self image is taking a big blow every time you say I can't do this, I'm no good at it, this is frustrating or just feeling that

negative emotion. So that's not what champions do. Champ think about the results unemotionally and allow them to direct direct them in a positive way so they can do the next one better. So that's literally why I titled my book Your Short Game Solution, because as a coach, I ask the same question probably five hundred times a day, and I always asks, Okay, what's the solution of that? So, Fred,

you missed this two footer? What's the solution? Well, it could be more break could be less energy, could be more commitment, could be I didn't quiet my eye and do my breathing or whatever it is that we're working on, right, and you say, well, next time, I'll just recommit and I'll do that foundational thing better. And so therefore you missed your two footer, but you've recommitted in a positive way to your plan, as opposed to missing your two

footer and going wow, I suck. I can't put. So there's a lot of little pitfalls mental pitfalls to to putting or performance in golf that people just don't quite get right. They just don't quite have the mental discipline or the knowledge to to kind of self coach in a positive way.

and buy the book. And that Let's talk about the the choosing the correct wedges for for your your game.

in there. So if I hit my pitching wedge one twenty five, the next club I need to hit at least ninety five yards, The next club I need to hit at least seventy five full. And if I can get those nice even spread like that, then through this distance wage system that I expound upon in the book, you can really learn to cover any yard which with appropriate spin and trajectory. Okay, so that's one criteria. The second would be the bounce options and the soul grind,

the shape of the wedge. And I mean that's a book in itself, just kind of going to all the different detail there. But if I could just generalize it to this one point, I think it would be helpful for anybody listening. You want to have a sand wedge, your middle wedge, whether it's fifty four or fifty five, fifty six doesn't matter with a lot of bounce on it.

Bounce is the difference between the bottom back of the club on the soul to the leading edge and degrees, So good sand wedge you might have between ten and fourteen or fifteen degrees of bounce on it. If you have a more lofted club like a fifty eight to fifty nine or sixty, you want that one to be low and bounce between four and seven, depending once again

on your standard technique. So with the techniques that I try and get people to use, you don't need much bounce because the swing is very shallow and you use

it as you swing. So if that's the case and you have a high bounced sand wedge and a low bounce lob wedge, then you're really prepared for any turf condition because when the sand, the sand or grass is soft, kind of like it usually is in the Northeast or maybe up there in the northern California or whatever, you kind of soft conditions, the ball comes out slow and more bounce is better than less, So you can always use your sandwich perfect you need you need a little

bit more energy, you need more bounce. If, on the other hand, you're playing kind of tight, firm turf you get in a lot of places, whether it's exis or maybe it's just have a little bit of a drought going on the course or whatever, or firm sand sand that's been where it's rained and it's kind of packed in and baked. Then you need less bounce is more effective and the ball comes up fast or flies off,

so you need more loft and less bounce. So you always have a choice if you had that set makeup awesome, that makes sense, I hope. I mean, no, it does. It does.

ball laying into the grain on a tight lie. And in that case, a lot of people they may have their favorite club out, which is a lob wedge, and they might see a little lower shot with it because they have some green to work with, So they lean the shaft a little forward and they take this club.

When you lean the shaft forward, you reduce the effective bounce, and he's sharpened the leading edge, which is just an awful thing to do into the grain, where if you hit just a little behind it with a sharp leading edge, it's just going to dig a trench. I mean, we all saw that. I think the listeners think back at Tiger the Hero World Challenge where he's into the grain on that sticky Bermuda and he's digging the leading edge

in the ground, just duff and shot after shot. That is much about that certainly was technique in his case, but it's more about shot selection. So if you take your sand wedge and just just roll back the clock to nineteen seventy pre lobledge and take your sand wedge, and we can hit the same trajectory shot as we did with the sixty by hitting a little higher than normal shot with that sandwich, and effectively you add bounce and soften the leading edge and it just works so

much better. Now the problem is that skill development, that judgment element requires decision making and training. How are you supposed to learn that? How did I learn that? You know, Well, the way I learned it is that I trained properly by throwing balls everywhere, and you know, learning through experience of a bunch of different trials. But that's not what average golfer does they. I mean you, even at my own club. You think these people would have read the

book and known better or whatever. But they go out to the sharcame area. They stand in the same spot for twenty minutes, and they'll hit ten shots to one pin, and they'll hit ten shots to the next pin, and they're all from the same lie, and they tee them up and it's just horrible practice for trying to develop skill and learn the little nuances of being a great player.

a bad shot, what do you do? Well? You think internally about what you did wrong, and then you fiddle and you try something new, and then you at some point you stay there long enough, you're going to hit a shot you don't like, you know, it's just there's no resiliency in it, there's no toughness in it, there's no skill development in it, and so they're just better off just like skipping all together.

of that talent regressed that far? Uh? And the reality is only when you the only way to get that far is to work hard on the wrong things. So he got some bad information at some point, practiced it diligently, you know, wasn't quite getting what he wanted out of

it and the whole thing regresses. And in this case, I know for a fact that the changes he was making in his backswing, with the way he moved his arms, and you know he's working on his full swing first with Haney and then with Sean Foley, that the arm movements, the motor patterns that he was working on hard or

change that dramatically. He was. He just kind of crept into his finesca and he was literally moving his arms exactly the same way, and that ultimately ended up making him change his set up and the whole motor pattern. So that's very common mistake. The major premise of my book is that the full swing and short game are opposites. They're not the same, and if you use the same motor pattern for both, you'll only be good at one. You know, you just got to pick your one you want to be good at.

Kind of found that out after the fact, and then I think, given, you know, then Tiger takes a break and they sit there and they focused on that part of the game and worked it through. And I think now the difference that Augusta is just operating with good information and everything has changed. Like setup is completely different, backswing, arm movement patterns different, is balance, and the way he releases the club was completely different. So one technique interesting.

happened when he switched kind of coaches. He switched complete concepts of how to do it, and then at some point he didn't know. It was kind of like me when I was teacher. It's like, well, I don't know what's right, but I know that's wrong, you know, So.

doing different things. But I'm usually here, you know, two or three days a week, and you know, if they want too bad enough, we can certainly find a way to get together.

finesse sequence. And the easiest way to learn what the finest sequence is, which is essentially at the start of your down swinging the club moving faster than your arms at the start of the downsing so these angles are starting to be let out, is to chip with your trailarm only just in training. So I just pretend like essentially, like I have a ball in my hand which I'm gonna grab here, and if I was going to do a little underhanded toss, I wouldn't do it by starting

my hips. I'd start my arm, the club would come out, and then I just release the club past my body to get this nice, gentle little toss there. And it's the same motion. And only think I'm gonna do differently is I'm gonna do it with the club in my hand, So just grip the club and the trail arm only set up to this normal I really like to level out, so I'd like to put my left hand kind of down on my thigh. Now I'm just gonna make a

one handed swing. Just pretend I can do it a little five yard toss with my trail hand, and that gives you the perfect perfect sequences. You release the club past your body, and I get a lot of calls and or texts saying, well, I chip so beautifully one hand only doing your drill, but when I put my left hand on there, it's not quite as good. It's just the perfect drill that allows you the sequence your swing properly, release the club pastor body and nice soft touch around the greens.