Shallow the downswing plane with chipping

Set the pathpal to 40 degrees — a relatively shallow angle — and position it so the rod creates an under-plane gate the club must pass beneath on the downswing into the chip or pitch shot. The golfer's task is to deliver the club under the 40-degree rod rather than above it, which requires a shallower downswing plane than most over-the-top junior and recreational golfers naturally produce. For shorter golfers, the 40-degree setting is particularly effective because it scales appropriately to a smaller swing arc — angles that work for an adult's swing height may be too steep to provide meaningful feedback for a junior golfer's shorter arm length and lower hand path.

Juniors and shorter golfers often come over the top on wedge and chip shots because they generate the swing primarily with the arms and shoulders rather than body rotation — a natural pattern for developing golfers who haven't yet built the rotational sequencing that keeps the club on a shallower downswing plane. When the arms initiate the downswing, they throw the club outward and above the plane, producing a steep, outside-in delivery that creates glancing contact, divots that point well left, and the chunky, pull-left misses that characterize over-the-top wedge play. The 40-degree barrier makes the over-the-top delivery physically impossible — the rod is in the way — and forces the feel of a shallower, more rotational delivery.

Shawn identifies a fundamental design gap in most swing plane training aids: they're calibrated for adult swing heights, hand positions, and arc widths, and their lowest angle settings are still too steep to provide meaningful feedback for a shorter golfer's shallower natural swing circle. The pathpal's 14-angle range — 20 to 90 degrees in 5-degree increments — gives instructors the precision to match the barrier angle to the individual golfer's anatomy rather than forcing the golfer to adapt to an adult-calibrated aid. The 40-degree setting for Shawn's son Jack provides feedback that a 65 or 70-degree setting — appropriate for a tall adult — would miss entirely because the club would pass well beneath it on every rep regardless of swing quality.

An over-plane, steep delivery on wedge shots produces a sharp descending blow that digs rather than brushes — the leading edge drives into the turf before the ball, creating the chunk. A shallower delivery maintains a downward angle of attack but approaches the ball on a less vertical trajectory, which allows the bounce of the wedge to interact with the turf as designed rather than driving the leading edge into it. The shallow delivery also keeps the face more square to the path at contact rather than open from the outside-in cut, which produces more consistent spin direction and distance control. Shallowing isn't just about avoiding fat shots — it's the delivery pattern that allows the wedge's design to work correctly.

These two drills are mirror corrections targeting opposite faults in short game plane delivery. Pat Bernot's drill uses a two-rod tunnel to force a steeper angle of attack on chip shots — targeting golfers who are too shallow and produce thin, flippy contact. Shawn Koch's drill uses a single 40-degree barrier to force a shallower delivery — targeting golfers who are too steep and over-the-top and produce chunky, pull-left contact. Together they bracket the ideal short game delivery from both fault directions. An instructor diagnosing short game contact could use Pat's drill for thin/flippy misses and Shawn's drill for fat/chunky misses, with the pathpal's angle adjustability providing the calibration for both the severity of the fault and the physical size of the golfer.