Around the greens, the margin for error shrinks dramatically. If you hit a half-inch behind the ball, you chunk it. If you hit a half inch too far forward, you blade it. Hudson Weibel’s ability to control low point with his wedges is one of the quiet reasons behind his three-win season at the University of Houston. His chipping isn’t flashy, but it’s stable, and it all begins with understanding where the club bottoms out.
In the photo above, his setup tells the story immediately. At address, his pressure is slightly favoring the lead side, his hands are subtly ahead of the ball and his sternum is positioned over or slightly forward of it. These details reinforce the same theme we discussed in the iron piece: forward pressure helps create a downward strike. In the short game, however, the concept becomes even more critical because there is no time to recover if the low point drifts.
To help reinforce this, we place a wedge on the ground just behind the ball. The task is simple: hit short, 10-yard chips while keeping roughly 60 to 70 percent of the pressure on the lead foot for the entire motion. There is no shifting back, no scooping and no attempt to add loft with the hands. The chest simply rotates slightly through the strike while the forward pressure remains consistent.
Why the wedge works
With the wedge behind the ball, it helps control where the club bottoms out. More importantly, it immediately exposes three common faults. If pressure drifts to the trail side, if the handle stalls or flips, or if the wrists “throw” the club before impact, the clubhead will strike the ground first.
In Hudson’s motion, the same fundamentals show up repeatedly. Pressure continues to favor the lead side, the sternum remains slightly forward of the ball, and the club enters the turf after contact while the handle continues moving left through the strike. All of this happens because the low point is ahead of the ball. The wedge behind the ball forces that pattern.
At the elite level, practice isn’t about hoping for clean contact. It’s about building constraints that make clean contact the only possible outcome. The wedge behind the ball creates a simple rule: the low point must be forward. If it isn’t, the wedge tells you instantly.
Most amateurs struggle here because their motion moves the low point behind the ball. Pressure shifts to the trail side in the backswing, the hands attempt to “help” the ball into the air, and rotation often stalls through impact. Each of those tendencies pushes the bottom of the arc behind the ball.
When the wedge is placed behind the ball, there’s nowhere to hide from those patterns. Either the pressure stays forward and the strike is clean, or the drill exposes the error immediately.
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