Having that high, soft-landing lob shot in your arsenal can turn a certain bogey into a tap-in par. It’s a shot that intimidates many golfers, but with the right understanding and a bit of practice, you can transform it from a threat into a trusted tool. This guide will give you a clear, step-by-step process for setting up and swinging to hit a perfect flop shot when you need it most.
Before we learn how to hit it, we need to know when to hit it. The lob shot isn't an everyday shot, it’s a specialist tool for specific situations. Pulling it out at the wrong time can be more punishing than helpful. The perfect scenario for a lob shot has a few classic ingredients:
The one non-negotiable for a good lob shot is the lie. You need a good one. To pop the ball up like this, you need to slide the club cleanly underneath it. The ball should be sitting up nicely in the fairway or the first cut of rough. Trying a lob shot from a tight, bare lie or deep, buried rough is asking for trouble and will likely lead to a skulled shot or a fluffed chunk. In those situations, a safer chip or pitch is the smarter play.
The lob shot begins with club selection. You can't hit a high, soft floater with a 7-iron. You need a club designed for height, which means a wedge with a high degree of loft.
Your best options are a lob wedge (usually 58-62 degrees) or a sand wedge (56-58 degrees). The more loft, the higher the ball will go with less forward roll. A 60-degree or 62-degree wedge is often considered the classic "lob wedge" and is purpose-built for this kind of shot.
Beyond loft, you need to consider the bounce of the wedge. Bounce is the angle on the sole of the club (the bottom part) that prevents it from digging into the ground. For a lob shot, where you are trying to slide the club under the ball, a wedge with a bit more bounce (10-14 degrees) is your best friend. It acts like the hull of a boat, skimming through the turf rather than digging into it. This provides a safety net against hitting the shot heavy.
Your address position pre-loads the shot for success. A proper lob shot setup looks and feels quite different from a standard full swing or even a normal chip shot. It's all about creating the conditions for maximum height and minimal forward roll.
This is the most critical element. Before you even take your grip, you need to open the clubface. Point the clubface to the sky. A good way to visualize this is if the clubface were a plate, you would be able to hold a plate of food on it and it should sit flat!
Here’s how to do it correctly: Aim the clubface where you want the ball to land, then open it so it's pointing significantly to the right of your target line (for a right-handed golfer). Once the face is in a wide-open position, then and only then should you take your grip. If you take your standard grip and then try to twist your hands to open the face, you’ll naturally return the club to a square position at impact. Opening the face first and then gripping creates a stable, open position that you can trust through the swing.
With the clubface wide open, take your normal grip. It will feel strange because your hands will be rotated further anti-clockwise in front of you. This is normal. A "weaker" feeling golf grip holds the palm of your hand more on the top of the club and this grip is what allows you to keep the club's loft through impact.
Because the clubface is now pointing way out to the right, you need to compensate with your body. Set your feet, hips, and shoulders so they are aiming well left of the final target. A good rule of thumb is to aim your body where you want the swing to travel - down the target line - which will feel like you're aiming left since you opened the clubface before your setup.
Your feet should be in a slightly narrower stance than a full-swing wedge, but in a very stable and athletic stance so you can feel what the club is doing through the swing.
Play the ball forward in your stance, roughly in line with the heel or instep of your lead foot (your left foot for right-handers). This forward position encourages you to catch the ball on a slightly upward arc after the club bottoms out, which maximizes height.
Finally, lean your weight slightly towards your front foot. Aim for about 60% of your weight on your lead side. This helps you get a good descending strike at the ball, ensuring you make contact at the bottom or slightly on the downward arc of your swing. This prevents the tendency to fall back and try to "help" the ball into the air, which often leads to thin or heavy shots.
With the setup complete, the swing itself focuses on two things: creating enough speed and trusting the loft you’ve built into your address position. A lob shot is not a delicate, timid swing, it requires confidence and acceleration.
The backswing for a lob shot should feel steeper and more wrist-centric than a normal shot. As you start the swing, hinge your wrists almost immediately. Think of picking the club head "up" with your hands and wrists rather than pulling it around your body. The length of the backswing controls the distance, but for most greenside lobs, a swing that goes from your waist to chest height is plenty. You shouldn't be feeling so much torso coil and rotation. The energy for the "chop" of the lob shot comes from gravity accelerating the head back down and not your hands or big muscles like your back or lats.
Keep your arms relatively straight until you hinge them with your wrists, while your arms remain relatively straight your shoulder rotate and you finish by making a "v" as well as your shoulders turning to allow for a better angle of attack. This creates a steep angle of attack, which you'll need on the way down.
Here it is: the make-or-break moment. The single biggest mistake golfers make on a lob shot is slowing down through impact. They fear they’ll hit the ball too far, so they decelerate. This causes the clubhead to wobble, destroys the bounce, and leads to either a chunked shot that goes nowhere or a thinned screamer that flies across the green...
You must accelerate through the ball. Trust your setup! The incredibly open clubface and high loft mean that even with a lot of speed, the ball won’t go very far, it will go high. As you swing down, your only thought should be to slide the sole of the club along the grass, directly under the ball. It can be useful to visualize literally sliding the club directly underneath the ball. Or if there is a daisy for example behind the ball think of chopping the head of the daisy off, these cues can give you some of the confidence you need to take an aggressive whack at the ball from close range and stay committed!
Keep your weight on your front side and allow your body to rotate towards the target. Do not try to help or "scoop" the ball up. Let the club do the work under the ball so the club can slide underneath with max acceleration.
Just as you kept the clubface open on the way back, you need to keep it open on the way through. After impact, continue to rotate your body and allow your hands and arms to finish high. A great checkpoint is to look at the clubface in your finish position - it should be pointing up towards the sky, just like it did at address. This feeling confirms that you didn't try to manipulate the clubface at the last second. The finish will feel shorter and more abbreviated than a full swing, but it should be a balanced, committed position.
Reading about it is one thing, but feeling it is another. These drills will help you build confidence in your lob shot.
Lay a towel on the ground about three feet in front of your golf ball. Your goal is simply to hit practice shots that fly over the towel. This drill forces you to produce enough height and removes the anxiety of shooting for a specific target. It trains your body to instinctively hit the ball high without thinking about the mechanics.
Without a ball, take your setup address position. Make an aggressive backswing and downswing on the turf. Perform your practice swings, and the feedback from the sound that the divot makes when you enter the ground or turf and the overall feel of impact is what will increase your confidence at the ball.
Mastering the lob shot boils down to understanding its purpose, committing to an aggressive setup, and trusting that speed and loft - not manipulation - will create the desired result. With a wide-open clubface and a commitment to accelerate through impact, you can add this high-flying, sharp-stopping shot to your game and turn threatening situations into scoring opportunities.
Knowing when and how to play a specialty shot like the lob shot can be tricky under pressure. This is where on-demand guidance becomes a game-changer. With my personal AI coaching tool, Caddie AI, you can get instant advice right on the course. If you’re faced with a tough lie over a bunker, you can get a quick recommendation on whether the lob shot is the right play and how to execute it, all so you can commit to the shot with confidence.
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