– Welcome back, Adam Bazalgette here in sunny Naples, Florida. Two-time PGA Teacher of the
Year Award winner down here, want to touch on a subject
today, an important one, how to chip and pitch a
golf ball, stay tuned. (motivational music) So, how to chip and pitch a golf ball? We're gonna look first at the definition, are they the same, are they different? Try to clear that up for you a little bit.
At least I'll give you my version. And secondly, and most importantly,
we're gonna look at two of the most common
pitfalls I see when people try to hit chips and pitches,
and how to counteract that. One of them is kinda
cool, you'll see something really instinctive and
easy that could solve a problem you might have been having. If you like this video, please
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scratchgolfacademy.com. We have full courses in
every aspect of the game including a full in-depth
course on chipping. You can also do one-on-one
internet golf lessons with me at then site there.
So, let's get started. So, there's a little
pitching wedge shot here by the edge of the green. Let's talk briefly about definitions. Now, what's the difference
between a chip and a pitch? Let me just say, we're talking now about short pitches near
the edge of the green, not long and intermediate pitches. Best definition I've heard, and you've doubtless heard the same one, is a pitch goes more in
the air with less roll, and a chip, just the opposite, less in the air with more roll, but I would say when
you're near the green, more than anything, that's a
function of club selection. So, you could potentially
have a long chipping stroke if you had an enormous green to roll over, or you could have a sand wedge and have a fairly small pitching stroke if you only needed to
go five or six yards, but you had to stop the ball.
So I would say this, they're both, when you're near the green, very similar in this critical area from about there to there. Now, certainly if you get
a little bit beyond that, you're gonna start cocking
your wrist a little bit, and you're gonna start
pivoting a bit more, but I think you'd do
better off to just think of what's a good stable
stroke there at the bottom and not necessarily feel like
you do something different from chipping to pitching. We've got more on that in
other videos I've done, so I don't want to camp out there.
I want to go to these two
pitfalls that are so common 'cause I think these'll really help you if you can solve these. Let's check out the first one. Okay, so first of the two pitfalls, this is a very, very common one, and that's kinda snatching
the club to the inside, getting it behind you there in the beginning of the takeaway. I see this all the time. First thing is, is
causes two real problems. Number one, the more you
get the club to the inside, and you gotta remember
now on a short shot, you don't have the time to hike it up and change you're swing plane. When you're stuck back here, you're gonna tend to hit the ground sooner than you would if you were on plane.
The more from in here you swing, the earlier you'll hit the ground. Of course, that causes a problem and the solution so often is that the mind stabs at the ball to try to get up there and not hit it fat, so we don't want that. And perhaps just as damaging, if you get the club behind you, you're either gonna hit
the ball to the right, or again, you've gotta
kinda flinch with your hands and try to knock the ball online. Likely not as dramatically
as I just demonstrated there, but they're very damaging effect, these very damaging effects come from getting the club to the inside. Here's the thing of it, it's not actually a natural movement. Now, here's what I mean by that. Let me grab a couple of clubs. I've placed a towel on
the target line here, and I've done this with a lot of people, if you were to stand here with a golf club and look at the target, so there is no ball in this equation, and just toss a club towards
the target like that, you can do that at the
house or in the yard, I'll bet you your club would go back in a direction that is
matched to the target line.
And you do it without thinking. So, I'm telling you,
toss a couple of clubs, start to get a feel for that. And to me, level two of that drill, I've got a pitching wedge here. Go ahead and make a little chip
shot looking at the target. Now, the target could be the flag or just trying to land it over the towel. Now, there's a reasonable chance you're not gonna make solid
contact with the ball, I may not right here, that's not really the point of it though. You'll start to feel,
hey, where does the club want to go that relates to
my target and lock into that. Make sure though, if you do that, you do a pretty small backswing 'cause with your eyes over there, you're not gonna be able
to make much of a pivot, so keep the backswing small.
Let's give it a go. That was actually a
pretty good shot there. Probably better than I
could do with my eyes on the golf ball, but anyway, that happened to be a good shot. So, do that, do some looking at the target on the small scale, then
do some regular ones and start to notice if you're
doing it a lot differently than you would if you
were, say, tossing a club. So, pitfall number two, I would describe that
getting your body center too far behind the ball.
You'll often see too much
shoulder tilt this way when you do that. And remember, when you have
a little shot like this, you don't have a lot of dynamic
weight transfer and lag, you don't want that on
a little shot like this, so your swing is gonna tend to bottom out more or less under your body center. So, here's the key. You've got to get that
body center up here. If you don't, you're
gonna bottom out too early and what happens is, you
either get a miss-hit, or you have to sort of salvage the shot with a little recovery, and again, that's very,
very hard to repeat. So, the key is to know what
the ball looks like to you when you're in the right
relationship to it. Here's what I would recommend.
Get a setup, I've got a ball in this hand, get yourself to where you're sure you're in the right relationship, and simply stick the
club out in front of you. Now, it's in a perpendicular relationship to where I'm hitting, and just drop a golf ball from under that. You can see that that landed, oh, I'd say, right around the front edge of the ball I intend to hit. So, that would be a good spot, and once you've done it, you've just gotta kinda look down there and camp out and kind of figure out how everything looks to you.
Get your geometry right
in your mind's eye. Now, if you can get
that swing plane right, and if you can get yourself in a good relationship to the ball, the geometry should match, and you should be able to bottom out in front of that golf
ball you're trying to hit, and here's the key, you should be able to do it absolutely effortlessly. So, here's the test. I'm gonna set up opposite that ball, get my position, my
swing plane feels good, and with absolutely no effort, I should time and time again
be able to bottom out there.
That's when you're really
gonna have some confidence on these little shots. Now, certainly, hey listen,
if the ball's sitting up in some fluffy grass and
you want a nice high shot, no question about it, you
might want to lean back and add a little bit of loft. We're looking at generic shots though, where the ball's down fairway grass. So, work on these two things.
I'm confident they'll help you. I actually think this
backswing plane thing would really be helpful to a lot of people in their full swing as well. Hope you're doing some good chipping and pitching after this. Well, hope you found that helpful, how to chip and pitch a golf ball. Get on my home website,
scratchgolfacademy.com. I have courses in every
aspect of the game. A nice full course on chipping, one-on-one internet lessons with me.
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