Imagine your ball is ten feet from the green, now imagine a stonking great thorny shrub three feet in front of your ball, you can't putt it up, and you can't go round without racking up the strokes so what can you do? Tadaa! The lob shot. This is probably the hardest shot you can play, the risks are enormous and the rewards? Well only you know how you would feel to lob that golf ball cleanly over the shrubbery and have it land inches from the hole.

So what is a lob shot? It is simply a high, soft landing shot with little if any roll out. It is a shot that you will need at sometime and the golf course is no place to try it without a lot of practice as, if you miss hit it you will smack the ball into the ground, or, more likely you will thin it forty yards over the green, as I said the risk are great.You need a very precise technique to accomplish the lob shot and plenty of practice to get that high trajectory, small forward gain and land that ball like a butterfly with sore feet.

The advent of the specialist clubs like the lob wedge have, to a certain extent made the shot a little easier for us mere mortals but, and at the risk of laboring the point you have to practice. The Lob wedge is a very lofted club and therefore there is little need to lay it open when you use it although you can when you are confident with it to increase your repertoire of shots, something we should all aspire to. Remember, all your wedges can be played in different ways by adjusting your grip position either up or down the shaft and by opening or closing the face so each wedge is effectively nine clubs! And they say you can only have fourteen.

To play the standard lob shot you will need to address the ball in a slightly open position, say ten or so degrees to the left, this means your shoulders, hips and feet are aligned left of the target line, this will give you the required out to in swing path, much as you would play a bunker shot in fact the lob shot is a bunker shot but off the grass instead of the sand. A reason the lob wedge a came into being is that a sand wedge, which is a highly lofted club itself, has a bounce factor, i.e a rounded ridge on the sole to enable it to bounce or skim off the sand, it is this bounce that makes using the sand wedge off grass a problem and many players would machine the bounce off the club, voila, a lob wedge. Great until you have to play the bunker shot. Back to the lob shot, the ball should be played from just inside your forward foot with your weight favouring the front end, left leg for righties and this stance and weight distribution should be maintained through the shot. Incidentally try moving the ball backwards and forwards in your stance just a little bit when practicing and see the difference in forward movement and trajectory angle, even an inch either way gives dramatically different results. The backswing is only a three quarter movement with a sharp cocking of the wrists and then forward, accelerating through the ball to a high finish. This will give a clean confident shot with plenty of back spin to land the ball softly without a roll out. Remember, to maximise the benefits of the lob shot and more importantly minimise the risks, practice, practice and practice.

Big Norm is a weekend hacker, gives private tuition and never pays full price Cheap Golf Wedges